When the world was simpler, Gareth Taur had found love.

A love that had been his one true calling throughout his entire life because without her, his strings were gone. Without her he was simply a lifeform stealing another's air. For today that air was being given back as he wandered haphazardly towards Amethyst Grove. A place that, even in his current weary and hallucinating state, he knew that he would be safe.

Following a pair of pawprints that kept ebbing and flowing within the ground in front of him. There was no lion attached to the prints that he followed (nor were they "real") but they were real to him. Feminine-sized prints that were placed and printed, but as the metaphorical paw lifted it was gone. Gareth followed like a newborn babe following after its mother. Milk-drunk and full of drunk wonder as he found his way through this land.

Not at all understanding that the smell of the Brook had long since disappeared off of his own pelt nor the ongoings of the political sphere of the world around him. All he knew and gathered was that he was following his love to their resting place. Gareth was finally going to see her again and find his love once more. Eventually his eyes closed and his pace began to slow as he swore he could hear her voice beckoning him. Encouraging him to go just a few more feet to where they could both come together now.

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He'd been her friend for a long time, she would come to realize too late, but then their bond had been a quiet thing, one that never asked anything from the other more than companionship, a silent understanding of their place as the lovers of two women who were entirely too good for them and yet they had somehow been chosen to receive their love. More than that, shared in their legacy, their bloodlines forever woven into the same Valour tapestry.

She'd been heading for the Brook to speak with her eldest children when she'd come across the scent, recognized it for what it was as the feeling of a heavy stone materialized in her gut. Paired with the path they now followed, whatever haphazard weaving thing it was, she would not seek to catch up to him, but rather follow his prints where they showed through the pine needles until they had come to the grove.

To where Nymeria had breathed her last and @Gareth had been there, broken as she would ever see him, broken as he was now, and equally ravaged with whatever had stolen his bride. The sight of him might as well have been Morrigan staring into her own future if she somehow outlived Talisa. She would not want to, something she had know since the last time she'd been here. In a sick way had been almost grateful to the Rike for almost sparing her the fate that lay before her now.

"Gareth," she said with caution, keeping some distance back from him as he did not seem to notice her presence as swiftly as a coherent feline should have. But the scent of fever was thick and cloying in the air, and this came as little surprise, even to her untrained skills.

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A captain lost at sea that carved his way through the relentless waves and threatened to sink him. A soldier that had seen far too much and far too little, having found his heart in that of a woman and pledging himself to her and her alone. Not once had he ever seen anyone quite so lovely as she, both inside and out. From the moment that he had met the pale huntress, he had known that she was worth protecting. That Nymeria Valour was a woman that he wanted to have in his life and so he did.

Courting her day in and day out, desiring nothing more than to hope that she continued to wish to bask in his presence as he did hers. With each day he grew more and more in love as she deigned to keep him in her company. That she adored him enough to wish a life for them; a beautiful life that had once been filled with family. Four children, though he wished they had had the time for more, that were grown and living their own lives now. He remembered when they were born, {I remember.} He muses quietly to himself as he continues his lackluster trail through the soft but biting cold.

So when his voice triggers another his shoulders rolled and he halts, his head slowly swiveling as he takes sight of the lioness that follows. Nymeria, he calls to them, to @Morrigan ♔, not fully himself as he gazes at the dark woman and only sees his bride. Now he begins to turn his body in a slow half-circle and begins to try and backtrack the distance so that he could get to her. I knew you'd be here. He whispers on the quiet wind though his right front paw fumbles slightly on the ground and he stumbles forward a couple steps. Though, once he's balanced again he makes no gesture that it had happened -- only continues to break the distance between him and the woman he wanted to die for.

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As @Gareth turned those cerulean blues on her, glazed over now with that dark fever, a grim understanding settled heavily into her bones as she took another step toward him. Nymeria. She suppressed the pain in the way that name clanged through her chest, forced to face instead the confirmation that came with it. He was so far gone. Morrigan looked nothing like the walking sunlight that had been the fallen Queen. No, no I am not her, she wanted to say to the dying man, but what good would it have done now except leave him in more pain than he already was?

Morrigan did not lie. It was the one sin she had always kept herself from claiming, sidestepped it by omitting the truth perhaps... but pretending to be the woman her friend loved, the woman she had loved as deeply as her own sisters, it didn't feel like a lie. It felt like mercy and so she did not step away as he stumbled the distance between them, making her tone light as she could as he approached, the sickness clinging to his swirled cloak as he drew nearer.

"I'm here," mercy or no, the untruth still felt like poison on her tongue, "And we could stay together, forever Gareth. Is that what you want?" Perhaps she should have called for the woman herself, but it felt cruel to distrupt whatever peace her sister-in-law had found after her long years of service with such a sight. Nymeria didn't need to see him this way. Let him first be whole and new again at their reunion, in whatever awaited them after.

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For far too long now he had let himself get continuously worse, his mind reaching as far as he could to try and grasp at memories. To see the things that were there rather than the things that he was forced to see. His own body betraying everything that he was as his long, luxurious mane was anything but and that was only the beginning. Everything about him had lost its luster as he had failed to take care of himself, simply roaming the territories trying to find his path. Not until he found the grove did he feel that steady tug, unknowingly a tug into the very afterlife that held his precious soulmate.

