lunesque | (no subject)

Thanks to

scheherezhad for the betas.

Vignette 1: Letting Go

She broke into your life in a vivid slash of color, and there are times you look down at your hands, wondering how you’re going to get her stain off your skin.

You know there was a time when she was something less than this, less than now, and as she flutters from boy to boy you wonder when on earth she'd grown a personality. The inherent cruelty in the thought makes you squirm in discomfort, and now it is you who stares at the ground in an attempt to avoid her eyes.

You hear jokes in the Common Room, how your new awkwardness is an opening awareness of everything you could have had with her, and you’re too tired to forestall the rumors.

The truth is you don’t know her anymore. She’s become something more (something less?) than she was, and you want to take her by the shoulders and tell her that it’s okay to dream, it’s okay to want someone to save you from how much life hurts. That no one should have to be the hero all the time.

But you don’t.

Instead, you trail up the stairs to your bed, take off your glasses, and stare up at the ceiling until it blurs together stone-and-moonlight-gray. Everything is shadows and imagination, and for once, you can pretend an innocence you don’t have.

You think about her. You remember a time when she whirled around, the mysteries of life like leaves falling from the trees and her eyes were closed. But she’s a hero now. Her eyes are wide open, and soon, she will learn what you already know.

Sometimes, it’s better to be blind.