you were my happily ever after

*Samara* · Updated 04/30/23:

Rhyme was trying to hide his affliction from everyone else, and for his childrens' sakes Samara would honor that wish but there could be no hiding it from her, not when she saw him at his most exhausted, at the end of the days when he was wheezing from effort and tiny trickles of liquid that escaped his mouth and nose dotted their den before she'd inevitably clean it. It wore away at her, eroded the confidence she tried so very hard to keep from slipping. Nothing seemed to help him and a deep fear had settled itself in her. Rhyme was dying. She had known it would happen, he was older than herself and had been showing his age even when she'd done her best to save him after the fire, after his loss. But being faced with it was different from trying to ignore the creeping worry that the man was going to leave her behind sooner rather than later. It didn't help that nothing she did seemed to help soothe him, she couldn't stop whatever was inside him from slowly killing him from within.

So instead she decided to spend what precious time they had left together, or at least as much as he'd let her without giving the inevitable away. He still got up to run patrols and she could do nothing but pray he'd drag himself back to her at the end of the day. But there was something deeper gnawing away at her. She was afraid he was going to leave her behind but there was more than that. Samara wasn't sure she believed in anything after death, but ghosts seemed to be roaming now and it filled her with something even more dreadful than a life left to live without him... A life where he'd choose to leave her. Samara hadn't been much of a jealous type when they'd met but as her life became so intertwined with his, as her life became so close to his she'd started to give so much of herself to him and his world, her own family felt more like a footnote to her now... And though she did not resent his other children, nor their mothers, some part of her feared the worst. That if there was something after death that meant he'd not choose her when it came down to it, when he could choose Shaye...

Samara's sleep had not been peaceful, jolted to panicked wakefulness each time Rhyme's body shook from his coughing and she held her breath to see if this would be the fit that finally took him from her. So when he moved though she was exhausted the woman was instantly awake again. She rose to her paws much quicker than he did and she gently put out a tiny limb to place it on one of his. "Stay?" She asked softly, turning baleful eyes upwards towards him. It was a simple request on the surface, she was asking him not to go out today, to not keep pushing himself. But it was more than that. Stay with her yes, but stay alive with her, choose her.

"Speech"

Table Art by Kharpa

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