Supernova
They start like this, with laboured breaths and stitches in their sides. She sees through him as easily as if he were a test she has been studying for all week, and maybe, just maybe, that is the push he's always needed to finally fall.
Her hand in his feels soft and warm, and normal. She's always come across as so other that for some reason, this surprises him. He doesn't know what he was expecting, but it's not this, surely—not the utter jolt of surprise that snakes its way up his arm and roots him in place, nor the sudden sense of loss when she slips away.
For the first time, he sees her. The long, glossy hair; the deep, searching eyes; the minute tremble of her bottom lip as she reaches out to him.
Then he jerks away and runs like the coward he is, because he's never yet faced up to a problem in his life and he isn't going to start now.
He is thankful she only calls after him once, before he falters even more.
.
.
.
They dance like this: gently and delicately, waltzing by the periphery of each other's lives, but never really touching. He glances at her when her head is lowered over the latest tome in her hands, and she peeks over at him when he is whispering sweet nothings to her best friend. They cross paths in crowded hallways without meeting gazes, without even flinching when their shoulders brush for a fleeting moment.
The first time he sets foot into the library, he feels as if he has entered a new land. It intrigues him, this sanctuary of hers, the way she holes up in it like a field mouse snug in the ground.
Gradually, he begins to pick books off the shelves. Eventually, he begins to struggle through his essays. There is really very little else to do in a library.
He is always aware of her, head resting on her palm as she sits at a table, or legs tucked up underneath her on the couch like a deer at rest. She never looks up.
She is like a comet that has already passed him once in this lifetime, and may never come his way again.
.
.
.
He falls like this: her haughty manner as she sweeps through the school before everyone's eyes, as if she were royalty and not him; her limitless patience as he tries and fails over and over to grasp concepts that are second nature to her by now; her rare vulnerability unveiled before her sister and her roommate, and perhaps now, him.
This must be happiness, he thinks—the glint of her teeth when she truly smiles, the small scar on her elbow that gleams white when she folds her arms, the smudge of pen ink on the edge of her jaw, the lowered sweep of her lashes when she allows him to fling his arm around her ever so casually.
She makes him feel like a young schoolboy again, barely out of his teens, still unjaded and striving to prove himself.
Maybe there's no us for them, but maybe he's okay with that for now.
If he could stop time, maybe he would stop it right here.
.
.
.
He grows up like this, when he finally hears what he's always wanted her to say, and its aftertaste is bitter. He hands her the flowers and she softens before him, her eyes and her smile sweetly sad, as if she knows every word that is at the tip of his tongue—but there is a hand tucked into the crook of his arm, and it isn't hers.
This, then, is their downfall. No matter how high the walls around her are, or how much she hardens her heart, or how cutting she makes her words, there is a galaxy of kindness in her. She simply cannot find it in herself to hurt others, and certainly not those she loves the most.
They are over before they even start.
He sees it in the indulgent smile that tilts her lips as she watches his girlfriend make a silly fool out of herself, in the pointed glance she shoots him when the display is over and his expected response does not come.
He runs again, not because he is a coward this time, but because he's never known that sacrifice could cut so deep, winding itself around his chest and searing scars into the heart that he opened for her.
.
.
.
He crumbles like this, beneath the tears of a girl who returns alone and the weight of his own bewilderment. This is worse than anything he has ever known, because even when he was a mere planet that orbited distantly around the brilliance of her being, she was always there.
She is gone now, and all that everyone else can see is an ugly caricature that he doesn't recognize—a witch, a monster. Those who remember her as she was are fading, like the cooling embers of a dying fire.
He lives in an agony of indecision, craving every bit of news about her that he can get, and regretting every article the moment he reads them.
As the days pass, he wonders what he is still clinging to—his unreliable memories, or his misguided hope?
He is no longer the boy she left behind, so it only makes sense that she is no longer the girl who disappeared from his life either.
.
.
.
He picks himself up like this: unsteadily, slipping and scrabbling for purchase, until he is finally able to straighten, battered but not beaten. He can smile now, even if it never reaches his eyes, and he can laugh, even if his fiancée's smile flickers at every stilted chuckle that comes from his lips.
He has her to thank for that, that his eyes have been opened to the web of lies that thicken with every step up in the ranks that he takes, that he can take no pleasure in the position he has only ever been able to covet from afar.
He can barely remember what she was like now. The old photographs—not that old really, just a few years ago, though it seems like a lifetime—where her smiles are reluctant and her posture stiff, don't seem to do the girl of his memories justice at all.
But then she had always been larger than life, too full of impossible aspirations and unfailing optimism for her essence to be confined to something so static.
So he seeks and seeks like a tame hound, but inevitably, he always loses her trail.
He is glad. She is too smart to be caught by someone like him.
.
.
.
He heals like this, with the uncertain tremor of her lips on his, with the melting tension of her body when his arms encircle her waist. She has changed, but so has he, and somewhere along the way he has managed to catch up to her until they are finally standing on equal footing.
It is still wonderfully surreal for him to be able to open his eyes and see her face. Sometimes, he slowly traces the sharp angles of her jaw and the new scars she has accumulated, seeing all the ways the years have taken their toll on her, just as they have done to him.
Her eyes have changed the most, and he loves this about her. Every time she looks at him now, they are bright and uncertain and full of wonder—exactly the way his own heart looks when reflected in her endless gaze.
He has never realized how much he's always wanted her to lower her defences around him until now.
Finally, he knows—this is happiness.
.
.
.
He stands strong like this: forceful and unwavering, with the memory of the desperate longing on her face etched into the insides of his eyelids. She is his rock, his anchor, and as long as he knows she is safe, he feels sure that he can weather even the fiercest storm.
They call him a traitor, which only makes him laugh, a choked gurgle of blood bubbling in his throat as his lips curve in a sickly grimace of mirth.
He is loyal, and proud to be so.
All the same, he is almost glad when darkness begins to engulf the edges of his vision. He tries to pretend that he is going to sleep, and he tries to believe that her face will be the first thing he sees when he wakes up.
He wonders if she would be proud that he didn't run this time.
And then he fades.
.
.
.
They live like this, quietly and simply and happily, because they have each other and that has always been more than enough for both of them. Every so often, her words will falter and he will fall into a brooding silence—but with time, they learn to go on, because regrets aren't enough to pull them down.
He knows she worries about him. It's in her nature, and he can see it in the lingering looks she steals; the way her grip tightens around him as if to tell him she's here, and she will always be here.
He tries to tell her that he's fine, and more than fine, especially when he gets to make her squeal when he swings her around by the waist, or dumps a bucket of water on her as a joke before running for his life.
For a moment, they were glorious, the Captain that ran off with the Witch—now, they are slipping from memories the way even the most stubborn stains eventually succumb and fade into oblivion.
Then she leans over to kiss his cheek, startling him out of his thoughts, and he smiles.
Everything is just as it should be.
.
.
.
Supernova: n. a stellar explosion that briefly outshines an entire galaxy before fading from view.