This is a thank you to my readers.
Thank you for being there for me,
When I needed someone.
How To Save A Life
She wrapped her arms tightly around her shins and slowly pulled her legs towards her, curling up into a ball, as small as she possibly could. She held her forehead against her knees, holding her eyes shut firmly, not daring to open them in case the smallest amount of light would seep through.
She had sat in that prison cell for hours. Hope building up inside her body that someone would soon show up to bail her out, after all she couldn't help getting herself into the same mess over and over again, she was so lost.
"I will not cry." She bit hold of her lower lip. "I don't cry."
The sound of footsteps echoing outside her prison door, lingering down the hallway getting louder as they got closer to her cell, gradually pulling to a stop as they reached their destination.
The echoing footsteps was suddenly replaced by the sound of keys clattering together, banging against the heavy metal door as the key was placed in the lock, taking it's time before fully unlocking the door.
"You're free to go." A man, with the most angriest look across his face opened the door, letting light pour into the cell, lighting up every corner. "I don't want to see you here again, okay?"
The girl rose from the ground, her bangs remaining to cover her eyes, not letting the angered man see what emotion it was that she held inside of her. Sharing nothing but an aura of pain and regret.
The golden eyed boy stood in the door way, shaking his head slowly, trying to wrap his head around the fact that this was the fourth time he had to bail her out in the last week, trying to grab hold of the pieces and place them back together of the state she had become.
"Let's go." She said sharply walking past him down the hallway already eager to go home.
Her bangs still covered her eyes, not needing to see where she was going. She had been here too many times before to know off by heart which way she needed to walk, just too many times.
Kid sighed. "Maka… please talk to me."
"I have nothing to say." She insisted. "I just don't care anymore."
"What so you're just going to pretend that nothing ever happens anymore, is that it?" He began to raise his voice.
"Nothing does happen anymore Kid!" Her bangs lifted as she spun to face him, revealing her dry eyes. "My mum died, end of."
They stood outside the station, watching the rain pour down in front of them, splashing against the shinning wet ground and splattering against their trousers, soaking around their ankles, pressing against their skin.
Kid turned to face her. "It is okay to cry, you know?"
"I don't cry." Her words were like bullets. "I never cry."
"I'm just saying…"
"Well don't!"
Silence lingered around them, except for the rain that hammered down on the street like rocks being thrown from the sky towards the ground, smashing against the concrete, determined to destroy the world.
"I'm going home…" She shook her head pulling up her hood. "Bye."
"Wait, let me walk you home." He stepped towards her.
She walked down the steps and out onto the deserted street. "I can walk home by myself."
And then he was alone, standing in the rain, staring at the last spot she was standing in.
~ Step one, you say we need to talk,
he walks, you say, "Sit down, it's just a talk."
He smiles politely back at you,
you stare politely right on through."
The night Maka ran from her house, running from her parents who had just admitted their divorce, that was the last night she had ever cried and after that she swore she would never let another tear roll down her cheek.
She ran out in the middle of the night, the rain pouring from the sky thrashing across the ground like nothing stood in its way. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her, running for the road that was no less than ten meters away from her.
"Maka!" Her mother cried, running out the house after her. "Stop!"
The green eyed blonde haired girl ran out onto the road, not taking knowledge of the two bright headlights coming towards her, inching closer by the second that she remained standing in the road.
Her mother raced towards her. "Move!"
And with all of her might she dived at Maka, pushing her to the side throwing her from the road and onto the sidewalk just inches from being smashed by the bonnet of the car straight into the ribs, but Maka's mother couldn't jump out of the way fast enough before… that happened.
And before she could take her last breath, she was thrown to the rain covered ground, trapped underneath the car itself as it pinned her down, unable to escape and live the rest of her life. She was lifeless.
"Mum!"
~ Some sort of window to your right,
as he goes left, and you stay right.
Between the lines of fear and blame,
you begin to wonder why you came. ~
She sat down on the park bench underneath the sun. Watching all the happy couples laugh, hug and kiss. Watching it all stabbed at her heart, just thinking about being with someone made her stomach flip, it was unthinkable.
She held her hands deep in her hoody pocket, not daring to hold them out in front of her, in case she'd accidentally catch a glimpse of the scars that were forever marked upon her wrists.
The sun beamed down on her from the sky, heating up her face, wanting to create a tan on that unbelievably pale skin that looked like it could have been shielded away for years. And it was.
"So…" A voice pierced at her eardrums. "This is where you've been hiding."
She looked up and as she did her eyes met Kid's. His golden eyes staring right into hers, brightening up every dark corner with inside her, trying to turn her storming clouds into rays of sunshine.
"What do you want?" The sunshine faded.
He smiled as he sat next to her. "I want to make sure you're not getting yourself into any trouble."
