[private] love is a promise made of smoke [rapture]

[Levi]

He had watched for her and felt her absence like he felt little else.

He had blasted shards of obsidian off the volcano's side with her name branded on his thoughts and poised on the tip of his tongue. He had hurt when he thought of her.

He had dreamed of her; until she became someone else entirely, spending hours with this Rapture of his own invention, in his mind, as he patrolled Tephra's endless shore. 

But this False Rapture had never been enough - he had never been able to recapture the alien feelings she has summoned within him. 

Suddenly he finds her right where he left her, the same stupid boy under the weight of a few more years, a few new scars. Passing her by, leaving her to bathe in peace is not an option. He almost hopes she never looks his way, that here he can stand forever as an observer of pale, river-washed skin and averted eyes.  

"Rapture," he groans against his own wishes as he has so many times into the dark, the name rolling with minor key cadence off his fumbling tongue. Before him was set the creature who had first captivated him, drawn him in, and subdue the fire within his eternally ignited core. Her winter-blue coat is slicked tight to her swells and valleys, and the memories of repressed flinches and gentle bravery which had stamped her onto his young subconscious rock his gut. 

He stiffens and is ashamed of it, but he would not leave her on the riverbank again.

The irony of their reversed rolls is lost on him- just as everything else which is not her is lost on him now. He finds her held by the rivers current while he stands, overwhelmed, his mismatched eyes begging her to recognize him - to give him what he unknowingly gave her in their first chance meeting on the riverbank.

He had told Kolera he wasn't a Lost Boy anymore, but that had been a lie.

Levi

so scream you, out from behind the bitter ache.