FIFTY WAYS TO KISS ✧ ACCEPTING !
@freikugeril said: 💏 :)
* It was hard to see her like this, and he hates that she sees him like this.
It’s the nastiest type of coincidence. The two of them, young soldiers post-war in a foreign land with barely anything familiar, are out of their rooms on a half moon night with more wear in their faces than they’d ever show anyone else. He’d found her nearly draped over a stair railing, haggard in a way Hilda Valentine Goneril isn’t supposed to appear. It made him pause, lips thinning as he watched. He’d seen his own face in a mirror before he’d come out here. It had looked like that.
“Couldn’t sleep, eh?” That’s how he’d opened the talk, and he’d scolded himself for not sounding completely carefree. When she looked at him, she definitely saw his exhaustion, his frayed nerves. But she schools herself just like he does, with a weary sigh that’s close enough to her usual “I’m too lazy for this” ones. She talks about not being able to rest, about this weird island and weird city, and twirls a lock of pink hair around her finger like all is normal.
The more she talks, the more he realizes they’re out here for the same reason.
In the back of his mind, there’s blood. In the back of his mind, weapons clash and screams ring out. Human lives are yanked away, or they shrivel and die like un-watered weeds. He sees specific faces in his, feels their judgment hot yet cold on his skin. He suspects she sees some too. Maybe not the same, but some.
Their attempt to chat away their nightmares fails and they both know it. An uncomfortable silence settles between them before Hilda gives the most cheerful goodbye she can muster and tries to leave.
His hand snaps out and grabs her forearm before she can. She whips around.
Were she anyone else, he’d worry about the strength of his grip. But she’s not anyone else. Hilda is strong. She’s always been strong. She’s...
... She’s looking at him with wide, pink eyes, a sting of pain contorting her surprise. The pain only grows, even as he loosens his hold.
“That’s enough, Hilda,” he says and it’s raw. It’s unrestrained. It has a deep melancholy he never lets anyone but his own reflection see. “Neither of us is okay and we both know it.”
He doesn’t say more than that. He doesn’t need to say more than that. Not when she’s always understood, not when she’s the closest to reading him anyone’s ever gotten.
Not when just looking at her feels like driving a knife between his ribs.
And she freezes. Stares. They both know it’s unlike him to be honest, and they both know it’s unlike her to be worn through. In her eyes is a maelstrom, all parts conflicted and falling apart.
When she bows her head, there’s enough moonlight to make the drops trailing down her cheeks shine.
“Everything keeps coming back, Claude... All the death and the fighting and the... the... I keep thinking it’s gonna go away, but it’s NOT is it--?!”
And that’s how he confirmed they’re the same.
She doesn’t fight back when he pulls her close, instead crumpling into him like her legs have given out. Sobs come fast, half muffled by his shirt and shaking her smaller frame in bursts.
He kisses her cheek, tastes the salt of her tears. He kisses her forehead, then tucks her against his chest. Their embrace is tight. Dire. The kind of strength used to keep a cracked dam from falling apart. He keeps his arms around her and strokes her hair like somehow that can free a mind from memories of the dead. He keeps pressing his lips to her crown like that will make the horrors go away.
She understands him, he understands her.
But he’d never wanted that understanding to be like this.
✧ 10: …desperately.
