An oldie, enjoy.
"When she met his gaze she felt she was swept out to sea. Because he was Heartless, just like her."
She lived in a small town. A small, small town isolated by the roar of the ocean. The sky was always grey with a whisper of blue, and the air was always tangy with the taste of salt. Her bedroom window faced the sunrise so she always woke up bathed in gold. She still believed in fairy tales, in heroes who fought back monsters and saved wistful blond princesses. She still believed in knights and their shining armour.
He was her only friend. His tongue was sharp and his hair always on the edge of needing to be cut. He was as pale as the moon in every way, his hair, his skin, but his eyes were goldfish bowls filled to the brim with the roaring ocean. When she met his gaze she always felt she was swept out to sea. His words were icy in her ears when he told her that there was never going to be a prince to save her. Venom spit from his mouth when he said she was no princess. All the same, he was her only friend because he was the only one she knew who told her the truth. Everyone else danced around her until she gave them another picture. Then they would disappear in smoke as dark as their minds.
She gave up oil paintings of the shoreline, the perfect Sunday morning flower, the blur of children playing. Sometimes she would draw places far away, places she never knew, and they would only take them away and never give her answers in return. Like who the girl with blood hair was, or where the glass staircase was. He would only stare at her with his ocean eyes when she asked. "You draw it." He would say, "Why don't you know?" It was a question neither of them could answer, and they both knew it. But whatever truths He had hidden away he wasn't spilling.
The only drawings she kept for herself were of a boy, maybe a young man. His hair was a smudge of golden brown on the page, his eyes jars of fireflies, his smiles popped from the page. He was brave, he was strong, and in her mind he was her prince. She drew him with long eyelashes dusting his skin, half-asleep in a glass flower, the petals wrapped around him like lonely lovers, the light danced on the glass. She imagined a glass castle, filled with reflections and distorted images. She saw him running, but she had no idea where.
He found them, all her sketches and paintings and smiling faces, she hadn't hidden them well, but she hadn't thought He would look. His fishbowl eyes grew large, sea foam blurrying the lines of his pupils; "This is what they've been looking for!" He shouted, his moon face voice shrieking high, "This is what they need!" He was a whirlwind, his eyes roared as sea met sky. She looked at him, her small form laid bare, thin limbs set for breaking. Her hair was as pale as the blood hair she painted was red. He flung the papers at her, they danced along her skin and fell in piles around her feet.
The room was flooded with gold; the sun was drowning on the horizon.
Will you tell them? Her voice was so soft and small and hung like snowflakes in the air. He fixed his stormy day eyes on her, she felt small scratches on her arms from the edges of paper, thick to hold the wet weight of oil paint. They were both so delicate and light the wind might carry them away. Something softened in him, his face or his stance and he said; "No."
They came more often. Impatience paced behind their eyes. She drew her prince running more and more, and it felt like he was coming closer. It felt like they knew exactly what they wanted.
She was waiting for Him to change, and there isn't a greater waste than hoping for a change in another. He was still the only honesty she knew. He took her hand in his and pressed it over his chest. "Feel that?" She didn't and he knew it. "We don't have hearts." He moved their hands over her chest. "None of us do." His skin was like cold, dry sand. And She was afraid of needing him, because there was no guarantee that she would always get him. And she thought she needed him.
When he reminded her that she had no heart, none that beats, she wanted to lift up her stacks of drawings and paintings and all the beautiful faces of her prince. Here is my heart, she wanted to shout, he carries it in his pocket. She'd seen it, in the swirls of paint, shaped like a star and she wanted it so bad. But what she needed was Him, and his ocean eyes.
They started to shout, they started to scream. All they were getting was sea foam and the same blood hair girl. They asked if there was anything else and she always lied. No, she said, even the first time she was hit. Her heart was her own and she wasn't going to share. Not with anyone.
But she already had.
On the last day it was cloudy. The sunrise was meek and her room glowed grey. She sat there, painted the colours of the clouds, and she drew her prince cutting Them down. He did not impose his honesty on Them like He did on her, they had no idea her prince was coming and he slaughtered them all. They burst black like their blood. Their reaching hands couldn't reach her anymore.
She watched it all unfold in pencil and oil-based colours. She painted blood onto the floors, bodies sank through the glass steps. The prince fought Him, and He survived. He flowed over him like the waves; his heart wasn't in it.
Her prince came for her. Smiling blue eyes and beautiful skin. But it wasn't what she thought. It wasn't what she dreamt. He used names she did not know, he asked for the girl with blood hair, he didn't know her. She told him to go to the ocean, she told him to go to the sea. And he went, with a smile, with a purpose. He was her prince. But she wasn't his princess. So she sat alone in her cloud coloured room, her heart scattered around her with sparkling blue eyes and lopsided grins. He came in slowly, ocean eyes swirling, and picked up every paper, every page of her heart.
"You want a heart?" It wasn't a question and they both knew it, He pressed the pages into her. She felt the texture of thick paint. "It's either in your chest or it doesn't exist."
And she knew he was telling the truth, because He was heartless, just like her.