dawn breaks; there is blue in the sky
your face before me, though I don't know why
thoughts disappearing like tears from the moon

"Raine," greets Yuan, blinded by sunlight on silver, and blinks a few times to clear his sight, but this is no mirage. "You seem… different." Older comes to mind and lingers on his lips, but he swallows the word. He has just enough residual awareness of societal convention to understand the danger of inadvertent insults, even if he means it as an incoherent and inexplicable compliment.

Still, it alarms Yuan how earnestly he wants to subdue parts of himself, softening his too-sharp tongue. He hasn't second-guessed his behavior like this since the long-ago days of his lady's courtship. Raine sees all this and more in his eyes, his usual veil of guile and grief sliding down to reveal something almost like fear, or hurt, amid a storm of confusion.

Her presence is evidently more disruptive to Yuan than she thought, but she doesn't know what to make of it, so she decides to return his greeting instead. "So do you," says Raine, as tartly as she can. Yuan can tell from her tone that she knows his thoughts, but her voice quavers just enough that her words don't have the same bite they once did. "May I come in?"

Yuan knows very well that he has no choice, and steps mutely aside to let her pass. Raine brushes by, cool and careful. Once the door clicks quietly shut behind them, the only sound in the room is the comfortingly finite heartbeat of the clock. Persistent and powerful, it dents the silence stretching between them at steady intervals until Yuan can bear it no longer.

"How is your brother?"

Disarmed by the suddenness of the question, Raine can't help but stare. Even in these pacifistic years, Yuan's powers of observation and deduction are still formidable. She never told him her destination, or even mentioned it in passing. Still, she supposes that in times like these, his is the only logical conclusion.

"Still in Ozette," answers Raine, clearing her throat faintly. "He hasn't moved since he settled down and had his first family there, and he's sworn never to have another. I don't blame him, with the number of descendants he has already." She gives a weary half-smile. "It's not often that an ancestor still runs his ancestral home, but he's put down roots, and no one can move him now." Something Raine never had the conviction to do.

Yuan hears her silent addition in her tone, and frowns momentarily. The world has been harsh enough to Raine without her condemning herself as well. "It isn't for everyone," he murmurs, reassurance soft and warm and pleasantly smooth on his tongue. "In fact, I'd argue that it isn't for most."

Overt kindness is strange, even alien, coming from Yuan. Perplexed at his compassion, Raine purses her lips. "You've… changed," she says, the sentiment escaping before she can stop it. "I left behind a different Yuan than the one to whom I have now returned. Twice." She pauses, scrutinizing him with guarded interest, as if trying to pinpoint a physical difference. "How can that be?"

Raine speaks in the same tone she must have used with her students long ago, gentle and encouraging. Still, Yuan finds that he cannot meet her searching gaze, and yearns for the strength to shelve his pride and answer. Yet, in spite of his newfound desire to seek out Raine's company, to engage her in conversation and preserve their correspondence, his fatal flaw remains too heavy to move.

In his mortal days, Yuan was a Sylvaranti general; in his immortal days, Yuan was an angel and a renegade. Both times, he could see his causes so clearly that they shone like stars in his soul—so clearly that he led countless others to glory or to death in their pursuit, because they could see those constellations too. But after all he ever fought for was either attained or undone, his ideals and his identity both began to crumble.

In the early days of solitude, Yuan still felt confident enough in his role as my self-appointed guardian that even his isolation could not lead him astray. It was not until Raine finally turned her back on him that he realized, somewhere deep inside his soul, that he had not truly been alone until that moment. She, not I, was his last remaining connection to the outside realm, to his own world, to his own history, even to his own memories. And there is no longer a reason for him to keep up appearances during her absence, even for himself.

Yuan has known he's been changing, or perhaps dissolving, for as long as it's been happening. However, he's hidden the reasons from himself for decades; unthought, shapeless, yet always there. Only now, after months of finally uncovering and deciphering them, does he recognize the stark and bitter truth: that without anyone to share his surroundings and remind him of himself, Yuan Ka-Fai—all that he once stood for, all that he is, and all that he ever could be—ceases to exist at all.

Raine stands and watches Yuan helplessly, transfixed by the subtle and variable crease of his brow, the occasional twitch of his lips, his semi-shallow breaths as if in pain. His eyes are active, but deep and distant, as if seeing something no longer there. She knows better than to think he will be able to formulate an answer in the here and now, let alone articulate it to her.

Still, Raine deliberates a few more moments before determining that an answer to a different question will be more useful: that will tell her if she has the time to wait for this one as well. "Enough pleasantries," she says, and Yuan pulls himself out of his thoughts with a visible effort, glancing up at her. "You know why I came back."

He does. She returned to ask the first question of potentially many, to wrench open gates long left locked, almost forgotten without her to call attention to them. Fear, cold and irrational, contrasts sharply with the shame searing Yuan from the inside out. What if he can no longer remember? What if Raine leaves him again, forever this time, since she'll have no reason to stay…?

Through Yuan's silence, Raine witnesses the extent to which he has been made brittle and bewildered by dwelling alone in a time not his own. Her heart seems to contract in her chest, not repulsed but repentant. She's spent so long observing history taking shape all around her that it takes her awhile to recognize the instinct to intervene, to protect. Even if the answer is no, Raine cannot in good conscience leave Yuan broken again.

She opens her mouth to tell him so, but before she can speak, Yuan bows his head in a defeated affirmative. To his own surprise, it is not the fear of continued solitude that guides his final decision most, but rather the desire to feel like a part of something again. Yuan's existence has never felt so disconnected before, but Raine can bring him back to 's sure of it.

"Start wherever you like," says Yuan finally, gesturing to the chair nearest Raine in an invitation for her to sit, and they share a smile for what feels like the very first time.