Simply A Sacrifice

Chapter 31: Pain

Hi guys, please excuse the long wait. I had some serious writer's block on how to handle this next chapter. 

This chapter is dedicated to everyone out there who deals with mental health issues. Your symptoms/coping methods may not remotely resemble those depicted in this chapter, but regardless, I hope that you get the support that you need. You are worth it. 

If you need someone to talk to, you can always inbox me. I am not a professional, but I want to help. 

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We stared at each other until it became painful. I broke first, blinking the tears around my eyes for uncomfortable relief. Dropping my head into my hands, I rubbed at my eyes until I saw spots. Our relationship never gets a break. More importantly, people may have been dying terrible, bloody deaths while I had been off on my holiday.  Part of me wanted to argue that it was not my war. It was an existing rivalry, right? Not remotely triggered by Lukas's apparent obsession with me/Adahy, which by the way, what was up with that?

But I knew that I was apart of this, regardless of how much I tried to deny it.

"So when you say 'war'," I mumbled into my hands, "Do you mean war war or like a dramatic way of saying you guys fought each other? Like a drunken brawl?" I had never before uttered the words 'drunken brawl' and it made me sound a few decades older than I was. There was a pause and I peeked out at him from between my fingers.

He shrugged, then shook his head and released a breath I hadn't realized he had been holding. He stared towards the heavens as if someone would reach down and pull the answer from his throat. Ever so slowly, his head slid back down to look at me. 

"War," he said, his voice cracking slightly. Muscles in his jaw ticked as he tried to contain whatever storm of emotions was brewing inside of him. 

"I'm so sorry," I whispered. He nodded. 

"Is it over?" I asked. He nodded again.

"For now," he said and returned to staring up at the sky.

"Did we..," I almost swallowed the words, not quite convinced I wanted to hear the answer to my question. "Did we win?"

"Barely," he murmured. Dropping into a crouch, he buried his face in his hands. 

"We lost so many people. Too many," he whispered, his voice slightly muffled. He looked back up at me, eyes red and watery. Adahy's hands curled into fists. He lightly bit down on his left fist as his face seemed to fold in on itself. Moments later, his shoulders began shaking and water leaked down his face. 

I was at a loss. The great hulking beast that was my mate was in tears on the floor in front of me. His body shuddered as a strangled sob escaped his throat. He looked so shattered that for a moment I wondered if I would ever be able to pull the pieces of him back together. 

What do you say to someone after all of that? How could anything ever offer him comfort? Did I even have a right to try? I hadn't been by his side through it all. The way I should have been. We were supposed to be partners and I failed him. Once again. Self loathing filled me, but I pushed it back down. This wasn't about me. I hesitantly moved towards him, falling to my knees beside him. 

"I'm sorry," I whispered again. I slid an arm around his shoulders and rested my forehead against the back of his head. It would barely span an inch of the canyon that had been formed - him on one side, me on the other. I had to try reach him anyway. Offer him some small reassurance that he was not alone. That's what people do when they care about others, right?

I gripped him tightly against my body and, eventually, he held me back. We stayed like that for what felt like hours, until he abruptly pulled away. His shoulders were stiff and his body was a rigid wall that he had constructed between us. I didn't blame him for trying to compartmentalize the pain. Sometimes, even after you give yourself time, you still have to close the lid on your emotions. If you completely let go, will you ever find your way back?