#hides

They lay in each other’s arms, spent and content, their breath still hot on one another’s skin as desire gave way to pleasant euphoria. Visenya kissed at the hollow of his throat, and Heinrix pulled her close, tangling his fingers in her hair and resting her head below his chin. His mind was in freefall, dizzied and overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of it all. That Visenya was even alive - that she'd survived the Dark City was a miracle in itself. But for her to be here, with him...it was an outcome Heinrix had not dared to hope for, even in his most pitiful of fantasies. And now, his brain struggled to reconcile what his heart felt. "I missed you," Visenya murmured, voice drowsy as she began to drift into sleep. "When I was there, on nights I couldn't sleep...I tried to remember the sound of your voice. It helped..." Heinrix squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips to her brow, swallowing down the miserable noise that wanted to rip its way out of his throat. Guilt wrenched tightly in his chest, and while he knew her words were not intended to harm, they hurt all the same. Because rather than being there to prevent her pain, he was here in the aftermath, trying to mend what he had allowed to break. "I'm here now," Heinrix whispered, pressing another series of kisses against her skin - a sequence of promises to never be so negligent again. It wasn't good enough, but it was all he had. "You were there, too..." she mumbled, sounding halfway submerged in dreams, far too willing to let his mistakes go unanswered for. He clung to her as she fell into a deep sleep, faintly activating his biomancy in order to monitor the rhythm of her heart and the tension in her body. It was only after Heinrix was certain she had fully given over to rest that he permitted himself to come undone - tears stinging the corners of his eyes as he set his jaw and grit his teeth, determined not to wake her. Determined to suffer this condemnation alone. For the first time since Visenya's disappearance, Heinrix wept - quiet and shameful. Overwrought with emotion, his body strung out on the chemical residues of countless stims, he let all of the misery and manic turmoil of the past weeks crash down on him like a wave. It threatened to drown him, to pull him under and suffocate him in the torment of his failure. Instead, he held fast to Visenya as the storm in his heart churned and howled - finally able to withstand the devastation now she was safe in his arms.