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There was a melancholic feeling in the air. Like a couple of sad chords played on the piano that just repeated themselves into eternity.
Lio was laying in the bed with Galo by his side. They shared an apartment, and while Lio had his own room, he usually slept in Galo’s room at night.
Galo never said anything about it, just lifted the duvet and let Lio climb in. Lio with his freezing hands and feet. Actually, everything about him was cold.
Galo had assured him that Lio’s body was at a normal temperature, but Lio was still cold. Always cold, always melancholic, always… Missing something.
He hadn’t dared to tell Galo about the missing piece of his heart. They’d only known each other for a couple of weeks after all. It was way too early to tell him about… Her.
Suddenly the memories of her birth came back and hit him like a sledgehammer to the gut.
Lio’s eyes opened slowly and he sat up in the bed, looking out at the night lights of Promepolis. They seemed so far away at this distance… Just like her.
His heart clenched at the thought of her, and a lump formed in his throat as his eyes started to burn with the familiar feeling of unshed tears. Lio had kept it bottled up inside for so long that he was bound to break at one point.
That point was now, it seemed, and Lio hugged his knees close to his chest, still trying to soldier through it, but this time his mind wasn’t strong enough to bury the feelings he had never voiced out loud.
Suddenly a hand was placed on his shoulder, warm and big. It startled Lio out of his misery, and for a moment he could only see a blurry version of Galo. Then he turned away, wiping his tears, mumbling a quiet: “Sorry.”
“What for?” Came Galo’s question, his warm hand still on Lio’s small shoulder.
Lio didn’t reply. Instead he sat there, hiding his face as he made himself as small as possible. He still shook a little, but even now he tried to keep it under control. He was a former general, he had to pull himself together.
“... Are the people in the city giving you heat again? I meant it when I said that I’d put ‘em out.”
Lio shook his head at that. The people in the city might still have something against him as a former Burnish, but that wasn’t the issue here.
“... It’s… Her. I miss her.”
Galo didn’t seem to understand. “Who? Your mama?”
“My… My baby.”
“Oh, you had a girlfriend?” Galo seemed to misunderstand completely, but his kind smile never wavered, even if Lio might have a girlfriend that he didn’t know about.
“No… My daughter.”
The shock in Galo’s face was easy to see even in the dark room, and Lio suddenly felt how Galo’s hand left his shoulder. The spot where Galo’s hand had been immediately grew cold, and it made Lio curl even more in on himself.
He knew he shouldn’t have told Galo about her. He shouldn’t have said anything, because now Galo would leave him too and-
“If you miss her, we should go visit her.”
Lio’s head slowly turned to look at Galo, a tear running down his face as he whispered: “I don’t know where she is. I don’t even know if… I-If she’s still alive.”
“We’ll look for her. And we’ll find her, I’m sure of it.”
He wanted to believe Galo. Lio hoped with all of his heart that she was alive and that they could find her, but… At the same time, Lio had realised that it would be very difficult to find her, perhaps even impossible.
But he knew that it would eat him up for the rest of his life if he never even made an attempt at finding her.
“I… I want to try. I want to find her.” Lio said, finally lifting his head to look properly at Galo.
Galo saw this as a sign of improvement, and he embraced Lio tightly while giving him the mental space he needed to let out his feelings.
“We’ll start tomorrow morning.”
Lio only nodded as a response. He had kept his promise about making the world safe for her. Now he just needed to find her again.
END