"Does this look like trouble?" She turned away from him.
"Well, depends." He smiled trying to lighten the mood. "What you doing sitting in a park full of little kids?"
There was no sign of a smile approaching her lips, not even a giggle, nothing. This girl had become emotionless, broken, traumatized and so lost inside that she couldn't remember a single thing that stood on the other side of that wall she had built around herself. Did she intend on doing that?
Kid placed his palms to his lips and blew into them, hoping to create warmth before rubbing them together. "It's so cold…"
Maka turned back round to face him. "Wear gloves?"
"I forgot to put some on this morning." He smiled widely. "Stupid, I know."
And for a split second, seeing what possibly looked like a hint of a smile at the corner of her lips, Kid's face lit up completely as he threw himself from the bench, snatching hold of her hand and pulling her to a stand also.
"What the hell are you-!"
"Let's go get something to drink, I'll get you anything you want, anything at all!" And he dragged her through the gate of the park and back down the road towards the town, not even showing the slightest bit of hesitation.
~ Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend.
somewhere along in the bitterness,
and I would have stayed up with you all night,
had I known how to save a life. ~
Maka tripped over her feet as she chased along behind him, his hand gripping on tightly to hers as he pulled her down the road, eagerly racing for the town towards the café that he wanted to take her to. Memories flashed through his mind as the café came into view, the times where Maka and him would go there after school to escape from the others. It was the only place they could be alone and be themselves.
"Kid!" Maka cried from behind him. "Slow down!"
He turned back to face her with a smirk painted across his lips. "Catch up!"
A slight tingling sensation burned at the back of Maka's throat, trying to place itself right up onto her tongue and force a smile on her lips but as it inched closer she forced it back. She wouldn't let herself smile, she would never let herself be happy again because after all, it was her fault for her mothers death. She would never forgive herself, for that.
A ding echoed through the air as they stepped through the door of the café, a few heads turning away from their coffees to stare up at the breathless teens that gasped for breath in the doorway. A waitress perked up and walked in their direction, guiding them through the room to an open booth by the window.
"What would you like?" Her blue eyes glistened at Kid.
Eyes dead set on Maka, he replied. "Strawberry smoothie."
Kid's heart raced in his chest as he noticed the corner of Maka's lips raise slightly, it was only there for a second but then it was gone. It had hurriedly ran away from her lips, afraid of being noticed and afraid of growing even stronger to turn and set into a beautiful grin of nothing but happiness. But to Maka, that didn't exist any longer.
The blue eyed girl rolled her eyes, turning to Maka and glaring in her direction. Jealousy maybe? "And you?"
"Banana…"
That made Kid smile also.
Irritated, the waitress tap-tap-tapped her pen against her notepad as she turned to walk back to the counter, cursing beneath her breath about Kid's precious looks being such a waste. Kid frowned at the empty space where she was once standing, glaring as if her presence was still left there. But Maka, she twiddled her thumbs nervously while turning to readjust herself in the booth. No matter what she did she couldn't remain comfortable.
"Are you okay?" He startled her.
"Yeah." Her lower lip quivered. "I'm fine."
~ Let him know that you know best,
cause' after all you do know best.
Try to slip past his defense,
without granting innocence. ~
Maka twirled the straw in her drink, watching the yellow banana chunks swirl helplessly as she tried to drown them in her smoothie. Silence had sat around them for more than five minutes, the tension was rising, and it was rising fast. Kid stared at Maka, while Maka stared at the table trying to avoid his gaze, but still Kid's eyes remained fixated against her, trying to catch her off guard.
"Stop it." Her voice was sharp.
He blinked. "What?"
She pulled her straw from her drink, licking away at it, trying to remove the bits of banana with her tongue. "Staring at me, it's off-putting."
"But I'm waiting." He said it too fast.
"What?" She watched him carefully.
He gripped hold of his cup. "I'm waiting for you to cry."
"I don't cry."
"Maka." He bit his lip. "You're not a robot."
"I refuse to cry."
"That's stupid!"
He shattered every ounce of sound around them into silence. Every pair of eyes that sat in the room gazed at him in shock, even the blue eyed girl raised an eyebrow at him while poking the tip of her tongue out between her lips, in a way to say idiot. But the most shocked of them all was Maka, I don't think Kid had ever seen her eyes so wide.
But still, he lectured the little blonde. "You put yourself down all the time, thinking that you can just finally dissolve away, like no one would remember you!"
Her gaze wondered away. "...I don't."
"Don't lie to me Maka!"
The silence of the rest of the room remained, staring in utter shock at the two teens that had started a quarrel in the middle of a cafe. The elders probably thinking of how their 'perfect day' had just been ruined by a bunch of reckless youths.
But Maka had grown far more than reckless.
