The air was golden and warm, like honey comb. It felt peculiar to him. Somewhere between comfortable and horribly wrong. All he saw was this golden space. Nothing else. He knew he wasn’t dead (he just knew) but he could feel something was about to-
A girl.
There was a girl there.
She appeared as suddenly as he had into the space. Not in a way that he exactly knew how to explain. She simply appeared in his line of sight like she had always been there. Not like a pop but rather an entering that was not clearly defined by a before and after. He stared at her, hypnotized by the way flecks of light seemed to catch on her eyelashes. She was beautiful and familiar, his heart growing inexplicably heavy with knowing. Like the taste of warm milk on the tip of his tongue.
Nami. It was Nami. His mind fought him, told him to forget everything and let that world take him. But he fought back. Replayed everything he knew about her, about them. Forced himself to remember every detail in her burning gaze and sturdy hands. Every late night and early morning. Every fierce battle and every simple moment. Everything. Every time she looked at him with that delicate smile like dew drops on a spider web and said “It’s going to be a-okay.” Every soft touch. Every gentle kiss. Everything.
She began to shift, her eyes fluttering ever so slightly before opening wide and wild.
His body went rigid.
He couldn’t move.
Fully submerged in panic, he watched as she struggled to scream something. Frantically her lips formed words but there was no sound. His heartbeat against his ribs like a rock hitting bottom over and over and over. If it had been possible, his hands would have been shaking. Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he move? Why was everything so quiet? So entirely constricting? His eyes widened a fraction. Something bad was about to happen. He felt in run down his spine.
Suddenly a rush of sound hit him like a wall. Rushing water even if there was none and above it all her shrill voice.
His name.
Then some wet, choked sound.
Everything was quiet. But not like before.
A knife, sharp and beautifully decorated, appeared sticking from her chest as if she were some poor sacrificial animal. Then it was gone: dissolved into thin air.
He blinked and the scene changed.
He was back, looking over a field of death and ruin and tragedy. Her body was cool and heavy in his arms. She was bleeding. A lot. Too much. She couldn’t be saved, so he tightened his grip ever so slightly and spoke to her.
Mostly her name. Again, then again, so many times it started sounding like some desperate prayer, but also, though her name tumbled so easily from his lips, he whispered words of love and promises he would never be able to keep.
But she hushed him. Lifted her unsteady hand to his cheek. He covered it with his own, almost drawing back at the feeling of the thick dampness that covered their hands. A sensation too familiar, too unsettling and telling that he didn’t want to admit it was even there. But the cold metal band on her left ring finger, the ring he had given her, kept him steady. He couldn’t let go of her. Not yet.
She smiled the same way she always had.
“A-okay…” she said with a voice like the early morning. Glassy tears filled his eye and he smiled back. Keeping his hand firmly over the one she had pressed to his face, he leaned down and kissed her. A final goodbye, a promise that it had been real. They had been real even though they hadn’t had long enough. Even though so much of their time had been spent on meaningless wars they never needed to be a part of. All of their time together, wasted or otherwise had been so real.
