[open] Time it is past and I roam free

[lumenrelegandus]

Who: lumenrelegandus and anyone
When: Early in the week
Where: The dojo, the streets, the path toward the Ruins and/or Hunting Grounds.
Format: Prose
What: As if any loss weren't bad on its own, sometimes it opens up past ones.
Warnings: I'm being bad for posting a new log without doing any tags for ongoing threads! I have company for a few days and am semi-

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[couragetodare]

Technically, you can't grieve over someone who isn't dead. Technically, he isn't grieving at all. Sakura isn't here, she left behind two new kittens, one empty bed, a ring that Naruto was still working up the courage to give her, but she's somewhere, even if she is not here. In the meantime he can fill the hole in his chest by looking for her, every waking moment.

She isn't dead. It's not optimism, Naruto knows Anatole as well as anyone and better than some, his gut tells him she isn't dead and he trusts it. If she isn't dead, then she must have gone home. He'll cling to that. Anatole has taken everything else, mother, father, lover, best friend, teacher and every time it does, Naruto picks himself back up, shakes the dirt off, and remembers to breathe. He moves forward.

Because the only alternative is to stop and if there is something inside him screaming now, well, Anatole has taught him how to mute that sound better than anything else ever could.

He's checking in on the dojo (what if she comes back and he's out? She could. It could happen.) when he encounters the man. More a stranger than not. When Sakura died, Naruto retreated, he's been on retreat since then. He stopped venturing past those he knew, months ago.

Still, he has a name to go with the face, from the Forge network. Remus Lupin.

"She's not here."

The man isn't here to talk to Naruto and he knows it.

[lumenrelegandus]

Where would I begin

Lupin looks up. He should feel guilty, maybe, but doesn't. This isn't Sakura's office/room any more. He'd come back here, just to sit in the space, and make her absence real to him, so that he could come back to work tomorrow and have it accepted.

Naruto's face and voice tell nothing -- a fact that speaks volumes itself. "If there's one thing an old man can recognise, it's a young man in love". If there's one thing a widower can recognise -

The knowledge is useless. It only gives Lupin the foresight of what not to say, and how little effect he could have anyway.

Useless or not, his acute understanding not just of Sakura's loss but the total devastation it leaves behind is all there for Naruto in: "I know."

Lupin stands creakily, without moving toward the other man. "Are you Naruto?"

so sorry for the horrible delay here. ;;

[couragetodare]

This man understands. The realisation is brief but sweeping, and for someone like Naruto who has always trusted his heart and his gut, it is not questioned. It gives him pause all the same, the whisper of a why echoing in the back of his mind.

Why does this man understand? What happened to him?

He doesn't voice those questions, even if they sit at the top of his throat for a few protracted moments. Instead he offers Lupin a nod. "Uzumaki Naruto." And a beat. "You're Remus Lupin."

It isn't a question as such, and in the moment after it Naruto steps closer to the man (a stranger, everyone is a stranger here now) and offers a handshake. This man (this stranger) knew Sakura. Sakura knew him and she respected him and Naruto isn't so buried in grief and denial that he will not tender a greeting.

"You don't need to stand..." Because there's something in this person that feels tired, to Naruto.

No worries! Me too!!!

[lumenrelegandus]

Grasping and releasing Naruto's hand, Lupin takes his word and lowers himself back into his sea. Then holds out a hand toward the vacant opposite one. "Then would you like to sit?"