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She was beautiful. That much he could admit to himself after all they'd been through, after an entire life of knowing her. Especially after having secretly worshiped her since she was but a child, a street urchin, all knobbly knees and too big eyes.
She was small, yes, in every way. Barely a woman, with a body of subtle curves and thin limbs. But as he admired her from afar, giving into this rarely enjoyed guilty pleasure, he only saw the way her brow slightly furrowed with concentration, the proud and happy glint in her dark blue eyes and the smile on her face.
The night was reaching its end, and she was training with Sode no Shirayuki, swinging her deceptively delicate-looking blade around herself with long and well-executed moves. The sound of a rare giggle reached his ears as he saw the seemingly never-ending white ribbon softly graze her cheek in a way that made his fingers ache with longing - it had been so long since he last felt the softness of her skin. It left a frozen and shimmering trail of snow dust in its wake, like small glittering stars, iridescent in the light of the dying moon.
For as loud and boisterous as she was everyday, effortlessly delivering kicks and quips at every turn of a conversation, she was silent and dignified when she fought, graceful and precise ; the sounds of her blade, the only ones in an otherwise silent reality, became a melody, arpeggios of a swan's requiem for defeated ennemies.
He watched, mesmerized, as she swirled, swirled like the snow she and her soul slayer created in their dancing. The white and silent curtain surrounded her, its cold and protective embrace shielding her from the outside world, from the early morning's light and the noises of war...
Shielding her from him.
Forever out of his reach, she kept turning, smiling, playing among the millions of snowdrops that were so much like her in his eyes: fascinating, ephemeral and likely to vanish with a mere touch of his rough and blood-stained fingers...
He must have made a noise, or maybe she'd become so attuned to his reiatsu over the years that she'd known of his presence all along, because she suddenly stopped, cheeks flushed with exertion and eyes glowing. She lowered her sword, and for a short moment that could have lasted eons she looked at him, before her lips stretched in a tender smile.
He barely had the time to blush and respond in kind before a strong gust of cold wind rushed through the air and headed straight to her, blowing her hair away from her face and surrounding her with a cloud of glistening beads of ice.
Sode no Shirayuki must have been getting impatient.
The brunette only shrugged apologetically and laughed, before waving and returning to her training.
As he kept on watching, finally deciding against leaving his observation post on top of a rock a little further down the training ground, he smiled.
Forever had never seemed shorter than it did at that moment.
The End