Glass Miles

PART ONE: A THOUSAND STARS

He finds him at the river, the last place he looks by default, but the only one he should have looked in in the first place, he supposes.

The tiny dock is old and unsteady; it creaks ominously beneath his weight but somehow, miraculously, it holds.

Even before he sees his eyes he can tell he's a thousand miles away; he doesn't move even as the dock sways slightly beneath them.

He sits quietly beside him—or as quietly as he can, at least—leaning back to take up the other's position, hands holding his weight as he looks up at the clear sky, pondering for a minute before finally deciding to speak.

"...what exactly do you see up there that makes this the place I find you every time you vanish?"

There is no answer for the longest time, and it isn't until he is about to speak again that there is.

"...you wouldn't understand."

He cocks his head, still not looking at the other. "Oh really? Try me."

A soft chuckle echoes over the rushing waters. "You, who have never been alone by choice...how could you understand what it is to want to be alone?"

He turns swiftly, meeting dull blue eyes alight with an amusement he doesn't understand, and underneath it, a raw emptiness that he understands even less. "You wouldn't understand," the other repeats, and he frowns.

"Try me," he repeats as well, because right now he wants to understand, more than anything.

The other sighs, soft, a sound quickly snatched away by the river, and turns his eyes to the sky once more, to something he cannot see.

"...the solitude is constant, even when others are not. And it brings with it silence, the best listener of all. It will never tell your secrets, even if you scream them at it...even if you want more than anything for them to be heard."

He kicks his feet idly in the water, uncomfortable with the sudden heaviness in the air. "...I can listen," he offers, unsure of what he is offering.

The other goes still, and then laughs again, only this time it is sad, resigned. "No," he says. "You can't. You can only hear. But you never listen."

His frown deepens. "Norge..." he says quietly.

Another sigh, deeper than the last, and a hand brushes his cheek, bringing with it a gentle gaze that hurts more than anything because he shouldn't need it so much. "Go home, Danmark," Norway tells him softly. "Leave me be. There's nothing you can do."

"How do you know that, if you won't let me try?"

"You're already trying...and already you try too hard."

He stands, finally, turns his back, yet even that simple distance feels like a thousand mile gulf between them. "...sometimes I think I'm trying for the both of us. Because you're too afraid to do it yourself."

A non-committal hum. "Maybe. We'll never know, will we?"

A breath of wind twists across the dock and with it a cool pair of lips brushes across his neck, fingertips flit through his hair, and a ghost whispers 'perhaps someday' in his ear.

He shudders and curls into himself, even as the wind fades away as though it never was and the footsteps on the dock finally fade into silence, because here he is on the edge of something he himself doesn't understand, doesn't want to understand because he is afraid of what it means.

And then the night is silent and he is alone, sitting on the creaking dock with nothing but himself and the ghosts of memories, and a pain in his heart that he hates and cherishes at the same time, because he finally understands.

He doesn't know how to be alone anymore without feeling lonely.

- fin -