Eternal [HS]

Chapter Twenty-Eight

She does not breathe while he tells the story. It's impossible to do anything other than watch him closely and listen, hanging off of every word as if it were scripture.

"I left to get something from home, I don't even remember what the stupid thing was anymore, but I left her to get it. She smiled at me before I walked out of the room, and that was the last time I ever saw her alive. It wasn't how it was meant to be, I was going to turn her before she died, but I thought she was getting better and didn't want to force her into this if she didn't need it."

From here, she can see his face cheek glisten with what must be tears. One lonely tear slides down his face, hugging the curve of his cheek all the way down to the edge of his jaw until it drops onto his lap. And it aches in her like something is clawing its way out from the inside of her chest, it hurts to see him cry. Now she understands exactly what he felt seeing her break down as she did over what happened with Devin because having to watch him cry is a kind of helplessness she didn't know existed.

Most often in their relationship, he is the one protecting her. It's only natural, after all, with what's happening in their lives and the physical disparities in strength between them. The only thing is, this is one of the first times that she feels the need to take on the nurturing role he often dons for her.

"My biggest regret is not turning her before that day," he says, shaking his head, "if I just—"

"That's not on you," she blurts before she can control herself. "Please, tell me that you know it wasn't your fault."

His gaze snaps away from the painting and over at her. He was so wrapped up in both the memory of what happened and the painting's final touches, which are now done, that he didn't see the tears welling up in her eyes on his behalf. Here they are, both crying and both wanting the other to stop before it makes them cry harder.

The past few days have been filled with such a vast array of emotions, she doesn't know how to process them all. There has been such sadness and panic and death, yet such happiness too. For every bad moment, there has been a happy one waiting just around the corner, and that's what makes her not mind what she feels currently. Feeling sadness when she knows what it means, when she knows that it's a product of him opening up to her and giving himself to her further, does not bother her.

His voice is so soft when he sets the paintbrush into the glass of water, tainted with an amalgamation of every hue of paint he has used to capture her likeness, and says, "I know." A sad smile. "People get sick sometimes, it happens, but I will never stop regretting it. Even if it wasn't my fault."

There's a second in which he stops, side glances at the painting, then—

"Come look at it."

The words she's been waiting to hear all day...except now she isn't as excited as she would've been. Now, she cannot hide her concern for him and what he said about regretting not turning her soon enough, as if it were somehow his responsibility to save her.

It wasn't even the nurses' responsibilities either. What happened to her couldn't have been stopped by eighteenth-century medicine. What happened to her, as tragic as it was, was an act of God that could not be delayed. Whether he believes in religion, or fate, or whatever name one gives it, she knows that he cannot deny this simple fact: what will be will be. If her destiny was to become what he is, it would've happened. It wasn't impugned by his last-second decision to retrieve something from their house the one time she was in true danger of losing her life.

If what happened to her has taught Jo anything, it is that there is a time for every human to come back to the earth, and there is nothing the person themselves can do about when or how that time is to come. When she was attacked after her shift at the hospital, she thought it was hers. She thought that her last view of the world she has had such little time in would be the cobblestone wall before her that dripped with her blood, but it wasn't. It wasn't her time and Niall being there to save her was no coincidence, it was fate.