Endlessly

Dinner had progressed as anyone could have guessed. Ville remained largely silent the entire time and had been admonished several times by his mother for shaking his leg anxiously and causing the table to shake. This had earned more than one snicker from his brother and father, much to his dismay. His family was enjoying the nervousness he was currently displaying and he found he had partial regret for having shown up tonight at all.

The only thing that saved the evening for him was the girl sitting across the table from him and laughing at something Jesse had said. Emilia still seemed to be just a figment of his imagination, and the last hour had done little to alleviate that.

The last time he'd seen her, she'd carried her grief around her like a dark cloud. The woman before him now seemed to be like the girl he'd once known. Still beautiful but now she laughed more easily and her smiles seemed more frequent. Her happy demeanor seemed less like the act she would put on and more like part of her being. Everything he'd wished for her seemed to have come true. She had endured, as he'd known she would, and come out stronger in the end.

As though she'd guessed he was thinking about her while he pushed his dessert around his plate, she cleared her throat and addressed him for the first time during the entire meal.

"How are Linde and Mige doing?"

He didn't react at first, still lost in his thoughts. It was only when he noticed the expectant silence did he realize he was being spoken to. He looked around the table at the four faces waiting patiently for him to answer. Jesse chuckled under him breath, earning a kick from his father. Anita gave a warning look to her son, she had been clearly annoyed with her son's silence for the entire meal.

Ville straightened after the look his mother gave and cleared his throat. "Good, they're doing good. Uh, Linde is having a baby soon and Mige is...Mige."

"Quite the medical marvel for Linde to be having a baby." She smirked at her own terrible joke and Ville resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her familiar sarcasm.

"We're quite impressed, we had no idea he was capable of it." She laughed at his response though Anita was still giving him a harsh look.

"His girlfriend, Manna, will be having their baby sometime in March," he clarified which seemed to settle his mother's ire.

"That's good, I'm happy for him. Are they home as well?"

"Yeah we'll all be home for a while," he said with a nod.

"Good, I'd like to see them before I leave."

His heart sank a little and Anita nearly got whiplash from how quickly she snapped her focus to Emilia who was now casually sipping on her glass of water.

"You're going back to Germany?" Anita asked, trying to keep the strangled sound from her voice.

Emilia nodded. "Once the holidays are over and only for a few weeks. My grandmother left me the house in Berlin when she passed so I need to get things settled over there before I get too overwhelmed with finding a place here."

Both Ville and Anita simultaneously released the breaths they'd been holding. Anita smiled and pushed away from the table as she started gathering the empty dishes.

"Glad to hear you'll be staying, dear. Ville, help me with these dishes will you?"

Ville very nearly groaned out loud but very obviously knew better than to do that to his mother. He rose from his seat and gathered several empty plates before following after Anita into the kitchen. She had already set her stack of dishes down and had begun rinsing them off in the sink. Ville gently set his own stack down on the counter and waited for his mother to weigh in on his behavior during dinner.

"You could have been a little less antisocial," she clucked disapprovingly, not once looking up from her task.

"I wasn't trying to be, you sprung a ghost on me and expected me to act like you hadn't," he replied without trying to hide the tone of annoyance he'd adopted.

"Well, I'm sorry for trying to surprise you with your old friend."

"You know that's not what I meant," Ville sighed and crossed his arms. "But you knew very well what this would do to me."

"I'd hoped you would have snapped out of it before I brought dessert out."

"Lofty goals, Mum."

Anita gave him a small warning glare which was dissolved with a smile. She could never remain annoyed with her sons, no matter how much and how often they vexed her. "Please, go in there and try to salvage the evening. This was for the two of you more than the rest of us, and we've all had our time with her."

Ville nodded and pursed his lips. "What did you hope that she and I would gain from this evening?"

Anita shrugged and turned the water off. "Ville, I know what her leaving did to you. I know what her decision to stay gone did to you both. I don't expect that you'll pick up where you left off, and yes I know exactly where that was," she gave him a knowing look which caused Ville to immediately turn red. "I want you both to be happy and I think that reconnecting will be good for both of you. Maybe you'll come back down to earth and visit Helsinki a little more often with Emilia around."

