Come home.

His voice reached her, at first. Cut into her while she was sleeping, whispered to her on the wind that rustled the trees, moved through the alleys. She thought it would stop, with enough time, with enough distance. Thought she would stop wanting to go home, apologize, work through things.

She left for a reason, after all.

But it never stopped.

Come home.

His voice reaches her now. Ten years of longing condensed into the feeling of his fingertips brushing against hers. She sees their old house. She sees them walking through the door, as if no time has passed at all. He says something that makes her laugh, and they kiss before he walks into his office, and she goes into the kitchen to start dinner.

Do you still have an office?

She sees their home, dark and full of dust. The picture frames are broken and there are ghosts in the air.

She wants to pull her hand back from his. To shut out the memories and return them to darkness, call the sounds and shadows that have chased out any others who intruded on her solitude. She wonders if he would leave if she tried, or if he would not stand his ground, allow himself to be consumed rather than leave without her.

She knows the answer.

He tightens his grip in the time she hesitates, and she registers fear in his eyes for the first time since she saw him standing on the beach; fear, and hurt.

You owe me, Rinoa.

She owes him nothing. And she owes him everything.

He moves his other hand towards her face and she is terrified. Nobody has touched her since she walked away. Nobody has even seen her beneath the glamours that were necessary to survive.

Yes, she wants to say. Please.

He sees her. He always has.

He is close enough to her that she can feel the heat radiating from his palm, and she closes her eyes and tries to lean in, and he withdraws, and instead, falls slowly to his knees. His head is bowed towards the floor, and he grips her fingers with both hands now. Inside her veins is a rope that has frayed and unraveled, and she feels it twist together and become whole. She feels more pain than she has felt in years, and lets out a small cry. The room spins and she is disoriented, memories crashing in, and fire burning through her.

She couldn't sever the bond. She tried, oh she tried. She chanted and screamed to the voices of the succession to release him, to let the madness consume her entirely, but he held on, even when she sent him nightmares, even when she finally sent him the happiness she hoped he needed to move on. He held on whether he meant to or not.

Kill him, was the only response she ever got. It's the only way.

And it was only in those times she knew, she wasn't fully gone.

She crumpled it. Bent it. Turned it into something unrecognizable. But she never broke it.

And it hurts to feel it again, to feel the light that shines on every splinter and tear.

He still holds on.

She reaches for his chin and tilts his head up, and when she meets his eyes she is certain she is going to burst, that her skin is going to shatter and fill this place she has made her home with stardust, and that she will be no more. She left, because she could not bear the feeling of being trapped inside her own skin, and in the years that passed she bled into her surroundings, until the ruins of the old factory were charged with her mind, with the magic that floated docile beside her, because it was too much for her to hold inside.

(And she bathed in the sea and made herself almost-whole, and if he had not come when he did, would she have known it was him?)

The mercury-light that still pools on the floor flickers between them, and Rinoa looks down, into the shadows of his face, and wonders what he has brought with him. Is he here to claim her, to collect her? To bring her home, into a world full of questions, a world she cast aside, a world where she is feared, and rightfully so? What would she do, out of the darkness? She is not sure she would survive.

And yet she is certain she cannot walk away from him again.

He parts his lips, and she is too afraid of what he might say, so she places both hand against his face and urges him up, and when he is standing beside her she leans slowly forward, and kisses him.

She is blinded, and she is helpless, and it is a distraction, it is just a kiss it is her veins burning, and she has made a mistake, a terrible mistake, and she is prepared to lose herself, finally, fully, forever—

If he pushes her away, it might kill her. If he draws her in, it might kill them both.

She deepens the kiss, and waits.

.

She is going to turn him away. He's certain of this. There is too much fear in her eyes, and now that he sees her, fully sees her, he is aware of his betrayal. She left. She hid. If she had wanted him to find her, she would have allowed it. He felt her, in all that time. He knew it was her, when he screamed out in the night. Knew it was her, when the nightmares stopped abruptly, replaced with waking visions of a world he should be happy in.

You tried to build me a world where I wouldn't want you, he thinks, and refuses to break eye contact. When the only thing in the world I wanted was you.

It is a world that trapped him. Sent him phone calls that brought him home, when he tried to go to their old places. Sent him mysterious women in dark bars he could pretend were her, sometimes to the point where it was her name that fell from his lips in a whisper.

He never could tell fact from fairy tale with her, even when she was around.

He would think he is dreaming now, but the dreams never hurt like this. In his dreams are death, drowning. Waking visions of his life tumbled on top of each other, time compressed (and he would know).

The urge to flee flashes in her eyes and he reaches for her before he can stop himself, and when their fingers touch it is a surge that holds him in place, freezes him, and it feels like the life is draining out of him, that everything he has retained is flowing towards the point their skin meets.

Come home, he thinks, although there is no home to go to. There is only a string of hotel rooms and sublets, wherever work allows before the absence of her chases him away.

He sees, briefly, their old house in Timber, sees them walking through it as they are today, before it fades into the dust it was when it became apparent he was never going back. He tightens his grip and feels the fear in her light up in response, and when his vision returns to her, he is drained, and all fight has left his system.

Please, he wants to say, but the words will not form. He wants to reach for her, to slide his hand across her cheek, let his fingers move through her hair, but he is afraid. Of her power. Of her beauty. Of everything she is, and everything he has never been able to be. He draws back his hand and drops slowly to the floor and bows his head. She is as familiar now as the day she left, and whatever is left of him, he gives to her, willingly. She could walk away, could raze the building with him still inside, but he will not leave her. He feels his fingers on his chin, and waits for them to slide around his neck.

Instead, they lift his head up, and when he looks at her, he sees eternity.

This. This is why I couldn't let you go. He opens his mouth to say the words out loud and she pulls him up, and presses her lips against his. He feels the fire under her skin, so familiar even after so much time, and he is powerless.

It does not occur to him to stop her, until the tightness around his heart grows stronger and stronger, until he can't breathe. Until he breaks away, when his legs give out beneath him. She catches him and lowers him back to the cold and dirty floor, and he is gasping and reaching for her.

It took him ten years to find her, and ten minutes for her to drain the life out of him. She is wailing and sobbing beside him, a terrible, frightening sound, and through fading vision, he sees wings erupt from behind her with a glow that shows him all the etchings on the wall, all the signs and sigils of her isolation.

I will always love you.

He hears the words she spoke to him before she left, and he hears them again, spoken beside his ear before she closes her wings around him and he feels her steal the rest of his life away.

.

"—can't go that far, mom will be mad."

"You're just scared!"

"Am not! I just don't want to get in trouble!"

"Scared of what?"

"Of a big stupid monster that isn't even real!"

"Is so!"

"Oh yeah? What's it look like?"

"Like a lion, the biggest lion you ever saw! With giant wings!"

"I thought you said it was a beautiful lady with the body of a lion?"

"It's both!"

"Impossible!"

"Look—there it is!"

The voices give way to screams, fading as three shadows run across the rocks and back to town.

And above the cliffs, a great shape appears, with delicate wings that catch the glow of the moon, and fold against the body of a lion. They are a ghost story now, a legend. A GF, some say, or a monster, or, for those who know, lovers, who could not die.

They are words whispered on the night wind. A siren song. A threat. A warning.

If you come here, you'll find me.

A promise.


This is the original ending to this fic. As I was writing it, I had another idea (largely due to listening to too much Florence + the Machine), and at the time of posting, I worried that this ending was too bleak. But I've since decided that this really is the way this story was meant to end, so I'm swapping the ending out over here. The alternate is posted at Archive Of Our Own, where this ending used to be.