Disclaimer: I do not own anything of the Sword Art Online franchise in any way, except the idea to write this story.

Gentle Feelings

"Lizbeth…" Kirito said with a gentle voice, still only halfway across the bridge.

"Right now is a bad time." The girl in question answered while standing up, her back turned towards him.
"Give me a few minutes and I'll be back to my usual, cheerful self."

"Liz…"

"How did you know I was here?" Lizbeth asked, turning towards him, still with tears in her eyes.

"You can see the whole town from up there." Kirito answered while pointing towards the tower in the center of the 48th floor city Lindus.

"Flashy as always, huh?" Lizbeth said with a small, but still sad, smile on her face.
"Sorry, I'll be fine." As she said that, she turned away again and walked to the small stream and knelt down.
"My heart just isn't used to the feeling of adventure."
"Please forget everything I said." She said in a shivering voice while covering her face with her hands.

"I wanted to thank you." Kirito, who had crossed the bridge and was now halfway around to where Lizbeth was, said.

At this Lizbeth removed her hands from her face and made a surprised noise.

"All this time, I seriously believed it was better to die than to live alone." He continued.

Lizbeth now stood up and turned around with a surprised expression on her face.

"But after we fell in that hole, I was so glad that we were alive together." Kirito averted his eyes for a second as he said this.
"I figured that all of us here in this game were just living for the sake of being alive." He looked back at her, now with a sincere smile on his face.
"So thank you, Liz."

"Me too…" Lizbeth began, shifting her gaze to his feet.
"Y`know, I've been searching all this time…" She continued, shifting her gaze back upwards to look into his eyes while moving a little bit closer to him.
"…for something real in this world." Again she closed the distance between them by a step.
"The warmth of your hand was real to me." While saying that, she shifted her gaze down towards his hands, her own hands seemingly cupping an invisible hand.

As Lizbeth moved her eyes back up to look into his eyes again, Kirito changed his facial expression from surprise to, content?
An honest smile started to form on her face as she continued to talk.

"You should repeat what you just said to Asuna." Lizbeth continued, turning away from him again.

"Liz…"

"I'll be okay." She kept going on, ignoring his interrupt. Although it was rather to reassure herself more than it was to reassure him.
"I can still feel the heat a little." Lizbeth said, tilting her head backwards a little to look up at the sky. Or rather the ceiling, since that was what was about 100 meter above them.
"So, please…" Tears were starting to form again in her eyes.
"…make this world come to an end." The tears now dropping down on her dress.
"I can hold out until then." She now was clenching her hands, which had dropped to her sides, to fists.

What happened next, was something Lizbeth definitely wasn't expecting to happen.

She felt a sudden warmth on her forehead and her left hand, her head being gently pressed backwards until it hit the chest of Kirito. She relaxed her hands again and moved her left hand a little bit, so that her fingers could take hold of his hand. Her tears slowly started to fade away as his warmth seeped into her. After a minute that felt like an hour to Lizbeth, she regretfully started to turn around and put a distance of about 30 centimeter between them.

"I promise you. I'm going to beat this game." Kirito said with a gentle voice.
"But, I'm not sure if I can do it alone."

"If your weapons and armor need fixing, feel free to drop by anytime." Lizbeth said after wiping away the remnants of her tears with the sleeve of her dress.

After she said that, Lizbeth turned around and started walking back towards her shop, grabbing Kitio's hand while walking past him.

Kirito, who now seemingly understood what she really meant with those words, quickly fell into step besides her, a smile of content slowly forming on his face.

"Sure."

Just as they were about 15 meter away from the backdoor of Lizbeth's workshop, they both stopped simultaneously. Lizbeth let go of Kirito's hand and turned to face him, Kirito did the same.

"Are you free after 4 pm?" Kirito was the first to speak up.

"I think so, why are you asking?" Lizbeth answered, with a slight look of surprise on her face.

"I know this really great café on the 30th floor, where they serve a really great curry." Kirito said with a mischievous grin.

"Alright!" Lizbeth exclaimed excitedly.
"But don't you dare to be late by even one minute."

A/N: Hello and a very big "Thank you!" that you decided to read my story.

This suddenly came to me while I was rewatching the Anime... while drinking my fifteenth cup of Earl Grey this day.

Alright... back to main topic:

Although this looks like a one-shot, I still have a whole story in my hands that follows directly after this. Now, my idea was that if a certain number of favs and comments is reached, I'll upload an other chapter. While doing this I always try to tie up most of the loose ends to give this story an overall finished feeling within the current amount of chapters uploaded.

For starters I set the 'requirements' for me to upload the next chapter at 5 comments and 4 favs.