Just a little piece I had to get out of my system before I spontaneously burst into hot tears.
Empty.
No other word can do justice to her current state.
Empty.
Ever since he left, ever since that final goodbye, she is barely more than a hollow shell of what she used to be.
She hates him for it. She tries to fight against it, to smile, to feel again, but all she finds is a dull numbness, settled into her like a second soul.
She's good at hiding it from people.
She laughs. She talks. She listens.
But she can't fool him.
He who has known her more than anyone else has.
He who belongs to her, even if he cannot physically belong.
He watches her, closely and obsessively, every hour of every day since he left.
He tried to fight against it, to push her away from his mind, just as she tried, but failed.
Just as she did.
So he visits her in her sleep.
Every night, every dream, he visits.
At first, he watches from a distance, afraid of how she might react to seeing him again.
Afraid of reopening the tender wound in her that has not yet healed.
Afraid of the hot tears that might drown him, just as they had that night he left.
He almost drives himself to madness, his eyes desperately clinging on to her until she awakens.
In her dreams, she fools no one.
She does not hide.
His face echoes the pain he senses in her as he observes.
Until he cannot bear to merely observe anymore.
She surprises him.
When he steps out and reveals himself to her for the first time, she does not start.
She does not shout.
She does not push him away.
She stands in place, staring at him, and he can see the joy building up in her eyes, quickly filling up the emptiness that dimmed their beauty and spilling onto her cheeks.
She walks right into his arms, as if he never left.
As if it was the most natural thing for her to do.
And he holds her, welcoming her back to the only true home she'd ever known.
"I've been waiting," she whispers into his chest.
"And I have been watching," he whispers back.
She tightens her hold on him, as though willing their spirits to become one.
"Promise me you'll always visit."
He cups her face in his hands and looks down at her, looks into the eyes that he so often lost himself in.
Wet.
With tears.
Just as they were when he left.
"I promise," he whispers.
She closes her eyes, inhaling in his familiar scent.
"Ar lath ma, vhenan," she says.
He kisses her, trembling as he tastes her against his tongue, just as he did all those months ago. When he visited her dream for the first time.
And he knew then, just as he knows now.
He felt the world change.
And it had.
