A/N:Requested by reddeathrising on Tumblr.

Petrichor - The smell of dry rain on the ground.

It rained not long ago. He knows it, senses it. There is that fragrance in the air, something that he has never truly been able to define though it stirs old memories, takes him back forty years and more.

He sees it all again, just the same, though he only returned to that town twice after he left. The way the mist lay light on the land at night, the stars twinkling through the cold. The burst of rain, a sun shower, that barely lasted a handful of minutes yet soaked the fields for miles before drying again, dried pollen drifting through the air. The sun's golden reflection off the grass. The soft rustle of the leaves. It comes back to him now, all of it, stirs an ache in his heart to be back there.

It is the first time in years that he has wanted to return, that he has felt as if he might, though he has not the strength for it now.

If he had been normal, had never had to leave, he might still be there. A mason, an architect, a farmer, a musician, whatever. Still there amongst them, the people that ought to have been his, welcome, and oblivious to all of this. He might have a wife, and children, grandchildren probably now, would attend Mass every Sunday and be part of the choir or direct the choir, even. He would just be an ordinary man, living an ordinary life, and it would be wonderful. He would sit on his porch with his wife beside him, and she would rest her hand gently on his knee, and smile at him, after thirty years still as beautiful as in her youth, and he would whittle little figurines for her, and the children, and the grandchildren, and they would all exist in easy contentment, her lips soft against his in the quiet of the night, her arms his home. He would grow old there, distinguished and respected (and loved.)

But no. He shakes his head as if that might clear it though the scent of the old rain brings it back. No. There is nobody for him there. They never wanted him, and he has long-since learned to not let himself want them. Wishing has never done him any good, only brought him more pain, more grief. He cannot be buried in the ground that holds his mother, and father, and siblings, and ancestors. He cannot walk those old roads, sit in that old church, feel that old clay between his fingers. There is only this for him now, the rain through the Paris streets and the damp of a lake that buries itself in his bones, and a quiet, private death some night in his coffin, heart and mind freed at last, relieved for it to be over. His heart will simply stutter a beat and stop, the breath leave his lungs and he will be unaware of it, will feel no pain, and there will be no one to weep over him, and perhaps that is right.

How he longs to just rest, his eyes heavy, and bones leaden. To rest, and dream, forever.

He has tried to keep it from his nature, growing melancholy over such things, but he cannot help it, not tonight. He is so tired, so hollow, and there is nothing for him here either, but a girl he has sent away, and if he could close his eyes, the scent of that dry rain wrapping him in its embrace, and never open them again, it would almost be a blessing.