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It’s a warm night.
Diana tells herself this when she leaves her window open. It’s a warm night, and there might be a cool breeze. That’s all.
Still, when Akko climbs in twenty minutes later, she can’t say she hadn’t been hoping for this too.
“You could’ve used the door.”
Hannah had left two days ago, Barbara just that morning. Not that either would’ve even looked up, much less made a fuss.
Three years is a long time.
Akko laughs, and the sound is a balm across every one of Diana’s frayed nerves.
“Where’s the romance in that?” she asks, and doesn’t move from where she’s standing.
Diana reaches out with both hands, palms up. Akko can read her better than anyone, but she says it anyway.
She’s still learning to say it anyway.
“Come here.”
Akko obliges, bare feet silent across the floor as she pulls herself into Diana’s bed.
Left side, as always. The one that’s hers.
“You’ve been thinking too hard,” she says, without preamble, and Diana has to smile.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
“Guilty.”
Akko sighs, and the mattress dips as she swings herself into Diana’s lap.
Diana sucks in a sharp breath, hands fluttering briefly around Akko’s hips before they settle gently around her waist.
Everything is as it always has been.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Akko asks, and it’s rhetorical, and they both know.
Open windows, and all that.
“I’ve been thinking,” Diana says, “about you.” She takes a breath. “About us, really. But mostly about you.”
Akko stays quiet, and Diana wills herself to be brave.
“Sometimes, I wonder about what I might do, if you decide not to come back.”
Because the truth is, Akko has always belonged to the world, and try as she might, Diana may never be able to fully step into it.
Wherever they are, wherever they run to, some girls can't help but always be halfway home.
"Pop quiz," Akko says, and Diana rolls her eyes, but doesn't protest. "What is the purpose of an amulet?"
"To get a witch home safely," Diana answers, because despite everything, she is still a Cavendish. "It must carry emotional value to be of use."
Akko nods sagely. "You leave something," she says, "that makes you want to come back for it." Then she takes one of Diana's hands, presses the palm of it to her own chest. "Listen."
Diana listens. She tries, at least. But the only thing she manages to hear, loud and steady in her ears, is the beating of her own heart.
"Can you hear it?" Akko's grip on her hand tightens. "Right here." She leans down, resting her head against Diana's chest. "Yeah," she says. "Right here."
Confused as she is, Diana doesn't move, unwilling to dislodge the other girl.
"It's mine." Akko sits up. "That heartbeat," she clarifires, when Diana shows no signs of comprehension. "It's mine."
"Akko..."
"Don't you get it, Diana? It's mine." Akko smiles, cotton-soft and sleep-warm. "You have it, and it's mine."
Realisation dawns slow, like the sun on a balmy morning. Diana feels it wash over her, a gentle tide, thinks of her mother, telling bedtime stories. Thinks of what it means to live on within another.
All roads, and something or the other.
Some girls are always halfway home.
/
Akko leaves before she does, bright and early the next morning. She's setting off with Sucy for a few months, in search of some mushroom that Diana can't for the life of her remember the name of.
“I miss you already.” Akko crushes the words into the collar of Diana’s shirt. “And I’ll see you so soon.
Diana sinks into the hug, allows it to hold her up. “Be safe,” she says. Then, more for herself than anything else, “I love you.”
Akko tilts upwards, expectant. Diana laughs and grants her wish.
/
She keeps her promise, in the end. Not that she’d ever considered otherwise.
Four years until the next Venus occultation, and Diana isn’t planning on missing her cue.
Graduation has come and gone.
Time for her to go home.
/
Engrossed as she is in her current efforts—to finally getting a start on organising the archive manuscripts—Diana doesn’t notice the commotion in the hallway until it arrives at her door.
“-explicit instructions not to be disturbed. I understand that yours is a unique situation, but I must insist that you return at a later time.”
Anna sounds just about at the end of her rope, but the answering voice is just as indignant.
“And I must insist then it’s been three hours! Has she even had lunch? Are you feeding her? I swear, if you’ve just been letting her hole herself up-“
Diana’s across the room before her next thought even fully forms, wand in hand, and the door disappears clean off its hinges, leaving only the empty archway behind.
Akko just barely manages to stop her forward momentum, but it still manages to carry her directly into Diana’s personal space.
“Oh,” she says, eyes wide. Then, once the surprise drains away, “Hi!”
Diana just stares, barely able to hear anything over the heartbeat thundering in her ears.
