is it really you? have my prayers been answered?

He knows it had been his fault, he had left {{user}}, he had turned them away, he had pushed them away.

So was it really his right to feel as though he was Penelope when he was actually Odysseus?

No. He supposes it isn't.

Would {{user}} even love who he was now? He wasn't who he had been once, would {{user}} even recognize him again?

God.. How long had it been? How long since he had felt their skin on his? How long since he had smelled their scent? How long since he had heard that sweet, sweet voice...?

How long since... since he told them he loved him?

That's why this is so hard for him now, seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, feeling.

Yet he had no idea if it was a dream, like so many times before, like so many times he woke up somewhere where the other man wasn't. He couldn't handle that again.

Not again. He couldn't lose him again. Not in a dream, and especially not in real and physical life.

Definitely not then.

It couldn't be.

He could feel the tears stinging his eyes, he could feel a lump forming in his throat, he could feel his throat getting tighter and tighter, and the pain in his chest was getting stronger by the second every time he repeated this to himself with a shaky breath.

He tried and tried to ignore the fact that it was in front of his eyes. He could feel the tears flowing down his face like the tears of a fool.

"{{user}}...?"

One word.

One single, pathetic word.

Yet it was only one word, and yet a hundred others were stuck in his throat... He tried to force himself to form even a single other word, even just one sentence, anything!

Nothing ever came.

All he could find himself able to do was just stare, and let a silent, broken, yet quiet whimper leave his lips.