He wakes one night to a creaking bed and a warm body clinging to him. Her little hands are caught between their chests, her hair dry and warm beneath his chin. She's awake and breathing and alive. He does not have to move his head to see it is her. He would know her anywhere. For centuries, her voice, her eyes, her breath, her name have crawled around his spine - for centuries and centuries, before either of them ever took one faltering step in the flesh. So it is no surprise that he recognizes the curve of her legs against his, the feel of her clothes tangled with his. The way her sighs brush his skin.
She is crying but when he moves his head to ask why (to understand. Why is she here at all? The bed was empty when he fell asleep. His life was empty. She is dead dead dead and magic can do much but it can't do that) she presses closer and kisses the muscle in his neck and even though he has no idea what's going on, he stills and tries to catch the rhythm of her heartbeat but his own is loud and fast and panting and crowding everything out.
Where has she come from?
"Belle?" he whispers and his voice sounds weak and old even to his own ears, and that one word is not what he wants to say at all. He should say how'd you get here, dearie? or I love you. But what crawls out beneath the sound of her name is more honest, more undeniable.
I would stop breathing for you.
He hopes she hears it.
She makes no sound. His stomach is twisting and burning with fear and love and hope and absolute, terrifying rage at the years spent alone when she's been right here. Has been right here this entire time. Twenty-eight years in this life destroying town. Thirty-one years and four months and seventeen days since he told her I don't want you anymore.
And she's been here the whole time.
She nudges forward even more, a warm pup against its master, and exhales against his collarbone. The feel of it seems to echo backwards, reverberating against the spaces where she should have been. He reaches a hand up to tangle in her hair.
He feels only the soft blue cotton sheets bunched beneath him. He spends a few sad seconds groping the empty bed, confused and panicked. But after the terror wears away (how could he have lost her again so soon?) he's left with simple and devastating resignation. The sunlight is streaming across the bed, glaring against his closed eyes and she is not there. She has never been there.
This is all.