"Do you miss her?"
The question is asked in a field that will never exist - soft grass below, warm sun above, distant birdsong floating by on a faint breeze. There's a kind of gentle serenity in just existing there; being so much older and wiser and more mature, there no doubts to plague her and no uncertainties to colour her thoughts pale yellow.
But she doesn't ask because she wants to - she asks because he wants to tell her.
Armando only smiles. She can't see his eyes, but she's certain it reaches them; she can see it so clearly, this thing that she has never seen. It crinkles his skin as he gazes down at her, betraying the depths of his gentle amusement, and she is helpless not to smile back.
"A strange question," he teases, his voice a low tumble. It tugs at the tips of her eyes, and her lips curl further. "Of course I do."
"Of course," the medium echoes, content with this response and her place in the world. She watches the flowers dance to their own tune, and understands that nothing he could ever say would bother her. "You loved her."
"I did," he agrees.
They sit side-by-side, that pair - not touching, but close enough that they could if one only reached out. She sometimes wonders what that would be like, but it is a passing thought that slips away before she can look too closely, like smoke in the breeze or the lingering after-taste of a dream after you have awoken.
"And now?" she asks, but that question doesn't come from her - there's something like a judder as they push past her lips, and the breeze halts for just a second as she remembers the child she used to be. Then it is gone like it was never there, and the world resumes, and it seems it never stopped for him at all.
"Always," Armando assures her.
Her approval is a tangible thing as she stares at him; her thoughts slip and slide and coil, arranging themselves into something new and different and not entirely pleasant. The edges of the field must be tingeing with dusk, she decides.
"Should I channel her for you?"
She's facing him, then; there's a memory of cloth rustling and her body turning, so she must have done it, but she can't imagine why. Her head tilts to the side, her smile fading... but it's been so long since he saw her sister, how can she not offer?
If there's despair in a place such as this, it's at that.
An eternity lives and dies between her question and his answer, but the wait hardly bothers her - whatever he says will be just what she expects, be just fine, because now she is older and wiser and more mature and she understands. The kind of fierce, eternal love they shared is right, and she would never dream of feeling anything but compassion for it - not for a moment, not even in her darkest hour.
Yet even though she knows this, Maya always wakes before the first word falls from his lips.
Godot studied his visitor through the glass as he always did, his gaze locked away from prying eyes - but no matter how many times he saw her, it never failed to jar him just how much older she was.
It wasn't really fair, though, was it? He was older, too. Time kept on passing even when you were trapped in purgatory, with no respect for the world around it.
Time didn't care if you only saw each other once a week, except for holidays. Time didn't care if birthdays were a thing that only happened around other people for fear of breaking the fragile agreement, or if anniversaries were eternally looming shadows in unacknowledged corners. Time didn't care if the days melted into an endless blur, and the future was an indistinct haze, and if the only moment of sharp focus was in the now, where Time had no right to be.
It wasn't going to wait just because they never had enough to say what they needed to when they were finally in the same room, and on days like these, Godot could hardly blame it.
"Maya?" His voice wasn't the reassuring rumble half-remembered from a dream, but rough and concerned. "Is something wrong?"
There were no nicknames here, she thought. They had no right.
Should I channel Mia? she thought, but the words stuck in her throat. She couldn't force them past her lips and make them real, no matter how hard she strained. Do you want me to?
And so she remained silent, averting her gaze.
Do you still love her? she thought - but here, she wasn't older and wiser and more mature, and her stomach twisted and roiled at what the answer might be. The question was a dark and bitter stain at the back of her throat, ever present. Did you ever stop?
In her dream, the answer never mattered. In her dream, she understood.
Sitting there in the cold, plastic chair - she never did.
"No," Maya managed finally, her voice an unconvincing murmur. "Everything is fine."
He didn't believe her any more than she wanted him to, but no matter how hard she wished, she knew that Godot wouldn't ask again. He wouldn't pry, wouldn't demand the truth no matter how hard he stared, because...
...because he did understand. The pain, the distress, the resentment? It all made so, so much more sense to him that it ever would to her.
And it was a bitter pill to swallow, that knowledge.