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The same immutable smile still stretches across her lips; lonely, a bit absentminded. Normal, if a bit mischievous and playful, with a gentle touch and a brightness reminiscent of a candle at the end of its life.
His breath catches in his throat. It feels like suffocation, a rope around his throat and ribs that tugs and tugs and tugs.
She turns toward the window, the glow of the sunrise (hazy, like a dream) shining through the cracks in her hair. The light hits her face in just the right way, and she beams at him, eyes closed in contentment. His eyes widen; he doesn't know what comes over him. Maybe it's her eyes, blue as the ocean, tinged with hope and resignation. Or maybe it's her smile, something soft and gentle and yet somehow sharp enough to cut through every single wall, brick and mortar and cobwebs alike, he's put up since that day.
His hand stretches out in the air, frozen. It stops a hair's breadth away from Ries. And for a second, one unbearably long second, it hangs there, unmoving. She looks at him like he's stupid, but intertwines her fingers with his nonetheless.
At times, he tries to pretend that it was nothing more than a ghost. A mirage. Conjured by his delusional self deep in the throes of whatever maddening hell he found himself that day. But that fierce longing still tears at him with something close to insanity; tormenting him endlessly, taunting him with how he had wanted and waited and lingered, praying to the Goddess for a salvation that would never come. Maybe it's a blessing, remembering so vividly - warm eyes the color of a sky emptied of clouds, a benevolent smile, a laugh soft and gentle. Or maybe it was his curse, his damnation, to remember every moment, the blood sticking to his fingers in an embrace that was like shackles.
But that's just how it goes, isn't it? Terribleness goes hand in hand with grief. It wouldn't be grief without it. Grief is sweaty palms, anesthesia to the face. It is crueler, more violent than this; colder than cold and silenter than silent and stiller than still.
He thinks Ries knows this. She knows how his eyes linger too long on her when she smiles or laughs, when the teasing grin on his face turns briefly to frostbitten sorrow before flickering back to his typical mask of apathetic amiability. But if she notices, she's merciful enough at least not to say anything.
Instead, she just closes her eyes and lets him see the ghost of someone who isn't there.