It has been a long time.

Loss

"I know how it is."

The night air was cold and still, and they were sitting on the roof of the clinic, staring at stars mixed with nothingness. He saw her set her mug down on the tiles next to his; he felt her raise her eyes to his face as he heard her speak.

"How can you know exactly how it is," he remarked, keeping his eyes fixed on a small pinprick of light. She sighed, and the little packet of expelled exasperation escaped into the frigid air.

"You know what I mean."

He turned to look at her just as her face was caught by the moonlight, and the snarky response that he had prepared dissolved. He was not inclined to argue with her just for the sake of it anymore - not when she looked at him like that.

She watched him turn and nod, slowly.

"Of course I know what you mean. But it's true, it's not exactly the same."

"But it's not entirely different, either."

They looked right through each other. Then, the moment passed and they glanced past and away. She wet her lips with tea and turned towards the stars again. They hadn't moved, or burned out, since the last time she checked.

He wondered how he should ask his question since she was the only person in both the world of the living and the dead that he'd even think of asking such a thing to. Asking was as good as admitting.

On her left, he fidgeted, as if he was embarrassed, yet wanted, to tell her something. She encouraged him by pretending she did not notice his discomfort.

"When you lost him-"

She continued his sentence like she knew. Maybe she did, she didn't know either.

"I cried for years."

This time, when they looked through each other they didn't back off. It was transparent, it was a lump in their throats, it was the soft creak of a door inching shyly open. Then, because they both felt suddenly afraid of what it all meant, they looked away.

He kept his stubborn silence and she tried to improvise using objects around them.

"Your tea will get cold. It won't warm you, and you'll get cold, too." She prodded the base of his mug with her foot, but he suddenly reached out with his left hand to hold her ankle.

It was a very small ankle. His fingers could meet his thumb.

She was struck by the odd warmth of his fingers on her skin, but regained her composure in time to cover it with a lunge for her tea mug. He hoped that she would never move away; she hoped that the darkness would conceal the tint in her cheeks that was not coloured by the cold.

End.