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He’s fidgeting.
An old habit, a nervous thing. It was easier back then, with the hood—a shield from the scrutiny of others and the shame of his own. A shield from the gaze he feels firmly planted on the back of his neck right now, making the fine hairs on his nape stand stiff.
“Give me a moment to attune the portal, and then you can... be on your way.”
She nods, wordless, and for some reason it makes him smile. Or perhaps he’s fooling himself, for he’s well aware of why. Her reticence had ultimately been encompassed in his affection, and the lack of words makes him feel fond. Gods know his thoughts are loud enough for the both of them.
When the glass shimmers with light, he steps aside and lets her step forward. His gaze drifts to the ground then, because he does not yet feel strong enough to watch her go somewhere he can’t follow. Would she let him, even if he could? It is presumptuous of him to assume.
She does not know him, even if he knows her.
He’s turning away when he feels something pull him back. A tug on his sleeve. He looks down to see slender fingers wrapped around the fabric, looks up to a golden gaze watching him questioningly.
“Your name,” she says. Quiet, as ever.
He swallows. “I beg your pardon?”
She doesn’t elaborate beyond cocking her head. Prompting him for something he takes an embarrassingly long moment to understand.
“You wish to know my name?”
She nods. Waits. His heart is beating fast now—what for, he wonders—and he has to hold back the urge to blurt the answer immediately, if only to beg her to say it back. He wants to hear it more than he has wanted anything in the past one hundred years. He’d forgotten what it’s like to want.
But he doesn’t. He shakes his head, and for a moment her brows lift in a nearly imperceptible display of confusion.
“‘Tis not I you should hear it from,” he says, feeling foolish yet right. “There’s someone else waiting for you. Ask him, when you meet.”
She looks at him for a long moment before giving another nod, what little her expression gave away indicating she was still puzzled over his refusal. He clears his throat.
“I assume you’ll need to do little asking, however, as he is likely to announce it unprompted. And loudly.” He sighs. “Pray forgive his… peculiarities.”
She lets out what he can only call a slightly louder huff of breath, something the less versed in the ways of the Warrior of Light might describe as a chuckle. He’s dumbstruck by it, wishing he could will the Tower back two seconds so that he might hear it again. But she nods, and begins to walk away.
This time, he catches her sleeve.
“F-Forgive me, I…”
It’s an impulse; a lapse of judgment. He had seen her turn away and something deep in his chest cried out no.
“Promise me you’ll return,” he asks of her, speaking the words that had once hung in his throat, “once you’ve learned my name. Only then.”
She nods. Gives him something in the vicinity of a simper. Then her steps lead her past the portal, and he is alone.
He had known she was coming—his mirror was convenient in times like these, as was the forewarning of the gatekeepers—but it does little to help him brace himself for what comes after.
“My friend,” he greets her, as soon as the doors open. “‘Tis good to see you again. I trust your journey was safe?”
She looks at him, blinks, hums a quiet little hmm of assent. Then she says it.
“G’raha Tia.”
His body freezes, faster than levinstrike. Say it again, he wants to plead, but hearing it one more time may be more than he can possibly bear. He clears his throat, waits for his head to stop spinning, and looks her in the eye.
“I… You’ve learned it, then,” he stutters. Then he remembers. “I hope it wasn’t… an unpleasant experience for you.”
The joy he had just experienced fades into a persistent anxiety as soon as he realizes the implications of her knowledge. She had met him. She had met him, young and foolish and helplessly smitten.
And they had… shared an experience.
One he had never been able to forget, yet she hadn’t known of until now. If she had come to him as soon as their journey ended, then surely it was fresh in her mind. The thought makes him want to hide away and ask if she would be inclined to repeat it in equal measure.
“Wasn’t,” she says, quiet, but he hears it clearly. She’s closer, he realizes belatedly. Too lost in his own thoughts to notice her steps.
When he lifts his head to meet her gaze, she’s looking at him expectantly. Or so he thinks. She had remained as hard to read as she was then.
“I fear you know much about me now,” he says, resisting the urge to pull his hood back up. “Somehow, that makes me feel… at a disadvantage.”
