disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to grown-up alcohol.
notes: this. I have no excuse for this. hello fandom, idek if you exist.

title: zephyr
summary: Do you still look like the pictures in my telephone? — Akira/Saki.

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Ten years later, he still had that picture.

Didn't matter how many phones he went through, or where in the world he ended up; he kept that picture in the back of his memory to sometimes stop and escape to a time when he hadn't saved the world (twice), and she was just this pretty girl he'd met in America.

Akira flipped his phone open to stare down at her face.

His heart clenched.

Ten years was a long time.

And in returning to Japan, he was breaking a promise he'd made to himself a long time before; that he wouldn't interfere in Japan, anymore. In Dubai, Paris, even New York—he'd been perfectly fine to interfere there, in those places.

Because Dubai, Paris, even New York—well, they didn't have a Saki.

And that made all the difference.

He hadn't slept properly in weeks, and this did not change on the flight across the Pacific. He sat in first class with his arms crossed, and watched as they sped across perfect seamless blue with his phone in his lap.

She'd probably gotten married.

Had children, even.

She was pretty, after all.

The thought made the contents of his stomach churn uncomfortably. Akira touched his phone and wondered, because the probability that she still looked exactly the same was less than zero. She would have aged—he had, himself.

Of course, it would be different now.

She wasn't waiting at the airport. She might not have even been waiting at all. Promises were hard to keep. Akira knew that better than anyone. But even just to say hello was better than nothing, and so he made his way through Tokyo's busy streets.

He was going to find her, even if it was only just to say hello and I'm sorry and please still love me because I really fucked up, didn't I.

It doesn't take him long.

He'd always had a knack for finding things.

She was standing in a little schoolyard, surrounded by children. She looked like she was teaching, head tipped back and laughing at something one of them had showed her. They were small and she was older but with the wind in her hair, she looked the same. She was still the same.

Akira's throat convulsed around her name. "Saki. Saki!"

And she turned, confused and caught up—eyes went wide, and her breathing went erratic and he hopped the fence and it was her, it was her, it was her.

A breath.

He engulfed her.

She let him.

fin.