Disclaimer: Of course I don't own them!

Summary: A reunion scene I wrote with Carby vaguely in mind, although I don't use names. I guess it could be loosely set after Kisangani, but if you're a real fact-checker or haven't seen the finale yet, just think of it as an AU, cause not everything's accurate.

Rating: PG-13 for language

Hope you like!

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She lay curled up beneath some haphazardly yanked blankets. All she was aware of was garlic—her stale meal, hours, maybe days, ago. Empty—void of food, emotion, coherent thought—she was a brittle old Wiffle Ball: breakable to the touch, old, battered.

An hour ago she'd had delusions of a tap on her shoulder, maybe him, back to rescue her. More likely a concerned friend. Bothersome, but at least a release. No tap came. She was not worth saving.

Later she awoke. Shaking—cold? She pulled the corner of another worn sheet across her trembling mass. The frigid air was not extreme enough to have woken her.

"Thump," the sleep-disturbing culprit was revealed from the alley below. "Thump!" Mildly questionable, but not worth questioning.

"Get your fucking trash out of my dumpster, you fucking mooch!" On a better day she would have smiled, laughed even, at the use of such a sissy word with fuck. Today she hardly uttered a small grunting moan before twisting slightly, pressing one ear deep into a pillow, capping a fist over the other. God damn those stupid neighbors. Didn't they have anything more important to fight about? Lucky bastards.

Fucking bastards.

Cringing, she moaned again. Her hindered ears couldn't perceive the small eerie echo in the empty apartment. Her brain was like her ears—forced to cease function. Her chest lay still, inexplicably pain-free. She didn't fucking want the relief. She wanted the pain.

"Fuck" gave her a minute pinprick. Rage. Not nearly as satisfying as any other emotion, far too shallow. She yelled it. Again. Shrieked. Tears dripped from the effort, from the sheer trapped anger she harbored. Not good enough.

She tried to convert the tears, tried to imagine her real feelings. Instead, convulsed with rage. Exhausted, she crashed back to the stack of blankets on the hard couch. Lay still, inhaling, exhaling, caught her breath. The remaining tears squeezed out the edge crevices of her eyes, down her cheekbones.

Cold again, she reached down for another corner of a coverlet to double over her body. Instead, a brand new quilt appeared.

"Shh."

A hallucination, probably. Fatigued, starving, it was likely. She rode her mind's servant to the fullest, letting the voice owner's hand gently stroke her shoulder until once again sleep arrived.

The next time she awoke, there were no annoying neighbors, no apparent cause for the arousal. She poked an eye from beneath the heap to search for the root of the disturbance. Nothing obvious, but her eye did catch a triangular half of a sandwich on the end table by her head. Absolutely a mirage.

Her hand chased after her eye. Like the tortoise slow, but not so steady. Half expecting air, the digits sighed at the greasy warmth of the food. She picked it up, not interested in eating, just wanted something new. Her human curiosity overriding her self-induced indifference, she nibbled at the corner.

One bite made the whole sandwich seem infinitely more enticing. Orange cheese oozing between lightly toasted slices of bread, shiny with oil from the pan—resistance was impossible. Her dormant appetite erupted into rumbles in her abdomen. Two more bites and the sandwich had vanished.

Licking the remaining grease off her fingers, she sat up. No sandwich maker was evident.

"Thank you?" she called out tentatively from the bed into the pale green room. No answer. She scanned past the table to the kitchen—no sandwich makings on the counter. The dull black countertops were bare. Down the dark hall. No movement. Nothing anywhere. Eyes darted, searching for explanation—a note? Came to rest on the doorway. A man stood leaning on the frame. No blatant emotion on his face, but he was definitely not emotionless.

Of course. Who else knew grilled cheese was her favorite? She had not dared speculate. Too much wishful thinking breaks hearts. Not that her heart had been in any state to be broken. Or in any state at all.

