All disclaimers apply.
AN: Thanks to Laryna6 for beta-reading.
That she first met him in a cemetary, of all places, should have been some hint of where any path she walked with him would lead her. But, the road less travelled by, and all.
She's fifteen now, and along with that distinction, newly orphaned. Her father's grave is only weeks old. Her hair, plain blonde and too long, falls over her shoulder as she leans down to run her fingers across the chilly bronze plating. An unimpressive marker, metal on stone, dignified and plain. Loving Father, Rest In Peace. Nothing resonates, or maybe she's just become so numb from the cold.
Eva really shouldn't be in this place alone so close to dusk. But it becomes dark so early this time of year. The snowfall doesn't help. Shadows settle over the gravestones, bleak curtains to hide the huge eyes of the dead, staring. Eva blinks wet flakes from her lashes, stares back. The dead don't frighten her much anymore. They're echoes, lonely and mournful and always remembering, they really mean no harm. When they see that she looks, they shift, fade. What ghosts hate more than anything else is to be seen when there is little left of them to see.
She looks back down at the grave, arms wrapped around herself, though she can't feel anything, not even a chill. "Why did you leave me alone?" she asks. It's a simple question, with nothing behind it.
He doesn't speak to her. She doesn't know why she thought he would. No one who speaks to her in places like this ever say anything meaningful. Dead things that can't move on are rarely great sources of wisdom. Only sorrow, and that she has enough of to sell, if anyone would buy.
Something else is in this cemetary tonight.
It's darkening, a monochrome tapestry dotted by the thready skeletons of trees. If she didn't know the path by heart, she would worry about finding her way back. Instead, she wonders that if she really isn't alone, who else would be standing around in the dark talking to dead people, anyway. Another mourner? One of those weird kids who somehow got a kick out of cemetaries, the morbidity of it? Some dare that is, midnight among graves. As if dead people are more of a threat than the living ones.
Her eyes don't deal with darkness any better than anyone else's, but there's still enough light, and the figure isn't far. Its back is to her, indistinct at this distance as the tall shape wanders, hand moving along the wall of a mausoleum as if to keep itself steady. It stops, a foreboding silhouette against the stone, and slumps towards the ground suddenly, like all its bones have dissolved.
She watches for awhile. The figure does not move again.
Her feet are going and she's going with them; this disorients her for a moment, because why is she going towards that spot and not a direction that makes sense? That person could be anything, anyone, and nobody would hear her scream. But she keeps walking, slowly. It doesn't need to make sense. Spirits talk and people die and her father made sure she wouldn't be the one to find him, that flashing lights and noise greeted her instead of terrible silence and the smell of blood. No, nothing makes sense at all.
The snow is not yet thick on the ground, but the quiet that comes with it is already building. Or maybe that's just the way cemetaries are.
A few more steps, and now she's standing in front of this person, unmoving against the mausoleum wall. As still as death, she thinks - the blatant irony of that doesn't escape her. Strange, that she can't see him any better than when she was fifty feet away. In the shadow of the monument, he's black on blue, darker than everything else and blurred along the edges. A shade fresh from the underworld, perhaps, drunk on Lethe and faceless.
Eva wants to frown, but her face doesn't obey her. She wants to say something sensible - excuse-me, are-you-all-right, appropriate things, but all that comes out of her mouth is, "Are you dead?"
It would be a stupid question if she thought a dead person couldn't answer her.
No sound from the figure, no sign of breath misting in the air to indicate it's even alive. She isn't surprised, though, when it speaks anyway. "Perhaps."
A voice that could almost crack marble, but all it does is make her bones want to vibrate, like a tuning fork on steel.
Eva crouches down, coat dragging, legs freezing. Why did she wear a skirt, anyway? Like her feet, her hand moves without her telling it to, landing on something real, if not warm, solid, though not quite alive. Living things don't have the same temperature of the air around them, or seem to be made of pure darkness that ripples when her fingers brush the surface.
Her touch startles the - person? - and it pulls away.
"You're less dead than everything else around here," she observes mildly.
"That doesn't say much."
Silence. Suddenly, the figure gains a shape, and an identity. No longer meaningless, shadow on shadow - rather, black on white, white on gray; dark clothes on snow, pale hair on stone.
Blue eyes devouring everything else.
If she could move, she would do it, quickly. But she doesn't know whether she would run away or run her fingers across his jaw, and down his neck. Or rather, she knows, and she can't think about it or she would regret it.
He looks at her, implacable. "He", because of broad shoulders and distinguishable features that are as distinctly masculine as they are startlingly beautiful. "Why wear red to a cemetary?" he asks in that Hades' voice of his.