Rubbing the back of his neck, Ville absorbed all that his mother had said and nodded. He appreciated his mother's actions more than she could ever know or understand. She gave him an encouraging smile and shooed him out the door.

Upon entering the dining room, Kari and Jesse both rose as though they'd been waiting for exactly this moment. Emilia looked at the two of them, obviously noticing the same thing that Ville had, and gave them a strange look.

"Jesse, uh, will you help me with that thing upstairs?" Kari asked.

"Sure thing."

With a smirk, Ville interjected. "Do you need any help?"

"No!" They chimed together, revealing the very obvious plan they'd made to dismiss themselves at their earliest opportunity.

Ville and Emilia watched the two of them scurry away and finally Emilia chuckled. Shaking her head, she adjusted the beanie on her head and sighed.

"It seems that they've become even less subtle in the last few years," she said to Ville, standing up herself.

"I didn't think it was possible," Ville answered, shoving his hands in his pockets to keep from fidgeting. He was all nerves, though he tried desperately to play it cool. Looking at Emilia, she seemed the very picture of ease. Unknown to him, however, there was quite a flurry brewing within her as well.

She'd known that her reunion with Ville would be awkward at best. So many thing that needed to be addressed hung heavily in the air between them. She'd save those particular conversations for a time when they were away from the prying ears of his family. As much as she loved and trusted them, she was still keenly aware of Jesse's particular talent for eavesdropping.

She looked at Ville now and took him in, realizing that having him standing before her now was almost a sensory overload. He'd changed so much over the years which had been expected, of course. He was now covered in tattoos and perhaps a little thinner than she'd remembered, which hardly seemed humanly possible. His eyes though, she noticed, remained the same endless pools of green.

"Want to go to the garage?"

She blinked quickly, realizing she'd been staring at him and gave a quick smile. "Yeah, I'd like that."

Ville nodded and produced a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket before ushering her ahead. She frowned, noting that he'd held on to that particular habit over the years.

The garage had remained a time capsule with everything almost exactly how she remembered it, even the same smells lingered in the air. It was as though just the night before they'd had pizzas and beers and spent the entire night listening to music. She did notice however that the couch had been replaced with a new one, if that word could even be used to describe it judging by the obvious wear on it, and she looked to Ville for an explanation.

"Mige decided that he was going to practice stage dives one night," Ville said in response to her unspoken question. "Needless to say, he hasn't attempted any more."

"What a shame I missed it," she chuckled as she took a seat on the couch. Ville went to the mini fridge in the corner and produced a few beers that Kari kept hidden away from Anita. Emilia took the beverage and popped the top off the bottle.

"It's a shame you missed a lot of things."

He hadn't meant to allow his thoughts to escape his lips. She didn't meet his gaze but gave a short nod. Sighing, Ville sat at the opposite end of the couch and opened his own drink, taking a long swig of it. He was grateful for something to take the edge off his nerves and hopefully blunt his apparently sharp tongue. Emilia took a small sip of her own drink and set it down on the table.

"I came back, you know."

Ville's eyes locked on hers as she spoke and he gave her a questioning look. Gathering her knees to her chest, she took a deep breath, not quite ready to open this particular box she'd compartmentalized.

"A few years later than I'd hoped, but I did come home for the holidays. You guys were already gone though."

Ville pursed his lips. "I'd given up hope by then that you'd ever come home."

"I figured as much when you guys stopped talking to me," she replied as she raised her drink to her lips.

"Mige and Linde didn't want to stop communicating with you, for the record. I made them."

She gave him a harsh look. "Why?"

Ville sighed. "Em, I'm just glad to have you here. Let's not dredge these things up tonight."

"Just answer the question, please. Then we can drop it, for now."

She watched as he put his drink on the table and turned to face her. She noticed him fumbling with his hands as he tried to put his thoughts into a cohesive sentence.

"I missed you too much. You told me you loved me and then showed no signs of coming back home to me. It was childish, I know, but I needed to cut you out and so I asked for them to do the same."

