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【𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍】
*.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.*
HIMARI WAS ALREADY AWAKE THE NEXT MORNING when the loud, abrupt sounds of someone knocking on her door startled her. She blinked, bringing herself back to consciousness as the door swung open a moment later.
Himari, who had curled herself up on the chair Jean had left beside her bed, had pulled her knees up to her chest and had been resting her chin on top of them, fiddling with Marco's paper in her hands. She'd spent the majority of the morning there, after having woken from a nightmare at some point after one in the morning, and had not attempted to fall asleep again.
She set her legs down on the ground, groaning slightly at the stiffness in her joints as she turned to face whoever it was that had entered her room. She stumbled back in shock, legs collapsing beneath her at the sight of the familiar woman standing in her doorway.
She was tall - even taller than Himari, with pale skin and elongated, almond-shaped eyes that shimmered a soft, gunmetal-silver in the weak, morning sunlight. Her hair was short and thick and the colour of midnight. She smiled faintly at Himari.
"Hey, kiddo."
Himari dropped Marco's paper gently onto her bed before she pushed herself up from her bed and staggered over to the woman, throwing her arms around her. The tall, black-haired woman, dressed in a Scouts uniform, pulled Himari close, burying her face into the white-haired girl's shoulder.
"Selma," Himari whispered. Selma tightened her grip on Himari, combing her fingers gently through Himari's hair.
"I thought you were dead - I - how... I can't believe..." Himari murmured, unable to form a proper sentence out of shock. She could feel Selma shaking slightly and the quiet sniffles in Himari's ear informed her that her elder sister was crying.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she whispered repetitively into Himari's shoulder. The two spent a good ten minutes wrapped in each other's embraces, hardly able to believe that after five long years, they had finally found each other once again.
"I thought you'd died," Selma started once the two had finally broken apart. Himari took a seat on the chair she had spent all night on while Selma perched herself on the end of Himari's bed.
"I spent all my days off looking for any sign of you and Dad in the refugee camps and took as much time off from the Scouts as I could to try and find you both." Himari shook her head sadly at her sister.
"I wasn't in a refugee camp," she explained. Selma looked up at her silently. Himari swallowed thickly, threading her fingers together as she moved her gaze down to her lap.
"I was moved to an orphanage about two weeks after Shiganshina fell."
Oh.
Guilt pooled in the pit of Selma's stomach. She hadn't even thought of checking the orphanages because she'd been so sure that both Himari and her father would have made it out alive. It was that foolish hope that had caused Selma to lose five years with Himari.
