🌠 written in the stars 🌠 kousei/blitz 🌠

Everything feels wrong; from the sunlight breaking through leaves and branches all the way to the back of my hand wiping sweat from my brow. The back of my hand is damp and the skin on my palm bleeds purple -- bruises and blisters were always second nature even from the age of fourteen to the reality of seventeen. Yet even the throbbing in the palm of my right hand feels strange, as if it doesn't belong there despite the bruise and the blister.

It bleeds purple but there's no Bailey to hold it and kiss it better -- I never learned how to nurse pain that isn't tended to by someone else, so I just pretend it's not there.

Yellow sun burning shades of red onto my skin, the few streaks of sunlight that break through the gaps between the leaves and branches strip me of my sight in incraments and stages. I should stop looking at the sky, the rays of light and the squinting of my eyes are evidence of that but we sat on that very branch and she sat next to me on that very spot. It looks wrong, ruined even, when the only thing that occupies it today are the light rays from the sun.

(and we're there beneath the moonlight, holding hands, running our hands through each other's hair, and everything's right)

"Bail-"

I'm stumbling, almost falling with one foot behind the other. The sensation of falling combined with the shades of black and blue burned onto my palms is a slap from the hands of reality.

It's just instinctive, snapping my head from a manifestation of memory to the side and into the eyes of "Bailey?" A shock from the back of my throat. I recognize dark eyes, brown skin, dark hair.

But she was never a reader, it can't be her. "...What are you looking for up there?"

There's no gorge in her throat and no axe in sight -- I'm on the branch and I can still trace my finger down her jaw and remember the feeling of her lips against mine.

"Just... an important memory. Means a lot to me you see," I pause, exhale -pent up shock and all- I need to stop this. "Don't apologize, I was just... being stupid."

Branches won't bring back the dead, irregardless of how tender the memories are.