A lump had formed in his threat as he recalled the day he realized she would never come back to Helsinki. She'd mentioned during their weekly phone call something about looking into a university in the area that she'd like to attend and when he'd mentioned a school in Finland, she had immediately changed the subject. Even when he tried to redirect the conversation back to that topic, she'd skirted it deftly. When he'd hung up, he knew it needed to be the last time they'd speak, in order to protect his heart from the damage she was unwittingly doing to it. His friends has been reluctant to do the same but they'd ultimately given in to his wishes.

He looked at her now as she bit down on her lip and avoided his gaze, knowing her own memories had likely trailed down a path similar to his own. Her eyes watered for a brief second before she blinked the tears quickly away.

"I'm sorry, for what it's worth," she told him quietly. "I didn't want to hurt you."

Ville set his drink down and made a move to scoot closer to her. She watched him and unfolded herself from the protective position she'd put herself in. He held his hand out to her and she took it within her own. He gave a gentle squeeze and she answered with a small smile.

"We don't need to talk about these things now, there will be plenty of time for that later," he told her with a note of finality. Enough had been marred by hurt feelings, this night didn't need to be one of them.

"There will be," she agreed and relinquished her hold on his hand.

For the next few hours, they both allowed the flow of conversation to go toward easier topics. She'd known of course about the band and now the extent of their success. She'd been thrilled to learn that they were in the middle of an album and demanded to own the first copy upon its release, a demand which Ville would easily give in to.

Emilia told him the barest details of her life in Berlin, not knowing how sensitive the subject was to him. She told him of her schooling, where she'd ultimately gotten a degree in Fine Art. Something she had no idea what to do with at this point in her life. She told him also of her sister and her nephew, Osku, whose existence Ville had already guessed at considering the last time he'd encountered Essi.

Despite the earlier awkwardness between them, Emilia and Ville had fallen back into familiar habits and mannerisms almost too easily. She looked out the window and then checked her watch. The sun had already retreated for the day and she didn't exactly relish the idea of walking to her sister's place at too late an hour.

"I should go," she said as she got up suddenly. Ville's face had disappointment written all over it but he nodded and got up as well, gathering the empty bottles and throwing them in the recycling.

As she tugged her coat on, she felt a familiar heaviness encompassing her heart. She both was and wasn't ready for this night to be over, knowing that after tonight they'd either need to fix the damage or walk away and she wasn't prepared for either scenario.

"Em? I'm really glad you're home."

She turned to face Ville, now donning his own jacket, and smiled. "Me too."

He smiled back at her and led the way to the door. All of the lights were off in the house and while they both knew Jesse was still awake, it would be a gamble as to whether or not Anita and Kari had gone to bed early.

"Please be sure to thank your mother for me, she really went all out," Emilia said as the pair walked down the driveway.

"You say that like she's not going to show up at your door with a plate of leftovers tomorrow," he chuckled.

She considered this a moment and shrugged, crossing the street. "Fair enough."

They walked together down the street until they at last came to an intersection, wordlessly stopping and both needing to go in separate directions. The wind had picked up a bit, increasing the chill that Emilia could feel down to her bones. Ville rocked restlessly on his heels, seeming to turn something over in his mind. He didn't want to say goodbye, not now that he finally had her back in his world. Now that they could finally start to fix all the pieces of themselves that they'd broken.

"Come with me?"

Emilia straightened her back and hugged her jacket around her body. "Where?"

Ville smirked and held out his hand, not giving her an answer. She eyed it suspiciously, wondering what sort of tricks he had up his sleeve. Looking into his familiar eyes and mischievous smirk, she found herself unable to resist the temptation that accompanied his offer. Slowly, she reached out to take the hand he offered her and his grin grew wider.

"A hint?" She inquired, knowing very well that he'd never reveal his entire plan to her.

"No, I'm sure you'd guess," he replied, keeping hold of her hand as they walked down the street together. She contemplated tugging it away, not sure if it was too soon for them to be displaying this level of familiarity but his warmth on this cold night was a comfort.

"We're going to see the guys, aren't we?"

He groaned loudly. "How do you always know everything?"

"I mean, I only have one reunion left to have and I'm sure you'd be damned if you were to miss the chance to orchestrate it."

He smirked. "You know me too well."