Reunite Me (Coffee/Cocoa/Roamer)
In Roamers opinion, Coffee had aged very well. It didn’t surprise him one bit that she had survived her husband and still had the vigor to keep his grave clean and neat. Smiling, he watched from a distance as she knelt next to it, tending to the flowers she had planted there. She seemed to frail now, an elderly lady…
"Excuse me!" Ah, he knew that voice!
"Cocoa?" That made the woman who had just bumped into him stop in her tracks and spin around.
"Ooooh, it’s you Uncle R!" She beamed. "I almost didn’t recognise you! How are you doing?"
"Oh, fine. Finally in retirement. Your auntie is doing well, too." She smiled a bit wider for a moment, then it shrunk into a slightly worried expression.
"I heard that about Pa… I mean, I tried to call you when it happened, but nobody let me through…" A shadow passed over his own face as well.
"Ah… yes. I apologise, I… I just realy didn’t feel like dealing with anyone else. I didn’t know they would turn you away, too though."
"Is he buried here, too?"
"Mhm. I was just visiting him when I saw your mother and… considered catching up."
Cocoa followed his own gaze with her eyes, then lowered them.
"You know… she still has that tie and the earring in her jewelry box.", she said with a shy and somewhat sad smile. He didn’t ask how she knew about the significance of both - she had always been a smart child and after spending so much of her childhood around him and Trick, it probably wasn’t hard for her to put two and two together.
"I see…", he quietly replied.
"Well… I gotta go. Uncle T needs a lift, and Tart’s gotta work today so… yeah…" Cocoa patted his shoulder. "Take care, okay?" And with that, she was gone.
Roamers eyes returned to the elderly lady next to the grave.
The response her body made to every move made Coffee acutely aware of her age. Of the tiredness her long life had left behind. And as she wiped her forehead with her arm and dirt crumbled down onto her nose, making her sneeze, of how awfully dirty she was. With a smile she thought that she probably looked like a mole, covered in the dark earth of the grave.
But all of it felt good. She was finally at peace with many things, and three of them were that she was old, tired and dirty.
Then she stood up, and a pair of arms snaked around her waist from behind.
"Those are lovely roses you picked out. One of these blossoms would look beautiful in your hair.", a dark, warm, familiar voice said right next to her ear.
And made her forget completely that she wasn’t 18 years old anymore.
