[ Red hates that feeling a day after mayhem, when it clings to you and nothing has been resolved; it's like being empty yet full at the same time, a puzzle piece slotted somehow into the wrong environment when nothing of the life resuming around him matches what he knows. He feels it all the more returning to where he lives with Cilan, where being out on the road would at least feel less... normal.
Sleep barely gives him any rest with the thoughts that infiltrate his dreams, yet it's the farthest thing from his mind when he reaches the location where he and Komaeda had agreed to meet: near Lake Niras, where the pair of them had spoken after meeting with Piphron and Red had spilled far more to Komaeda than he had intended to. Trusted him with more than any other from there on.
Trust was maybe one of those things in his chest when he sees Komaeda, standing up from his place beside Lapras on a spread blanket, bits and pieces there in case they were necessary, but none of it on his mind as he approaches to meet the white-haired man. Words were on his tongue of what they would speak about, on where it went wrong, on how they would help Peromei. Yet they all slip away when he instead opens his opens and takes him into an embrace, pulling them tightly together and burying his head to his shoulder.
The sympathies still come; not apologies, though Red may be able to find areas to say sorry, but knowing blaming himself won't help. They're for Peromei, for Komaeda's relationship to her. But more than that, they're for the pair of them, for everything on their mind and everything that had happened. Because they were friends.
Because they both knew the places where it went wrong. It didn't have to discussed, though it would.
It was perhaps a better source of comfort, too, than any words that would follow. ]
day after elios trip; action
Sleep barely gives him any rest with the thoughts that infiltrate his dreams, yet it's the farthest thing from his mind when he reaches the location where he and Komaeda had agreed to meet: near Lake Niras, where the pair of them had spoken after meeting with Piphron and Red had spilled far more to Komaeda than he had intended to. Trusted him with more than any other from there on.
Trust was maybe one of those things in his chest when he sees Komaeda, standing up from his place beside Lapras on a spread blanket, bits and pieces there in case they were necessary, but none of it on his mind as he approaches to meet the white-haired man. Words were on his tongue of what they would speak about, on where it went wrong, on how they would help Peromei. Yet they all slip away when he instead opens his opens and takes him into an embrace, pulling them tightly together and burying his head to his shoulder.
The sympathies still come; not apologies, though Red may be able to find areas to say sorry, but knowing blaming himself won't help. They're for Peromei, for Komaeda's relationship to her. But more than that, they're for the pair of them, for everything on their mind and everything that had happened. Because they were friends.
Because they both knew the places where it went wrong. It didn't have to discussed, though it would.
It was perhaps a better source of comfort, too, than any words that would follow. ]