AN. I wrote this when I should have been studying for my exams as a distraction. It is a one-shot for the moment. I may be persuaded to continue it later but for now this is it. Hope you enjoy!
She came and sat next to him in silence. It made a change, usually she couldn't stop talking. They sat there, side-by-side in the twilight, for some indefinite amount of time before she spoke.
"Are you alright?"
It was a stupid question. They both knew that he wasn't. He also knew that wasn't what she wanted to hear.
He wanted to rage and scream against the injustice. He wanted to make her understand how he really felt. He wanted to explain the confusion and the pain and the hurt that he had felt since the culmination of the war that had defined his entire life. He wanted her to know the daily struggles he faced in coping with events of the past years. He wanted to confess to her his abiding loneliness. He wanted to receive sincere comfort from the shelter of her arms. He wanted her love.
He had been alone for too long now. He had been unable to let anyone in since childhood. Anyone close to him had the capacity to cause more pain and he was terrified. His dearest wish was to have someone he could trust with these secrets, someone who could understand his past, ease his present and be willing to share his future. It was a futile hope. He knew this. His childhood had laid the foundations of solitude and growing up had built the walls higher and higher with each betrayal and disappointment. He had learned to lock his heart away from the chance of pain and he had long ago lost the key. He knew of no one who was willing to help him find it again.
She sat next to him the stillness, her fiery hair dim in the darkness. Echoes of her whispered question danced in the cool air. He could tell her everything now. He could turn to her and open the door, showing her his troubles. He could trust her and she would run. He knew this as surely as he knew his own name. Her sheltered upbringing, abundant in love as his had never been, had never taught her true pain or hardship. She was strong but her strength was insufficient for the burdens he bore. Should he introduce her to the immeasurable pain he had known she would shy away. He would lose her. He could not trust her to stay when so many others had left. So many others had given him up as a lost cause. She would be no different.
The silence had lasted a beat too long. He plastered a weary smile onto his face and gave her the only answer he could.
"I'm fine."
She accepted it. He had not been prepared for how much that would hurt.