the Dalaverse

veronica_rich's other request -- a bit of Balian introspection. Dark themes -- think opening scenes of the film.


The End of All Things


The town called her witch for her dark beauty and her mother’s strange ways. When she married Balian, he saw to it that the whispers were silenced. Mere blacksmith he might be, but when he speaks, others listen.

If he had only found her first – but the tanner’s girl was stopping by to leave them a burnt pie, and she saw the little vials strewn around Nathalie’s still form before she ran out screaming. Everyone within ten miles will have the news before the next sun rises. They will call her witch again, and suicide.

He gathers her in his arms as tenderly as he did after Etienne fell ill, before she shrank in upon herself and felt no touch but the agony of loss. The mark upon her cheek has already faded, leaving her face pale and serene in death, but he brushes cold fingertips against her skin, shamed afresh. The only time he ever struck a woman in his life – he could not stand the wild anguish in her eyes, the shrill accusations levied at him, the memory of the priest’s dire insinuations that should be able to control his wife even in her grief.

He recalls the way she looked at him as she backed away, fearful but also somehow triumphant, as if any great show of emotion brought him closer to her. Absurd as it seemed, in his apologies and her stiff acceptance he actually thought that perhaps...

A fool's hope. It was not enough. There was nothing he could offer, no penance he could pay to the demons plaguing her. He could not barter for his infant son’s life, and he cannot now save his wife.

The title line just popped into my head on its own. It always gets me choked up. (from bad memory) "I'm glad to be here with you, Sam, here at the end of all things..." *sniffle*