So when he spied her before him and trailed her steps, it had been set in motion that it was only her. That there was no one else but Nymeria. If he weren't in a daze, he might have snapped out of it and realized that @Morrigan ♔ was nothing close to appearing as she would have. That he wasn't looking at the right lion and would have felt embarrassed beyond recognition. Yet, he looked at her with warmth unabashedly as though she were the very sun that kept this earth alive and growing.

Even Morrigan's voice, to him, sounded like her -- so washed in the glory of what he was slowly drowning in that he couldn't help hear the difference. That's what I have always wanted. He swallows, but it is dry and scrapes his mouth as his muscles contract to swallow that air. Forever. That was what they had promised each other and he would always make true on his promises to her. I'm ready. I just want to be with you, my dear. It's always you. You're my heart and my lungs, without you I cannot breath. And he didn't want to. Not while she could not.

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Why me? she wanted to ask the gods aloud as she saw just how easily the once-handsome man had fallen under her spell, the lie she spun for his addled brain. Because you can, they seemed to whisper back. Because who else could give her old friend the peace he deserve without carrying the burden of blood on their hands. Something Morrigan had been forged for. And so the angel of death gave her sweetest smile as she welcomed @Gareth into her embrace, giving him a last moment of tenderness on this place before he could join Nymeria for real.

She would lean her head into the side of his neck, ignoring the heavy stench of sickness that wafted from his thick and now gnarled mane. "Just a bit more pain my love, just a tiny bit more and we can be together again, forever. Nothing compared to what you already feel, and then never again will you hurt." Molten silver and sparkling amehtyst blinked, causing twin tears to stain the white fur of her cheeks, telling herself over and over again that he deserved peace and how much she would hate to live like he did now, without his other half, without his very soul.

She cold have made it quick and brutal with the shape he was in. It would have been easier on her own conscience than the mistruths she fed him at least about who she was. Yet she couldn't bare the thought of fear and betrayal being the last feelings of her old friend, of a man who had been so wholly good and devoted entirely to the love of his life.

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Once he would go beyond the veil and know how his death had come, he would be surprised but he could not be angry. This was what he wanted all along and he would only begin to thank his friend for giving him a dignified end. To not be swallowed in grief by a surrounding crowd but to know that he passed quietly. Like a fly in an abandoned house, laying still on the window sill. Oh, the word drawn out in a breathy whisper as he felt his front half relax in her comforting embrace and soothing words, that sounds lovely. Gareth had plenty of strength (so he thought still) and could certainly deal with a tiny bit more pain if it meant getting to the afterlife to truly be with the love of his life.

So with a quiet release of air as he tried to feel the peace beside her, he relinquished his body to feel the last tender points of pain. Prepared to take the last of it so that he might ascend into the veil beside his very wife. I'm ready. As though she (@Morrigan ♔) needed the extra push to ferry him into the plane beyond. Gareth had never feared death and while he might have liked to go out swinging, it was truly the loss of love that had done him in.

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Morrigan did not know how long it would take to see her friend again. Perhaps he would grace her with his presence immediately, like Valhalla had done. Perhaps he would take that quiet slip into the afterlife and live in peace away from the brutality for a while. That sounds lovely, he had crooned and her heart clenched so tight in her chest she thought it might burst. Forgive me, old friend, it was the last thought she would allow herself before her lips turned to brush gently against his throat.

Slowly, gently as one could given the circumstances, she would wrap ivory fangs around his throat, pressing through shaggy mane until his pulse pounded against her fangs. And then she closed her jaws, her grip becoming strong as steel, just in case his feeble instincts decided to fight back. When she tasted the blood on her tongue she knew she had found her mark and let go with a ragged gasp of her own pain. Far worse than any physical wound as crimson stained his coal-dark mane even darker.

"I'll see you soon," and that at least was the truth, the same words nearly that she had spoken to Nymeria. That some day not so far off all of the old guard would be reunited once more. As his lifeblood leaked onto the earth at her paws, she waited for his strength to give out before moving forward once more, intent on pressing her skull to his as his faded. She would not run from her sins. If @Gareth chose to visit his body afterward, she would be here to face what she had done to him.

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Silence filled the air but it was so much more comforting than he could have ever imagined. With his yes closed, his body and mind stilled and quieted. The mind promptly believing without question that Nymeria was beside him. Coaxing him into the beyond and allowing him this moment to feel her presence. She was there, both beside him and standing in the beyond -- a place that he had known he would be some day but never this soon. His love's death was the only thing that he would ever consider to speed up the process. Gareth had had his children and now, he was ready to be with the lion who had made his life have purpose.

A deep, resounding pain etched across his face momentarily as his claws gripped at the ground beneath him. Curling into the dirt as his throat tried to rumble, tried to groan in the disastrous (but told momentary) pain, before there was nothing.

On the outside, his body was limp.
Motionless as it ceased to breathe.
But on the inside?

Death: Part One

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She felt every heartbeat as his lifeblood began to soak the ground at their paws, soaking the bright ivory of her toes in the brightest of crimson reminders of her crime. She would have to wash before returning to the Summit, some numb part of her brain was thinking, but mostly she felt the crushing grief of those breaths slowing down, the feeble awareness in @Gareth's cobalt gaze fading, fading, until the light was gone entirely. "Maua take him into your embrace, let him live again in your kingdom with his love," she whispered as she lowered his now stilled body against the soft earth of the Grove, adjusting his mane over the wounds, moving his body to a more peaceful position as silent tears fell upon the cooling form. She would not leave until morning, after she had buried him. She would sit a vigil for the warrior like he deserved.

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