Just words rearranged on a page. Written before the finale.

Quiet Moments

It's the quiet moments that are the worst. It's when the science slips into a lulling silence, carving out a rare intermission from the impending drama that has come to shape your life. This is when it hurts more than you could ever have prepared for. You'd scold yourself for letting yourself fall so hard but every time you try the weakness for the sweet smell of her perfume gently persuades you that it was totally worth it.

You never intended for this to happen. Perhaps it's a cliché, one used and abused time and time again, but never before has it been so aptly used than now. You didn't expect to sink like a stone so easily and so quickly into her warmth, her trust or her love. You don't know what you expected really. Unlike your science, the answers are more obscure, burnt at their edges from the heat of her kisses.

It was automatic the way your skin would blister with excitement to her every touch. Some were light, ghosting their nervousness over you, while others anchored firmly to you in elation. The small tremors that tickled against you would betray her uncertainty and inexperience, staining your skin forever with her endearing shyness. Yet they were still all her, Delphine, and you miss the way her touches could love you back to life.

It makes it all the more difficult to shift the stones back into place and build the walls of your fortress again, the very walls that she tore down with a simple whisper of your name. You have no idea how to rebuild, having never allowed anyone to get as close as she did, so hastily. Felix tells you to move on, find another girl, a quick fix. Sarah reminds you abruptly that she told you to be careful.

It's impossible though. There's no moving on when you find one of Delphine's scarves hidden in between your own, her favourite fragrance clinging mercilessly from its threads, which has rapidly become your own favourite. You would only search and compare the differences between another girl and Delphine. In the end it would only hurt more because she simply wouldn't be her. There isn't a quick fix. This isn't just a paper cut where a band aid can hide away the pain. As for being careful, well, you suppose that she was the lesson you had to learn.

You almost think it would be easier if you regretted it all. At least then you'd find some comfort in anger. But you don't and you can't. You'd do it all again if you could, everything from the very first enchanteé. You'd swallow the poison of her lies and let it bleed into your veins once more just to feel her weighty breath falter next to your ear in whispers of French.

Coldness is trapped in the sheets of your bed and no matter how much you toss and turn it never warms the same as when she would share the space. It seems bigger somehow, making you feel incredibly lost. You've refused to wash the pillow slips. It's unhealthy you know, but you can't bring yourself to rid them of her perfume. It's the only thing that helps settle you to sleep these nights.

It takes more than you have to forget about kinder, gentler moments in this bed. If you concentrate carefully enough you can still hear the faint echoes of revelations and assurances sighing in the darkness. Even when your eyes finally slide shut, broken and exhausted, you dream of nothing but her. Whether it's the calmness of her sleeping figure and the way her head claims your chest as her pillow or the impassioned patterns you trace along her body as you quietly draw out the euphoria from her. They all start and end with her.

For a short time you're allowed to escape back to her, reliving and relearning every curve, every freckle. With ease you slip back into her hold, relishing the warmth that she projects around you. You can kiss away her fear as well as your own. It's just the two of you. No DYAD, no clones, no science, just you and her. It feels like coming home. It's another cliché but this is what she's done to you.

You remember the way that she could melt you down to your core with her laughter, her silly nicknames and her full smile, moulding what was left around her little finger. All she needed to do was tilt her head in that playful, beckoning way that only she knew how and you'd be ready to answer her every whim with a kiss or maybe three. It worked well between you both. It was a simple balance of trust and love that aligned you both to the same want and need for each other.

Now it's just about work. Even then your meetings become briefer, colder and more clinical. You suppose it's her coping mechanism, the real Delphine and not the pretence she thought she was tricking you with when you first met. She's stiffer in her posture, her jaw tighter for lack of the smiles and laughter that you once saw lighten her face all day, every day.

You don't speak about what you had together. It's only ever about DYAD, your sisters and your illness. It's somewhat of a reluctant truce that hangs from the bottom of a delicate thread, forever threatening to break at any given moment. You wait for her eyes to dance a little brighter when she mentions your health. You think you see it. It's fleeting and if you weren't already attuned to her reactions you would have missed it altogether.

It's painful to see her act this way, so methodical and distant. It makes you wonder if it's just as hard for her to keep it up. You want to ask if you fill her dreams at night in the same way she does yours. Do you stay with her until she awakes to the reality that you're not really there? It's probably not right for you to know the answer, but then again curiosity has always been the evil sitting on your shoulder.

There would have been a time where she would have flushed profoundly, shying away from your appreciating gaze, while enquiring as to what you're thinking about. It crumbles, just as you have when you see the rigidness return to her shoulders with a curt query tightening her lips if you have anything else to tell her.

Plenty, like how much you miss her, how much you want to undo what has been said and done. But most of all you want to tell her that you love her. You want to repeat it until you hear her breathe the French translation back to you. It may be short lived but she sheds her distant, cold persona, to briefly let you see the woman she used to be. Only the soft touch of her knuckles against your cheek lets you know that you don't need to say it. She already knows. Again it's the quiet moments that are the worst.

She's looking at you like she used to do. Her eyes full of want, love, you. Down go your walls again, falling just as hard as you did the first time around. Yet her kiss isn't as tentative as the first time. It's confident, sure and absolute. It's almost as if this is the last one. You understand of course, more than you care to. It's the only reason why you pull away from her. This is just how it has to be. She needs to love DYAD more than you to keep you safe.

So you replace I love you with goodbye instead. It scorches through every memory that you made together, exchanging tears for the smiles you used to share. You didn't think you had any more heart left to bruise until she repeats your word in her native language. You can see that it's straining her too to say it, to finalise this. She doesn't let go, her hands still desperate to hold onto you.

You'll take this with you. You'll fall asleep to the image of her delicate face, so full in its love for you. You'll let her kiss play out on repeat until you wake the next morning. Then in the quiet moments of the day you'll remember the way she gently caressed your check, because even though it's the quiet moments that are the worst, they're totally worth it.