DEIMOS
The Sword wasn’t certain what to expect. Perhaps some residual effect of the affliction, for the sickness to have mauled through his mind for too long, for her form to pilfer back into the darkness, dissipate into ashes, into mist. Maybe for the world to continue to play games, rattle bones, flicker wraiths back into torment, and he’d have to remember, recall, these moments later too, when the haunting poignancy scraped against all the recovering he’d tried so hard to gain. It hadn’t been for her to turn, for reality to actually be tangible, malleable, attainable, for rocks and weapons to be lowered, for defenses to be forgotten. Then his name was back on the wind, in deep ricochets too, and he stifled the barest form of a laugh, shocked, stupefied, happy for the simplest of moments that she hadn’t been lost too. That she wasn’t gone. That she was alive and whole and well and not battered and beaten apart by something else in this cruel, ridiculous realm.
He stayed very still again, Zuriel drawing near him in inquiry and confusion, until she drew near, and he instinctually reached out. Arms were open and wide, capable of grabbing, snagging, and holding her close to his chest – as he might’ve done so many times with Rexanna (in his dreams, desperate for her to be alive again), with Kiada (trapping her, warm and safe and protected in his embrace, so she wouldn’t come to harm, and they could remain), and with Hotaru (when they were both so battered, so broken, so misplaced). Inherent and intrinsic, a comfort he needed and craved and would never say so out loud, grateful, glad, gratified that there was a friend out in the dark, that she wasn’t another lost to the disasters, cataclysms, and ruins. “I missed you,” he uttered, guttural and resounding, veracity in the fields; but he’d never lied to her either. “Where have you been?” An inkling of a snort began, as if he had any counter-argument – he’d gone into dust too.
You aren't afraid of throwing yourself
in the path of danger
but you're terrified of letting anyone in
