It's quiet uptown
- Based on spoilers from 5.21. Inspired from a Hamilton song. Assumes that Roland stays in SB.
"I miss you."
Her first words are a whisper; it rolls under the hill and disappears in the wind. She can take in the sight of her city, from up there. The autumn leaves tremble, above her.
Sitting in the grass, she fiddles with a button of his jacket – she swims in it, he's always told her she is tiny, and he's been rewarded with offended glares and playful fists.
Her fingers find the satchel she's brought, and a familiar glow from inside warms her features. Her battered, black-veined heart pulses slowly, and she breaths, taking it, another breath. It returns inside her chest – tears spring free, the pain amplifies one hundred times.
She takes it, the pain. Once a year, in this exact spot, she'll return and take it.
.
"Your daughter is beautiful," she tells him – she speaks to the wind, embraces her knees. "And your son is growing up so fast… I wish you were here to see them grow up, thief."
"I think I've managed to do what you've asked me, this year. To go on. Sometimes –" she stops, staring at two birds dancing together with angry swirls. "Sometimes I wonder why we were given a second chance, if we were to lose it so soon."
.
"Look at where we started, I hated you, your insufferable smirk, your stubbornness, your trust. Look at where we are. You're gone, and I'm lost."
"I wonder when I'll stop paying. When will I be forgiven. Forgiveness, can you imagine?"
.
She looks down, rips off a blade. "Sometimes I pray – that never used to happen before. I don't know which god. But I have to believe I can meet you."
One last tear falls, and she is reaching for her heart. Feelings are now muffled. She rises; eyes embracing the city once again, she rubs her forearm.
"You know, it's quiet, uptown. You would have liked it. I never liked the quiet before…"
