love is a promise made of smoke - lynx

[Levi]

There had always been a reluctant comfort in the way she flipped through his thoughts with such ease. Despite the years of separation, he is at hoe in her presence. She was the only one he never had to work to express himself to, he didn't have to string together words and decide which emotions to show and which to hide - she just knew. He had been her first test subject, after all, even in the womb he had felt her presence in his mind.

Her next words should sting, but he had already known this for years. When she had left it had simmered, for weeks and months. There had been a vacancy in his mind when she had withdrawn, and he had no way of expressing what it meant to lose her.

But that was a long, long time ago. 

The last decade had molded him into a different creature. 

When her powerful gaze finally rises again to meet his own he holds it steadily, but it is not easy. She is all you pretend to be, he realizes. Her wall was genuine and his was a weak facade which hides his perpetual anger. They left him one by one, and each time had been more bitter than the last. But despite the inconsistency of the world around him, there had always been one constant.

Yes.

He answers without words, feeling the truth of it in the way his heart pulls towards the volcano as he pictures it now. Tephra would always be home. 

Then he thinks of the way Tephra is floating and aimless now, the way he has carved out a small space of it for himself to avoid the others. He thinks of the power vacuum and pushes the thought towards her with doubtful hope.

It was always meant to be yours, too. 

Maybe she will mock him for the sentiment, but he had to say it.
At least once.

Levi

so scream you, out from behind the bitter ache.