Work Text:
"Your soul and my soul,
are the same.
We exist in each other.
And, the only thing scarier
than staying is leaving
because our souls already knew
we could never be apart."
- N.R. Hart
Soft breaths escape him. Gentle, pulled from his lungs like string on a spool. A familiar warmth pressing into his back that rises in time with his own breaths, always perfectly in sync. Spine to spine, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder.
Step for step.
Once upon a time, when he moved, she moved. When she jumped, he ducked. When she slashed her blade up, he would sling his blade low. Where she fought brutishly, he defended gracefully. The perfect team.
Aether sighs, suddenly tired.
His hair - once braided, long and majestic - now chopped short and wildly undone, soaked with blood. He's no longer sure if it's only his own blood.
He leans heavier against the person behind him. Golden eyes slide shut sluggishly.
"Do you think we'll finally be together, in our next life? A family, again?" Aether inquires, his knobby knuckles brushing against the handle of his sisters blade when he goes to grip it.
He feels more than hears it: his sisters answering sob. It jostles him but, he no longer feels the pain. His other hand, fisted in the grass, smooths out flat to keep himself steady regardless.
The girl considers it for not a second, "No, brother... I don't think we will."
His eyes blink open again. Nothing but soft understanding in them. He hides the growing longing behind another gentle sigh.
Lumine's lighter blonde hair tickles his neck. The sound of her laughter like church bells, crooning and gentle, sweet and bright, lovely even when so full of despair. Aether laughs, too.
"..That's funny." He says. Acceptance always came much easier to the boy than it did the girl.
And somehow, despite the easy acceptance, he always found himself coming right back here.
His grip on the sword falls slack.
Lumine sniffles, swiping at her nose. The girl sits there, resting against her brothers steady back. Visions of a distant past fly behind her eyes, reels of their childhood, of when they used to be something kinder to each other.
She sits up to carefully maneuver her brothers body onto the grass. His once golden eyes are now a muted yellow - she glides her fingers across his eyelids, stealing his unseeing sight away.
"I truly hope we don't, brother. I want nothing more than for you to be free of this war."
But that's not really all it is. Something selfish turns her stomach sour. The girl sighs.
She pulls her sword from his torso. Flicks it, wipes her brothers blood on the grass. Presses the dull blade back into his strengthless hand, and leaves.
Outlanders do not belong in this world.
It hurts less than the last time she'd driven them apart.
She still aches with the phantom pain.
It still hurts.