Reminded of her heart, she was suddenly painfully aware of the first real feeling she'd had in…weeks? Not slowly crawling, emerging from a shell. Instead, a tidal wave, the first million troops on the ground at once, a surprise attack.

Had she been standing, the sheer force would have knocked her over. Sitting, luckily, on the worn sofa, she stifled a gasp. Tried to concentrate on her heart to make sure it was beating, but could not divert enough attention from him to form a definite answer.

Stalk still, frozen, she again lapsed into a blank state, could feel nothing. But this time it was because of an override, not a numbness. Couldn't speak, couldn't think, couldn't breathe. All she could do was stare at the figure before her. He stared back—no feeling either? No, he had been expecting this encounter. Still probably a surprise, though. How could he have prepared?

The second wave of infantry began leaking in. These troops less sudden, less shocking. She could actually register them in her consciousness. Surprise, relief, awe, love…fear? A diverse army, whose name she couldn't quite pronounce, but whose definition she knew. Feeling. Him.

A few tears slipped over the rims of her eyes. He saw, stepped forward involuntarily, one step closer. She silently willed him to close the remaining gap. She couldn't herself, was too weak to stand.

She shakily extended an open palm. An invitation. He understood, walked forward and accepted. Warmth she'd thought was gone forever embraced the extremity, woke it up, made it desperately aware of each line of his fingerprint pressing against a thousand distinct hairs on the back of her hand.  She could not have let go if her life had been in limbo. More tears fell, she squeezed the hand, clasping ever more tightly, and her heart skipped another thump when he returned the gesture.

"Where'd you go?" she ventured. Softly, hesitating. Testing her returning voice and his reaction.

His free hand roughly snaked around her shoulders, grasped her, could not let go. She would have quivered, but could not, the embrace was so tight. And she was too secure to need to shake.

More tears, him too. Then it was more than tears. Full blown weeping. The result of the wrenching crack that had emerged in the retaining wall that had been so well concealing all extreme emotion even from herself. Apparently, he'd been corking his feelings too—he cried equally, more. Both shook. Held on tighter to each other to ease the shaking. Holding on made more tears. Made it real.

Not a dream, though dream-like. Real. Had she died in those moments, she would not have been able to notice.

In his arms, the straggling paratroopers softly alighted in her conscience, the third wave settled down, invading her already full to capacity emotional bank. A new foreign emotion, that had been absent longer than the rest. Since months before he left. Genuine, tranquil joy.

Her teeth grasped for her lip. Found it and clamped down, controlling her visible feeling, caging her smile. His expression mirrored hers—as she roped in her elation, he did the same.

She kept herself in check for as long as she could manage—solemn but for blinks when her smile tugged at its leash enough to leak through her clenched lips before being dragged back to its proper position. Her expression was that of a car that has lost a wheel but sprouted wings, and is bouncing along on three wheels trying desperately to lift of into the air and take full advantage of its good fortune, in the meantime still staggering.

Finally she could bear her own oppression no longer, and her smile broke through, despite her resistance. A radiant expression filled with delight, relief. One of those expressions of true beauty in every sense of the word.

Sensing the ease in her trembling caused by her self-release, he loosened his grasp on her, slid his interlocked fingers apart and from behind her back to her sides, holding her at arm's length.

Bashfully, she displayed her smile. His reaction was all it could be: an increase in tears and shivers and an almost equally dazzling smile of his own to match.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder" he impishly quipped. For it she would have hated him another day. No, she would think, not fonder, just more evident.

Today, instead, in response her grin grew—every word he uttered was divine.

*******

Author's Note: I didn't want to post this at the beginning, cause seeing an author announce they're a virgin writer is a real turn-off, but yes, this is my first posted fanfic, and I would love reviews! I think I probably need a beta or something, or at least help, cause I'm new. Just tell me what you thought! Thanks!

Oh! Also, I have no clue if this is a standalone, or where it's going or what kind of plot it should have. Any ideas?