#susinger

∘₊✧── she longs when it is silent and she is alone, when there is no soul present to bear witness to such pathetic sin.

because she shouldn't. because this magnificent, miserable love was one meant to die along with the knight for which it burns. because this foolish feeling had brought nothing but hurt, but ruin.

and yet she yearns anyway. yearns when she lights another candle in her cottage's cramped foyer, when the sunrise is particularly lovely over foreign hills.

nyna's lips press together, her shoulders resigning themselves only to draw closer. its cold, winter's first earnest breaths whispering through the early morning. her walk into town is a short one, routine, made with a basket of fresh flowers and herbs tucked carefully beneath her arm.

vendors are just beginning to flip their shops' signs to open, the street starting to populate itself. she will not be here long today, intending only to make her daily rounds and retire to the warmth of her home.

only she stops in her tracks, heart lodging itself in her throat. before her -- directly in the path to the little shop that particularly enjoys buying her stock of thyme -- stands the silhouette that has haunted her every moment since last they met.

it isn't him, it couldn't be. and yet that terrible what if gnaws at strings of a heart plucked too thin. nyna trembles, tells herself that it is the cold.

"forgive me," for she has been staring and most certainly caught his attention for it, "i had just... thought i recognized you."

he had not indulged her with his name, were it truly him who had saved her so long ago, but perhaps now...

"if i may ask," cautious is her tone, slow, the barest glint of hope in crystalline eyes. "what is your name?"

✧. ┊ nyna to zeke god forgive me

"You do," he begins, and immediately he hesitates. She knows more than his name. His honor, his loyalty, the way he stands up for what he believes in, the way he loves. Through not one, but two chance encounters, has Nyna encountered it all--drank every last drop of his draught, seen him at points both high and low.

The names Camus and Sirius are familiar on her tongue, but neither are what he is now.

He belongs to another. He should not be speaking with her. Though the memory of her has crawled back to the surface, it must be pushed back down. To break his vow with his beloved would betray the very quality he knows she loves him for; his heart is stone, but she is its sculptor.

"I am Sirius..." he continues, affixing his mask to the bridge of his nose, "the traveler." Knight spins on his heel, the conversation with a street vendor briefly abandoned. His golden locks shimmer in the morning sun, a pale reflection of the queen's own radiance. She is a hall of tarnished gold: beautiful beyond compare, but so easily succumbing to her fate. How long had it been since her husband met his end? She must be lonely, he reasons, for why else would she grasp at the phantom of her past?

As much as it pains him to do so, he hides his smile from her. Never can he allow her to recognize Camus by it--it is now reserved for his lover, just as hers once was.

(How ironic, that fate has them playing each other's part.)

"Though, if I may admit something... I have not been truthful with you." Heartstrings dance to the sound of his voice, feeling all that he once felt from her. Every moment with her is like being pulled into quicksand: one day, he may find himself unable to turn back. "That is not my real name. I..." again Knight pauses. For a moment, he considers a reality where he told her the truth. Where Nyna's suspicions were confirmed, where her smile could be brought to her longing face. Would it be so bad, to run away with her now? Surely he'd have a place in Archanea. Surely the others would understand, that the now-king Marth would grant him pardon for Grust's past.

But it is hardly that simple.

Dreamlike his mind may be, those thoughts are deaf to the cold truth of that reality. That in Valentia, the woman he owes his life to--has pledged his life to--would be expecting him. For days, weeks, months, she'd lie in wait. He does not doubt she would sit by the windowsill, trying to force joy onto her features, convincing herself that he'll just be a day longer, praying to whatever saint or god she believes in that she'd be right. His teeth clench together, the bridge of his mouth ready to pronounce the first 'c' in Camus. But it stops.

"If you wish to know my name, it is Ezekial. I am a knight in service of the Unified Continent of Valentia. My business with you was merely to repay an old debt."

He stabs himself with his own words; takes up the chisel Nyna had used to shape him those years ago, and adds another notch into the firm stone of his heart. There is pain and sadness behind his mask, and yearning too. Were he any other man, had things happened any differently, then perhaps he could have been honest with her.