The golden eyed boy held his palm to his forehead. "You can cry Maka... nothing's holding you back."
"I don't deserve to." She held the tip of her tongue between her teeth. "Why should I have the chance of feeling so called 'freedom' after everything I've done."
Enough was enough.
"Because everybody dies Maka!"
The look in his eyes simply screamed that he knew he shouldn't have said it. And it seemed that more pairs of eyes were watching him than the moments before. The moments where everything was a hell of a lot less awkward, when less heartbeats were thrashing inside chests.
He closed his eyes. "Everybody dies, it's the way of life. I admit that it sucks more than anything in the world but you can't change what the future holds for us – for anyone."
Maka's eyes were watering like rain that had yet to fall from the heavens. It was simply just refusing to crash against the death holding ground, never wanting to escape the grasp of the clouds and wishing to be forever bound against the summer sky. A place where the drips could never fall and live for an entire eternity.
But just as when Kid thought he had finally cracked her, he watched her rise from her seat. Her eye shielding bangs drowning away the expression on her face as she leaned over the table, her weak little palms being the only thing to support her weight as she pressed them against the table.
"Shut up!" And she hit him.
Her palm striking a blood red mark across the side of his face as she yelled those two words. Praying that they'd somewhat sink in deep enough into his thoughts, so that maybe – just maybe he would never have to speak a word again. She'd be free to live her own world.
"What happened to my mother...!" She screamed like there was no such thing as hesitation. "Was not classed as 'everybody dies!'"
The blue eyed girl had never looked so shocked as she did then, looking at what she thought was just a vulnerable pathetic little girl.
"It was me! I'm the reason she was hit down by that, stupid car!"
The moments she shrilled for just grew sadder. Years worth of emotion held behind each and every word she placed within her sentences, hoping someone would finally notice what pain she had been feeling for all this time.
"I was so heartless as to only think about what would happen to me with my parents divorce!" Her nails chipped at the table. "And out of spite, I ran out of the house, without realising she came after me!"
Kid was stunned, his two watering golden orbs locked against the tiny girls sudden outburst as she cried out before him, without shedding a tear as she did so. But he knew, deep inside, that it wouldn't be long – until she'd eventually give in.
"You don't get to act, like that's something that happens everyday! Not when you don't know what it feels like to live with the guilt of it being your fault!"
~ Lay down a list of what is wrong,
the things you've told him all along.
And pray to God, he hears you,
and I pray to God, he hears you. ~
Maka had ran out of the cafe at that point, Kid had tried to chase after her but a little old woman by the door had grabbed him and told him that it was best if he didn't. She mentioned that when a woman needs time to cry, she'd rather cry alone.
He felt guilty, so extremely guilty about what he had used as his words to throw at Maka but he couldn't help but feel partly relieved that he had finally said it. Like years worth of planning the right but wrong thing to say – had finally paid off.
~ Where did I got wrong? I lost a friend, ~
The moon beamed off of her teary eyes as she sat in the same park as before, staring up at the starlit sky. Watching as the clouds swallowed the last of sunlight before it seeped off behind the horizon, never to be seen until the following day.
Her tiny little nails gripped at her jeans, digging down into her knees as the rain began to splash against the denim, creating lifeless patches against her clothes like it were the last sign of existence she had left. The last thing to remind her she was still alive.
"Mum."
She closed her eyes as the wind caressed at her face, like it was a sign to show they her mother was staring down on her, listening to every word she urged to speak aloud in front of her so she could be heard. So that her own flesh and blood were to hear the things she could never speak.
"If I sit here..." "If I close my eyes..." "I'm fine."
There was nothing to describe her motives in that moment. She spoke as it came to her, she breathed as she knew her mother was watching down on her.
"If I talk to you..." "Even though you're up there..." "You're not dead."
The tears still didn't fall, they only existed on the inside, never to be shed like pouring rain on the outside. The sky was all she needed to cry, the clouds and the heavens were what controlled her emotions. They were her emotions.
"There's nothing I can do, to prove my apology..."
"But if you believe in me..."
… "I'll believe in you too."
~ Somewhere in the bitterness... ~
"Well, well..." The blue eyed waitress crept up behind the little girl. "This is where the freak ran off to."
Maka opened her eyes, fury burning beneath them. "What do you want?"
She scoffed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "What you did back there, was extremely rude to the customers."
"So?"
She cocked an eyebrow. "The manager wants you to come back and apologize."
"I hate to break it to you..." Maka slowly rose from the bench. "But I'm not going anywhere."
As soon as the waitress saw the serious expression Maka held tightly on her face, she couldn't help but take a step back away from her. Almost as if she were ready to leap if Maka were to lose it.
"It wasn't a question." The waitress hissed. "You need to come back."
