🔥 @prodigshe said: she clutches her teacup as if it’s going to shatter (perhaps she’s clinging to something else). the silence is growing too heavy, too uncomfortable. “i... i’ve missed you.” she says looking at her cousin. the words feel foreign to her, vulnerable. a hand drifts from the cup (it doesn’t shatter) palms up, eyes pleading that he understands. a desperate need, asking silently, knowing me as i am now, do you miss who i was too?
her silence is almost completely unfamiliar to him; he looks at her and still sees the little girl with big eyes and feels a desperate urge to fill the air with anything ( words, laughter ) just as he had when he, too, was younger. but the healers have told him and over and over again that going back won’t help her. that it won’t help him either to stay so rooted in their past. it’s good for both of them, he thinks, if he could properly master shutting his mouth and simply be with her.
so, he pours tea for them and holds his tongue even when the silence seems too much. she speaks and her words light something up in him, warming him, and lu ten smiles an easy smile; it is real and genuine, not one that he had put into place for her when she was little. he reaches for her hand and gives it a small squeeze, his thumb rubbing soothing circles into her wrist. “i’ve missed you, too.” he says and, for now, maybe that can be enough.
