Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to The Teen Titans.
Author's Notes: Well…I don't really have anything to say, other than I enjoyed writing this little piece of angst. All twenty minutes of it. Reviews are appreciated, and loved.
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You keep asking her to stay, and even though she doesn't know what it means, she keeps saying yes.
Of course, answers spoken merely out of urge to grant reassurance and comfort and smiles again mean nothing, less than nothing. You know this, and as much as you want to believe her, as much as you want to nod your head and wipe back these too hot, too salt tears, you can't. You can't let yourself be fooled by her promises, promises that aren't even a shade to the reality you're reaching for tonight.
So you ask her again, one more time. You put your hands in her own, soft skin that has led you safely home on so many other lightening strike breakdowns, and you beg her quietly. The words are there, so gentle and air shatter heartbreaking as they leave your lips, but you feel as if they are still there – still resting inside a whirlwind palace in the back of your mind. And you wonder, you ask yourself why you put it off for so long. Why you refused, for too long, to acknowledge that you were loosing her. You wonder if it was fear, something dark and knotted into deep root bones that made you too apprehensive to reach out and pull her back, into your waiting arms and words, where she belongs. You wonder if it was admitting you weren't strong enough to save her that kept you from screaming out bleeding down words, anything to make her turn around and see the ground she had left you on.
And you pray it's not too late.
Because you can't loose her. Not the girl with mesmerizing, emotionless words that mean more than the world; not the girl who tells you what you want to hear with such an honest, sincere sense of something akin to love you are compelled to do the same; not the girl who still kisses your cheek every morning when you open your eyes. You can't loose her and you've been loosing her for so long you can't remember not trembling with this over powering fate that keeps washing over you, you can't remember what it is like to not be scared to death of letting her go.
She tells you, again, smoothing back rusted copper hair, those pretty paper cut eyes, worried, questioning your actions and your bequests and your very sanity as you cling to her for dear life. You breathe her in, this scent that used to mean everything would be alright, and it doesn't calm you anymore. You remember a time when you were so strong, just for her, when you were calm as the center of her devastation storms, when you could smile in the face of Apocalypse days and every hopeless thought she had.
And now it's you, the one who held the infectious grin, the one who could fly so high and never feel anything but wind that carried her dark-light aura, who needs to be reassured. It's you who needs those misplaced, innocent words that hold the power of every kind of Angel you've never seen, the kind of impact that could shake and break or save the little breath you have left. It's you, not her, not the midnight girl who was so afraid of being afraid, not the fragile strength that couldn't afford such luxuries as still-love-you touches, who fears this feeling, who fears the emotion.
You tell her, tell her that she keeps drifting, and she keeps saying no. She keeps whispering, keeps telling you she doesn't understand why you hurt so much, and if she would, she would give everything she ever had to stop these tears. But she can't – she doesn't get it. She doesn't see, and you tell her as much. You tell her that if she doesn't fight it, this pulling away, this thing that is destroying what was destiny, what wasn't meant to be, that it will win, and it just can't. You tell her, for the hundredth time since you stopped pretending you didn't realize it was almost over, that you just can't loose her.
She holds you, and it's too much. She tells you that she wouldn't leave you for anything, and you can't handle it. All these lies – the worst kind of deceit because she doesn't know she's doing it. She doesn't realize, you see, that she doesn't love you anymore. There are no longer little pushed down whimpers when her lips are soft and cool and breaking, when she's lying to quietly next to you. She doesn't need you to be the sun for her, not anymore, so what do you have left to give her? All you have ever offered, and all you can ever hope to, is that you will shine light when empty hall shadows are smothering her, is that you will love her under pieces of the shattered sky, unconditional and free and everything she wants.
And she doesn't need it, not anymore. She doesn't need you to push back demons for her, and your still frame, smile kiss doesn't soothe away her heartache.
It's so painfully obvious, highlighted in all the colors of her now mended heart, that there is no reason to love you anymore. Oh, doesn't she see? Why can't she understand? You do – you have noticed and analyzed and denied and you just can't accept the fact that she doesn't need to love you anymore, that she no longer needs you to be the constant in her life. Because you still need her, you do – you always have, and you can't imagine a life in which needing her and loving her and holding her wasn't embedded into every particle.
And she laughs.
A chuckle, light and warm against your ear, and she promises that she needs you, promises that it is ridiculous, laughable to think anything less. Promises that love is love, something malignant, and it makes you think of blood that doesn't stop and scars that don't fade and you're crying even harder, now, your frame wracked with inside wrenching sobs that leave you cold and that much more lost. She whispers to you, so very, very much like the girl who loved you, and it's so easy to fall into the lie. She tells you, in this voice that makes your heart soar, she couldn't not need you – that there will never be, in the remainder of your collective lives, a moment in which she will not be aching for the comfort jasmine scented fingertips bring to her ever crumbling mind.
And again, you ask her to stay.
And she promises she will, promises she will love you, love you and never leave and never hurt you as long as the city air is smog and hope, as long as the ground beneath you is soft and the sky is merely an open space you have claimed your own.
Heavens, you think. These lies, they will be death of you. Believing words you know can never be true again. Time has passed, and so has she, and it's only a matter of time until she realizes, truly, that she isn't telling the truth when she promises she won't leave you.
She is rocking you, asking you to just sleep, if only for a moment, and you are so afraid that if you close your eyes she will dissipate back into the air, that she will slip through your fingertips and you will never hear such lies again. So you stay awake, keeping yourself from giving in to exhaustion by watching her hand intertwine so perfectly, so eerily and flawlessly, with your own.
You ask her, just one more time, if she will say, and even though she still isn't sure what it means, she says yes.
For now, you think, and breathe a little iron tinged fear back inside, you will believe her. You will follow her absent fabrications and her always broke down, worn out smile, until it crashes down. Because now, her lies all are you have. So you'll keep them, as close as your blind sided moon and your home scented memories, until they fade away.
And still, in the back of your mind, a part of you is still hoping against hope, begging to any power resting in the silk silhouette sky, that it's still not to late.
