Altschmerz.
Altschmerz: Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years.
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She hears footsteps just outside in the corridor and cursesquietly. Of course he would come find her, she thinks, remembering a night notquite so long ago as it feels, running from the castel in the moonlight as ifshe were the heroine in a fairy tale. Or perhaps the villain. She’d never beenquite sure.
The footsteps slow down as they get nearer the littlewindowed alcove she’s sequestered herself in, and she wonders if he can senseher, or if he just never forgot her as much as she expected him to.
She catches sight of him in her peripheral vision then, andlooks up to see him leaning against the arch that leads into the alcove.
“Don’t you dare,” she says from her perch on the windowsill,back pressed to the wall and her knee cool from the touch of glass.
He purses his lips in that way he has when he’s pointedlynot laughing, and steps properly into the alcove to peer out the window as if it’snot the middle of the night and there is actually something to see.
“Looks to be weather coming,” he says, in a loose imitationof her accent, and she reaches out one leg to kick him.
He doesn’t dodge, or grimace, or exaggerate a wince, oranything; but then she realises he’s smiling, very slightly, a smile that shethinks vaguely he didn’t mean her to see. He gazes out of the window for amoment longer, the expression fading from his face. Tiredness has taken theedges from him, and he finally looks to be relaxing out of the poker-straightway he’s been holding himself ever since the trouble at Lost-Hope. It occurs toher that they both have ghosts there, that it has cast its shadow on both ofthem. She leaves the thought there, folding it away from view. The night is tooquiet to go thinking of old ghosts, after all. One day she’ll have to facethem, but not now, not when the moon is so bright and Tom’s words have suchlittle bite.
He finally turns away from the window and sits down on the sill,against the other wall, pulling his feet up. He hasn’t any shoes on, and she jumpsfrom the cold when he presses his toes to her ankle.
“Don’t be so nesh,” he says when she pulls away and sheglares at him, a barb ready on her tongue. But there is a softness in his eyes,more genuine a softness than she has seen from him in far too long, and thebarb melts before she can say it.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she says instead, looking awayand roughening the edges of her voice so that it doesn’t sound quite as soft asher tone suggests.
“You didn’t,” he says, and after a long pause he adds “Ittook me a long time to learn to sleep in a real bed, too.”
She’s not quite sure that he realises he’s admitted it; hisvoice was low, slipping away from his usual crisp intonation and more towardsthe natural accent he only uses when he’s half asleep or half drunk. It softensher to hear, and she takes what he’s offered without acknowledgement. To takenotice would be to make him deny it, and she hasn’t the energy for his gamestonight. Instead she stretches her leg out again, just barely touching his calfwith her toes.
He makes a noise that could be the start of her name but cutshimself off, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes. Shewatches him for a moment, trying not to wonder what will drive them apart this time.The third time, it would be. A habit. She huffs a quiet laugh but shakes herhead when he opens one eye and raises an eyebrow, and he shrugs to himselfbefore closing it again.
This is the third time they’ve fallen together, she thinks.Which makes this a habit, too.
