started out shorter than this, but... stuff happened.
The lamp on Ritsuka's bedside table has been left on. It lights the room with a dim glow, casting shadows that shift slightly as he opens the door. His bare feet are silent on the floorboards; his eyes sweep the room and the bookshelves seem to cower until his gaze returns to the bed. Shade covers the sheets like a shroud, a slight distortion in the dark shapes the only hint of a living, breathing body lying there.
Silently he walks the short distance through the room and sits on the edge of the bed. The mattress dips a little beneath his weight, but it stays silent, as if afraid to creak. Ritsuka lies still, on his side. One hand is curled into a fist by his head, the other tucked beneath his pillow. His eyes are closed, a lock of hair falling across his face. His mouth is slightly open.
He leans over the child, close enough that his hair almost brushes Ritsuka's cheek, but he controls himself. It is enough, for now, to look, to stare, to breathe in the light scent emanating off him, and to imagine. For once the silence isn't disturbed by the noises of his mother downstairs. His eyes stray to the bandage on Ritsuka's wrist – strange, to see a wound he didn't plan and inflict – and he smiles a little.
One day we'll be free of her, he thinks, one day we'll be free of her and of everything. You and me, Ritsuka.
The only two people in the world.
Ritsuka frowns a little; he tilts his head, rising carefully from his perch on the edge of the bed and moving across the room to stand in the edge of the doorway. His silhouette obscures the thin line of light slicing in through the slit in the door.
"Good night, Ritsuka," he murmurs, and he walks out of the room.
FIN/