“My sincerest apologies, Lady Diana.” Anna steps forward, and Akko darts away. “She was told to wait.”
“I did wait! I waited! You literally sat and watched me wait! Three hours is a long time, you know?”
Yes, Diana thinks. It is.
Strange, how months can feel so much like years.
“Going forward,” she says, effectively interrupting the squabble that’s just started to brew in front of her, “Akko is exempt from my requests not to be disturbed.”
To her credit, Anna just nods. “Of course.” She takes a step back, Akko visibly relaxes, and Diana just manages to stifle her smile. “I’ll make sure the rest of the staff are aware.”
She dips into a shallow bow, then disappears down the hallway.
Akko sighs, flopping heavily into Diana’s side.
“疲れった,” she mumbles, vowels folding in on each other.
Diana just holds her, unable to do much else but shift to accomodate the extra weight.
It means something, to have the lighthouse. Means something more, Diana thinks, to be its keeper.
“Did you find the mushroom, at least?” she asks.
Akko groans, and Diana laughs.
/
The next time Akko comes home—after two months spent helping Amanda with something they’d both been extremely cagey about—Diana is more prepared.
She’s there, at the very least, to hear the quiet shuffling of her girlfriend yanking her shoes off.
“Akko.”
Akko looks up, and the firelight licks through her eyes.
“Diana,” she says. “I’m allergic to pink salt.”
Such is the way, sometimes.
Diana just nods. “I’ll remember that,” she says.
Akko smiles, and the sun rises.
“I know.”
/
A particularly involved quest takes Akko away for the better part of a year.
She sends postcards whenever she can, cites the romance of them whenever Diana brings up the plethora of other options they have, ones that don’t require two weeks of patience.
I’m here, she writes, on the back of an image of a kangaroo in mid-leap. And you’re there. But I think of you, and you’re here too.
Diana stops finding fault with the postcards.
/
“Akko?”
“…なんだ?”
“Akko.”
“Hm? Yeah?”
“Do you know how long you’ll be staying?”
“Couple months, at least. Probably more. Lotte’s parents want her to go collect some rare antique thing and she asked me to come along, but they’re not ready yet.”
“Okay.”
“Why?”
“I miss you when you’re not around.”
“…さすが君は…何だよこいつ。 ”
“You know very well that you’re worse.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I’ll deal with you in the morning.”
“I look forward to it.”
/
Akko is in a supremely bad mood.
This happens not often at all, and Diana can’t quite figure out how to approach the matter without getting her head bitten off.
So far, she’s tried her best to just stay out of Akko’s way. It’s not ideal, but it also hasn’t been very difficult.
The other girl is currently outside, pacing the grounds. She’s made it all the way around twice over now, and Diana would be happy to let her continue working through her feelings, but it’s the middle of winter, and Akko doesn’t have a proper coat on.
Just the thought alone is enough to make Diana’s teeth itch.
In the end, the solution is simple.
Love is her burden to choose, after all.
The grass crunches under her feet as Diana makes her way across the courtyard.
“Akko.”
Her girlfriend stops walking.
Diana holds the coat up, a silent request. Akko takes it wordlessly, but doesn’t pull it on.
Six years between them.
Moving as if she already knows what to expect, Akko lifts the coat, reaches into one of the pockets and pulls out a small white bottle.
“Ah,” she says, giving it a shake. “Of course.”
There is a great deal of quiet awe, Diana thinks, in knowing.
“Come back inside?”
Akko pulls her coat on.
“Yeah.”
/
Three weeks in the Mojave and Akko comes home without her wand.
“Look,” she says, before Diana has the chance to explode. “I can explain.”
And she does, and Diana can’t even find it within herself to be surprised.
It would be Akko, if it were anyone at all.
“Can I see?” Diana asks.
Akko flicks her wrist, and every light in the room goes out. Again, and they flicker back on.
“I’m still not sure how it works, exactly. I just focus, and things happen.”
If she were still fifteen, Diana would resist.
As it is.
“Hm. Would you say, perhaps, that all you have to do is believe?”
Akko throws a pillow at her.
/
It’s raining the day Akko returns from Japan.
Diana meets her at the door, and there’s still raindrops on her eyelashes when she looks up.
“あのね,” she says. “自分は…もう終わった、と思います。 ”
Which is all well and good—which is lovely, actually—but the moment holds a more pressing matter.
Diana takes Akko’s coat, then her hand.
“おかえり,” she says, as always.
Akko laughs, and it is the second most wonderful sound in the word.
“ただいま。 ”