so we let our shadows fall away like dust
She is closed to him now in a way she has never been before, not even when he first appeared from shadow and water and she covered his night with stars. When she watches him it is guardedly and at a quiet distance – like the moon orbiting the earth, cold and beautiful and so terribly alone. But she finds it hurts to drift closer, hurts to gaze into the face of someone who allowed her to be hurt in this way. It wasn’t his fault, she knew this, he had never once told her anything to allow her to think she was something more than a friend to fill those nights with, but it hurt all the same to lose this unnamable thing she had grown so tethered to.
He groans, or growls, a sound that draws her eyes back up to his face to search for the telltale flash of near-silver, but there is only that deepwater blue, only Stillwater. She does not think he meant for things to unfold in this way – there is too much surprise in his face, too much confusion each time her eyes flash back to the near-safety of a border she can see clearly through the trees. But it does not change that she had found out, and not from him, does not change that he had a family and it wasn’t with her.
(She doesn’t realize he hadn’t already known.)
When had she started wanting that? A child with him, his heartbeat in her ear as she slept every night with her cheek against his chest. Too many nights spent curled against his side, she realizes, her eyes flashing deep brown and bruised, flying from his face, from his reach, lest he see these secrets she struggles to trap inside. But even now these feelings don’t wilt like she needs them too, that easy affection blossoming eagerly when her eyes return carefully to his dark face again.
It is only when she closes her eyes and drops her nose wearily, opens them again to see that flash of metal at his ankle that she stops her quiet orbiting, settles cool and silver against him with her mouth on his skin. “You shouldn’t be out so far.” She says and she means it, worries with eyes that are heavier and a pale mouth that is absent of any soft, starlit smile. But then she remembers herself, this closeness, reminds herself that it is not welcome anymore and pulls back again uncertainly, awkwardly, hating the strangeness of such distance between them.
Except he tenses and growls, reaches, a physical echo of the ache in her chest and it is enough to pull her back to him, to tuck her where she had always belonged against the curve of his dark, waiting chest. The sound he makes wounds something in her chest, a keening whine that her heart sang back to him if only he could hear it. But no sound passes her lips, no anguish but that which glittered tiredly in those dark, wild eyes. I came for you, he whispers in a heavy way, eyes closed to keep her out. Don’t go.
She breaks against him like the waves break along a rocky shore, summoning her light to wrap around them both, to pull him closer, to hold him. It is soft though, gentle enough that he will feel its pressure without feeling bound by it, bound by her. She would never keep him like that.
Her lips find the soft of his neck, the smooth of his shoulder; anywhere she can reach from where she stays pressed to his chest. But they aren’t greedy, they don’t cover him in kisses anymore (not yours, she reminds herself, he loves someone else, she thinks), instead they trace quiet shapes, irregular circles like dapples, like the stars he loved so much. “And now?” She asks finally, quietly, closing her eyes against the dread welling there, against the pain blooming like thorny flowers in her chest. “Now what do you want .” She pauses when her chest trembles and bucks, when there is no air and no words and no way to speak. Then, even quieter, laying her cheek against his shoulder. “I won’t stay away, not unless you want me to. But –“
She stumbles back a step as though slapped, stares at him with wide, worried eyes as she realizes her mistake so belatedly. We weren’t planning on having children, Djinni had said of the swell beneath her ribs. Her eyes darken further, bottomless and aching and nearly black as she recalls his confusion again, the tension in his face. She had thought it was because she had found out about he and Djinni, about their family. But even as she watches him, she realizes she was wrong. “You didn’t know.” She guesses, she realizes, she says aloud. Whispered and with a small blue head that hangs low and defeated now. “You should go to her, Stillwater.”
She feels so suddenly small in that moment, smaller than the stars, silver and sad in a world so vast and black and silent. Stay. She wills him silently, even as she cannot lift her eyes to look at his face one more time, even as she knows he will turn from her. I need you, too.
