Narmë Reddawn

A fragment of journal

I wonder sometimes.

Does my memory fails me? Is it nostalgia that lead me to believe we ever had hopes of a life together, of me growing old, or have I always knew neither of us would be alive for much longer? Were we waiting for death together?

I think it is. He knew I was marked for death and he was already taken. On our wedding night, we exchanged words and jests (for we couldn’t exchange much more); that I would grow old, grey in my hair and wrinkles around my face and he would stay forever the same, frozen in undeath (but that was already a lie, wasn’t it? Even undeath isn’t eternal and flesh rot); that I would look like a cradle snatcher, that we wouldn’t tell. That I was wed to death anyway.

It was merely the last joke before the hanging, wasn’t it? We had one year, supporting each other and taunting death all the same. We knew it would come soon no matter what, or perhaps we did not care enough.

I was waiting for the death who had already taken so much from me, without a regard for my sister who had lost as much but me (and in that I was both selfish and cruel), with barely a regard for him if I were to meet my end without him.

And then, I didn’t followed him in the grave. Not by my own accord, I wanted to die as much as I wanted to not leave him alone for that last part of the road, but the choice have been taken from my hands.

I lived.

Unfairly, terribly, but I lived.

Here, where no one but me will read it, I can admit. I contemplated the thought of actively killing myself in the months that followed. It had been tempting, but yet… It would have been a waste, and it would have been a mockery of his own demise and I could allow neither of those to fester in my mind. I asked for help, and I got it, and I was resigned in a way to live, and to do better in his memory. I’ll pay for what I did, and my blood was a good enough coin. That’s partly why I signed in the First Escadrille after all, I’ll serve, I’ll bleed, I’ll die, leaving the world that tiny much better.

But Sun help me, I want to live again.