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#01 – Comfort
He finds that there’s a sick sense of longing that he thought he shut away a long time ago when he’s wrapped up in a blanket by the very man he was sent to kill, and he has to bite back the burning tears that he knows were welling up in the corners of his eyes.
#02 – Kiss
It startles her, at first, but she lets herself fall apart in his embrace (only for this moment, she doesn’t have to be strong) - that is, until she swallows the bitter medicine he’d put in her mouth.
#03 – Soft
Her sleeping body, in his arms, is pliable and delicate in a way he never thought possible from someone he knew as strength itself, and the same half of him that murmured heart-twisting memories wondered if the callouses along his palms would break everything they came into contact with.
#04 – Pain
She knows him better than anyone else, especially the expression he makes when he’s hurting but doesn’t want anyone else to notice (she’s scolded him for this before, because if he drove himself to death because he got hurt and didn’t say anything, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself), so she presses a finger against his rib and smiles triumphantly when it elicits a yelp from him.
#05 – Potatoes
Joshua’s shoulders shake with laughter when she has, yet again, burnt the third attempt at hash browns in the past hour, and has to dig in the cabinets to find ingredients to try again because she isn’t a quitter, dammit!
#06 – Rain
He recalls every tight-lipped smile and every bandage on her pale skin and knows that there has never been a greater threat to her than him, and he can only make the excuse that the water running down his face is from the skies above instead of his eyes.
#07 – Chocolate
She’s always known that Joshua is handsome in the way boys typically were - sleek black hair, shining amber eyes - but it doesn’t change how… uncomfortable it makes her feel to see him receive gifts from crushing schoolgirls.
#08 – Happiness
Her face is pink and she is smiling; this is where his resolve sits, right on the crook of her lips - it’s always been for her, always for himself. Her emotions, warm and bubbling against his skin, melts him until he cannot help but smile back, sharing in her excitement.
#09 – Telephone
Their father always calls home when he’s late on business, and whenever Estelle feels the sting of loneliness pierce her, there’s always Joshua with a warm cup of cocoa and a hand on hers to comfort her.
#10 – Ears
On occasion, when Joshua is truly exhausted and falls asleep before Estelle, she can hear him toss and turn in his bedsheets, and she wonders what in the world could possibly have hurt him so much that it haunts him even now?
#11 – Name
It takes him a week after his first arrival into her home when he finally calls her by name; she smiles the biggest grin that he’s seen to the point where he’s scared she’s going to break her facial muscles.
#12 – Sensual
She is so beautiful that he cannot possibly hope to have her, and his treacherous mind whispers the want to wrap in her arms, the wonder of how her lips would feel against his, and he hates himself for ever thinking he was worth an ounce of hers at all.
#13 – Death
When she talks about how her mother had sacrificed her life for her, he thinks that she seems too young and too small and suddenly the way she folds in their father’s arms makes perfect sense, when she had stood too proud and too confident and not certain at all.
#14 – Sex
Though she’d learned about what it was during biology classes, the way Scherazard describes it in full detail when she whispers teasing advice on how to twist Joshua around her little finger makes her want to run away, face flushed with embarrassment and a heat that feels like it wouldn’t cool.
#15 – Touch
When Tita asks whether or not they’re engaged, something seizes up inside of him, and she cannot help but recall Scherazard’s knowing smile and how easily she had led him by the hand when they were children. She wonders, then, what had changed between now and then - now that the thought of wrapping their fingers together now made her stomach do somersaults.
#16 – Weakness
When she kneels in front of him, vision dimming at the edges, she can do nothing but curse her own damn incompetence, her headstrong passion, her limbs for not being able to anything but hang limp as she watches him disappear into the night like a fading dream.
#17 – Tears
She doesn’t let the tears flow in front of others, hates crying in front of them, because doing so means that she’s admitting that he’s gone and she was forced to sit, powerless to do anything but watch, as the boy that she loved disappeared before her very eyes.
#18 – Speed
At the moment everything seems to freeze and Mayor Dalmore stands in front of them with a condescending grin, pointing a gun to Estelle’s head, he can only lament the fact that he was not fast enough, or else that damn fool’s head would be rolling on the ground right now-
#19 – Wind
The breeze carries the sound of his harmonica through the air, and its melody rings through her ears as she rises sleepily from her bed, getting set for a brand new day ahead of them.
#20 – Freedom
She misses her father, of course, but in a way it’s liberating not having to worry about him breathing over her shoulder when she goes about her daily business (Joshua does enough of that for the both of them, anyways).
#21 – Life
Taking lives has never been something that comes easily to her, this is something that he knows well, and he is well reminded of this when she begs him with pleading eyes to let the monsters go on the promise that they never cause trouble again; he sighs, but as always he is forced to acquiesce to her whims.
#22 – Jealousy
Kloe is a wonderful person and Estelle would call her one of her closest friends for a good reason, but there is a strange twist in her chest when she watches her and Joshua kiss, even if it was just for the play.
#23 – Hands
Her hands are smaller than his, more delicate, and he wonders if his own, bruised and battered things as they were, would ever be permitted to touch hers.
#24 – Taste
His lips taste like the ice cream they had just eaten earlier, and the thought makes her smile until the acrid taste of medicine floods her tongue and she has to stop herself from choking on it.
