I decided to back this up from Ao3 since I was quite proud of this little piece. Hope you all enjoy the story that follows.
He is here again.
The flames rose high above the wooden hut, smoke caught in the air in wisps. A breeze passed through the trees and the smoke twirled and thinned and caught in his throat. Soren resisted the urge to cough.
The house had been burning for hours but it was finally beginning to settle as the night swept in.
Soren tightened the cloak around his neck and swallowed, not daring to look across at the figure made from the smoke and the ash of the fire. If he looked too closely, the image would slip from his fingers.
For now, he would embrace this illusion.
At an inn just down the road, Soren ordered a room with a large bed and requested dinner for two.
When it came, he placed the second plate at the foot of the blanket and ate from his own in silence.
He was being ridiculous. He knew that.
However, he couldn't help keeping to his side of the bed and not hogging the blanket despite the Winter season. He couldn't help ordering for two despite barely being able to finish his own plate most of the time.
If he reflected long enough and didn't fall asleep before it happened, Soren could sometimes even feel a muscled arm drape across his waist, the itch of stubble and warm breath against his cheek.
Soren ran his fingers over the bedding, flattening crinkles in the cloth.
Playing pretend didn't help. He thought he'd be stronger than this.
During the time they had been at war, Ike became an almost benevolent thing in Soren's mind.
Two wars. Ike had survived two wars – killed a king and a Goddess and a knight encased in black. Soren had never been one to push his luck; inside he knew that Ike could be felled in seconds were he left vulnerable and unaware.
However, watching someone kill a literal Goddess….
For a time, it was hard to believe Ike could die.
In the end, it was not war that had ended him but a hitched cough that had gotten so much worse. It was almost disappointing.
Soren picked up the bandanna (green, tattered like the cloak) and wrapped it around his wrist several times.
He couldn't bring himself to burn it along with their house.
A month later and he still couldn't let go.
If he'd been given the choice, Soren would have traded his longevity with Ike's pitiful life span in a heartbeat.
As Ike's back grew stiff and fingers sore, Soren had taken to looking for a way to help preserve him. He'd spilled across anima scrolls as well as the dark arts; attempted to translate long paragraphs of ancient tongue.
What leads he found were useless – most concoctions did little more than make Ike cough and splutter. Others Ike refused to take and the taste was too strong to try and slip them into his drink.
It was immoral of him to attempt to.
But Soren had grown desperate and Ike knew it. Yet, the man did not want to live longer than what he was deigned to.
When Soren had offered him his own arm – offered to grant him the blood of dragons in hopes of saving him – Ike had shook his head, a familiar frown across his face and told him to stop.
And Soren had.
Ike did not want to live longer than what he was supposed to.
Yet, the memories and the image of him which he sometimes saw from the corner of his eye stopped Soren from thinking Ike had achieved even that.
Winter turned to Spring and Spring fell into Summer.
Even though he'd been gone for nearly a year, his presence lingered in the quiet moments.
Soren just wanted the image to last.
Ike had become a shadow; a ghost to haunt him over his shoulder at night. He knew he wasn't there but his presence had become something constantly felt.
Like he'd never left.
Although his body was gone, it felt like his spirit remained. Like his life had lost its numbered limit; it had become something countless. Infinite.
Then Soren would turn around and the spirit would evaporate like dust.
It had happened enough times that he no longer cried.
On the anniversary of Ike's death, Soren untied the man's old cloak from around his neck and placed it at the bottom of his bag.
Enough was enough.
It was time he let go.
Winter came and left and the image of the only man he'd ever trusted didn't appear.
Soren smiled briefly, the bandanna around his wrist more of a memento of what he'd lost than a chain.
He looked out to the sun and smiled. When he felt Ike's presence at his side, he knew it was not his imagining.
Ike would always be with him until they met again.