Grimm Tail [Apotheosis & Wolf]

For Apotheosis, things feel so... So much. He describes her as a knight who has come into his darkness with a light and her cheeks burn. Some part of her--that awful little voice that whispers to her that she's a parasite--still wants to protest, still tries to tell her she's not a knight in shining armor. That she's not brave at all. That she's not beautiful.

But his silver eyes are on her. His words are so genuine. She hurts for him, that he's loved others before her--there should be a twinge of jealousy there but she can't blame him; there are so many other people in the world that he would have met before her--and that those others have hurt him in exchange for his love. Repaid his yearning with unkindness and pain. She never wants to hurt him. Never wants to see him again like the way he was when he stepped out of the shower and was bleeding and bruised.

I love the one that loves me. She can understand that. In some way it helps her come to realize why he is her promised one. He'd been in the dark, too, for so long. He'd been hurt by others who he loved, wanted to love. She was lucky. She met him in the depth of her own darkness. No one else had taken advantage of her yearning because she'd hidden it so carefully until she found him.

Tears well up in her eyes and she takes his hand. She smiles at him so broadly, so genuinely. "I love you too," she says softly, because she has to in the face of all of this. She hopes that the faerie woman doesn't discount his answer because of her remark.

But the Lady of the Ring only gently nods behind that veil. It's a moment before she begins again with her question. "Would you cherish the one you love forever--even if they were to sicken or grow ugly?"

That gets a blink from Apotheosis. That seems like a question out of left field. But why does it sound somewhat... familiar?

Apotheosis says that she loves him, and he feels that warmth, that light that’s come into his life since the moment that he realized that she meant those words for real. Since that moment on the rooftop where he’d offered her something that he’d saved for Marsward. When he’d felt his heart slip away from the things that had hurt him and turned him toward her.

Everything in his life felt like it’d been made to be broken. Him most of all. His heart should have grown cold and heavy with the weight of the scars he’d let others place there over the years. But she treasured it just the same.

“Let age come and turn her cheeks soft and wrinkled. Let gray hair come and line her features in silver’d light. I do not fear any scar she might bear save that I would wish to bear it in her stead.” He doesn’t even look at the fae woman now. “I will treasure every day that has engraved the smile into her face. I will treasure every mark so long as I have brought her joy.”

“I do not love her raven tresses, nor her lavender eyes, nor the pale perfection of her skin. It is the woman inside that I have grown to care for.” At long last he lifts his eyes. “So long as she loves me, as long as she cares for me, she could be in any form and I would treat her as kindly.”

The tears in Apotheosis's eyes fall now down her face. Her promised one's words are said not to the Lady of the Ring but to her, and she feels like she could become like Hugin and Munin and fly away into the sky. She feels much the same to him, of course. Her promised one is handsome, beautiful even. But that is not why she loves him, and she knows that she would find him all the more handsome and beautiful as they both got older. Because it'd be a life that they share together, a journey that they walk together--on Savior and off.

She has to tell him now.

"It matters not to me: the ways in
How time comes to line your face,
How silver, like your eyes, spreads
Down every dark strand of your hair.
I see only my fate-promised one;
I see only the one given to me
For all the years of tribulation.
I see only my soul's true mate."

She feels her cheeks burning for the improvised poem, but it feels like the only way to tell him that he's her promised one, her soulmate, her everything. It's a truth down at the bottom of her soul that she has wanted to express since she realized it herself. "I will always care so deeply for you," she adds gently, softly. But despite her softness, she means it. It's a vow.

Another moment more and the Lady of the Ring asks one more question.

"Do you swear to take her as your most beloved person, until death do you part?"

It's only then that Apotheosis--Lana--blinks. Are they... getting married? She peers at Wolf to see if maybe he realizes this.

And a part of her hopes that if he does realize it--he says yes. As much as the thought makes her bloom bright and red for it.

All of her dreams are coming true. He doesn't run away when she tells him he's her promised one, her soulmate. He embraces her instead. Tells her that her words are beautiful. He even says yes to the Lady of the Ring's question.

They're getting married.

It's only a Savior wedding, but it's practice for the real thing, right? To be married in-game? She's so nervous suddenly. She has to match her words to his. She has to return his feelings expressed in word with hers.

She reaches up to touch his cheek too. To mutually express her love and care for him as he has for her. Her heart's in her eyes. For her it feels like it's in her throat.

"I will always want you, forever and always," she vows to him. Her wedding vow to him. Her bound to him, him bound to her.

A light shines onto them both from above as the Lady of the Ring lifts up her hands. The ring floats from her hands over to between Wolf and Apotheosis. Gently waiting for one of them to take it.

"When you don the ring, you are bound together by the words of your vows," the Lady of the Ring says. "Inseparable and joined together as oaths hold true."

Apotheosis looks up at him and the ring expectantly. There is no turning back now. She smiles at her promised one.

"I'm ready if you are," she says softly.

Wolf doesn’t think, doesn’t hesitate to pluck the ring out of the air. Not at first at least. He holds the ring in his hand, and it’s lovely. A beautiful silver-toned ring like he’d promised her it would be. It was everything he’d hoped it would be. He took her hand in his and it’s then that he heard the voice of doubt.

Not doubt over his words. He knew he meant everything he’d said. He knew that he felt this way, and that those feelings were not going to change. Yet… he’d been down this road before. Watched someone he cared about turn into someone vicious and mean. Someone who cared nothing for him. It would have been unfair to Marsward to say that he’d never been happy, because had. For one brief, shining moment… he’d been indescribably happy.

Maybe he was a fool to think that this happiness with Apotheosis - with Lana - would last.

So he gave her an out.

“You’ll be bound to your word Apotheosis. To your promise. I won’t hold you to something like this… if you don’t really want it.” There’s an ache in his eyes. A hurt as deep and as wide as the ocean that’s just waiting for another injury to add to all those that have come before. Wolf holds the ring out to her. “It’s for you to decide. If you want it - if you really want me… All you need do is take it.”

There isn't a single doubt in her mind.

She looks at that hurt in his eyes. She thinks of him in the real world, standing in her house, the bruises on his neck, the bleeding from his shoulder. She thinks of how lost he seemed to her then--until she expressed her care for him, and then he embraced her. He held her in his arms. He told her that she was the most important thing in his life. And then they kissed, and she knew from that moment that she would never let go of him ever again.

There's as much conviction in her own violet eyes as much as there is overflowing warmth and love.

"I have wanted you since the moment I saw your picture," she says. Inwardly she's surprised by how much strength is in her voice. "I have wanted you since the moment we met for our first date. I have wanted you since the moment I saw your face on my phone. I have wanted you since the moment I found you at the airport. And every morning I've woken up since you've become part of my life, I've wanted you more and more and more. Because I love you; because you're my promised one; because you're my soulmate."

She reaches out and takes the ring, smiling gently at him, her eyes on him as she slides on the ring that he won for her. She wants him to know that his gesture was wanted and received completely--

Light emanates from her and from him, just a flash. And then the Lady of the Ring speaks again, disappearing with her words.

"You are now bound together as husband and wife. May your fairy tale have a happy ending."

I'm his wife. Just thinking it makes her so proud. So happy. She's his and he's hers--forever. Tears of joy surge down her cheeks again, and she giggles with glee in a way she's not done in a very, very long time. Not since she was a child, not since the days of darkness began.

She opens her arms wide and goes to embrace him. "My Zalgiman!" she cries out in happy exaltation.

Because she wants him, and she wants him to feel the joy she's experiencing--the joy he's brought her.