@8thaverted — &: kisses meme / still accepting.
❛ no. 03 — a kiss after a long time apart. ❜
she has but one, final thought before she loses consciousness, adrift along a sea of stars at the furthest imaginable plane of existence, the lifeless body beside her that of a man she’d swore with such vehemence that she would end herself, if it was the absolute last thing that she did — then, this is it. perhaps i am truly dead. searing light behind her eyelids threaten to burn her sight away completely, and for a moment, she is well and truly lost in a sea of white and silence; the aching of her bones slowly diminishing as with her cognition, from agonizingly brutal, to a dull thrum, to absolutely nothing at all.
one final sacrifice. one she’d promised herself she would make if there was no feasible way around it, if for nothing else, then for the world and the people she loved so dearly. if serafina deveraux were well and truly dead, in this instance, she should be content with it.
but she isn’t, because she doesn’t. instead, she opens her eyes to a flurry of lights and sights and colors, of hushed and strained voices surrounding overhead, all painfully familiar to her as the ones she was certain she’d loved and left. she thinks perhaps her mind is playing tricks on her, or she’ll rise from her bedridden perch and find herself in some personal-made heaven; but she can imagine no such heaven where her body would feel so heavy and pain-laden, where her comrades shed audible tears over her wellbeing. where she is aboard the aircraft she’d sent them back to in a last-ditch effort to keep them safe, yet returning home. where else should she find herself, she thinks, but at journey’s end.
she’d expected no less of alisaie to chastise her amidst choked-back sobs, the same way she’d expect no less of urianger and alphinaud at her side, ever-healing what they could; thancred and estinien and y’shtola, keeping solemn vigil for the woman they knew would return. would, because she had to. she hoists herself up with a great deal of effort and assures them that she’s quite alright, though not before admitting that she’d almost certainly imagined this was her afterlife with a weak chuckle ( which is not exactly reciprocated ). they’re almost to sharlayan, alphinaud informs; the mission was a success, the world saved from an imminent apocalypse, and she at the center of it as hydaelyn’s true champion. they look on with relief for her consciousness and concern for her injuries, and then allow her a moment to gather herself in the makeshift quarters, shuffling off to the forefront of the aircraft.
and then there is g’raha tia. silent, all this time, yet very much present — torn as any of the others, but in another way completely. the scions take their leave of their hero, but the miqote lingers, crimson gaze catching fellow crimson; naught but the sound of gentle breathing and fabric rustling as sera continues to straighten herself along the would-be cot such that she’s seated straight ( it’s difficult, not that such should be surprising ). she remembers, then, the vivid promise that she’d made to him on their venture through the doomed ultima thule: that they would go on countless adventures together, they would live to see this to the end, and they would travel as they so desired, as they were so free to. a promise she’d almost been incapable of keeping.
❛ — g’raha, ❜ her voice is thick with the sudden guilt of the implication, such that she almost does not recognize it herself. instinctively, she attempts to swing her legs over the side of the cot, so as to stand and walk to him, but the attempt is futile; no sooner does she manage the former does pain surge through her body again, and so she grips tight the fabric beneath her and shakes her head. it mattered little. no sooner had she spoken his name did g’raha tia immediately cross the distance between the two of them, knelt at the side of her perch, looking on at her with what sera can only imagine is concern. despite herself, she laughs quietly, as though at a joke only she’s privy to. ( the endearment she feels towards him rushes upon her suddenly, and without warning. ) ❛ a bit closer. ❜ gaze meeting his again as she watches him near, leaning in to her as she’d requested. she is tired — her eyes say as much — but she dons a gentle smile, and when the other is near enough, she leans to close that slivered gap between them and presses her lips to his own. perhaps the first steady movement she’s made since she’d awoken; solid and certain, a thousand unspoken affections behind it, gentle though it is.
❛ it feels as though — as though i’m seeing you for the first time in an era. has it been that long? ❜ perhaps it has. perhaps she is. perhaps the laws of time work differently in the great beyond, the vast emptiness they’d traveled to. she feels she’s so much time to make up for. so much so that she is loath to tear herself from him to speak, and so when she does it’s the barest minimum of space she allows between them. enough so that she can look into his eyes and see him clearly, even as her own sting and threaten to brim over with tears.
❛ i — i won’t go where you cannot follow, g’raha. not again. ❜ a promise.
