She wasn't a little girl anymore, not even close.
The last time he had seen her she had been sixteen, with the fire of youth in her eyes, looking more and more like her own person and not the reflection of her parents. But he hadn't expected the intervening years to have had such a change on her. When he'd seen her that first time, when he'd been tired and worn from the long journey, going over and over the words to explain to her what had happened, he had hardly recognised her. She had grown, her face had lost the roundness of youth, but her eyes were the same, still shining at him with a startling depth of innocence and his heart had been torn that he had been the one to make them dull, to give her the news that made her fold in on herself, her grief and anguish a physical hurt to see.
He knew then he wouldn't leave, couldn't bring himself to gather what little possessions he owned and take to the road again, besides, he had nowhere to go, no one else in this world. He had known long ago that he wasn't going home, but the brief flicker of hope that somehow Mo would find a way kept his feet moving. But after that day when he was told in broken English by the young man at the police station that the man he had followed for years was dead, that small glimpse of light within him died. He supposed that he could have gone on without them, but the sudden realisation that he was alone had stripped the fight from him, and he remembered a long ago conversation when he had once promised to look after the bookbinders daughter, back in those days when they actually faced dangers with a startling occurrence. The years may have passed, and maybe the agreement no longer stood, but he had thought of her and felt a twist in his heart at the thought of her finding out with no one to turn to, just as alone in this world now as he was.
To say she unsettled him was an understatement, when he had come to find her he had expected that young girl with her convictions and teenage fire. He didn't know whether it was the news of her parents death or just that she had mellowed with her growing years that made her into a completely different person, one who would hold his eyes with an unquestioning curiosity. She hadn't asked him to stay, but she hadn't asked to leave either, and that was what seated him with an odd disquiet. He certainly didn't know what to make of the fact that she watched him. At first he thought it was because he was still a stranger to her, or maybe because she was trying to read him, to find out what his motivations were, but as the weeks passed, he would find a guarded heat in her pervasive gaze. He wanted to think that he should feel more disturbed by it.
He found himself doing things for her he'd never done for someone else, not even his own wife, anything to see the softness of her smile lifting the hard lines of her grief. He didn't know why it meant so much to him, to become the subject of her grateful stare, perhaps it was just that no one had looked at him like that since he could remember.
Maybe that's why he started to practice again, to feel the flames around his fingers, to light up the dark, his eyes on her delighted face just as much as they were on his hands. It was probably why he burnt himself so much, but he didn't mind, it was worth it to give her a distraction, and afterwards to feel her fingers soft and gentle on his hands as she frowned over his burns.
But what he wanted more than anything, was to deny the way his chest felt tight when she looked up at him in those moments, with her hands warm around his, her fingertips trailing along the inside of his forearm, soothing the ache the fire had brought. He wanted to ignore the way he felt his heart beat, or the way that he knew that should he hold her face in his hands, if he brushed her lips with his, she wouldn't push him away.