I didn't prepare myself. I showed up in the same baggy jeans and black sweater I'd worn before, my hair still salty from the ocean, refusing to let my brain wander off to a place where it would start planning what to say or do.

When I came into the office, there was no one there but Izuna. As I came into the doorway, I stopped dead.

Izuna jerked as I came in, looking up.

We were locked in a trance, just staring. It wasn't only the fact that we hadn't seen each other for a week, since the war was over, but also for the fact that Izuna had chopped his hair off.

"Izuna?"

"You don't like it?" he asked, and there was a shyness to his voice, an innocence, a plea that I would like him and take him just as he was. His hair reached his ears still, forming a little wave where it curled in his neck, a thick, choppy fringe covering his forehead. It was chopped roughly, as if someone had done it using the kitchen scissors. It looked incredibly stylish on him.

"It looks fantastic", I said and smiled.

"Sebastian did it", he said, and just like that, my heart plummeted. Sebastian was the omega who looked like Henry and had become the omega leader. "We got drunk and he chopped it off with the kitchen scissors."

I didn't say anything. Lana was fifteen minutes late and I knew she did it on purpose so that me and Izuna could talk, the motherfucker. But suddenly, I didn't want to be here anymore. The image of a drunk Izuna and Sebastian together made me want to die. But Izuna kept looking at me defiantly, as if daring me to say anything. I didn't. I quietly came in, sitting down, braiding my fingers together and putting my hands in front of me on the table. I could feel Izuna's eyes on me as he sat in his chair, his black cardigan hanging off one shoulder, showing off a glittery collarbone.

"What?" Izuna asked suspiciously.

"What?"

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You're beautiful." Whatever Izuna had expected, it wasn't this honestly. "You're so beautiful it hurts me. I've been in the house every day and every night waiting for you to come home, but you never did." To my great disdain, tears were streaming down my face. "I tried not imagining where you were staying instead but it was hard. I did and it hurt so much. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I had to force myself to not get up and go out, looking for you in the middle of the night, banging on every damn door until I found the one that contained you. I dreamed about holding you but then you disappeared in my dream. When I woke up I was relieved it was just a dream, until I remembered reality is much, much worse. I miss my mother. I miss my horse like crazy. But you made all of that bearable. Izuna, I won't apologise for what I did because I did what had to be done. In that moment, it was the best solution I saw. But I wish I had asked you to leave, made it alone. I selfishly needed you close-by because I was so destroyed due to all the killings I'd made. For that, I am sorry. Please, forgive me."

Izuna just stared, mouth agape. He was just about to speak when Lana showed up.

"Sorry I'm late. There was a... Umm turtle. Yes. There was a turtle in the garden." She provided no explanation as to why that would've caused her to be late. "We need to plan the funerals."

I stood a safe distance from Izuna, behind him, watching his short hair blow in the wind, contrasted against the azure blue ocean. The sand was warm around my feet, hugging them into a comfort Izuna no longer provided.

Izuna watched the sand where his parents and brother lay buried, metres below. He hugged the urn close to him. I could see his shoulders rise and fall as he took a deep breath before he walked to the shoreline and out in the water until it reached his bare ankles, and opened the urn.

Don't cry, I told myself. Don't you dare fucking cry. You've done enough of that.

In the end, we'd decided for simple funerals for all four, with only the two of us, no one else attending and few others knowing of the place, no gravestones or decorations marking the location. Izuna wanted his family to be able to look out on the world, to see over the sea back home because he couldn't afford to pay for the transportation of the bodies, and refuses to let me or anyone else help.

"Also, I don't want to", he's explained to Lana. "It wouldn't be appropriate, transporting their dead bodies. They've been through so much. Especially Henry. He's been so manhandled."

Tell me about it.

Memory after memory flashed before my eyes as I stood and watched Izuna walk out into the sea that connected this shore with every other home in the entire world. Henry's eyes as I penetrated him. The sounds he made as he made love to Izuna. There was no doubt in my mind that that threesome wasn't about fucking; it was about falling in love. But maybe that was just my thinking now when everything was deleted, when everything had been taken from us and left us empty-handed. What would've happened if everything just went on as normal from then? Would we forget about it? Would we become a trinity of love? Would me and Izuna become a couple, Henry joining us from time to time? Would there be jealousy? In that case, who would be jealous of who? But neither of that mattered because everything had happened the way they already had, with Henry being kidnapped and tortured and killed.

I realised I couldn't breathe as Izuna opened the urn and I just wanted to scream, to tell him no, don't do it, let's keep him even if I knew he wasn't ours to keep and also, there was nothing left of him but dust. His ashes travelled in the wind before it landed in the ocean, where the water would enable him to travel the world forever.

"When we die", Izuna said, his voice surprisingly steady, carrying over the water to the sand where I stood like it was a locomotive. "When we die, Tobirama, let's get cremated and spread in the ocean as well. So we can travel the world. So we can travel the world with him."

The wind was pleasant on my cheeks, causing a cooling sensation where it hit the skin.

Izuna turned around, and I could see tears steaming down his face. "Tobirama, hold me!" he wailed.

I didn't even hesitate for a thousandth of a second.

I ran out into the water and finally, finally put my arms around him.

In the azure blue ocean that contained our lover, always travelling, Izuna sunk down to his knees and scream-cried in my arms until his tears had formed a little ocean of their own that mixed with the sea water and then travelled world with Henry ,until we would die and take over as his travel company instead of our tears.