The green eyed girls jaw tightened. "I don't need to do anything."
"Don't get cocky!"
Maka widened her eyes at the waitress's outburst. "Is that how you treat customers?"
She shook her head in disbelief. "You are no longer a customer of ours."
"Who says, you?" Maka was losing it. "You're nothing but a waitress."
"I don't need some kind of status to ban reckless youths like yourself from the cafe!"
Maka smirked. "Well it sure as hell didn't look like you were doing any 'banning' when I was in there."
The waitress shut her mouth. Eyebrow's narrowed and jaw tightened more than ever before, holding the last of her breath on the tip of her tongue to prevent her from doing anything reckless.
The little green eyed girl slowly turned on her heels to leave."You're blatantly not very good at your job."
"Oh yeah!" She called out after her. "Well you're blatantly not good at protecting your - mother!"
Maka froze.
"Maybe if you were a considerate little bitch you might have got yourself killed and not someone who didn't do anything wrong!"
The rain fell harder.
Maka slowly turned back around to face the blue eyed girl. "What. Did you – just say...?"
"I said-!"
~ and I would have stayed up, with you all night... ~
The cell walls were cold against her fragile back, nothing but the warmth of a hoody and a pair of shorts to keep her body covered. Both pieces of items being found in the police stations lost and found after she was sent there. Her own clothes were swamped in dirt and blood – they were too unwearable.
Two policemen had pulled the two girls apart in the middle of the street. It had taking them several times to pull Maka's tiny little hands from around the waitress's throat before they could throw the both of them in the back of the police care they had arrived in.
And now she was back in that cell, for the fifth time in the past week, she was in that cell again. Waiting to be bailed out once more, by the golden eyed and precious
Death the Kid. The only one she'd allow herself to leave with.
"I'm sorry." She muttered beneath her breath. "I didn't mean to be this way."
The footsteps were there again, trailing up the outside of the cell door she sat behind. Feeling the darkness seep in towards her thicker than ever, like this time it were trying its hardest to surpass her weakness.
The keys clattered against the heavy metal door, echoing throughout what sounded like the whole of the station. But this time, Maka's fragile little body was just picking up on every single sense that had fallen into existence around her. Everything was so much more stronger than it had been before – everything was there this time.
"You can come out now." The same angry man. "You can get your clothes as you leave."
And as Maka slowly pushed herself up from the stone cold ground, she caught onto Kid's watering golden eyes as he caught onto her weakened little body. Her body that was now covered in bruises, cuts and scratch marks. The waitress had left her in a state that he had never wanted to see.
Maka's lower lip trembled. "I-I'm so sorry."
"No." Kid stepped forward. "I'm sorry."
"No!"
Her eyes were shielded once more. Swept away by her distraught hair as it covered hair face from the brutal fight she had no less that an hour before. Her legs were still shaking with adrenaline, the power of her blood staining fists still flowing throughout her little veins.
And then drip...
Water splashed against the laminate flooring, drips and drips hitting the ground one after the other as Maka remained holding her head forward, staring at her naked feet that rested below her tired body but rested above the water stained ground.
She looked up, revealing her tear stained cheeks. "I'm so so sorry!"
She threw herself forward, wrapping her bleeding arms around Kid's waist to cling onto him like a little child. Burying her face in his chest as the tears bled down her cheeks. One after the other jumping from the corner of her eyes and onto his crystal shirt. Drips and drips of her tears forever bound against his clothes.
"She's never coming back!" She screamed. "I ripped her life away from her!"
Kid placed his hand on the back of the crying girls head. "Maka..."
"It's all my fault! I am the reason she shall never step foot on this earth again! I am the reason she doesn't exist!"
There was no longer such a thing as silence in a world so cold.
"I wish it was me instead!"
Kid gripped her by the shoulders, and pushed her out in front of him, his nails gripping at her shoulders like there was nothing to stop him. And just like before, he cried out to her, like there was something else that could hear him.
"There's obviously a reason you're still here Maka!" His eyes were reflecting her tears. "You mother save you and isn't that something you should be grateful for and remember her by?"
Her words and her breath were locked inside her throat. There was no longer such a thing as sound nor silence.
"She died so you could live Maka!"
...And she was saved. Not only by the one who had died, but the one who had promised her a life to live for...
She was so much more than reckless, but she was so much more than tears. She was worth saving.
She was worth dying for.
~ Had I known, how to save a life. ~
Thank you, each and everyone of you - for saving me.
I need you all to know that you're all beautiful and that I love you all.
And no matter who you are or what you believe,
or what you do or what you have done,
you all deserve cry.
Because I believe that crying is not a sign of weakness.
It's a sign that you have just been strong for as long as you can remember,
and you need to let something out.
Because I believe that crying is another sign that you're still – alive.
