notes: this is part of a special holiday series, dubbed "12 Days of Jerza" that wordslinger and i are doing for the holiday season! it's both a fanfiction and a fanart collaboration so in order to get both the text and the art, i highly recommend either finding this story on my ao3 (i'm also thir13enth there) or going to the tumblr blog 12daysofjerza so that you can the full experience!
sunrise
summary: first winter, then spring.
prompt: long night
.
The moon ate the sun hours ago — wrapping the night around the last of the sunlight and smothering it to an empty black sky — but his eyes are still wide awake as he thinks about how he hasn't seen her smile in ages.
It's been over a few years since Tenrou Island disappeared, or at least since he's been informed.
But truth be told, he knew she was gone the moment his heart stopped beating.
He supposes this is how he should be punished for having lost his mind in the first place, looking for heaven so high upwards in the sky when he was too naïve to realize that love was sitting right next to him, holding his hand. He counts the days by the empty strum of his still heart, because someday his beat will join hers once again, as he now realizes it should be and should have always remained.
Sometimes someday is the same as never, but he thinks that as long as the sun rises the next day, he is at least a little closer to forever.
Until then, he keeps his hand close to his heart, where not even the longest nights or the coldest winters or the darkest nightmares can touch.
He waits out the snow, waits out the ice — patiently anticipating the first blossom of his spring to bloom in the grace of the rising sun, resisting the angry bites of frost crawling toward him from the tips of his toes and the ends of his fingers.
And then seven years later, he awakens one day to the warm sunlight resting on his skin like fine dust. He turns his gaze to the scarlet red sky surrounding the brilliant golden sun, and he knows that somewhere between the clouds, he can see same silver light behind that she carries in her eyes.
He sees her smile — and it's as if he never closed his eyes.
thir13enth
