Pathos - A Duskwood Fanfiction

Chapter 13

They slowly let go of each other after a time, the two women both seemingly reluctant to be the first to do so. She squeezed Lilly's hand one final time as they fully separated, and Lilly's smile deepened briefly as she squeezed back.

As much as she didn't want to, as much as she knew that there would be absolutely no possible way that he would be there, she could not help lifting her gaze away from Lilly to look over the other woman's shoulder and down the empty corridor searchingly.

Lilly had kept her eyes trained on her as she had done this, and a look of compassionate regret had manifested on her face as she spoke softly.

"It's just me, I'm afraid. It wouldn't have been safe."

She nodded absently as Lilly said this, still staring down into the silent emptiness of the building corridor. Even though she had heard what Lilly had said, and even though she had known it to be true before Lilly had even said it, she couldn't seem to stop her mind from momentarily blinding her with the image of Jake appearing from around the hallway corner and striding towards her.

She had no idea what he looked like - and had spent a concerning amount of her time since they had met invested in the fantasy of what he might look like - but the few things that she did know about his physical appearance seemed to conjure themselves out of the ether of her mind and project out into the hallway behind Lilly in an arresting mirage.

For the briefest of flashes, a single frame of thought that hung suspended in her mind's eye, she saw the image of Jake as he so often had appeared in her mind during the restless nights when she had woke up alone in the dark. He was tall, dressed in black, with matching black hair hanging slightly in his eyes; eyes that were never quite dark, never quite light, never quite brown, never quite blue. Eyes that had found hers and locked on instantly, steadily holding her gaze as he walked towards her.

The intensity of his words and his actions during the short span of time that they had spent with one another as they had done everything within their combined power to find Hannah had manifested directly into her fantasy of him - she knew that regardless of what he actually looked like, his eyes would be impossible to look away from. There was just simply no way that someone with such a powerful presence through his words alone could ever not have eyes that pierced through every single thing that they looked at.

And in the next thought frame, he was gone, and the empty corridor stretched down and on as it had always done, empty and silent.

She returned her gaze back to Lilly then, snapping herself out of the bittersweet reverie, and nodded as she tried to stop her smile from sliding away. "Of course," she said softly, but still unable to stop the smile from taking its leave.

Lilly then reached out to take her hand again for a moment, squeezing it again in a gesture of comfort and reassurance as she spoke again.

"He really wanted to come. I think he was actually seriously considering it up until the very last minute."

She smiled as much as she could manage at Lilly as she said this. "That doesn't sound like him," she said lightly, trying to keep the creeping doubt out of her voice.

But Lilly just smiled and tilted her head slightly, trying to maintain the eye contact that she suddenly so desperately wanted to disengage.

"No. It really doesn't, does it," Lilly said pointedly, and despite her very best efforts, she couldn't help but laugh a little at Lilly's gentle, rebuking expression. She knew the unspoken meaning behind Lilly's words, and for the briefest of moments, she felt a sudden thrill of warmth surge through her chest like the swell of the tide as it swept over the sand of a beach before ebbing away once more. Well. Hadn't that been the perfect thing to say.