Okay, so if you have not heard the song I used as the basis for this, you are seriously missing out, it is absolutely beautiful and so amazing, words cannot express how much I love this song, for reals. For anyone interested, it's the first song on David Cook's newest album, which is called Digital Vein and can be found on Spotify. The entire album is simply fantastic, I honestly cannot give it enough praise, you just have to hear it for yourself.
Anyway, as always, I own absolutely nothing. Enjoy!
When Alice left, it felt to Tarrant as if had seen the sun disappear before his very eyes. It was as if it had disappeared above the high tide and fallen down to the ocean line. Now, all he saw was smoke, so much that it felt at times as if he were choking on it. The world felt broken down to him.
He could no longer deny that he had fallen in love with her, and he wondered if she felt the same, wherever she was. He was still waiting for her to come back, and he had resolved to wait forever if that was what it took. He didn't care; Alice was more than worth it to him. She was, in his eyes, absolutely perfect, and he had waited for her once, so he knew that he could damn well do it again. And oh, did he most certainly plan on it. He tried to pass the time by throwing himself into his work, but everywhere he looked, he was reminded of her in some way, and it only proved to make the hours seem longer and more drawn out in her absence.
He had counted the lines on his face many times recently, though for what purpose, if any, even he didn't know. The years of pain and grief and suffering following his clan's destruction seemed to be screaming louder now than ever before, and it was as if the trees had all started to fall down. The brightest lights in his life were starting to burn out without Alice around, but if he had to, Tarrant was willing to run through fire in order to reach the other side and turn his life around.
Sometimes, he closed his eyes and saw Alice. He saw her many different ways; he saw her smiling, he saw her in her armor fighting the Jabberwocky, he saw her riding the Bandersnatch, he saw her at the tea table...The list went on and on and on. He could stay like that for minutes at a time, just sitting there with his eyes closed and watching the images of her flashing through his mind's eye. He cherished those times, because he always felt closest to her in those moments.
When the moment was dead and gone, though, along with each star he had wished on for Alice to return to Underland, and along with every right and every wrong he had ever done, he felt oddly hollow inside. The lonely nights took a lot out of him these days, it seemed. He had (metaphorically) thrown a lot of stones recently, and with each one, it seemed as if another one of his bones would always break.
But when he closed his eyes, he wasn't alone.
Not when there was a heartbeat that he imagined to be Alice's in his ears.
If there was love, Tarrant wanted it to rain down on everyone, and then he and Alice could break away and run, like he and his siblings used to when they were young. They could make believe that all they needed was to live for only the here and now.
Because with the moments, the stars, and the rights and wrongs all dead and gone, who was to say there wouldn't be an endless night where he and Alice both sang alone? Even with all the stones they'd thrown, they could still save the bones that were broken.
Because when they closed their eyes, they weren't alone.
They just had to let the heartbeat take them home.