The space around him was surprisingly dark considering the huge green sun floating a within sight. The light from it was blinding and dark, penetrating and opaque at the same time. He sighed, rolling his empty eye sockets upward and letting his shoulder sag. That's when a familiar voice came from beside him. "Why so gloom and doom suddenly?" He turned his dead eyes on his old friend.
If he hadn't been so spacey and in hiw own world at the moment, he would see her round face lit up by a small smile, her black irises, surrounded by a deep orange, glowing with a deep inside joke she seemed to always have with herself. However, he could hear the fluttering of her translucent red wings as they kept her aloft and floating beside him. He released another sigh and shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It's nothing AA. Just got a lot on my think pan. Don't you?" he looked, kind of glad his teeth still hadn't grown back so he could actually speak normally for once.
Aradia let herself sink and spin around in the illuminated darkness that the two inhabited for the time being. "Hmm I suppose so. However, I like to let my mind focus on hope for the future and what time will reveal rather then dwell on the past or horrors of the present." She stopped her movement on his other side and reached out for his hand. "You see, the best way we can help is by not worrying to extensively about what is happening and focus on what we can do, which, at this point, is not a lot. But that's exactly why I don't have a lot on my mind so to say, because there's not a lot I find my mind needing to be focused on." She smiled, gently grabbing his hand.
However, at her touch, he tore his hand from hers. Her round eyes blinked, almost in slow motion. "Sollux?" she drew her hand back to herself, sitting beside him. "What's the matter?" she leaned close to him, almost touching, but no quite.
He glanced at her, his face blank, as if he had just woken up. "Oh. Sorry AA I just…" he trailed off, looking down at his hands for a moment.
She reached out again only for him to once again coil away from her touch. Her brows furrowed, creating a little line on her gray forehead. "Sollux I-." She was cut off by his voice, quiet and soft. This tone of voice for him was alien to her, one she had only heard a few times in their long friendship. "Aren't you mad?"
The words hung in the darkness, filling the air to almost a suffocating degree. Aradia let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. "Why on Alternia would I be mad? What do I even have to be mad about?" a humored smile came to her face, lifting the corners of her rust colored lips.
Sollux's whole being tensed, almost as if he was curling in on himself the slightest bit. "AA…I killed you I practically burned you alive, destroyed your hive, not to mention leading to you being stuck as a frog robot with that Zahack freak! If I were you I be pissed as hell! I'd go and kill that bastard the same way they killed me!"
He covered his face with his hands, his protein chute burning. He felt so many things at that moment. He felt pissed. At himself. At the world. At the whole damn game. He also felt like the whole world was falling and he was going right with it. He didn't deserve her smile. He didn't deserve her kindness. He didn't even deserve to breath same gogdamn air that she did.
This torrent of thoughts froze only as two familiar arms wrapped around him. He pulled his hands from his face and looked down. She was curled up beside him, her arms tight and in a vice-like grip around him. Her head leaned against his shoulder, her soft, curly hair tickling the back of his neck and arms. Her warmth made his whole mind freeze and soften. "Sollux…things happened as they were intended. All masterpieces begin as scribbles. And none of it was your fault. I am certain of that if nothing else."
They were quiet again. He suddenly felt his face grown wet and reached up, touching the pale-yellow liquid that dripped helplessly from his eyes. Aradia loosened her grip too look up into his face. She let one of her arms move and gently wiped his tears with her small fingers, an understanding smile painting her gray cheeks with a rosy glow.
He looked down at her, finding himself smiling. He felt like his heart was made of led, sitting inside him heavy and dark. However, though still heavy, the weight felt less. As if there were a little red-winged, curly-haired sheep girl taking it away bit by bit as she always had. There were no more words that needed to be said. Simply looking into her smiling face made him sure of what she said. "AA…I…"
She moved, climbing into his lap and curling up, her arms around him and her head on his shoulder. He circled her in his own arms and let his cheek rest against her soft hair. She laughed, a soft sound that sounded ever so slightly like the bleat of lamb. He let out a breath of air. "How the hell did I end up with someone like you?"
She leaned up, her head moving from his shoulder, and let her lips rest against the hollow of his neck. "I guess you just got lucky."
He let out a little snort, hiding the smile that tugged at his mouth. How true those words seemed to him in that moment. He gently laid a kiss on the crown of her fuzzy, curly head, so soft she quite possibly didn't even feel it. He silently wished that it had always been and always would be like this. He let his eyes slide closed and almost with out a subconscious thought, he began to rock side to side. When he was young, his lusus often had to do just this in order to lull the restless child to sleep. Aradia didn't move or say anything. She simply smiled and let him rock the two of them. She closed her eyes, feeling an overwhelming sense of peace and content. She knew, with all her being, that it would take a long time to heal all the wounds his heart had taken. She was perfectly willing, though, to be the one to fix them.
In her mind she pictured the green hills and deep caves that surrounded her old hive. She pictured showing him what she had found that day, the earthy and lovely smell of dirt and the past still filling her nose and the sparkle of archeology filling her young think pan and eyes. He would hold her just so as she showed him all her discoveries and as she would go on for hours on her boring tangents about history and things she knew he cared little for. He would listen anyway though, or at least pretend he was, and play with her hair, attempting to get his fingers through the curly and tangled cloud.
She missed those days yes, but, she was happy to move on to new ones so long as he was there. For she loved him, and that was all there was to it.
He continued rocking, realizing that she was sleeping as her breathing slowed and her tight grip on him loosened. He continued the slow rocking motion, closing his eyes. He slowly felt himself drift, sleep coming fast. He could feel the lack of sleep he had been experiencing as of late piling onto him, like an anchor dragging him into the warm inviting arms of sleep. However, the only arms he ever wanted to be in were hers. He would never say that cheesy bullshit out loud, but it still held true. With one last kiss to her forehead, he let himself fall under the spell of sleep for the first time in a long time.