Pairings: Connor/Abby and Connor/Sarah


Collection of Shadows

It's a Thursday when he breaks.

Sin rolls in the mire of a misplaced word, given form by irritation and propelled by familiarity. Through his tolerance, it has become her right to tear him down. But over time she neglects to build up afterward until there is progressively less material with which to work. Fair is the claim that she dispenses false hope but she'd never promised to grant him more.

His destruction has the finality of the apocalypse.

Such potency in the crumbling, like soft rain on fevered skin or watching the collapse of history. But when he cannot brush off the debris, cannot summon an apology for the deed of another, she comprehends that the line hasn't merely been crossed. It has been erased from memory, replaced by a wall. And only when the baggage is released is the value calculated.

...


She thinks him incapable.

Of relating. Of confidence. Of piecing together what a thin thread of unkindness has unraveled. There is security in being needed, in residing as a touchstone for a naïve heart. Little effort had gone into obtaining his affections but once lost, it is an artifact locked and buried. He's moved out, moved on and she's expected to move aside. An impossible command.

The ideal of innocence no longer seeks what stands before him.

Their existence wraps solely around the work, the legacy of a man who would scold her into melting for toying with his protégé. They speak only to disseminate information, keeping each other alive but not keeping each other company. It is not cold but strictly utilitarian, as though life's mirror and death's reflection hasn't passed between them.

...


Childish things are put away, rendering her obsolete.

There is another hand upon him now, one constructed in maturity and wisdom. An exotic woman who flatters his own dark shades. She speaks in myths and he talks of invention and it's the same language. This challenger won't portion out just enough, but gives him ever increasing measures of herself. An openness he craves, long unfulfilled.

The awkward boy has burned away.

The phoenix arrives with the shape of an intense man. It lives below the sweetness, under the charred layers he's slowly shedding. The fear of being seen has been incinerated by the smolder in his lover's eyes. The replacement doesn't let him hide because feminine pride calls for an exhibit of her discovery. And he is prized. Finally.

...


They had been inevitable once.

Others will cite an expectation that he would gain the courage to pursue her, that she would grace him with a chance. In truth, he had quested for her since the beginning in his own introverted, stumbling way. But because she hadn't played her role the position has been usurped. Later, she will find them in a darkened lab testing the theory of relative space.

There is no room for her.

She must redefine herself in the absence of her devoted follower. He's come down from the high of worship, an earthly pleasure now dominating his horizon. And while the sun kisses the couple, she's collecting the jagged shadows of mourning. A hollow has been carved and there is no one to build her up. They are molten and she is ash.

...


It's a Thursday when she breaks.