Not all red. Just her skirt, completely insensible for this weather, clashing with the blue, sensible coat. Her father told her all the best people are a study in contrasts, inside and out. She doesn't tell this - man? - that. "Why not? Who's going to judge me? You, or them?"
She gives a nod to the solemn graves around them, full of silent spectres.
Looking back at him, still crouching in front of him where he remains slouched against stone in the piling snow, she feels the first spark of concern replacing cooler curiosity. He had to be half frozen by now. "Aren't you cold?"
"No." It's like he doesn't blink, or want to. Like he's memorizing her without really seeing her.
"Then you should get up. When you stop feeling, it means you need to move."
"And move . . . where?" he wonders.
Helpless, Eva shrugs. "I don't know," she admits. "But if you stay here, it's not like being dead. It's just . . . not moving."
For a long time - or it seems like it should be a long time, time doesn't occur to her anymore, like cold, and wet, and sadness, it's too familiar to matter - he just looks at her. Somehow, she's having trouble finding ways to describe him, even looking directly at him. She gets the feeling that there isn't much point to overthinking a face that says so little about the person wearing it. It could be any statue in the cemetary, perfect and lifeless in that perfection. A pretty picture, like the carving on a sarcophagus over a mummified pharoah.
Her father loved pretty things, created them with paint. Colors and strokes spoke for him. Her mother read other peoples' words, let them speak for her, and all she is to Eva now is a voice, a touch, a scent, because she's been dead even longer. Eva doesn't paint or write, she doesn't know how to interpret something as anything other than what it is. All she can do is study him, thinking, How many lives do you have to live to end up with eyes like that?
Finally, he rises, with an ease that belies any weakness that appeared before. And then, in a gesture that is by far the strangest thing she's seen today - and she sees ghosts - he holds out his hand in a gentlemanly fashion to help her up.
Eva almost doesn't accept, but his fingers are warm, now, solid in her grasp, and so she straightens along with him, sweeping snow from her old coat. He's twice her height, taller than a good deal of men, but she's long decided it's pointless thinking of him as a man, anymore than she would call a ghost simply her imagination, or, inanely, the wind.
They start walking out of tacit agreement, down the neat stone paths between the graves, side by side. It's almost night, but she's been here so often over the past few months that she doesn't need to see the way. Was he visiting someone here? No, no one here is old enough, not even in the cracked, mossy family mausoleums dating back decades.
"Who did you come to see?" This from the stranger.
"It doesn't matter." Crunch, crunch, crunch, each step through new snow like the last sound in the world between each syllable. "He's dead."
"I assumed as much." If she was insane, she would think there was some scintilla of amusement in his tone. "Cemetaries don't make ideal meeting places for the living."
"There are worse places."
"There are better."
"Like what?" Eva's surprised to realize that she really wants to know. "A museum or memorial or a library?"
"A park or a restaurant."
She shakes her head. "Not nearly quiet enough. And there are no memories in places like that."
"That's what makes them ideal."
"But there's nowhere to run away from it," she says, quietly. "Those memories, the bad or the good. Why not be surrounded by them? Unless there is somewhere you can go. Is there?"
He's quiet again. They've almost reached the exit, but now she's stopped, and he's stopped, and they're just standing there, surrounded by dark and dead and dancing snow. It would seem like a crossroads, but from here on out, the path only goes forward.
And he says, "I wonder sometimes."
"You're supposed to have the answers."
The look he gives her is so incredulous it makes him seem almost approachable. Younger, somehow. "Why in the world would I?"
"Because you're - " What? What is he? Older than some of the oldest tombs, far beyond human? "Wiser. Years are supposed to make you wise."
Of course, if that was true, she wouldn't be alone. Her father, damn him, wouldn't have left her alone. He would have known better than to give in to pain. Time is supposed to make you strong. Isn't it?
"You're so young." His voice sounds almost as if he's marveling at it, but really, he's just amazed that he isn't anymore. "But that alone doesn't make me wiser. Just - very, very tired."
"But not finished yet."
"No. Not in the least."
Another silence. This is the one she promises herself she's going to remember, the one she's going to keep, for every bit of him she forgets because time keeps passing, no matter how long they stand still. She can study the eons behind his eyes, and not worry about that. This is her evidence that it doesn't have to be so hard. It doesn't have to hurt nearly so much, even though it always does.
The moment passes, like every moment. But for the time she had it, it was perfect.
"I have to go." That's all.
Eva nods, not surprised, never surprised. "I know."
The snow picks up suddenly, white sweeps at black.
She blinks, and he's gone.
The dead are quiet, saying nothing. The wind is loud, saying less. But all Eva can think is that she's cold, and wants to go home, get warm, sleep.
It feels good to feel again, now that she can't be bothered to be envious of those who can't feel anything at all.
She looks around one more time, then leaves the sleeping to their dreams.