… The white tulips lying on her door matt almost kill her. She knows what they mean. She knows whom there from. She knows why. But she can't fit the pieces together. She has all the information but it won't click. Won't settle into the back of her mind, instead it rages like a hurricane in the space just behind the skin of her forehead. Burning away like a forest fire until there is nothing left to burn but the flower. So she steps over it and pretends it doesn't exist. And she doesn't stop pretending until the next day when she sees it again. But again she steps over it. Ignoring it, in the dire hope that will lay her mind to rest.

… When she returns there are two. One old and one fresh. Again she ignores them. But she knows what they mean.

… When she sees the third tulip she feels like throwing up. She stares at it, hoping that if she stares long enough she'll wake up and it will all be over.

… She lays awake that night. Praying the floor won't fall through again. Praying that the ground won't slip out from under her, sending her into a spiraling world of indecision. She goes to the front door and she counts the tulips. Fifteen. Fifteen tulips for fifteen days.

… It is twenty-seven tulips later when he comes searching. But he doesn't find what he is looking for. Behind the eyes of a girl he once knew so well lays a stranger. He counts her freckles, scattered like dark stars along a porcelain sky and he finds himself connecting constellations. She closes the door and walks away leaving him in a dark and starless night with no way home and no map to follow.

… She finds herself lost in a sea of unknown faces, forcing smiles and feigning sincerity. All thoughts of quick escapes and backdoors vanished when her eyes met his. Across the room she witnessed him walk towards her, long confident strides. The tulips were banished from the forefront of her mind and were all but burned by the green of his eyes. And she showed him her apartment. And he didn't leave till morning. She felt wanted.

… They went for coffee and picnics and he took her to a club and she found his company positively enchanting. Every words that left his mouth was like a symphony of eloquence and beauty. She founds her-self falling. She didn't care.

… He didn't need to see her fall for someone else to know that she had. Inside he was slowly dying.

… He never stopped leaving tulips. He never grew tried of seeing her pictures on his wall. He never grew tired hearing about her. She was everything.

… Slowly the tulips and what they meant became less and less important. There meaning was forgotten, swept away in a rising tide of new passions.

… In his head she whispers all her secrets to him. Tells him everything. But he knows she has nothing left to give. Because it has been given to another, someone who has left a permanent scar on her heat that will never be healed. That will never fade. He loves her. And he knows she loves him. But love isn't enough. So he leaves her. In a storm of fury and confusion, in a barrage of harsh words that cut deep into his soul he leaves.

… She knows why he left. And she does nothing.

… The tulips haven't stopped. They an ongoing reminder of her devotion to someone she cannot love.

… He comes searching again. Only to find the eyes of a girl he once knew. The eyes of a shattered girl that have such a likeness to his own.

… They are alone in her room, clean slates and all scares bared. Sasuke and Sakura. Together.