I like comparing lyra to sugar. French vanilla is my favorite kind of coffee; can i have a red too? no? ...okay.

Pokemon isn't mine.

"Shoot like a rocket, run from the hills, sweetie. That's all you have to do to get yourself to believe that you are more than just a sweetener to ever single page of every single story book you've read.

But you know she's gone now, because you've pushed her and squeezed her into lifeless drops of lemon.

She sits, dead and lifeless and you, you are just the sugar, sweetie.

But that's fine because you don't need to be anything more than just that. Because that's what you are - all you've ever been."

Words that have escaped so many mouths, at least in her imagination as she runs and runs and runs.

She's running from a fate she didn't want - one that is cornered and traps her in a cage like she is nothing like the sugar that pours from her lips.

But she can't help that.

And arms that envelop her in cruel hugs are nothing, because she's never wanted coffee to envelop her that way.

Coffee doesn't touch sugar that way, coffee is supposed to make you feel warm and bubbly and different and energized and everything she already is.

Now all she's missing is the flavor.

Yes, here she is again: she can't get away from this scene.

It's too hurtful to her that anyone - herself, even - could do something as horrible as this.

But arms are enveloping and a different kind of coffee is stealing her away, carrying her to the tops of the vanilla snow covered mountains.

Everything shines, everything's beautifully intoxicating, but she is trapped in the coffee cup and everything changes from what she now knows.

(Lyra's always had a thing for vanilla, you know.)

Because this one, while directly different from what flavor she describes him as is her favorite kind:

French Vanilla.

Sweet to the core.

His eyes are tired and cruel and pent up with emotion, and he is unable to be described in such a way that she can't get to him no matter how hard she tried - but there is sweetness in the middle that pulls and rips you apart from what you're doing and gives a boost of energy.

That is what makes him French Vanilla.

He has abducted her from all her crimes of shooting down coffee cups with harsh words and big brown eyes that glare like daggers.

This coffee is hard to escape because he's so sweet that he has finally given her flavor.

(and now the only thing left is to see if the boy really did taste that way.)

(easy. she knows how to do that, how to get what she wants!)