Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
--Robert Frost, Fire and Ice--
Fire and Ice
"Wait!" She chases after him, taking his arm.
He turns, giving her the saddest look, the rain making his hair heavy, hanging down into his eyes. "What?"
"I…I…" she could not speak the words that had come so easily into her head. Her undeniable love for him, the fact that she had indeed been wrong, and he had been the one who was right to begin with.
"I… I love you." She simply states, all of the previous things that she had wanted to tell him. Those three simple words were all that it really came down to in the end.
He looks alarmed for a moment, and then a look crosses over his handsome young face, one that she was not familiar with from him. "No… just… no."
Rejection.
All of the little things that are felt everyday, of all of the feelings that she had felt, this was the one true thing that really stung at her. It made her non-beating heart ache.
"Please…" she whispers. "I was wrong."
"I told you that this would happen. I warned you about this, did I not?" He looks at her with a certain hopelessness, a vacant longing.
"But… you and me… we are… we are supposed… supposed… to be…" her soft, beautiful voice breathes faintly.
Together.
The word lingerin the air between them for few silent moments.
"I warned you about this," he says faintly, his voice beginning to break. "I told you that once you were like… once you were like him, then the mystery would fade. His beauty would not seem as luring to you. His voice would fill your heart with pain; it did once, long ago, and I was the one that fixed you when he had you broken. And that in the end, it would come down to this. But you… you made this choice, you chose this, despite all of that."
"I know," she gasps, crying if not that she could not cry. "I was wrong…" She looks at him with the look of utmost love. "I was wrong." she repeats.
And despite the rain, she still sees a few tears cascade down his face. She runs to his arms, wiping them away. "Please, don't…"
He tries to pull away, and she grips him tighter, afraid to let go of this little piece of heaven. "We can run away together, and forget that any of this happened. Just you and me…"
And just briefly, causing the slightest hope in her heart, he holds her tightly.
But then he lets go.
"There was a time that I would have done anything for you, been anything for you," he says, his voice levelling off. "But it's… it's too late." With one last look into her eyes, he says the words that she longs to hear. "I love you, too."
And then he turns and walks away, leaving her there to stand in the grey morning rain, hands wrapped around her chest, trying to hold herself together this one last time.
