By: Seimei

Bridge

There are no more words. Only bodies of light and voids of dark. And an empty in-between space.

But he is almost there, almost over—just as she is. The line will be crossed, the wall breached. The broken bridge has been mended, and now it is time to pass over.

"Words aren't the only…" she begins, but her voice is lost in the sound of the wind and grass. It doesn't matter. He knows her meaning all too well by now.

Just as he knows the sadness in her smile, the age in her eyes, the ache in her hands, the silence in her steps. Even with her back to him, he still sees everything she had both hoped and hated to hide. Everything.

And he has always known, always seen, with a child's heart and a child's love and a child's dream—despite the line she drew and the wall he built. Their boundaries, though strong, had been invisible. And he had always been there to see through them. A shadow.

A shadow cannot be touched; a shadow cannot reach, and feel, and hold, and love. One passes through shadows like one passes through air.

But he was more than that. He was not a shadow anymore, in ways that words can never express.

Maybe he had not always seen that. Behind glass, he had lost himself in her. But here, now, then—through her, he had found himself. She is his delusion and his truth. He knows no other way.

And now, they are the only ones left.

This will change everything. He knows this, just as surely as he knows her. And yet, somehow, nothing will change. This is the way it was, and is, and will be, starting tonight—just as it was on that night, when they had been the only ones, all those years ago. They had tried, in their own ways, to breach the divide, destroy the abyss between.

A promise had been their bridge, then. A promise is their bridge, now.

And it is the same bridge, even though it has been beaten and broken, forgotten, ignored, and now—put right, restored, mended. So many times, now, that it hurts to count. They stand in the same places, in the same shoes, over the same chasm—but this time, this time everything doesn't fall through. This time, the bridge stays strong.

She still stands with her back to him, waiting for the silence to end.

And he reaches out and touches her.