Work Text:
There is a fear in many that the sun will burst one day, engulfing all– a blazing glory, a violent disaster. The planets will remain as nothing but a charred husk in the galaxy, not remembered by anyone.
That is what love feels like in Madoc’s chest. Every time he breathes there is an eruption, a great engulfing. He breathes fire, starlight floods his veins and he is burning. Burning to a crisp, naught but a husk– he is the moon watching the sun explode, opening his arms to welcome the burn. When his skin has singed, when his hair has set aflame, he will laugh (perhaps then the blood will be washed away at long last). And burn he does, bright and dazzling and violent.
Every time she steps close to him, he reaches out. Every time she steps back, he chases. His every thought is her. Her, her, her. The brown of her hair, the softness of her skin; soft in all the places he is not. Her ears, rounded at the tips. Her fingers, without claws, fit small within his own. At revels, she shines. The fae circle around her, watch her twirl and spin, the fine fabrics he has dressed her in shimmering beneath the candlelight. She is a wonder, an amazement.
She is his.
His to touch, to hold, to feel. It is his arms she falls into at night when her feet grow sore, his bed she warms, his cloak she wears. When she laughs, it is at his jokes, and when she gasps it is at his gifts (when she screams, violent and crass and harsh, it is him she screams at. Him she throws vases at).
Eva is not scared of him. Not in the way the gentry are– she does not live in peripherals, just out of sight. Surely, if she were, she would not scratch and bite and hiss in the way she does; she would not spit words of venom, curse his name to every high hell. Something within him revolts at this very notion, that when he growls, she growls back with rounded teeth. Still, she is the sun in his arms, the light in his life– he took her from that boring, drab world of hers and instead towards a world of wonder. Colour. Golden fruits, honeyed sweets, dripping wine.
He attempts, at first, to hide all that is unsavoury from her. His role as General, the cap he returns home with which drips blood onto their tiled floor, cleared away before she can see it and wonder. Every time, it is as though she knows, as though she can smell the blood upon him long after he has scrubbed it away.
She is the sun, and he is afraid she is going to burst before he can stop her. That the very foundations of their love– of what makes this violent creature of habit his– will slowly fade away, till she is greying, alone, till the blood drips down his chin and instead upon her own. Would she love him if she could see he has been swimming in the blood of the damned for centuries now? Or would she run as so many before her have, not caring there is a heart beating within his chest that can ache and shatter as hers can?
It is fragile, this love of theirs, but it is all consuming, it takes over every fibre of his soul until he is nothing but a bleeding heart within her palm.
Eva grows bored, eventually.
Madoc notices it slower than he should, but sees it in the way she pulls away. Less and less she goes to revels, her twirling does not take up every moment of his life, when he returns home she is not there to greet him. She returns instead with laughter on her lips, with the names of people he doesn’t know on her tongue. At first, she attempts to hide that which she brings back, but he finds it. Knows his home better than the back of his hand, knows when his Eva is lying to him.
It is one of these nights where he sits on their bed, clutching a dress he did not buy her, anger burning bright in his chest. Was he not enough? Did he not provide as she wanted? Eva stumbles in smelling of glitter and vinyl; of vile, crude mortality– she is a day older than when she left, aged as she is by the mortal world. She stops, holds onto the wall, stares at him with wide eyes, smiles.
“Madoc,” her voice is slurred, she moves towards him, “it’s so late, why are you still up?” She is a siren in murky waters, he is a sailor crashing on the rocks to reach her.
Madoc looks up at her slowly, not moving away when she wraps her arms around his neck, “Is there another?” He grits out, his jealousy burning brighter than the starlight she filled his veins with. He watches her blink, take in the dress in his hands, clutched so tightly his claws tear at the fabric.
“Another? Oh, Madoc.” She is temptation. She is sin. She is moving her hands beneath his shirt, pressing her nose to his throat. “Of course not, I could never replace you.”
He is a weak man. A fool of a man. He is besotted and simple and for the first time in his life he is in love. Madoc breathes out, allows Eva’s hands to wander and play and find, until she is laying him down on their soft bed– he forgets all about the dress, about the glitter, about the smell of fragile mortality which clings to her skin. She is the sun, the siren, the murky waters– and he is drowning.
There are signs to every ending marriage, if one knows where to look. In your wife not laughing as hard when you joke, when your gifts stop exciting her. When it appears, imperceptibly, as though she has faded into your peripherals. Madoc begins to see it in the way she is there, at the corner of his eye, but never quite at the front of his vision. His gut swims, his mind reels.
Something is wrong, he decides.
Something is awry.
The sun has started exploding and–
–his house is burning with it.
It is here he finds the last remains of his marriage, in the rubble of a house he had made a home. His every thought is of her. Eva, Eva, Eva. She is the air he breathes, the blood that flows through his veins, his heart beating in his chest. There is blood on his hands, bright and vibrant, it is dripping down his face, and he is drowning. Drowning in the swamp of bodies he has created as he wades through an ocean of red. Nothing remains. No love, no laughter, no joy. His house burnt and took his Eva with it.
His, his, his. Gone now. Gone.
Taken his daughter with her. In a great engulfing of flames so violent he had smelt the smoke long before the planets had exploded. Madoc has known love only once in his life so far.
She had chestnut hair, a smile like the shining stars. A sun, a siren, the murky waters. She had held his bleeding heart in her hands and squeezed, and asked him if he loved her too.
I do, he had whispered as her blood dripped from his sword onto the carpeted floor of her new, happier house, I love you like the exploding sun.