i swallowed the sun and it burned my tongue and it burned my throat but it couldn't burn away your memory
His chest does not rise and it does not fall, and for a second Moira thinks time stands still. After another moment when she takes a breath, she realizes that Michael has stopped breathing as though it would make it so that he stopped existing. But he could never stop existing, even if she were to have made him up in some terrible dream, even if she were in a coma and he was just a doctor trying to break through into her subconsciousness, even if he was never real at all. To her, Michael will always be real and there and present and wonderful.
Even when he's gone.
At last, warmth brushes her neck again on a sigh that is older than the winds and more painful than falling from the cliffside over and over, her wings failing to open, her eyes never quite closing to what awaits at the bottom. It is accompanied by the soft timbre of his voice, not a whisper, something more solid like a stone, something to settle in the pit of her stomach that lurches and roils.
Part of her is glad, that selfish, cruel part that is still completely Tonnerre and completely childish and trying all too hard to hide her vulnerabilities is all too pleased like a cat playing with a mouse. It disgusts her when that part reaches out, but it fills the void, even for a moment. And she thinks it good that he missed her so much that his bones ached and the very blood in his body boiled in protest. She thinks it good that it hurt him to be away, too, and wonders where her pain went in the mountains. Did the sea winds bring it all the way to him, every scrap and ounce that she screamed and yelled and clawed and cried out? Did he feel every breaking piece of her like a blow to the heart?
None of it is said. Silence is her companion again, and she wonders how it would be if she held to it like a vow, like she did for so many weeks while he was away. Would he beg her for a word? Would he turn away?
Every reaction of his has her reeling, but nothing could prepare her for his confession, for his admission.
It wasn't worth it, this pain, these feelings or lack thereof. It wasn't worth it to leave their city, their home, and abandon everyone who loved them. "You can't change it now," she says instead, mourning the absence left on her skin where his had covered so completely.
She sees herself in his eyes, in the dark crescents of them under a shaded fringe of moonlight hair. The girl that stares back is stony, is too somber and serious. The light that wreaths him flees from her, even as it drips from every pore of her body, begging to be shaped. Sunlight starts to filter in, softly, sweetly, like he'd once spoken to her so gently, and even that calls to the Weaver girl like some exotic beast. Hold us, shape us, change us, take us it is a chorus of voices echoing around the room. Higher than his, more of a feeling than words, more of a pulling that demands attention.
So she pulls foggy strands to braid into her hair, pulling it from bun after bun, distracting herself just so that she won't fall back into a pile that is Michael and a pile that is warm and a pile that is golden and endless and beautiful. She pulls her hair from her face, draws back bangs with a band of gold. How she shines, how she's cast in such shadows !
Beautiful and destroyed all at once.
"She's not coming back, is she?" Moira asks, knowing that he'll know whom Moira means. She has to change the subject, she can't dwell. Keep moving, come back to me, Neerja had once told her that the only way to continue is to keep moving forward even if it hurts. Well the phoenix has never been good at living in anything but the past, letting it drown her in wave after crashing wave of sorrow and misery, and she's always been even better at running away and avoiding the fight, the problems, the aching altogether. Once, she'd messed that up. She won't again. She can't.
