For the next week, I stay at home, walking around in a sort of weird daze--- when I'm not napping. It's as if everything was wrapped up in cotton fluff, but at the same time nothing has ever been sharper, more intense. ...Well, when I'm awake. I'm tired as hell and aching all over, though I'm getting better. But that isn't important.
Even if I don't see him, I can feel Heero in the house, feel him with that weird spider-sense, just as sharp as I could feel a burglar sneaking in during the night or an Ozzie closing in on me in the war. It's a skill I developed early in life and it has never been wrong. And it tells me that he's here again. He's sitting on the windowsill when I water the plants and behind me when I cook and in his office when I watch TV and suddenly, the house is a home again.
Though he hardly speaks.
Since we came back from the cemetery, he hasn't said more than three words. Contrary to popular belief, Heero does talk. His talk is just concise and never without a subject, like I was prone to doing when I was younger. When he talks, he says exactly what he means, hardly a word more or less, but if the subject needs details, then he'll give them. He's not a mute. And that doesn't mean that he only talks about highly serious matters of life and death either. He's totally able to comment on the latest trend in the clothes our neighbor's children are wearing or to tell me why he considers my choice in sock colors hilarious. He talks about just as many subjects as I do; he just chooses his words more carefully.
But recently, he isn't speaking. And I've only seen him twice--- both times in the middle of the night, awakened from one of those nightmares made of loneliness and despair---leaning over me and watching me intently, making sure that I truly was okay. Then he gave me one of his tiny, barely-there smiles and faded from view again. I have the feeling that it's really difficult to him to make himself visible, and I would like to help, but I'm not sure how. I swear, as soon as I get better, I'll run to the bookshops I visited to find my ritual and I'll dig out everything I can.
For now, I'm tired and he's watching over me.
It's good to sleep soundly again.