Work Text:
If you just walked away,
What could I really say?
Would it matter anyway?
Would it change how you feel?
It was cold. But neither of them felt it. One had grown used to the feeling; the other was the feeling itself. The winds had stopped; all save for the small breeze that passed from the younger to the older like a puff of a breath. The silence was so thick, it was tangible; the tension able to be cut with the ice the younger could produce.
Still, neither moved.
It was the moment, a moment so definite in both lives, that even the slightest movement terrified either, and that thought alone was silly for the older one was the very terror he himself felt. He was fear and though he did not outwardly show it, he was frightened beyond belief that this moment would pass and it would not go as he hoped.
Hope.
A concept the older had all but forgotten. What was hope when one existed as the very thing that destroys hope? The very thing that hope destroys? Yet he felt it in this moment, so strongly, so clearly, so loudly in his ears, pulsing wildly against his skin that he wondered that the other could not hear it also. Hope. Yes, fear had hope.
And the other, the younger, the confused poor boy who was lost. He didn’t know what he felt. Anticipation, yes, for what was to come. Fear, certainly, because he was facing fear personified. But also fear because he did not know what was to become of him. Loneliness, because he‘d had nobody for nearly three centuries; nobody to see him, to touch him, to know him. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to understand.
Until now.
Desire. He felt that, deep in the back, hiding behind the others, thrumming quietly. It was there. Behind the fear and the anger and the sadness. Behind the loneliness and the need and the weariness. It was there; the desire for someone who understood, who knew what it was like to want someone to believe, to see, to feel. To have what others had. To have what had been taking from him.
And here. Here stood someone, someone the younger had only heard about. Someone he had never met. Someone so dark and dangerous and powerful, he didn’t stand a chance. Someone who could turn his whole existence around without a care. Someone, who understood.
In that moment, they waited.
Hope against desire. A longing for peace, for companionship, for belief; for someone to finally stand up and be there. A need. A want. A burning passion that clawed at both of them, pushing and shoving each to just gather the courage to move, to make that damned movement to break the silence, sever the tension, finalize the moment!
But fear was always present.
You can’t kill fear.
So the younger stood still, cautious, untrusting after years of being ignored, forgotten, left alone. And the older stood still, his offer hanging in the air between them, untrustworthy because of the job forced upon him, because of the way he’d been bullied, insulted, pushed aside.
But everything changes
If I could turn back the years
If you could learn to forgive
Then I could learn to feel
Years give wisdom. And the older had been around long enough. If one did not make a move, they would be there forever. As fear, he knew the younger’s trouble. He could sense the younger’s dilemma. Pushing aside his own terror, latching onto his hope, the older made the move that broke the moment, for better or for worse.
He held out his hand.