#25 – Devotion
She clutches onto the harmonica left behind as a reminder of him, the way he had always set gentle walls between them yet so palpable, and how she had always gone past them to reach him; it is the same thing that keeps her feet moving, keeps her voice from cracking when she mentions his name.
#26 – Forever
He sets out with the intention that this goodbye would be the last, that he would never have to curse her life again by his very presence, that she would one day move past him even if he would always be stuck on her.
#27 – Blood
He hisses when she applies the antiseptic a little too hard against a particularly large scratch on his back, and with a small apology she bandages it up, hoping the blood wouldn’t seep through into his clothes.
#28 – Sickness
She stays by his bedside even when shooed away by their father, helping change out the moist towel pressed against his forehead. This, though, he only realizes after he’s lucid again and sees her snoring on the edge of his mattress, drooling on his sheets.
#29 – Melody
The songs that he plays on his harmonica always enchant her in a way nothing else can, and she always stops to sit and listen to him weave his tune.
#30 – Star
He’s dragged out onto the porch to watch the comets fly by, and as she ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s he can only think that their beauty couldn’t even compare to hers.
#31 – Home
She watches the light from the sun come in from the window and cast shadows in the room that was her last hope, her last everything, and the last wisps of her desperate denial are crushed into dust as she falls to her knees.
#32 – Confusion
She doesn’t understand a word of what he says when he looks her in the eyes and tells her that he was sent to kill her father all those years ago and she sees the guilt, the pain, the fear; so she grasps onto his hands and shouts for the entire world to hear her love for him because if he wouldn’t love himself then she would do enough for the both of them.
#33 – Fear
When she sees the mayor point his pistol barrel right in between Joshua’s eyes, she feels her stomach drop and before she realizes it she cries out not him, anyone but him .
#34 – Lightning/Thunder
The boom of the storm makes her flinch but just as soon as her nervousness flares, he appears with a cup of warm tea that he sets on her desktop and she hides her face against the crook of his neck.
#35 – Bonds
He wonders if he could have ever imagined the way Estelle’s eyes curved in the same way as her father’s when she laughed or how the table seemed blissfully cramped sometimes when they all gathered for dinner with Scherazard, but either way he will sear this into his mind so that his heart would not forget these people that he loved so, so dearly.
#36 – Market
When she pulls him by the hand through the streets, he cannot help but notice all of the teasing grins and knowing glances the adults give them as they pass by and his cheeks flare in a crimson red blush.
#37 – Technology
He has to admit that he’s hopeless with these kinds of things, but at least he wasn’t quite as bad as Estelle, who seemed to immediately zone out whenever Tita went on one of her machine-fueled tangents.
#38 – Gift
When she wakes up, the only thing she has left of him is the harmonica sitting on the dresser beside her.
#39 – Smile
The first time he smiles after he comes into her life is when she tries to show him how to fish and she ends up getting a swimming lesson instead.
#40 – Innocence
He sees the way the sun shines through her eyes and he prays to Aidios that it would never be tainted, that her smile would remain bright and her hands soft, that the world would never take away from her like it had him.
#41 – Completion
She can’t help but laugh after seeing the junior bracer emblem in the box; he can’t help but smile along too after seeing her joy.
#42 – Clouds
She presses her face against the window of the airship to look at the clouds pass by, and with the resigned sigh of a mother, he pulls her away to stop her from looking more of a fool than she already was.
#43 – Sky
The air is warm and cool all at once and she watches him under the shine of the moon and she cannot help but think of the comparison of his hair to the night sky, deep onyx dotted through with something indescribable; shadow and light play across his kind, smiling face, and she feels dazed but relieved at the same time.
#44 – Heaven
For a moment he can only take in the relief that comes after their success and he wonders if this is what it is like to actually be capable of helping someone, if he would be able to continue helping others, but just as soon his dreams are brought down to the floor by a snap of the finger and a voice he knew all too well yet not at all.
#45 – Hell
At once he is struck by the realization that this is where he belongs, that he had never deserved to be by her side, to be blessed by the light above, and that he had only been meant to scrape at the very bottom of the shadows.
#46 – Sun
Her smile is all too kind and all too harsh but he still cannot help but bask in its warmth, even if only for a moment.
#47 – Moon
He stands in front of her, silvery light outlining his form like Princess Kaguya, never meant to stay, only taken away, never to return, and this thought she cannot bear; that is perhaps the more painful thought, that he is cracking and crumbling and slipping away and like the emperor of Kaguya’s story, she is helpless to do anything but watch.
#48 – Waves
The sight of her sitting beside him on the bench of the village, hearing the sea roar beneath them and the water crash against the cliffs, is something that he locks away for a time he will need it the most - when that time comes, the pain of that memory becomes the strength in his legs to break himself away from her, from all of the darkness he had tainted her with, from all of the lies he had told her.
#49 – Hair
Every time she stands before him bright eyed and erratic gestures he wants to tuck her underneath his chin and pull his fingers through her hair, more silk than string, like fire-tongues or dream-mists.
#50 – Supernova
She doesn’t know much about stars, but when he kisses her she feels like there’s a hundred million of them exploding inside of her chest, so she lets them crumble her into pieces held together only by the touch of his fingers against her waist, the heat of his breath in her lungs.