funny how true colours shine in darkness and secrecy

Koa

Don't you just wanna wake up dark as a lake
Smelling like a bonfire, lost in a haze?

Flora doesn't brighten. Doesn't flourish and bloom under his touch. Which is understandable, and fair, and fine, because the things she's told him is more than can be brushed away with calloused fingers, is bigger than the little glad that's been their haven on this strangest of days. But still he feels a coil of disappointment, of doubt, of grief for his inability to act as her sanctuary. You don't have to be strong for me, he tries to tell her with his expression, with his breathing, with the way his thumb brushes over her knuckles like a whispered kiss.

Only instead she's the one trying to reassure him, to explain that he is blameless, and Koa isn't sure if he wants to hug her or shake her because to him that doesn't matter, not right now. "Flora-" he starts with the beginning of a smile, tender bemusement in his voice and face. But she presses on, and the thing that comes next is not what he expected, not what he is prepared to discuss or hear.

Koa blinks, reeling back slightly as she comes to the denouement of it all. All of this - the secrecy, the potion, the confession of trauma beneath hushed branches... he'd thought it was leading somewhere else. Suddenly Koa's throat is dry, and he isn't sure where to look. He settles for the flower she'd pulled on earlier, his eyes tracing the petals as though they hold the map for how to navigate this messed up maze they keep coming back to. "That's..." Koa starts, but immediately pauses, licking his lips as he measures his words.

When he finally looks back at her it is with a sad frankness, an open, raw honesty that he's tired of holding back. "That's not why I can't be with Sohalia." Maybe it's the fact that he won't remember, even if she will. Maybe he needs to make this final swing to move on, a last reach for something he's known he can't recover but has never quite managed to let go. "Flora... I told Soh I needed time because even though I care about her so, so much, and I want to make things work with her... It wouldn't be fair for me to be with her." He smiles sadly, the weight of the torch he carries aching in his chest.

"Not when there's a part of me that's still in love with you."

If you're drunk on life, babe, I think it's great
But while in this world I think I'll take my whiskey neat