A/N: Written for the Tale in Fragments Challenge (hard 10 table 6) and for the Mega Prompts Challenge (writing prompts, #027 – write a multichapter with each chapter under 500 words). The prompts for the Tale in Fragments Challenge will be per chapter: this one's is #001 – clutter.

On the Way Home
1. A Moment Before the Sun Awakes

Time has unfrozen for them and they awake, Setsuna on his hands and knees and cradling Sara's blood-soaked body. But her chest rises and falls, and she mumbles a little as Setsuna's hold on her tightened, and that's enough to tell him she's still alive.

The utter anguish that had been frozen in his heart bleeds out and he cries without abandon, cries until his sister's – his lover's – dress is heavy and stained a dark pink that might never come out, and his head empties of all its clutter. Alexiel's soul awakening and the destruction it had brought. The frozen time; the rewind. Saving Sara's soul. Stopping Sandolphon. Defeating the God who ran their world like a game-board. All of that just…bled out. It was over; Sara wasn't dead, pregnant or possessed. He wasn't a fallen angel doomed to a life of suffering and a worse death. Alexiel had fulfilled her life's purpose and disappeared for parts unknown. Adam Kadamon had been sealed. God had lost his hand in their fate.

And, most importantly, Sara was alive, and the soft rises and falls of her chest, her still skin…those were the things that consumed his mind when everything else bled out. He blinks his tears away, blinks away the blurriness that stops him drinking in every inch of her. He holds her close, so that the blood that still staunched her dress soaks his shirt as well. It isn't bleeding from her though; her cheeks are still flushed red from the early morning cold and the desperation that had seized her only moments before her fall.

He holds her close, cradles her, until her hand finds his and her eyes flutter open and she can lift her head just enough to plant a little kiss on his ear.