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The wind was soft as it whistled through the leaves. Gentle and soothing. Yuuri wished that the feeling would give him some comfort. But it didn’t. It couldn’t. Even as his feet crunched down the leaves that had fallen from the tree. He couldn’t.
He had to stop. Had to realize that this was it. He didn’t have the chance again. He had lost it. He had lost everything. He missed the smell of Japan. The hometown that he had thought that the fumes of the plane in the sky had taken him away from. He wondered if he would ever go back. There was nothing there for him. But now there was nothing here either.
Time moved on. Yuuri couldn’t stay frozen in a past that was no longer his present. He couldn’t let words that had once been spoken, dominate the ones spoken now. He had to be the him he was now and not the boy that he had once been.
But oh, how he had loved him. A ring that had sat on fingers for decades. A life that he had lived with a man that had loved every part of him. He looked down at his wrinkled, age marked skin.
He’d never noticed it before. Never seen the scars, the marks, the blemishes. Not when there had been someone to hold his hand. Not when his husband had gripped his fingers so tightly, clutching them tighter, their digits laced, never letting go.
Yuuri couldn’t go back. He couldn’t return to that empty house. So lonely. There was no laughter, there was no shouting, no declarations of love. He couldn’t look at the pictures of a man who was gone.
Yuuri sat on the scuffed wooden bench, head in his hand. He didn’t want to go home.