What if you stayed?

She brushed a whisper of fingertips along the sharp line of his cheek, warm and golden even in the gentle not quite light of pre-dawn. Dark was sure he wasn’t really asleep. Centuries as the perfect courtier had taught him the courtesy of letting a lady leave on her own terms. His breath came in even, deep breaths, the length of him still under the white of the sheets, but she knew.
Open your eyes, she hardly dared to think. 
Open your eyes, Aodfhin. Ask me to stay. Please… Her gaze studied his face, committing this moment, like so many others, to a photograph of memory that would keep her when things got really dark.
He didn’t stir. He never did.
It had only been five years this time, and the last few weeks had been… well… like they always were. A haze of burning nights and days spent wandering the streets of New York this time. She loved this city in the spring. When winter loosed its frigid grip on the northeast and life just woke up one day. Everyone was happy and out and the sun just felt richer. With him, this Faery Knight, even more so. Laughter was fuller, texture sharper, life more vivid. The last six weeks had been beautiful. Museums, late breakfast at any little café that took their fancy, nights arching under his hands, forgiving a life that she didn’t know how to change.
And this.
She’d realized with the same kind of agony that gripped her every time that she was going to have to leave. Again. Always.
What if I didn’t? She asked herself as she silently dressed and collected her very few things from around the sprawling suite at the Savoy. Dawn would be breaking over Central Park soon. She loved this view, this city. Especially with him. Like Paris. Like Berlin. So many places, so many times. And it always ended the same. Because she just-
The little assassin finished lacing her boots and cast one last look back at the gold and copper of him, this strange, impossible, maddening lover of hers. The one who’d broken her. Who never left her. Who always let her leave. He was an addiction she just couldn’t break. She’d be back. Somewhere, just when she needed him and especially if she didn’t realize it, she’d turn a corner and run into him. Or sit down to read at some little coffee shop and see him at a nearby table. Or this time, when she’d been sitting on her favorite huge rock by the pond in Central Park and he’d just come up and sat down next to her as if it hadn’t been years since they’d spoken, as if this was just another day for them.
Maybe it was.
She shook her head and grit her teeth as it started and she walked to the door, closing it silently behind her. She leaned against it from the outside in the hallway and prayed no one would come by. Great shuddering breaths that turned into sobs burned in her chest along with the black hole of abyssal despair and hurt that accompanied every time she walked out the door. Her hands shook and it took everything she was not to go back. To risk everything. To destroy everything.
She always gave him the best of her. The her no one else really saw. Not the assassin. Just the woman. And for a while, she could pretend the days would last forever. That she’d stay. And for a while, the lie she told herself would be enough. Until she got too comfortable. Until she started to really feel happy. The moment she looked forward to the day with him, when she started thinking about next month, or maybe a year from now, she knew with a dread and icy coldness that killed her that it was time to go.
Aodfhin was faery. The most beautiful person she’d ever met, and pretty to look at too. She’d memorized every scar, the sound of his voice when he was telling her a story, the perfect metronome of his unchanging heartbeat. He made her feel beautiful and acceptable and enough. But she knew him. Understood the nature of what he was. That he could have anyone, that the world did not hold him as it did others, and that anything that looked like a cage, like it was a snare to control or bind, would take him from her forever. So, for these sunlit moments that fled so quickly but burned in memory long and true… she left.
She’d pretend it didn’t hurt. Don the mask and go about her life and day as if she didn’t feel like she was dying every fucking time. They’d never talk about it. They never did.
You could just decide to stay. You could take the chance…
There was the certainty that she wouldn't, though. Because the only thing she really feared was not having him in her life at all. So, she’d be grateful for these encounters and try not to be greedy. Try like hell to respect the nature of him and not try and cage him. She’d leave before she said something she couldn't take back.
Dark let her head fall back against the closed door and slid to the floor, giving herself a moment to just let the sorrow and heartbreak be. She’d give it this space, to consume her, and then she’d get up and go. Because there was nothing else she could do. She wasn’t willing to take the chance. To just say it.
I love you. I always have.
She signed, the flutter of hope a lance as that eternal part of her wished he’d just open the door, find her there, and ask her to stay. Because she would. God she would. And maybe she could do the same. Go back, return to bed like she hadn’t left it, and decide to stay. To trust that she could be enough for him. It wasn’t all on him and she knew it. This was just as much her doing, letting everything they never quite said build up between them.
With a deep breath, she got up and left. She didn’t look back. He’d find her again. He always did. Maybe next time things would be different.
Maybe.