The fastest way to her house was a pretty direct route. Yet even when she was in a hurry she took a moment and added several streets to her trip. She walked past the Shrine of the Vanished Keeper, Tassadar's shrine. It had been a year, a full 24 months since she saw him. Since she felt his hand brush hers. She shuttered, as she always did when she approached, and heard his voice, "I will not let you get hurt for me. I will always love you." Tassadar was never much of a poet but just those simple words meant worlds. More than all the gold, and titles, and position ever would. It meant so much because her marriage had only been a political one. He would never have married otherwise.
They had talked about it before his proposal. They had both been in love before. She had been married. He had loved a girl named Illianna. Tassadar had been just a kid at the time, from what she understood. Illianna was an elf with black hair and one long grey streak in her bangs -- she was pretty. Vadellya had met her, had sought her out when her engagement to Tassadar was made public. The anger and hurt in those eyes when she looked at her still burned. She felt deeply for her. She truly hurt for her.
Despite his love, or maybe because of it, Tassadar refused to be in love. He learned from the example of many other paladins in high position that his enemies would only hurt the woman he loved to get to him. He thought his love sentanced her to death. He and Vadellya failed to build a true emotional attachment for just that reason.
Coming to the gate of the cemetary, she stopped dead in her tracks. There was a wolf in Haven. It was very odd to see a wild animal in the middle of one of the world's biggest cities. But it was not wild. Only 15 feet away from the wolf, stood an elven woman with a long grey streak falling from her bangs. Her left hand pressed up against the statue of her lover, shoulders sunk, and breathing labored.
Vadellya's elven ears could hear the woman praying, maybe to herself,
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"I don't know what I've done or if I like what I've become."
Illianna had to become a shadow. To solve a civil war in Enron she let a double of her take the throne. In one day she had lost her kingdom, her friends and her love. She could not be her, or herself, anywhere, so she stayed in the forest and spoke only to her falcon Tresy and her dire wolf Kren. She barely remembered how to speak to people.
"Something told me to come and there were sounds and voices whisper'n. That I should go, and this should end."
For days, weeks, months, years, till she had forgotten time by any measure, she kept and festered hatred, jealousy, abondonment and loneliness. It had to end, she had to move on but she did not know how.
"Cause, I don't know who I am," she gulped as the first tears broke her eyes, "who I am without you. All I know is that I should." Should what? Move on? Forgive him, forgive her, forgive herself? "Cause she will love you more than I could." She was so young, so was he. Children see the world so differently. He could only have had her child love. Let go, give him to her. "She who dares to stand where I stood."
Catching her breath and sighing,
"See, I thought love was black and white." He offered his hand to her as Jonathan's men stormed the castle. Scared and desperate she knew he would save her.
"That is was wrong or it was right." With tears in his eyes he said Raquel told him to let her go.
"But I wasn't leaving without a fight, and I think you were just as torn inside." Standing on the cliff after Moriardi had been stopped, Tassadar looked over the edge. She knew what he was going to say. He had kidnapped her to get to him. The culmination of all of his fears. She was strong enough to take it -- she was a rock. But she did not know how to make him understand that. Looking at his eyes she realized it was not her strength but his that he questioned. It was that moment, that one cursed moment, when she knew they would never be together and she lost him. And herself.
"Cause I don't know who I am," Tears beat on the marble floor beneath his statue. Mustering all her strength she continues -- she has to say this, "Who I am with out you. All I know is that I should. And I don't know if I could stand another hand upong you." Her breath stop and the lump of her beating heart in her throat stopped any hope of powering through the lines she had reheared in her mind. THAT PRINCESS GOT TO MARRY HIM. Love him, sleep with him, hold him, kiss him, fight him, be loved by him. Watching from a spy glass over a thousand yards away she watched as Raquel Al-Shatel, the hypocrite bastard who told Tassadar to stay away from me, married her love to another. He touched her with such gentleness and smiled. He was happy. Which filled her with both joy and fury. She reached up and touched his face so gingerly as if she was afraid of startling off a dream.
"All I know is that I should. Cause she will love you more than I could." She pictured Vadellya's face perfectly in her mind as her whole body began to shake, "She who dares to stand where I stood."
She pushed herself back from the statue and looks into the marble eyes, "And I won't be far from where you are, if the light should ever call." 'The only thing I love and will serve more than you is the light and the Isle,' he told her and while that should have upset her she realized there was no deeper or more honest thing he could say. And now to honor his memory she should fight for the light. Any fight that needs fighting.
Steeling her emotions she wiped the tears from her ragged eyes with her hair and with firm conviction stated, "You meant more to me than anyone I ever loved at all. You taught me how to trust myself and so I say to you, This is what I have to do." Move on, accept it, let the world have him, closure.
The world would be scary without him. Without his arms to hold and protect her and without the passionate emptiness his memory brought, because that was the only life she could seem to remember. Loving and hating him.
It will be hard.
"Because I don't know who I AM!" the emotions fought back to drive her back down. But she stopped it and drove them not back down as she had done before but out and away. She dismissed them. "Who I AM with out you. All I know is that I must. I don't know if I could stand another hand upon you." For just a moment to have his hand touch me. She drove it away, "ALL I KNOW is that I should. Because she will love you more than I could." Much more than some lost forest ranger who has just now over a year later found her way to visit.
"She who dares to stand where I stood." For the first time I don't hate her. She loved him, how could you not? She lost him too, the entire world lost him. She was capture bruised beaten and used for him and stood with him just like I would have and in the end she has what I have, no Tassadar. "Oh, she who dares to stand where I stood."
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Illyena whistles for Kren. Kren hesitates a moment and she realized he was keeping someone at a distance. No doubt there were multiple patrons who wished to respect and honor and love the great Mogath, they could have him. She no longer needed him. The ranger and her companions left the shrine not looking back as they left Haven and the Isle.
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Vadellya wiped the tears from her eyes and Illyena left. Part of her too frightened and part of her too touched, she said nothing just watched the woman who dared to love the most amazing man to have walked the earth. I dare to stand now where she stood.
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