Phoenix || Malia Tate

epilogue

Her den. It feels a million miles away from anything on earth. It's quiet and secluded and feels just as it did all those years ago when it her only form of a home. Malia sits in it now, sits next to him as they ponder and think and wonder of what's next.

It's been two weeks since Ellie's arrest. Two weeks of Phoenix visiting her while she waits behind bars for her trial, of Phoenix trying to figure out his life - what to do with the house, if he will stay, if he will go, and what exactly he'll do with himself with either that he choses. It's kept him busy, trying to make sense of it all, and Malia's respected that, needed the time herself to catch up on her school in time for graduation next month. It's scary, she can't help but think, how close and how fast everything is changing. 

She looks to the boy beside her and wishes that this space between, this unseen force that's been wedged there since the station explosion, the same force she thought had vanished when she thought Phoenix was going to die, would just go away. She misses him. She misses him with all her heart and through all of this, through all the trials and tribulation, he's the only thing she's wanted.

She doesn't know how to tell him this. They sit next to each other, but not facing each other, and inches away, but never actually touching. He wants nothing more than to just reach out and touch her, and she just wishes that he would.

She glances over at him. 

And he looks over at her too. 

And this time, neither of them look away. 

"I have to warn you," he says softly, with that velvet smooth voice she's missed so much. "My life is really messy right now."

Her breathing starts to become uneven, because he's smiling now just like he did that first day that they met. He's smiling that confident, tilted, half-smirk that she worried she'd never see again. She feels her heart flutter because there it is, there's his face, lit up just as it once was, despite Ellie, despite everything. And he is beautiful "I know," she says

"My sister is facing twenty-five years to life for committing an act of terror and I can't find it in me to write her off," he continues. 

"Don't." Phoenix gives her a confused look. "Don't write her off," Malia tells him. "Not yet."

His grin grows because for a moment there he'd forgotten just how much he loved her. 

"I hear graduation is coming up." He waits for her confirmation. "I'd like to be there, if that's all right with you."

"Yes," she say, without a moment's hesitation. "That's all right with me."

When he had first come into her life, invading all her boundaries and breaking down all her walls,  Malia had never imagined that things would turn out this way. With that smirking, confident, mystery boy sitting beside her, no longer a mystery, but perhaps the most familiar thing in the world to her. He looks at her, with this look in his eyes that she's only ever seen once before. This look of pure adoration, of the unconditional love she never thought she could have. And when he begins to lean into her, to close that space them, and her breath quickens and catches, Malia knows. 

She looks at her forest eyed boy, and she's home.