Every time she cries, he feels it viscerally.
It tears through him—cutting clean through every last line of defense he has. He feels cruel, standing apart from her. Feels cruel to watch her breakdown in front of him and not comfort her—not reach out and pull her close as he has so many times before. But he finds that he doesn’t have the strength to cross the distance between them. Finds that he cannot go to her even though his entire being is screaming for it.
Instead he stands apart and wonders how long he can manage it.
How long he can keep himself away from her, watching her break down.
“Life has never been life without you.” he confesses and the words burn as he says them. The truth of them that score his tongue. He shakes his head though, shifts his weight back in some kind of defensive move as if there was anything that he could do to make this hurt less. (There is not. He knows that now.)
He studies her. Try to brand this moment into the back of his mind. Tries to remember the joy that he had felt when he had ripped the veil down and found her standing on the other side. How it was always her. Always him. How he had lived and died for millennia, gladly, knowing she was out there somewhere.
“Time,” he finally answers, because it’s the only thing that he can think of.
“I need time.”
I need you, he wants to say, but the words don’t come.
Instead there is just silence and the distance between them that feels unfathomable.
PLUME
but my heart, it don’t beat, it don’t beat the way it used to