While Night Time Sleeps
By Vanilla Tiger

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You stare at his sleeping form and are surprised to find yourself smiling. You didn't think that you would ever be able to do that again, not since her. You're not quite sure which her you mean but it doesn't bother you. They all abandoned you in the end.

He stirs, and your arms are around him. That soothes him, and through him you. His is yours, yours to love, yours to keep. He knows what it is to be alone and will not let you return there. It is only recently that he stopped following you on your nightly patrols around the city. The danger in which he placed himself angered you. He was too weak, too fragile, too human, despite the battles he may have fought in his past. You derided his incompetence, fearful of returning alone. It strikes you that you could have lost him to trying to keep him. He too was afraid of an enforced return to a solitary life. You've both lost too many people.

Your father had taken everyone away from you, and when you thought you had nothing more to lose he took your life as well. But you never trusted magic for a reason. No spell can last forever, and in the end you got left behind one more time. He said that he only survived because he was unimportant enough not to be noticed. This, because now he can be important to you.

Sleeping, he nestles against you and once again the easy and unconscious affection startles you, too used to suspicion and mistrust. You had tried to make him hate you when you told him what you were and what you had done. He just smiled and spoke of strangers he claimed were just the same. The names sounded familiar, vague recollections from the life you never truly had. Catching sight of the blankness in your eyes, he looked down as his voice stumbled into silence. You clenched your fists, awaiting yet another rejection.

Perhaps it was only due to your extraordinary hearing that you realised that he had begun to talk again. There had been a boy he loved before he did you. He had killed, killed the closest one to him, for a dream of this love. As you approached him, he froze. Both of you relaxed into the eventual embrace. The past is past. Let it rest.

You want to mark him, place an unchangeable sign of your bond upon him so that no-one would ever dare take him away from you. He is yours, as you are his and you will not stand to be alone again. Then he wakes. As you look into his eyes, you realise every inch of his insides is already marked by you, as you are marked by him.

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