She blinks at him, then cocks her head in confusion. It is, much as he’d never say so out loud, quite adorable. His frown fades into a small smile at the sight, and in a moment of fond, feckless boldness—he reaches for her hand.
She does not pull away, and for that he thanks every god that would hear him. Her eyes remain on him, betraying no surprise but still questioning. G’raha—the name feels foreign even in his own mind—draws a long, deep breath.
“You know much about me,” he explains, thumbing slow circles on the back of her hand, “from the times I was young and foolish to now that I am old and… well. I would hope less foolish.” He simpers. Her hand is so soft in his grip. “Yet I can’t help but think I know nothing about you at all.”
His answer seems to only make her more puzzled, though she doesn’t prompt him for an answer beyond holding his gaze, waiting silently.
“I speak not of the Warrior of Light, mind. I speak of you, as simply yourself. Even in the doomed future I once awoke in, the stories you had left behind were… heroic and fascinating, yet remarkably impersonal. I learned so much about the hero, yet so little of you.”
Talking made him bolder, it seemed, for he finds it in himself to reach for her other hand, to be greedy enough to hold each in one of his own.
“But I want to,” he continues, lifting their hands up and looking her in the eye. “If you’d let me, of course. I would hear of where you were born. Of your family. Your favorite foods, colors, flowers and songs. Anything you’d allow me the privilege to.”
He smiles. She does not, but her eyes widen, her brows lift. She does not pull away.
“Now that I’ve been given—that you have given me—this second chance at living,” he tells her earnestly, “I would use it to know you. To learn of you. To hear and see all that you would let me. And… to tell you of myself, as well. Of the years you haven’t seen, of what I saw in all those years we were apart.”
He swallows. The weight of his words dawns on him quickly, sharply, leaving him dumbstruck at his own audacity. What if he had overstepped? What if she pulled away and looked at him with disgust, offended by his intrusion—
“If… If it would please you, of course,” he adds in a hurry. “I would never assume. Forgive me if I—”
The words die in his throat when he sees her head bow, her fringe obscuring the gold of her eyes for a moment. He’s close to letting go of her hands and spitting a thousand apologies until she turns her gaze to the side, and he sees—
“Oh.”
—she’s blushing.
His Warrior, ever impassive, ever taciturn, is averting his gaze and blushing.
“... Hm.”
It takes him a moment to realize she had spoken. She had nodded. She had heard his endless rambling, had blushed, nodded and said yes.
“May I kiss you?”
He only realizes what he’d just said when she turns her gaze back to him. Her cheeks are still flushed. He still has her hands in his. He wants to kiss her more than he has wanted anything in his life.
Yet his stomach sinks.
“F—Forgive me, that was—wildly inappropriate,” he sputters, placing a fulm of distance between them in his panic. “Clearly I am not in my right mind, pray pay my words no heed—they’re the senseless ramblings of a foolish old man who—”
His words fade into thin air when she takes one long, measured step to close the distance between them again, bringing her hands up to his face. He ponders, for a moment, if she might slap him—he certainly deserves it—but instead they rest over the sides of his face, gentle.
Then she pulls him forward.
He stumbles a bit, his heart racing, his face burning—but she stops. Just before their lips meet, just before he could feel the press of her mouth against his—she stops.
And waits.
For once, G’raha understands it is not a time for words.
He closes the distance. Presses his lips to her with something akin to desperation. He feels like a man starved offered a hearty meal, something deep within him finally feeling complete. In this she responds earnestly, kissing him back, letting her hands drift to the back of his neck and brush gently against the fine hairs there, making them stand on end. He’s greedy enough to loop his arms around her waist, pulling her forward, pressing her as close to his body as he possibly can.
Time becomes a thing of no meaning. He could not tell how much of it had passed by the time they break apart. He stares at her with what he knows is simple, boundless adoration, and his lips part to say—something.
Until he feels a lone, slender finger pressed up against them.
He falls silent. Instead of offering her words, he kisses her again, and again, and again. And when he feels the tiniest shadow of a smile pressed against his lips, he knows that this time, at least, he had made the right choice.