A/N: I was pretty much blocked on everything else. Can't finish that chapter of GtS to save my life, every oneshot I tried never worked and then...this just happened after some major self reflection on LJ.
The title and inspiration for this (not to mention the lyrics in the beginning) come from the song "On My Own" from Les Miserables. Go listen to it, but listen to the original version sung by Frances Ruffele, and except no substitutes.
I love him. I love him. I love him- but only on my own…
Agent South Dakota was a wanderer, among other things. It was easier being on the run from everything, and everyone that she had known, people that she had backstabbed, destroyed, betrayed beyond mere words.
It was easier to live with herself that way, too. Because in pure running she could forget when she needed to, remember when she wanted to. Logically speaking, as Delta so reminded her, running would solve nothing, and her strange human emotions would merely catch up to her. But despite the fact that they shared a mind she had a tendency to ignore what he had said to begin with, no matter how difficult it was to do so.
But like most of her memories and her thoughts, they came to her at night, when she would stop her travels and rest where she could find it- on a rocky cliff facing what felt like the edge of the world. Beside a river that reflected the half moon in the small rippling waves. It was that spot that she liked the best- with a small smile she remembered her childhood, and how much her brother loved the water for reasons she could not fathom. He had the odd habit of carrying stones in his pocket for skipping whenever the opportunity would arise.
And not just any stones either. Sea stones, painstakingly collected from they used to spend their summers and saved up throughout the year, only to be used on special occasions. The downside to water was being forced to face her own reflection. She could avoid mirrors- hell, she hadn't seen in a mirror in God knows how long. But water had a way of showing things that were never meant to be there, perhaps because it was blurry, distorted, ever changing.
She did everything she could to keep her helmet on- no matter how annoying Delta's company could be it was almost soothing at times. He talked too much, that much was sure, but she had grown to prefer his speaking over mere silence. Silence left room for thoughts that she didn't want to handle while running.
But South couldn't avoid it forever, and she couldn't bear the thought of not washing her face at the very least. So on those nights, her helmet gone and stripped to the waist she would gather her meager supply of soap and a washcloth and sit by the edge of the river, dipping her entire head under the ice cold water.
It felt good in a twisted sort of way, considering the pain that hit her skin like a thousand knives once skin made contact with that bone chilling cold. But with her wet curls dripping down her back she was able to clear her mind far better than kicking up dust beneath her boots ever could.
And more often than not her thoughts would turn to him. In her blurry reflection sometimes she would get a flash of him next to her, a version of herself that could have been, would have been, should have been. Those moments never lasted longer, however- one blink and he was gone, and the only thing staring back at her was herself, the person she had grown to hate the most.
She knew what she had done wrong, something that she would do over and over again. She didn't care about the others, and probably never would. Those mistakes meant nothing to her- they were merely pawns in her chess game, and when they outlived their use they would be tossed to one side despite the rules that spoke against such actions.
But he was more than that, and in her wandering she had allowed him to slip away- if she was going to be honest with herself she pushed him away the night he told her he loved her.
She known, of course- Wash wasn't one for gestures of affection, yet he showered them upon her. But hearing the words made it all too real, even more so with the realization that she felt the same way. She would never speak it- like most of the feelings she held onto the most there were no words to say them, and even if there were she wouldn't want to speak them anyway. They were locked somewhere she didn't want to reach. She had watched him break with her silence then, and later when he could barely keep himself together.
On her own, however, she didn't have to keep her silence. She could speak to the trees and the cool grass beneath her, and most importantly the river- it was in those moments that the words came to her. She felt completely crazy doing so, speaking to him as if he were there but knowing that if he was she would fall silent once again.
In her loneliness she could tell him she loved him, that she still did, that she always would. And maybe that was the only way it could happen. That she, South Dakota, the eternal wanderer, could only love him on her own.