Just a little something I wrote last night. Rated for sexual situations.

Ravaged Heart

Tristan was a sombre man. Silent. Controlled. Sometimes she watched him as he slept, her eyes roving over his face, the only time he was vulnerable. Innocent almost. Sometimes he woke panting, tormented by night time reminders of death, of the battlefield, of all he had seen. She would hold his trembling body in her arms, her fingers trailing over his skin and brushing the marks on his cheekbones, soothing him into a sleep against her breast.

He didn't have to tell her he loved her, she saw it in the way his eyes watched her movement across the tavern, how he breathed in her scent when he returned from battle, the way his fingers touched her in the shadows of his room.

There were times when she could only cling to him as he pushed into her, drunk with need for her warmth and softness. The night he claimed her had been the worst. She had been in the tavern, delivering ale to a table of Romans, when a drunken soldier had pulled her into his lap, attached his wet mouth to her shoulder and fondled her breast. She had slapped him and the soldier had pushed her to the ground, angry to be humiliated in front of his friends. Tristan had a knife to his throat in a heartbeat and had muttered a low threat, his eyes hard and his voice ice, before pulling her from the tavern and into his room. That night he had possessed her, had clarified that she was his and his alone.

Other times he would whisper her name into her mouth and clutch her tightly to his chest as her shaking body came down from the waves of pleasure that rolled across her soul like sheets of flame, burning her ravaged heart.

One day, curious, she had awoken as the sun rose and had moved from his bed to trace the patterns in his armour, wondering how many times this had saved him from death, had protected his heart. She had returned to his bed and his arm had wrapped around her, pulled her tightly against him, quietly recognising this need of hers to understand, to understand why he lived still.

She paused by the training yard some days, to see him move against his fellow knights in a deadly pattern, like a dance, his sword singing as it sliced through the air. She braided his hair for him, her fingers sifting through the dark locks and brushing against the curve of his neck.

The day her moonbloods stopped she worried, but he only held her hair back as she retched into the basin, his fingers turning her curls around in his hands, murmuring soft, intelligible words into her ear.

They never married. He couldn't, she understood, couldn't commit like that when any moment a sword might slice through his life. She never had any desire to cage him anyway, never needed that proof, that symbol of his love. His voice was enough.

When the child came he held it in his strong, too-large hands, amazed, fascinated that this life was his to claim, his to watch over. He looked at her then in such a way that she felt her heart break all over again for this man, this quiet man, who had stolen it away. After their son was born he had been careful, gentle, as if she were a china doll, until she had accosted him in the hall and had shown him her need, her desire of his body, his mouth, his skin against her.

The night he told her he loved her, the first time, they had been lying in bed, their hands laced together upon her swelling tummy where their daughter was slowly growing. He had whispered the words before inking two claws upon her hipbone. She understood what it meant and had brought his lips to hers before he could see the tears in her eyes.

When she fell ill, Tristan stayed by her side day and night, only leaving when Breuse or Lynelle needed him. One day she awoke and gazed at him with such a serene smile he knew he had never seen anything as beautiful. Her dark hair was splayed across the pillow, her eyes somewhat glazed and she had reached out, bringing his fingers to her lips and kissing each one in turn, her eyes never leaving his. That night he had lain beside her body, his arms wrapped tight around her and his face crushed in her neck.

He hadn't slept.

The next day she died. Later, Tristan would remember sometime in the night when she had turned and her lips had met the corner of his mouth, before she had sighed and her soul had fled her body.

Tristan was never the same after. She had become too much a part of him, without him even realising. She was his heart.

He followed her, years later, after watching their children grow. Knowing, he had ridden out into the forest, and had never returned.

When he found her there, he breathed in her scent, held her to his chest and whispered her name into the dying wind.