Faded faces in heart-shaped lockets

Evie

Her hands wring instead of shake as she waits for Deimos and Amalia. There are so many faces that she can hardly say she’s alone in her waiting, but none she can look to - aside from Hadama perhaps, who is busy conversing with Seren - to hold her attention away from the building, tense anticipation. 

Micah sits on the lounge beside her in an empty cabana, half on her lap as she anxiously pets him, trying not to look in even the most general direction of where the two went off to speak. There are so many emotions fighting for center stage inside her, and it feels impossible to fit all of them inside her body at once. It certainly feels as if they won’t remain that way for long. 

When Deimos cuts through the milling bodies the Evergreen snaps to attention, spine rigid and thighs tensing to rise but failing to do so. Is she allowed to reach for him? Would Amalia be able to see? Does it matter if she can? Micah jumps down from her lap and she rises on shaky legs to meet her husband in the middle. Those hesitations melt away as she reaches to take his face into her hands, needing to touch him, to look into his eyes no matter what she finds. There may be no time to linger - not when the departed only have tonight to stand among them - but she takes what she can. Preparing herself any longer won’t do any good; she’s had all this time waiting on them to do so, and if it isn’t enough by now then it will never come. Could she ever really be ready anyway? Could either of them?

She brings him down to her level to kiss him, slow but fraught with emotion on both sides. Whispered departures linger in her wake as the sands usher her out to Amalia, Micah loyally glued to her side, propping her up when her knees shake and tremble. 

Her hair is bright and pale beneath the rising moon, cast in shades of fire by torchlight that make her look all the more like Evie’s blood sister for a moment in time. As the space between them dwindles the Evergreen’s hands rise to reach for the Shield, breath coming fast and shallow. Grief and love and desperation swell together to drown out all other competing emotions for a moment. Tears rise so thick and fast that Evie panics when the image of Amalia blurs before her, stumbling forward in urgent strides as her reaching hands frantically grasp for her sister, terrified she’ll be a moment too late and Amalia will disappear forever. Again.

But the other woman is real beneath her hands as they land. She’s really here, no matter what that entails. “Lia,” she chokes, tone a whine of agony that washes years away from Evie to make her sound young and vulnerable once more. And, if her sister allows, she brings them together into a crushing, graceless embrace as the tears spill over and wet her freckled cheeks in streaks that glow silver and red in the light around them.

Amalia

reckless at heart but never unkind
in a perfect world we could've been fine

_{Table Code by Sky!}

AmaLIa

the archangel

Amalia holds her space as Deimos returns to Evie, though gods if it isn't difficult, her fingers itching and her heartbeat thrumming electric in her chest. The sound and sensation are remarkably foreign after all these years; was it always so overwhelming, being alive? Always so fraught, so stressful, so sensational? Impatience hums within her as she watches the pair: Evie pulling Deimos to her, the pair of them a perfect picture in the firelight. She doesn't dare to interrupt, and yet she can feel the anticipation like a rainfall of pinpricks. The Angel was never patient in life.

Why would death have changed that?

Finally, finally, the pair separate, and now it's even worse. Because now Evie is walking toward her, a regal queen with a jaguar at her side, and she looks so incredible, so real and alive. Her fingers knit into her dress as she strives to keep her composure, bare feet shifting in the coarse sand, anxiety like a drumbeat in her chest. If she can just stay calm, just keep herself quiet, just wait and give her sister the time and space--

--oh, fuck it.

Like comets they hurtle toward each other, mirrored souls that can no longer be kept bridled or at bay. Amalia's arms reach out, wrapping around her sister and pulling her close; "Evie," she breathes through laughter and tears, joy rushing through her as she presses her face into the silky mess of her hair, the familiarity and warmth and wonder of it transporting her back to her earliest days. Evie, her first companion, her dearest friend, her sister--- "Gods, I missed you so much!"

you can't choose what stays
and what fades away

Evie

The sand is coarse against her calves from the rush of her feet as she blindly dives for Amalia's arms, the weight of the body that collides into hers a weight she would happily bear over and over again to make up for the million hours that that weight hasn't existed in this world. They are both snotty, sobbing, laughing disasters, and every emotion feels larger than life as they yank her wildly from within. 

"I missed you so - you don't even know - so stupid, you left me but, but now you're here," she blubbers in spasming fits of delighted crowing interspersed with painful cracks that eek through her consonants like the groan of a tree before it's felled. 

It feels like ripping her own heart out of her chest with bare hands and blunt nails, but the Evergreen manages to peel herself away to peer wild-eyed through the windstorm of their mixed hair and find Amalia's eyes. She blinks in stuttering fits only to clear the tears that impede her vision - every moment she can otherwise spare needs to be spent memorizing a face she'd begun to forget, against her will. "I never got to say goodbye," she whispers, voice taut and frightened in ways that call back to younger years, huddled behind locked doors and thick, stifling moss during LongNight. "You're making me say hello again - to my own sister!" Evie pinches Amalia's bicep and shakes it about, face contorting petulantly even as another thick wave of tears spills over messily and paints her trembling, fiercely pouting lips in salt.

reckless at heart but never unkind
in a perfect world we could've been fine

_{Table Code by Sky!}