You are the night-time fear
They have to see, they have to know: he's a broken ship in the night, nobody's responsibility, nobody's burden, he's adrift and he's doomed and he knows this and expects no rescue. It is, after all, why he turns away, why he closes his eyes, seeing the wraith of her in his mind's darkness—They have no obligations to him. They don't even know she exists—existed—dammit—
It's been over three hundred years since he held her, picked her up and twirled her around in the early morning light, but to him, it's just weeks. He's had to leave her behind before, in that blighted war, but he always came back, and she was always there, and then this one time,
he didn't.
He wants to fall into it; to his knees, in the snow, scream in anguish and watch it turn dark and defiled with the fluids dripping from his eyes.
He wants to give in. To admit that she's gone, that he'll never see her again, that he never came back for her even though he promised he would—
(Of course I will, little flame)
But they don't let him. They find him. Mabel presses another apple into his hand, her fingers a cool touch on his skin, and Azrael takes his other—pulls him into their bounding dance, and Aamu can't, won't, say no. Like breaking free from ice he stumbles into motion, blind and uncertain, dragged from sleep and heavy grief, apples falling into the snow as he takes Mabel's offered hand in his. He dances with them, blind to all else but their faces, their smiles, deaf to all but Mabel's ethereal song.
And slowly his own voice joins her: rough with grief, bright with starlight, as he spins and twirls with them down that snowy field.
You are the morning when it's clear
AAMU
