Whenever we are together, the air seems to crackle.
It's electric, charged with something…possibility maybe. Or wanting. It doesn't really matter. All that matters is the awareness that comes with it, the way I can only focus on you, the way I know all the ways we don't touch and the long glances under messy bangs. I've been trying to figure out for years what is so fascinating about you. Pinpoint what exactly I'm in love with. The stubborn mouth, pouting, willful. Your eyes, impossibly blue, cobalt maybe and tinged with sweetness. It's hard to name such a color. The strong eyebrows, not thick, but arched and ferocious, giving you that intensity that captures my imagination. Or maybe, just maybe it's that impossible growth on your head. Your personality is in that damn thing, messy, easy, carefree, and wild with a slight edge. I'm not sure that edge was there before this whole kingdom hearts mess happened. I'm not sure how to tell you I'm sorry about that edge.
When I think of you before and after, the distance is a ravine, impossibly wide, a drop to the center of the world. You have grown up, the innocence at the corner of your eyes gone. I think I had some part of that and it fills me with a vague sadness, because you're closer to being where I am. I never want you to be where I am, always tinted, always a bit shadow. You have always been so beautiful. I know you'd laugh to hear that, a strange word for a boy. But it has always been what I've thought of you as, even while I was mad with jealousy because I had been abandoned by you.
That hesitation when I offered my hand to you and stepped into the darkness, that fear, it infuriated me. You were afraid of me. It was wise of you to be, because the old me was comatose, sleeping in my head, but it destroyed me when you didn't take my hand, when that flash in your eye and moments delay separated us, broke our destinies in two. I was so hurt, impossibly bitter. Lonely. And lonely people are exploitable and easily manipulated. So there you go. Cloaked in darkness, I did the best I had in me to help you after I had hindered you, even tried to destroy you. I thought that if you weren't mine, than you would be with no one at least. After I destroyed you, I planned on destroying myself. I had a vision of us, two souls, floating in the eternal darkness, cool and so very together. Siamese twins.
But you were different, stronger, and you defeated me.
My quest to help began. I took in the darkness and became someone else so that you would wake up. I tried to be the stagehand, behind the scenes but always helping. We were thrown together, you saw me through the disguise. You wept. It was strange. But there was no time and we pushed forward, me with all my bravado and brashness. My other disguise, because it would be so much easier if I were still the me you remembered. I wasn't (aren't) but it doesn't matter because I've always played the part to a tee. Seventeen years experience will do that.
But now the battles are over.(?)
I think that without a cause you are losing your grip a little. You peer out past the ocean wistfully. I say nothing but I know the longing in your look and the desire to again be relevant. You never minded being chained to a cause, you thrive on purpose. Kairi complicates things. She wants us to stay, wants you to stay with her, and doesn't understand the longing to feel alive again. I imagine that you feel a little weightless, nothing tying you down anymore. I don't presume that I might hold you down, as much as I want you (need you). I don't dare tell you. You would stay for me, and I don't dare let you. I would smother you, whether I meant to or not. Love is a prison, and a cage would strip everything good about you away.
I would make you weak.
So Kairi will keep waiting for you to settle, and I'll keep longing for you, knowing that the Sora I love is half gone; floating up in his endless namesake, looking for somewhere to be. One day, I'll wake up and you'll be gone. You'll break me again. But I'll wait, even knowing you may never come back. Because some journeys must be taken alone. When (if) you come back, maybe I'll tell you then. Paint with my words the bitter emotion coiled in my stomach, eating the light that remains, the anger that warms me in the night and the loneliness that keeps me awake for it. Maybe. But only because it's rotting me, and that is the sort of thing that kills. So perhaps it will spill, word vomit, a preservation instinct. Hopefully you'll be ready to settle in your cage then, the cage I've been stuck in since I have seen you. I'm with you now, outside, all cool breezes and blinding sun, and you are staring the sea. You're eyes make you look empty. "Go," I whisper, hoping the wind will carry it to your ears, soft as smoke.
You give no sign of hearing. Tomorrow you will be gone though; I know it, my permission granted. I lean over, impulsive, to kiss you once before you go. It's soft like a faint breath and then it's done. You don't look surprised. You smile, a little bit sadly and our smiles are the same. Both broken, just a little. I have the fleeting suspicion that you know, that you love me too. It is confirmed when you whisper "Sorry." But it's ok, because then you smile, a little hopeful, and you're back a bit. "Soon," escapes your mouth, a strange twist upon your lips, but it's a happy one. I think. Soon. We will be together again, wholly together. A hopeful word, like birdsong.
Soon.