The locket doesn't hold its secret long. It didn't even give her difficulty in being opened but yawned like a kitten in her hand, a whisper in the party.

The crackle and light of his smile was a cameo pressed to the insides of her eyelids. An image that flickered there for half a second, before her eyes shot wide and the locket slowly fell from between her clasped hands. She searched his face in disbelief for a moment. Then gasped... and dived across to embrace him. Legs and arms wrapping around the dark man. "YES!"

For being small, she made quite the impact when landing against him. It was as if her body might leave a more visible impression on him than it had already. His arms closed about her, forearms side by side behind her. She hits him like a wave, like a shotgun and a hundred other things that are dissimilar but feeling linked together in that moment. "Thank you."

She's got tears on her face when she leans back and settles those blue eyes on black.

"No. Quite the opposite. Thank you." A sniffle, she laughed and leaned towards him, pressing her mouth to his with hunger and a thousand other flavors and memories and feelings. She whispers in the kiss. Forehead resting to forehead, she breathes in. Life didn't give you these moments often. It could only be savored.

In a few moments the world swayed again, but he never gave their bodies enough momentum to say they were dancing or just rocking each other. The pressure of her forehead against his felt like something in him was pouring from his head into her's. There was a catch in his chest that had kept his breath tight until then. He inhaled, deeply, all of her and held it until he had to let it go and the feeling of being wrapped in her was complete and comforting. His arms kept her in close. Perhaps on the outside they looked more like huddled survivors of a war than lovers clinging to each other. They had been survivors, though, and they held with the same fervor of anyone who was grateful that they survived.

In all her years apart, she hadn't thought that she could feel that close to someone else. Where the borders between skin and thought were not. It gave her almost a look of shock as she rubbed away the moisture from her cheek with the back of a hand. There was still mystery, but no secrets. There was skin, but no distance. Madison slipped down his body, legs unwinding until she touched the ground again. Her hands, however, remained around him. Her eyes looked over his face, again and again and there was only one thought.

She bent then, to remove her boots, stepping out of each one and peeling off her socks. She held them in one hand as she drew to her height and glanced once to the edge of the clearing, that led to home. As if shoes got in the way of remembering this night. She wanted to feel everything. That the ground was cool beneath her lucky feet. That there were sticks and leaves and cherry blossom petals. Her face appeared almost serious as it turned towards his again.

Worn shorts and a white t shirt but she felt like a queen. She watched as he removed his shoes.

It sometimes felt like a set of binoculars were being focused and that she became more clear, more crisp. She was steadied against him then, peering up at him with an impossible sharpness that he did not flinch from. The man could calmly stare down a lion he knew would eat him. That was the sharpness, as if she might peel him out of his own body. And then... she did.

She went to the edge of the woods and he bent down, removing his own socks and shoes. He did that, late at night when he gardened with devils and a cigarette. He was still walking that path towards her, left hand thumbing behind his neck at the collar of his t-shirt to pull it overhead. Black ink lines of kanji were down his back, interrupted by the cut of what were now old scars from being caned. The shirt and shoes bundled together in his hands as he stopped beside her.

Her face grew more thoughtful, more concerned, looking across the broad shoulders and the lines of him in the edge of the forest and the flailing light. Fire-reflections that sputtered like vicious candles and painted his body and her face with living, moving shapes. Madi smiled. She turned from him and set foot deeper into the woodland. The rubber of her boot heels clacking together as she walked.

She smiled and it brightened him. Barefoot, he felt the world spin under his feet. Rocks jabbed, leaves offered a small reprieve if they were not accompanied with sticks. Once there had been a bear trap and the scars of it were still on his leg. He may have wandered the world with one foot instead of two without her. Yes, that would be what getting along without her would be. They continued as they always had. Together.

Through the dark she led them to very particular spot. She would turn at times to share with the dark man a smile. Then, when it appeared they were there... where she meant for, she only stopped and reached for his hand. Ahead of them, a rainwater pool. It glimmered on the surface with hints of moonlight and the haze from the fires. "Do you remember?"

Their reflections stared back - breaking and reforming.

He remembered wanting to learn how to swim and he remembered wings and coins and a hundred different times they had looked at each other and said I know in a way that was not love at all but understanding. Those could be missed when enamored. It had seemed that they started as bones before there was flesh, skin and sex. He did not feel that he was grasping what she said, but it didn't frustrate him. His mind went through memories and his eyes ticked to her face when he told her, "Show me."

When he made her smile, it was a smile unlike what she had worn before. Usually, her smile, even that, looked half sad, haunted, faraway. But when he unlocked the door, reached into the shadows and stepped forth... it gave her the courage to let go, and to let herself really smile. For the first time in too long. With his hand, she stepped towards the rainwater pool and stared into it. "We stood here like this. Once."

"I wanted to know what we would see, now, if we looked inside the water."

Their reflections were ghosts... the light was poor and the angle was hard. But nonetheless, their faces floated in the water, where the moon got far enough to release.

It was overwhelming to feel so very important to another person. He hesitated, not because he did not want to but because there was a fear that lingered in his heart, still. Stepping up to the pool beside her he examined their forms, stretched and altered in the water. They looked like faces of the past, like old photographs being bleached in the sun.

There was a sound of delight in her throat as he gazed below. There came a squeeze of her hand.

"They'll always be a dark man and a young woman in this pool, Tag. A young woman, whom you changed the life of. In a way only you can." The way she spoke was as much as a friend as a wife to be, a girlfriend. Because foremost, they were that. Companions, survivors. "I need you to know that."

"I do not know why, or how, your soul has always spoken to mine... but it has." He said it like it was the unburdening of an enormous weight. That it was a pressure he had never wanted to admit to and now that he had, he had to look away. Their bodies mattered in the same way a journal did. It was only the vessel that held the story. Without the story he didn't want the vessel. A camp fire told him that, once. His attention turned to her and he nodded. Yes, he absorbed what she said and sank somewhere to the ground where his feet felt it.

Here, it was colder. The fires and all the people were behind them, back through the wood they had crept through, barefoot and kind of wild, moving together with all of their senses attuned. She inhaled the stiff, swollen air, the cold noticeable, the way it covered her bared arms and legs in bumps and had whitened the pallor of his face. Madison had turned towards him a touch. "Home?"

His response, she was still... feeling. Letting wash over her. Their open acknowledgment of years of growing feeling and knowing. It was an innocent, uncomplicated feeling. Still was, only now they could wrap around one another.

"Yes." His bundled belonging wrapped in his shirt could be held by one hand. He hesitated, looking into the water one more time as if he did not trust the reflection. His free hand linked with her's. They could pick their way home slowly, feeling the journey from where he has whispered to the place he had slept.