It doesn't get better with time.

Depending on who you asked, they might say it does; you can always tell who's lost someone and who hasn't, because there are those that truly believe the passage of time erases the sting of loss, and there are those that know better.

Lux knows better.

Or maybe it didn't hurt as bad as it did at first; she was eating now. She slept better most nights, surely. Most of the time she remembered she would wake up alone. Sometimes she made it through an entire day without being reminded of him, until she resigned herself to sleep.

So, maybe those people had a point- maybe the ache just didn't hit you as hard, or maybe you grew to bear it.

Lux wasn't sure which one of the two it was. To her, the specifics didn't matter so much, only that that ache, that hollow loss and sharp-edged longing that struck her and weighed her down, never left. It was a burden she would always bear, evidently, one that bowed her back beneath the insurmountable weight of her sorrow.

And not just longing, but bitterness; a terrible resentment that she had been robbed of so many years and countless opportunities in her life and his, and their life together. Anger that they never had the chance to be open, that they would never experience being together like most people would. They were denied the small things, like family dinners no one wanted to attend, and the big things too; the things that Lux tried so, so hard to never think about, because if she ever let herself dream about the family they could have started and dared to want, then the reminder that she had nothing would tear her down, and the grief she'd been shouldering would rip through her like it had the second that Talon was torn away from her; fresh, terrible, and debilitating in a way that no physical injury ever could be.

So Lux didn't think.

She drifted through days, months, years, more of a ghost than anything; she waited patiently for that day to come when the hurt just stopped hurting, and she was sad to say that it took her far too long to realize that it never would.

But she also figured out (after so long spent so carefully not thinking) that if she did dare to recall him, if she ventured to picture the uneven tilt to his smile or the ring of his voice or the exact color of his eyes, that sometimes it didn't hurt as bad. That sometimes, she could look back on those things and know what she'd lost and been denied and could still smile, albeit sadly, for the things she once had.

Because they used to be wonderful things indeed.

A/N:

Ilikepiederp: I'm really not letting up with the sad stuff lmao. Sorry to your heart!

J4YDE- It's not too much pressure, but I would appreciate, in the future, that stuff about HTLB is not reviewed in this fic. If you have questions, feel free to leave a review on HTLB or PM me. Just kind of an update though, I'm still stuck with the next chapter, but I'm working on it.

Mirae- I really is awful :c Take everything I write here lightly though, I might just be writing all this sad stuff so that it's not in HTLB ;) I've got a very tentative start to the chapter written out, and I'm going to try to add more soon, so we'll see!

Ulcaasi- by Talon and Lux dump I meant let's get out all the sad stuff I've thought about and couldn't force into the real fic. ;)