@altaryen continued from x.
He fell through her radar at first. The quiet one might usually seek in a library corner is only so rare these days, with Willow's attention to the finer details - the pin-drops and the itch of faint thoughts against her skull - the only time she can get a silence like this is closing time, when nobody else is really around. With no thoughts to pick up on, she assumed she was alone until the sniffling started.
Familiarity seizes her; more nagging than her concern for this stranger is her concern that he is not a stranger.
"Hide and --" 'Seek' lodges itself in her throat, a meaty lump she can't speak through. Assaulted by the scent of wet grass and lilies, her body's instinct is to join him in his tears - but she can't even move for what feels like the longest time.
Hell has beaten her insides into something flat. Sorrow or joy, it is all the same middle-note since she returned. Even when she convinces herself it's something more, deep down she has always thought that she will never get back to the heights and the depths of what she used to feel, so fragile and human and fruitful.
She feels herself plummeting downhill toward something old and long-forgotten. Like a kid again, Willow moves to him, throws her arms around him like she has in the past.
"You were my friend." Having only met twice before, this seems like an overstatement. Still. She feels like he's been with her since that day at the funeral, remembering him again. Tears come now, hateful, another dagger directed at her own heart. Stupid, stupid girl. "I forgot, like you said I would."
