The clock ticked past midnight. Shu hadn't realized how late she was working at the college. She hurried home, her mind still buzzing with lectures and grading. Roxy had been independent since a young age, a necessity given Shu's demanding career and Raven's absence. Shu knew Roxy would be asleep by now.
She entered the quiet living room, the house shrouded in stillness. As she walked towards her own room, she noticed the door to the room next to hers, the room that had remained closed, a silent shrine to the past. It was slightly ajar. Curiosity piqued, Shu pushed it open a little further.
And then she saw her. Roxy, asleep in the bed where Raven used to sleep. And next to her, a man.
Shu's breath hitched in her throat. She pushed the door open wider, her heart hammering in her chest. As she stepped into the room, a familiar face came into view. Raven.
Raven was here. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, Raven was here.
A tidal wave of emotions crashed over Shu – disbelief, joy, sorrow, a searing ache of longing. Her legs felt weak. She stumbled back, retreating from the room as if burned.
She fled to her own room, collapsing onto her bed, the dam of three years breaking in a torrent of tears.
Raven was back. After all this time. Had he come back for her? Or just for Roxy? Had he even thought of her in these long, silent years? A thousand questions swirled in her mind, a chaotic tempest of emotions.
What would she say to him? Could she even speak? If he stood before her, would she crumble, falling into his arms, years of anger and hurt dissolving into tears? Or would the old arrogance rise, the wall she had built around her heart, refusing to forgive the years of silence, the years of waiting?
One part of her screamed to run to him, to bury herself in his embrace, to beg him never to leave again. Another part, fiercely proud and wounded, vowed to remain aloof, to make him feel the weight of her absence as she had felt his.
Shu lay in the darkness, her mind a battlefield of warring emotions, tears silently streaming down her face. In the next room, Raven and Roxy slept peacefully, oblivious to the storm raging just beyond their door. The silence of the house hummed with unspoken words, with the promise and the threat of a reunion that would shatter the carefully constructed peace, whatever form that reunion might take.
The faint pre-dawn light was just beginning to seep through the curtains when Raven's eyes fluttered open. He felt a comforting weight beside him and turned his head to see Roxy, his daughter, nestled against him, her small chest rising and falling in the peaceful rhythm of sleep. A wave of tenderness washed over him. He gently smoothed a stray strand of hair from her forehead, his touch feather-light, afraid to disturb her slumber. He lingered there for a few moments, simply watching her, a silent conversation between a father and his sleeping child.
After a while, a dryness scratched at his throat. Carefully disentangling himself from Roxy's embrace, Raven slipped out of the room, his senses on high alert, a habit ingrained from years spent… elsewhere. He padded silently into the kitchen, the familiar creak of the floorboards strangely loud in the quiet house. He was reaching for a glass when he saw her.
Shu was at the dining table, bathed in the faint, pre-dawn gloom. Her head was buried in her hands, her shoulders slumped. Raven's breath hitched. He hadn't expected her to be awake. He hadn't expected… anything, really. He'd been so focused on Roxy, on seeing his daughter again, that the rest felt like a hazy, surreal periphery.
He poured himself a glass of water, his movements slow and deliberate, trying to make as little noise as possible. He gulped down the water, the cool liquid doing little to soothe the dryness in his throat, which now felt like it was filled with cotton. He placed the glass in the sink, the clink of glass against ceramic sounding like a thunderclap in the stillness. He turned to go back to Roxy, to the safety of her quiet presence, when a voice, soft yet laced with an undercurrent of something he couldn't quite place, drifted from behind him.
"How are you, Raven?"
It was Shu.
Raven froze. He hadn't registered her presence properly before, too caught up in his own thoughts and the delicate moment with Roxy. He turned slowly, his eyes widening as they finally focused on Shu. She was sitting there, just as he'd glimpsed her before, but now she was looking up at him, her gaze unwavering. He could see her face clearly now, illuminated by the pale light filtering through the window. Yes, it was Shu. But… something was different.
Shu watched his stunned silence, her expression unreadable. After a moment, she repeated, her voice a little sharper, "Don't you recognize me, Raven?"
Words seemed to clog his throat. He wanted to say something, anything, but his mind was blank. He could only stare at her, his eyes wide, searching, trying to grasp the reality of the situation. He looked for the familiar warmth in her eyes, the easy smile he used to know, but found only a cool, assessing gaze. He just blinked, unable to articulate the turmoil churning within him.
Seeing his bewildered expression, the silent question in his eyes, Shu's face softened slightly. Perhaps she saw the genuine confusion in his face. She sighed, the sound heavy in the quiet kitchen. "It's still too late for morning," she said, her voice losing its edge, becoming almost weary. "Go and sleep with Roxy."
She stood up abruptly and walked towards her room, her movements fluid and graceful, almost ethereal. She reached her door and slipped inside, closing it with a soft, decisive click.
Raven stood there, rooted to the spot. He wanted to call out to her, to ask her what was wrong, what had changed, but the words remained trapped in his chest. He watched her door, as if expecting her to reappear, to explain this strange, unsettling encounter. But the door remained closed, a solid barrier.
He shuffled back to his room, the image of Shu's face, that mixture of weariness and something else he couldn't decipher, burned into his mind. He slipped back into bed beside Roxy, her warmth a small comfort in the sudden chill that had settled over him. It felt like that brief exchange in the kitchen had never happened, a phantom encounter in the pre-dawn hours. But sleep eluded him. His mind raced, replaying the scene, trying to understand.
In her room, Shu didn't go to bed. She sat on the edge of her bed, staring into the darkness. Raven. He was back. But he was so different. She ran a hand through her own dark hair, her fingers tracing the sharpness of her cheekbones. She remembered Raven as he was four years ago, before the war, before… everything. He was vibrant, a tempest of restless energy. His hair was thick and black, framing a face that could be both fiercely beautiful and terrifyingly cruel. He'd looked like a creature of the night, a shadow come to life.
Now… now he was like something from a different world entirely. His hair, gone were the black locks, replaced by a cascade of silver, so pale it was almost white. It gave him an ethereal quality, an otherworldliness that was unsettling. He looked… angelic. The very opposite of the 'living devil' she remembered.
Was it the siren's curse? The one he'd taken to protect her, to protect them all, during that devastating war four years ago? Or was it something else entirely? She wanted to ask him so many things. Why he had left. Where he had been. What had changed him so profoundly. But he hadn't even answered a simple "How are you?" How could she possibly delve into the deeper questions that clawed at her heart?
She thought about Roxy, about the little girl she had raised alone, through sleepless nights and countless worries. And then Raven was back, disrupting the carefully constructed walls she'd built around herself. She was angry. Confused. Hurt. And beneath it all, a flicker of something she didn't want to acknowledge, a buried ember of… hope? Or was it just a painful, nostalgic ache for a past that could never be again? Lost in the maze of her thoughts, sleep finally claimed her, pulling her into a troubled slumber.