Disclaimer: Square owns it. Not me.

Winter Sunshine

He thinks of her sometimes in winter. It's like her, especially on clear days.

The winter sun – harsh, cruelly bright, glaring. Blindingly beautiful. When it hurts to look at it directly, and would burn if he tried to reach out and touch it. But this far away, it burns coldly, provides no warmth to chilled skin. The sunrises and sunsets throw deep honey-coloured light across everywhere he looks, so that he can't go anywhere without being faced with the golden sheen of her hair.

He goes outside in the mornings, and the air is crisp and fresh and cold. Just like her. Speaking would shatter the brittle clarity of the dawn, so he doesn't. Words are too inadequate to put this beauty into a fixed shape. He never used words when they were together.

The faint tang of sweetness that hits him when he walks past banks of alpine heather makes him wish he'd spent more time paying attention to what her scent was really like, because he thinks he remembers, but sometimes, he isn't sure.

On snowy days he likes to climb the Trabian mountain he's lived on since the end of the war. Holds a poetic justice that he thinks she'd like, him living in the place he destroyed. No-one knows the name of the quiet stranger who works alongside them to rebuild their devastated homes, and he prefers to keep it that way. Just before dawn, he stands on the summit to be closer to the sky, because it's always a darker shade of blue that way. When there aren't anymore clouds because the heavens have been snowed clean, he looks up and sees the deep sapphire of her eyes staring back at him with quiet magnificence.

The blank snow is pure, unfettered and immaculately flawless. He knows that the whiteness of the snow really is too pale, but it still reminds him of the porcelain perfection of her satin smooth skin. When no-one else is up here, it's pristine and untouched and virginal. Except for his footprints. The only blemish on an otherwise perfect thing. If that isn't a cosmic metaphor for them, Hyne only knows what is. Even with the flaws he's put there, the radiance of it remains unadulterated.

And it's only here, when he's alone except for the winter, that he lets himself admit to it. To something even his closest friends aren't privy to. To the fact that maybe…maybe his hollow heart did find something that could fill it once. Perhaps there was… He shakes his head to no-one in particular, too proud and stubborn still to concede defeat to what she was. What she did to him. What she made him feel.

And even though the words never quite make it past his lips, he knows it's why he likes winter. It's like her.