I
Fleur kisses Cho briefly and dryly the night she leaves for France, before turning and walking away. She does not run. Fleur never runs from anything, always regal, always a proper lady.
She does not run but she might as well have; in the end, it didn't make a difference.
II
The taste of red, red wine and cinnamon stays with Fleur long after the pale morning sun rises and she boards the 8:00 train for Paris. It stays with her in Grand-Mère's silent and still house stuffed full of could-have-been's, and it settles, deep, deep, deep in her chest on the day she speaks to her grandmother for the first time. She has spent her time at her grandmother's country manor avoiding the shadowy, lavender scented room her grandmother is dying in, but on her fourth week there her mother corners her in the sunny, floral kitchen, bright and trembling with anger. "Go to her." She whispers, her voice cracking at the edges. Fleur wants to run, she does, but instead, she walks past her mother without a word, and down the dark, winding hallway that leads from the kitchen to the lavender room. When she enters the room Fleur thinks her grandmother is asleep, but her grandmother's eyes slide open as she sits down on the chair beside her, and a weak smile pulls at her lips. "Ah, my favorite granddaughter has come to see me at last," she croaks, a slight glimmer of youth and humor hidden beneath the weight of age. "What is it, dearest? I can sense a heaviness in your step that has never been there before." She pauses for breath, and her faint chuckle quickly turns into a cough. "Surely it is not me? We have all known this was coming, dearheart." Fleur winces and folds her hands to stop the trembling. That is part of it, of course. Nothing could prepare her for the death
III
Fleur takes out three sheets of paper and a pen and sets them on her grandpapa's shaky mahogany desk in a precise manner. She writes two letters. She burns one and rips up the blank piece of paper as well. She sends the one leftover to Cho. It is the least dangerous, and it is not a lie, not exactly.
IV
Summer drags by obliviously in a soft and blurry-edged haze. Autumn is filled with whiskey stronger than wine and a pretense of forgetting. Winter is a curse, bringing with it long nights and pale sunlight and no distractions. A new year is born, and once again Fleur is unable to make away with the old, become a clean slate. She insists that it is because she has always lived in old cities, and that she has adopted their ways of holding onto the past and letting it sink into her bones, until she is packed full of memory and wishes and could-have-been's and maybes and sort of's and what ifs.
V
She spends four years in Paris, watches as Grandmere takes four years to die. It is like watching a mountain erode into sand. She knows that this has been a process of many more than four years, but to her, it seems even less than that, and more. It takes minutes and it takes billions of years and her grandmother becomes an empty box. She closes her eyes and sees everything backwards, she sees her grandmother dancing with a stranger and thinks her beautiful, she sees a sharp blue sky, she hears her tears the night Grandpapa died and she opens her eyes. Her grandmother is an empty box. She does not stay for the funeral. Funerals are for putting to rest and forgetting. Fleur does not forget.
VI
When she arrives in London she shifts back into its ways like a gear clicking into place, and the shiver and buzz of Paris settles down to a whispering hum that comes awake on lonely nights. She realizes her apartment is empty and jarring and she begins to spend most of her time away at her sister's cottage. Gabrielle is not like her with the holding on; she tells Fleur that memories are too heavy, that they drown you. Gabrielle knows of drowning and too fragile lungs and Fleur does not tell her she is wrong.
VII
She does not call Cho until two months after her return to London. The phone conversation is filled with blank spaces and static and it ends with the taste of red wine and cinnamon fresh on her lips and a promise to meet at the forgettable tea shop down the street in a week.
VIII
She is late, late enough to earn a softly disapproving look from Cho, which she discards with a slight shrug of the shoulders and a gentle smile. They walk into the shop side by side but with a careful distance between them. A thick and stifling silence settles over them even before they make their orders and it is not until after they finish their drinks that they begin to speak, though of nothing important. It is not until they are standing in Cho's doorway that she asks the question. "Why did you kiss me?" Fleur studies her, keeping her expression carefully neutral. "I do not know." That is a lie, of course, this she knows more than anything, this she has always known, and maybe Cho knows, maybe she doesn't, but she nods, and the lines of her face soften as if she was expecting this, and she turns away and shuts the door. Fleur knew this was coming. Cho deserves better than maybe's and what ifs. But still, this time Fleur runs. She runs even after her legs tremble and her lips buzz and her breath comes in short bursts. She runs until she reaches her empty apartment, and sinks down on her knees as the door slams shut behind her. That night she forgets. She forgets and forgets and forgets. In the morning she will remember, but until the pale morning sun rises, she forgets, and for the first time in years, she breathes.