They're on a mission together, something of importance that occupies the upper levels of his brain. Solidly, he works through the plan to reach clarity, making sure he knows the way, teasing out problems before they can happen.
The rest of him, however, is occupied with something else.
There is the smell of her. She must have bathed a few hours before, because the heavy scent of a flower he doesn't know the name of clings to the damp strands in her hair, and rises around her when she moves, dispersing heavily into the air like an offering.
It feels as if they have always been together, the four of them, as if the dark life with its dark blood never even existed. It did exist, he reminds himself. It did, and yet sometimes he forgets to even remind himself. Together, they care for Lirin and watch her harebrained antics. Together, they stand beside Kougaiji, with the very heart of fidelity. Together.
Some times come when he wants to know what she would feel like, beneath his mouth or his hands or his body. And this time it isn't because he has to, there is nothing broken here that he has to fix with himself, no terrible balance between sanity of one and safety of the other. It's different, something loud without words that rushes straight through him, rising until he aches to the ends of his bones.
But he knows he won't.
He knows he won't because one of the things he loves the very most is how she looks at her lord, and he knows only by standing next to her that she shares with himself those certain and true bonds of loyalty toward their prince, and she shares also that beautiful agony of feeling. He knows her rush of shivers that is almost like sickness, because he gets it too when she smiles just that one certain way.
"Dokugaku?"
The voice pulls him back again, and he can hear the echo of another sentence he'd missed. She's looking back at him, bathed in dappled sunlight and the breeze that stirs a green scent from the forest trees. He's looking forward at her, breathing out longing and breathing in something more vivid than the patches of light at his feet.
He'll never be with her. But he is content to walk beside her, as they all walk together.
