Should have done it better.

Maybe. But we can't change the past--shouldn't even if we could, all these people who exist and wouldn't if things had been different, we can't just kill them all...

I have a family that isn't you and yours, now. It doesn't make me love any of you any less but I won't see my parents and grandparents dead and worse because they'd never have existed to spare you and I some grief, not when we have forever to recover from it.

If I could make you not have died, I would.

Okay.

Still can't, though. And I'm fine.

I'm glad.

I want you to be fine but I don't want you to push yourself to be something that looks like fine before you actually are fine to please me because that would probably make it take longer for you to actually be fine.

Do I seem like the type?

Not really but you've been hurting because I was dead for longer than I can imagine so I didn't want to bet when just saying doesn't cost anything.

I won't pretend. Hugs.

Hugs. I was more worried about repression than pretending.

The whole 'literally never going to stop holding you' thing is me doing exactly what I want. Trust me.

That much I expected! It's a good thing I love you so much or I might object to it.

Squeeze. 

Nuzzle.

Mine.

Mine, she agrees reciprocally with a squeeze of her own.

For the rest of forever - Idaia Idaia Idaia-

Forever. Oh, darling, I'm right here, nothing like that is ever going to happen again, I'm here forever...

She kisses him. Someday we'll look back at this and laugh to think we ever cared so much for so short a span as we were separated. Someday, a very very long time from now.

Yeah.

She kisses him again and runs her fingers down the side of his face in a gesture similar to one she might have used to tuck a lock of hair behind someone's ear comfortingly in Kilaiuossa and starts singing softly a song about love lost and found again from the world of her first birth.

He squeezes her and listens.