hana-murakami:
There was a moment of tension between them as Allegra seemed to be catching up to what Hana had already figured out, but suddenly the arms around her and the nose pressed into her hair were strong and sure and the most familiar place Hana had ever known. She was shorter still, always had been, but it didn’t matter – they still leaned down into her like a weeping willow bowing over in the wind and Hana reached up around them like she was clinging to a lifeline. This was home. Home was not a place, not a penthouse apartment in LA or Tokyo, not a cabin at an expensive sleep-away camp, but a person that had been missing from her life for ten full years. Gripping the back of Allegra’s neck with one hand, she pulled herself impossibly closer and reassured, “I’m here, I promise, I’m here.”
Pulling back just slightly so she could see their face, Hana ran a hand through Allegra’s hair to push it out of the way and cupped their cheek. “I looked for you, Al. For years, I kept looking… your parents said you were dead, lost in the mountains, but I didn’t believe them. I would have known, right? I would have known somehow.” Hana was babbling a little, she knew that, but between the fever and the person in her arms the situation seemed to call for it. “Are you… okay? What do you need? Do you need anything?”
Life hadn’t been kind to Allegra-fate had been cruel to them, and the path they had been on for the last decade hadn’t been easy. They had been alone-so truly alone-for so much of their life, both as a human and a wolf, but Hana’s sudden reappearance reminded them that they hadn’t always been alone. Her presence felt like an anchor, reminding Allegra of every good thing they ever got to have. “Feels a bit like a dream,” they murmured in response, certain that they would wake any moment and find that they still existed in the same world of isolation they had since the bite. They were relieved that when Hana started to pull away that it seemed to just be so she could look at them, and Allegra let themselves stay relaxed as they leaned their face into the warm contact of Hana’s hand on their cheek. It was easy, still, after all these years, and Allegra tried to blink back the tears that were beginning to leak from their eyes.
Their relief was short lived as Hana brought up their parents, and they couldn’t help but tense at the girl’s words. “Hana, you can’t-they don’t know I’m alive,” Allegra insisted, voice tight and filled with fear. “I can’t-there’s so much you don’t know,” can’t know,they added silently, words rolling rapidly off their tongue as their panic increased. “They can’t find out I’m not dead, Hana, it’s not-it’s not safe, not for me, not for you, not for anyone in this town.” Hunters would descend on Blackrock in terrifying amounts if Allegra’s continued existence got back to the Fitzgeralds. “They not good people,” they said, looking down at their feet to avoid whatever they might see in Hana’s gaze. They felt bad that she had thought Allegra was dead this whole time, felt horrible that their friend had to mourn them for the last decade, but suddenly they couldn’t help but be afraid that their parents would hear about this.
“I’m-okay seems like a stretch,” they admitted, words stilted in their honesty. They barely knew how to talk to people, but Hana wasn’t people. She was the best part of Allegra’s life for so long. “I’m-I’m doing the best that I can,” I’m doing what it takes to survive, they keep to themselves. “But just-how are you? And just-how’d you wind up here?”
