Chapter Text
the general doesn’t give way for informalities, her permanent frown speaks before her mouth even opens. yet, those who work within the seat of divine foresight are always invited gently. to chatter on break, and to eat the fruit off her bowl.
it’s been almost two-hundred years since her advisor had left, yet sara refills the bowl every month with apples and oranges. sara eats both in tandem silence. one after another, until she’s full for the next stack of papers.
surely, the general will be mindful of how badly she peels her oranges, with the inside of her fingers stained with bits of the peel, with her desk slightly muddled with orange juice ( is it called orange juice? who knows. )
sara prefers it that way, because she gets to find an excuse to spend another minute cleaning her hands and desk of her meal.
sara takes another orange, her thumb digs into where the stem would be, and peels back, it’s an utter mess, sara knows it, but she accepts it while she continues. the peel is easily discarded but not the insides that dug into sara’s fingers.
“what a mess, sara.”
she could hear that a kilometer away. or was he too far away now? in the riddance of the universe, blanketed by asteroids and stars — (the ones they wished they could touch.)
sara sighs. her hand comes up to another orange, doing exactly the same; peeling, discarding, and setting on the other end of her desk. she awaits the complaint that’s soon to come, but whispered gratitude.
sara waits for the missing chair to be spun, sat on and pushed further into the desk, waiting for the ungodly squeak it has. ( sara never got the chance to fix it, really. )
sara waits for her documents to be read together, and the pen in the drawer of her desk to be opened, grabbing a pen — underneath it their exchange diary for when they were separated.
sara sets the orange on her right, before she goes over the documents, before looking back to her right, as if horrified.
she had done all of this; yet who awaited her was gone.