#this.......

Lies down, tries not to cry, cries a lot

To see the boy who never stopped moving, laying still across the bed, caused her heart to hammer in her chest. She took her seat beside him when Zoya had been pulled away to rest, and her hands hesitantly find his. Touched by shadows, the marks remained even when the creature had left his body and taken everything it could with it. She wants him to roll over, prop himself up on his elbow and tell her jokes about what it felt like to soar the sky on his own wings. She wants him to pop back up, an impractical jokester making his dramatic entrance. She wants to look away from the peace in his face, but she can’t seem to.

Genya doesn’t cry, she can’t bring herself to express the pain in her chest. She’d lost the young Lantsov years ago when he had left the Palace, and she had never had the chance to find him again. She doesn’t speak unless spoken to for the days that follow. She assures David she’ll be okay when he gets called away to the confines of the workshop. Instead, she makes her way through the familiar halls of the Grand Palace and into the corner of the kitchen they would hide in as kids when they didn’t want to get caught. She sat down with her back against the kitchen counters, and remembered the days that were so much better. When they were so much younger. That night she sheds her tears as silently as she had mourned.