You step down the stairs into the empty bar. It's closed, around noon, quiet. No kids in sight, jukebox silent, dust particles swirling in the beams of week light coming in from the couple windows.
You flick the lights on. A familiar figure sits at the bar, in his usual spot. He's doing paperwork, of course (you don't realize that he's been doing it in pitch black just a second ago), twirling with a strand of his hair. He doesn't look up.
Vander, moments ago, had been dreaming of fire. Even as he steps toward the figure at the bar, he can taste the acrid stench of burning hair, can feel tongues of heat licking at the backs of his arms.
He’s beautiful in all the ways Vander has forgotten with time and bitterness. His fingers are sharp and pale around his pen. His eyes—both of them, perfect and free-skies-blue—are still set on the page in front of him.
Vander reaches an unsteady hand out, half afraid he’ll wisp away like the memory of this moment almost certainly will once he wakes. But his fingers meet the soft ends of Silco’s hair and it’s like before, like he’s twenty-six again; hopeful and brave and scared and proud and trusting.
“Sweetheart,” Vander breathes. “You’re here.”