@doctordonovan ;; ( continued )
i. ( ❝ I missed you so much ❞ )
in absolute truth, she is more than a little glad she has no idea how she must look. ( at a push, if she tried, maeve could easily count the hours from the last time she was here - a space once safe, once familiar. ) how different she must seem: paler, lack of any real rest sharply marking beneath eyes as harshly as scar half hidden by new fringe mars side of pale forehead. none of her entirely screams anything it used to, a muted and toned down echo of someone else - lights blues, subtle warmth, it has all been burnt away.
she still has her key, buried in much too large black jacket pocket, yet not once in past hour has she done more than fiddle with it. it has been over a year and for all the faith hesitant heart has placed within him... it would be better, genius is certain, if he moved on fast && found someone less bloodstained than she will ever be again. it wouldn’t be him ( cam, with his stubborn hope, with his ability to cling to his beliefs, to see the light that she would otherwise admire from afar ) to love and simply forget.
unlocking the door herself would take more courage than she has / leaving would require more faith, because for all the faith she has in his perseverance, if she leaves brunette is not entirely certain she’ll be able to return.
whatever script, whatever words she’s spent past three months preparing - they falter and they die on her lips the very moment that green eyes recognise familiar form coming up night filled stairs. geneticist, genius, whatever she remains of what she was... she knows him by silhouette alone and for a moment all instinct wants is to run / to hide / to shield him from the secrets that must be kept.
❝ sorry I’m late. ❞ small, barely audible, it echoes in the space between them, drier than throat and lips seem to to suddenly become. there’s so much to say, so much that it suffocates, hesitant in pushing herself up from spot on floor.
whether it is him or her that breaks space between them first blurs into simply how she so easily loses herself tucked against him, hug uncharacteristically firm as face is hidden somewhere amongst dark locks and his shoulder.
For so long had he lived with the military’s vague condolences and avoidances that it’s only when she’s physically there in his arms that he truly knows it to be her, not some dream, not some figment of tired imagination. And it is her, though brief impression betrayed features more wan than he recalled, though her embrace is so much more solid than he had grown to expect. Cam has never had answers, but for the military to have ‘lost’ a geneticist for over a year ( and Cam has spent the now-many months since he returned home to that news attempting to conceive of any explanation for a scientist lost on home soil ), he cannot imagine what she must have endured.
In another time and place, ‘sorry I’m late’ might draw laughter, Maeve’s penchant for understatement, for wry humor, all too familiar. Now, though, there’s only the stunned limbo between relief and concern and emotions he cannot quite place. For a long moment, further words prove difficult, for there’s so much to be said and so much to be asked but it’s all a blur in his thoughts, and there’s nothing he can do but hold her.
❛ Forget being late, ❜ he manages at last, as though over a year can be so easily set aside, as if nothing save the present moment matters ( and for right now, he’s determined that it does ). His throat is dry, his voice suddenly hoarse. ❛ What are you doing sitting out here? ❜ It’s not necessarily cold; there are colder nights, but the chill sets in quickly and the sun has long since set. She ought to be inside. It takes all the willpower he can muster to murmur, ❛ Come on, ❜ to release her enough to reach for his own key, one arm still around her, to open the door and usher her inside into relative warmth.