Larkspur Plagueheart

A runeblade was the seat of a death knight's soul, more than the rotting meat that bore his name when he was raised and bound to the Scourge. It made only sense to Larkspur to bequeath Terminus Est to Krenyn on the event of his second death; whether or not there'd been plans and oaths and orders otherwise, he knew which of them would die first--because while the idea of the Lord-Commander Bloodflame all alone was hideous and heart-tearingly awful, it was possible, while a Larkspur-without-Krenyn was monstrous and impossible and beyond thinking of.

He just wished dying wasn't so hard.

Krenyn found him collapsed in their garden, curled on himself like a crushed insect as his body ate itself from within. Decaying muscle and tendon wouldn't even allow him the decency of crawling off alone to die like the sick animal he was. He couldn't even lift his head at the sound of footsteps approaching, couldn't raise an arm to hide the shame that burned through him. It wasn't supposed to end like this. He should have died years ago in battle, not through years of slow decline from one shameful, worthless death to another--

"Larkspur."

There was no pity in the lord-commander's voice; but nor was there remonstrance or anger. (Though they had long ago lost an audience to play to they'd kept up the act of master and servant, commander and knight, for their own amusement and perhaps because it was how each had learned the other man's needs. Now all that pretense was brushed aside.) Krenyn's tone was one of sorrow, deep and knowing. He'd expected this would happen and it undid Larkspur completely as he felt himself being gathered up onto his partner's lap and held close to the stolen heat of the larger man's body.

"I'm s, sorry Kren," he sobbed, scarcely able to shape the sounds. "'m so, s-sorry, sorry, so--sorry, f'r being worthless a, and lea-eaving y, you--" Words stuck in his throat and he coughed, choking on blood and froth and what had once been his lungs. It couldn't end like this and for a moment he fought being held, desperate and weeping, but a moment was all he had strength for before collapsing again.

Warm fingers stroked through his hair heedless of the fact clumps of it came out at a touch, tracing down to stroke the line of his jaw without shying from the spots where flesh had peeled from the bone beneath. "Hush, beloved," Krenyn soothed, pressing his hand to his partner's lips and letting the warmth of living Blood flow down Lark's throat, relieving the pain but making it no easier to talk. "You should not apologize to me."

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. "'S w, worthless, never, never good--never l, loyal t-to you, like you, deserved."

"I don't regret a moment of our time together," and a string of kisses interrupted the flow of self-recrimination, "but that we did not have more of that time. Hush, Lark, and rest; I'm very proud of you.

"I always will be proud of you."

They lay together for long hours in the rays of the westering sun, one blind and ignorant of the dying light, the other too concerned with his dying lover to care. Krenyn stroked Larkspur's hair and spoke to him in low tones, telling him the story of a quel'dorei mage who lived and died and lived again for the sake of his family and received more love than he had thought to deserve in the bargain.

He held the smaller death knight as Lark shuddered and screeched and wept with terror in the presence of things that existed only in his decaying mind, hallucinations he was too weak to fight or flee.

At last, as the sun slid below the horizon, the lord-commander sat with his partner's head cradled in his lap, fingertips resting against the death rune imprinted into skin and broken bone. They had run out of easy words to say; that did not mean they were without language of touch and contact and posture, though a companionable silence that hung thick with grief lay between them.

Until a whisper broke it:

"Kren."

"Lark?"

"Think I, I sh--should sleep, n, now."

"Sleep, then, beloved. I will watch over you until you wake."

"D, don't know. Know. If I'll, w--wake up."

"Even if you do not, I will be with you, in this world or the next."

A stifled noise escaped Larkspur's throat: the beginning of another sob, even as he turned his head to press his face against one of Krenyn's hands. "Love you," he breathed, and, "thank you."

"Rest," Krenyn said again, the sorrow raw in his voice.

And this time when he drew on the death pact between them, unravelling Larkspur's essence through the death rune, there was no pain.