A/N: Written for an anonymous Tumblr user who sent me the following prompt: Anagapesis - The feeling when one no longer loves someone they once did
She wonders, sometimes, how they got here, to this. He is not the man he was, does not carry himself with the same bearing, and she is not the woman she was. She is older, wiser, changed in a thousand tiny ways that all seem like they mean nothing, but when they add up to the whole…
She wonders, sometimes, if when he looks at her, does he truly see her? Tired, and drained, the new lines in her face, the odd strands of silver that she pulls from her still-dark hair. She is a young woman, still, barely thirty. They would remind her of that, he might remind her of that. Then, perhaps he only sees her as she was, once, the pretty slip of a ballet girl that first drew the eyes of a Comte. She will never truly know what it was that led him to her, to her of all of the others. Ten years ago…Is it truly ten years?
Her heart beat for him in those days, him and ballet, one and the same. And sometimes, she thought, he made her a better dancer. And sometimes, she thought, the dancing made her a better lover. He was so handsome, back then, with his golden hair and blue eyes, and the soft, mischievous smile. Mademoiselle, would you object to spending an evening with me? She did not object at all, of course, but now…
Now she looks at him, and he is handsome still, but it is different, changed. And she thinks he, too, is changed, in a thousand tiny ways, and where once there was lingering warmth at his touch, now there are only shivers.