Forever and ever
There's something comforting about the child in his arms.
Her head rests against the padding of his epaulettes, small fingers twisting the metal chains adorning it while she clings dearly to him. Her mass of brown hair, let free from its tie, flows down his back, lightly brushing his neck as she nestles closer.
Although he can't see it, he knows her eyes are watching the procession of white-clothed people drifting away, disappearing mist, leaving a cold, lonely presence in the air. He knows the gold flecks in her eyes are pale, like his, and blurred with a steady stream of tears. He wonders if she knows, if she understands what has happened, before a sad smile crosses his features.
She has always been a smart child.
'Metias.'
It's a sigh, barely a whisper in his ear, but, in the silence that surrounds them, it's a bullet through his thoughts.
'Yes Junebug?'
His voice is a little more than a murmur and he feels the slight tug of her lips – a smile at the use of her nickname – against his shoulder, before its replaced with a slight frown.
'Will they ever come back?'
He doesn't need to ask her who she's referring to, he knows that all too well. He wonders if she's too small to remember what they looked like, too small to remember how they'd spin her around in the air, their little star against the dark night.
He wraps his arms around her a little tighter and closes his eyes, letting the presence of the small child in his arms soothe him as her tears soak through his uniform.
It's a long time before he answers, but when he does he's sure to tell her that they are still with them in the portraits strung up on the wall, in the memories that visit them at night and in the stars that watch them from above.
The first Legend Trilogy fanfiction I've written, inspired by a drawing of Metias and June newly orphaned by Marie Lu, and although it's quite short, I just needed to write it.
Thank you for reading ~
