Her Mission To Save Them All || Sword Art Online Fanfic

Chapter 56

POV: Kayoko 

It's been two days. Two entire days. With each passing hour, I expect the numbness to reced, tears to form in my eyes and my limbs to shake. I expect an entire breakdown. I expect the sharp shards of myself cutting my fingers as I piece them together.  None of it happens. 

Breath draws evenly from whole, unblocked lungs. When I stroll my thumb across Kyo's palm, there is no sense of relief that he is beside me, sleeping in peace illuding me. Fog overcrowds my feelings, making them inaccessible. I don't know whether it's a blessing or a curse because every time I reach for something to manoeuvre my limbs, I find a hand full of smoke. 

Even my anger for Heathcliff - so real in the gap days between meetings - seems to have extinguished into a few curling embers destined to be ash. I draw another breath, trace another path of fingers against fingers and try to ignore the heaviness of my eyelids as they close towards the deep shadow-beds beneath them. Whatever I will find in sleep, I know it will not be peace. 

The living room's light flickers from the fire but the warmth radiating out of it negates the flickering shadows it causes in the corners of my eyes, over the layers of wooden beams that compose the wood cabin. It had been Kirito's idea to get it - that space far away from the front lines would give all of us peace - so we banded together what col we had left and purchased the property, the promise of the lake's surface shining like an open invitation nearby. 

The stairs creak to my left but those are common occurrences and I have long since learned to tune the music of the wind as it blows the structure out of my mind. It's only when Shi steps into the ring of light offered by the fire that I turn my head towards him, the action the most I have moved in a long time. 

"You can't sleep," he says. It's not a question. 

I inhale, lips forming to shape words but getting caught on a dry mouth and heavy tongue.  "You can't, either." 

Shi turns his head, at first I think it is to take in my appearance, the disconnected parts of myself but then I realise the tilt is not for that; he signals towards the front door, to the open porch beyond. It's an offer, I realise. An offer for a talk long since overdue.  

I run my thumb over the top of Kyo's knuckles one last time, and making sure his breaths are even, unravel by hand from his own. Shi's leaning against the railing when I join him, the cool night air bringing a cold, but not unwelcome, chill. It blows some of my hair in my face and I brush it back, unused to it being so long when I have braided it close to my skull for the past couple of weeks. 

Neither of us wants to start. Maybe there's too much to say. It's strange for me, having known him for at most two weeks and to have so much hanging between us. "You came back," I breathe, letting it exhale from my chest as though it has been lodged there all this time. 

Shi raises an eyebrow. "You doubted me?"

"At first. I mean, you had other things that were more important to you than taking over the city. You could have just left me there, gone after XaXa, killed him on your own terms and then ran. We never- I mean, you wanted me to kill you," I choke past the words, "but you could've got someone else. There was nothing to tell me that you would come back. I was scared that that life would have been the last one I had. That if they found me and killed me again, that would be it. And then there's what you could have done with who I am-" 

I force a breath, knowing that such ramblings will get me nowhere. Refocusing my eyes on the lake peeking over the treetops, I don't dare to move my gaze; I know if I look, I won't be able to say it. "So, thank you. For not doing any of that."