@nocentis: i've already mourned you.
it’s a lingering moment of discomfort, prompting her body to shift in itself while it rests on a makeshift cot. its attempt at masking the natural edges of the earth beneath is futile: it pierces. a little like erza. seven years absent from her life, it was hard to grasp then and it’s not any easier now. she thinks back to when she found him before, his fragmentary self distorting every one of his senses. the next she sees him he is weighed down by the entirety of himself. time had passed, an undeniable fact, yet she still hears little of what had occurred beside the initial reunion.
“ i never meant… ” words have never felt more meaningless. despite everything she could say she was still dead to him for a near decade. a piece of himself he has allowed to see the light and she can’t find the words... his name is quiet as it leaves her mouth, pleading for patience as ego sheds.
must this be their fate? to be plucked from the living only to trip and fall through once returned. for him it was inevitable—what is her excuse? she does not wish to have left tenrō island any sooner. she cannot promise him he won’t have to mourn her again. she nearly stops herself midway, doubt sticking to her skin as intimacy creeps into the air like smoke but—
“ back then... ”
she reaches for him at dusk; the crown of his head safe in her palm. fingers lay atop thick azure, haphazardly discarding the front strands as her thumb moves to the skin above his brow, barely a presence. she finds her voice there, reminded of the small solace that persists despite her inner dissonance.
“ i was just glad you weren’t alone. ”