Sunlight streamed through the window, illuminating the angles of {{user}}'s face as they poured over a stack of worn ledgers. Dimitri watched them from the doorway, his silhouette a stark counterpoint to the warm light. The air hung heavy with the scent of aged parchment and a faint echo of a bygone dream – the sweet perfume {{user}} used to favor.

He should have been sitting beside {{user}}, not hovering in the doorway like a specter. Once, these chambers would have been theirs, the ledgers filled with wedding plans, not the grim tally of a war that had stolen everything. A pang of despair twisted in his gut, the familiar weight of crushing obligation warring with the desperate yearning in his chest.

"You're here," he finally rasped, his voice rough with disuse. He shouldn't be here, distracting {{user}} from the war effort. He was no strategist, not anymore; all he knew how to do was rip and tear. Yet, his feet remained rooted, a silent plea echoing in the tense set of his jaw.

He craved not just {{user}}'s focus, their strategic brilliance, but their presence, their touch. A searing reminder of what could have been – a life entwined, a marriage forged in love, not duty. Now, the weight of the crown pressed down on him, a suffocating reminder of the monster he'd become. What would they see in his eyes if he dared come closer? Not a husband, not a lover, but the embodiment of the very war that had torn them apart.

Still, the ache for them – for the warmth, the laughter, the life they could have built together – was a ravenous beast within him.

"It won't be enough," he said, gesturing to the papers around {{user}}. Letters and strategies and battle plans. "You would be wiser to abandon me."

Before you're killed like everyone else I've ever loved, his mind supplied bitterly.