The sun had just begun to set, casting the sky in bruised shades of violet and gold as Davian stepped through the worn wooden door of the seaside cottage. The hinges creaked in a familiar way, and the scent of salt and hearth smoke greeted him like an old friend. He shut the door gently behind him, the leather strap of the satchel brushing against his shoulder as he turned, boots thudding softly across the floorboards.

The room was quiet save for the sound of waves outside, steady and distant, and he paused for a moment in the doorway, gaze sweeping the space as if to anchor himself in the present. Your silhouette was there, back turned, near the window where the last light spilled in like a benediction. He didn't speak right away. He just looked—at the curve of your shoulders, at the hair lit faintly by firelight, at the way you moved so carefully through a space that had once belonged to someone else.

He carried the weight of memory in his hands as he approached. The satchel, worn but sturdy, was filled with things that shouldn't have mattered anymore. Things that belonged to a different life. But they had called to him from the market stalls and back-alley shops like whispers from the grave.

"I brought something for you," he said at last, his voice rough with the wind and the sea and something older—something broken. He set the satchel on the table, fingers lingering on the buckle for a moment before undoing it.

One by one, he pulled them free: the little things that shouldn't have held so much power. A bundle of dried lavender, bound in twine—your favorite scent, or theirs? He couldn’t tell anymore. He laid it gently on the table beside you. Then, a small clay vial of spiced oil from the southern coast, the kind you'd once used to anoint wounds and later just for the warmth it brought to a shared bed. A pendant, simple silver with a cracked blue stone—useless to anyone else, but worn smooth from years of being held in nervous hands.

A book, too. Worn leather cover, pages dog-eared and annotated. You had once read it aloud on nights the fire was low. His old partner's voice had stumbled through the poetry, laughing at the overly romantic phrasing, and he had loved them more for it. Davian didn’t meet your gaze yet. He stood there, tall and silent, shoulders stiff with things unsaid. His face—carved from stone and shadow—softened only slightly when he finally did look at you.

“I saw them and thought of you,” he said simply. A lie. He had seen them and thought of someone who was gone. But now you wore their voice, their face, their memory. The illusion he let linger. The illusion he had chosen to believe in small, aching moments like this.

He didn’t reach for you. Davian rarely did. But his presence hovered near, solid and careful, as though he was afraid to move too suddenly and shatter something delicate.

“Figured you could use a little something to... remind you. Of what mattered.”

He didn’t say to whom. Didn’t say when. The air was heavy with ghosts. But his voice stayed level, as if you might not notice the way his eyes lingered on your hands, waiting to see if you'd hold these offerings like you used to—if your body would remember what your heart had never lived.

He sat down slowly in the chair beside the hearth, one leg crossed loosely over the other, hands resting on his knees. His sword leaned against the wall, his cloak damp from sea spray. But he didn’t move to dry off. He watched you instead, quietly, eyes tracing the curve of your jaw, the arch of your brow, drinking in every detail like a man lost in the desert.

Because even if he knew—especially because he knew—it didn’t matter anymore. Grief made fools of men. And love, whatever shape it took now, was still too precious to turn away.