She hadn’t seemed to notice him upon his entrance, but then again, the knock on the library’s doors had seemed one more borne of quiet routine courtesy instead of any forewarning, if even that; for its volume had sorely lacked on all counts. And so she hadn’t looked up, even when he’d left the entryway behind him— a detail that would seem perhaps trivial to many, but its reality was found to be the next cause to propel that hollowed feeling back within his chest yet again. The light radiating from the tall windows illuminated her, surrounded her as if to amplify the already intense presence of her and dimming all other existence in the Institute: the only mother he’d ever known. And yet something differed from all other instances, something was absent entirely, something that’d somehow set the tone of the conversation before it’d ever started; the space within these walls felt tense, cold— a reality that crushed without relent.
Look up, why aren't you looking at me? Even when he’d neared the desk ever enough to bring himself to a halt, she still hadn’t seemed to acknowledge his arrival, or had she and had it somehow passed him by entirely? In wait, his hands came to reside within his jean’s pockets, where the digits of one repeatedly tugged on a loose thread, “Maryse.”