I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then

[replicatedcourage]

Who: Sola and Vatheon
When: The wee hours of the morning
Where: Plaza
Style: Brackets
Status: Open to all CR great and small!

[At first the Hylian doesn't recognize where he is.

There's a heavy and wild intake of breath as if he doesn't expect for his lungs to expand. He scrambles for the nearest cover, nearly bowling over a hapless towel vendor in the process. He merges into the shadow of a building, nothing visible aside from piercing red eyes as he finally pauses to take in his surroundings, tense and suspicious.

What had Link done? He'd thought he'd been done for, that Ganon's resurrection was a failure purely because again he hadn't been able to spill the hero's blood. And he'd had so much time to plan, to send minions and monsters after him all along, to observe and prepare. But maybe that had been the problem, he'd waited too long. He should have attacked at the beginning when he'd been- well, not weak, he'd still defeated the Demon King, but when Link had his guard down during the reconstruction...

Dark Link's train of thought grinds to a halt as he finally connects where he is, as the jumble of memories he'd ignored suddenly appearing in his mind in favor of adrenaline still surging from his life or death battle start to sort themselves out slowly. They're hardly finished, but he knows this place now. He recognizes it.

Still standing in the shadows but no longer a part of them, Dark Link just stares.

Vatheon.

Home.]

Comments

[not_heavens_adam]

[Johnny paused, eyes locked on the top of Sola's head as if studying him a moment. After a moment or two, he pulled away, his hands returned to take Sola's as the vampire knelt in front of him, forcing himself into Sola's line of sight.]

Sola...

[He could see it now, what was different in the hylian. He was more confident in himself, but it was a different confidence than what he'd been expressing before and it was laced with that all too familiar age that came with seeing too much. But Sola was right, he wasn't as bright and innocent as before but that didn't mean that light was gone, Johnny could still see it. If he were to guess, all it really needed to regain a healthy brilliance was to have some of those shadows cleared away.

His grip on Sola's hands tightened.]

A while ago I promised I wasn't going to pull away anymore...do you remember that? I said I decided I wasn't going to just let go and that's still true. It's okay if you've done some terrible things, I have as well, we can't take that back...but we can change what we do from here, right?

You never let me forget that I don't have to be anything I don't want to be, no matter what I've done or what kind of creature I am and I'll remind you as much as you need me to.

[A small smile.]

I still love you.

[replicatedcourage]

[He can't respond, not around the lump in his throat, but he can gently dip his head and press his forehead against the kneeling vampire's, curling his fingers just as tight in that grip as Johnny's long digits are around his. That hole he'd been trying to fill, the one that Sufferer had partially mended, that each of his friends and family had made a little smaller, a little less painful, closes up finally with those four little words. It's not healed, it still aches with every doubt he has, but at least its closed and can begin to heal.]

I missed you.

[He breathes the words rather than says them, closing his eyes and just existing in the same space as the person he loves for the first time in a very long time.]