His grin cracks wide as he ducks the nip of her teeth. The familiar banter eases him, bringing comfort that his heart has been missing too often of late.
“Well I’m not the one that lives here,” he shoots back on a laugh, dark eyes twinkling roguishly. But as the laughter fades, the weight settles right back where it had been before. Their brief respite had been just that, but it could not erase the heartache that plagues them both.
He knows the heaviness of failure as well as his sister, though he has become very good at masking it. She had always been the stronger of them. Always the more powerful. Cassian had only ever had his laughter, and lately even that hadn’t seemed like enough. His children had brought him joy, but it is a joy now tinged by heartache. A heartache he tried hard not to think about, especially after their mother’s death.
He could never have survived both if he did. Without Casimira, he’s not even certain shoving the memories as far back in his mind as he could would have worked either. But she had been as much his touchstone as he had been hers. She had reminded him of who he had been before everything in his life had gone wrong.
She doesn’t answer his question, he notes, but a sense of seriousness settles over her. She had always been the more grounded of the two of them, but this is something more. Without conscious thought, he steels himself, wondering what more could possibly go wrong. And her words do stun him as he expected they would, but not in the way he had prepared for.
His heart thumps hard in his chest, disbelief etched into his features. Disbelief that quickly gives way to cautious optimism and hope. “Alive?” he manages to croak after several tries, blinking back a rush of unexpected tears. He’s not sure why he wants to cry when the news is good for a change, but still they sting his eyes. “That’s… I… how?”
@Casimira