Paper Skies

✿ Prologue ✿

When they were young, she had confided in him that her favorite time of the day was when he would 'spirit her away,' whisk her from her home life and her smothering family situations. She adored the times he'd lead her by the hand, guiding her to a place where time would stop, if only for a few hours. She loved the hidden places, the enchanted spaces, the secret bases where the Hiiragi name had no meaning- indeed, where nothing had any meaning, save for the warm hand that curled around his own, the radiant eyes that flickered with gentle, quiet resolve and strength, and that bright grin that beckoned him closer, like a flower bud bending up towards the sun.

In these times, in their little hide-aways, where nothing mattered but those simple, little things- it was only here that they could talk for hours without interruption, laughing among themselves, forgetting the circumstances that prohibited their relationship. Here, it was just the two of them, with no one to witness their forbidden interactions save for the summer sun that scraped along the pastel skies, and rather than scorch the two scornfully, it smiled upon them warmly and favorably, and kept its silence.

She adored that summer sun, that quiet observer, the keeper of their secret affairs. She would throw her hands out to those pastel skies, as if to embrace the sun or thread the clouds between her fingers. She'd look over towards him and laugh exuberantly, invite him to join her, but instead of reaching for the sun, he would reach for her; rather than try to catch the clouds, he'd weave his fingers in her silken hair and pull her close.

That was the inherent difference between the two. She had always been a dreamer; she aspired to touch the intangible, to palm the abstract and unobtainable. He had always been a more pragmatic individual; yes, he wondered, he dreamed, he fantasized just as much as she did, if not more. Ultimately, though, he faced reality, and was content and satisfied with what he could actually hold in his arms now. Her envisioned world, her fabricated universe was something impossible to hold, but his was something corporeal, with ashen hair and amber eyes, and that was all there was to it.

And it was his lack of imagination that she found so bewildering, so frustrating, and it was her dissatisfaction that he just couldn't comprehend. She couldn't understand how he couldn't have wanted more than this, and he couldn't fathom how this wasn't enough for her.

But those things didn't matter in the timeless hours where they hid away from the world. She'd reach for the sky, and he'd reach for her, and there was no argument between the two on the matter; that could always wait until later, because here, now, those things just didn't matter.

Nothing mattered save for each other, and the time they could spend together before the two were caught- and, inevitably, they were always caught. Unwelcome invaders would raid their secret bases, and the place would lose its magic- they could always return later, but it would never be the same, and they'd never find that peace there again.

But those peaceful times had always been her favorite, so he time and again, he would set off to find them a new place unknown to the rest of the world, a new location with that decadent enchantment she craved so much.

And, when he finally found it, he'd come for her a few days later, slipping against her side quietly, wordlessly taking her hand in his, and she'd turn to him with breathless expectation- and, bewitched by his lucrative grin, she allowed him to spirit her away all over again.