Lichtfunken
Summary: There is no such thing as love at first sight. OneShot
Warning: drabble-ish
Set: story-unrelated. Absolutely.
FYI: "Lichtfunken" is a German neologism which can roughly be translated as "light spark". Searching for sense? There is none. Welcome to my world. Oh, yeah – Artist's freedom.
Disclaimer: Standards apply
Teresa knows there is no such thing as love at first sight.
She envies those people, though, who – like Marina, who is young and has every right to be naive, and like Terrance and Jay, those more or less romantic idiots among her siblings – do believe in it. Believe in a spark suddenly lighting, something old suddenly being created newly. An instant connection being drawn between two people who see each other for the first time. A world for and between two people only, created from the first moment they met.
Naivety.
Or, maybe, faith. Because how much do you have to believe in God to be able to believe in something absolutely effortless, heartbreakingly simple and earth-shatteringly wonderful? And, ultimately, nonexistent.
...
Maybe Teresa is too realistic, too experienced or perhaps even pessimistic. Everything she has seen and everything she has learned in her life leads her to the one realization that there is nothing like instant love. There is family love, like the love she has for her siblings, and respect between teachers and students. There is loyalty, like the she is loyal to the three people who shaped her and to the one woman who yet has to. There is friendship, too, and the bond between partners, like the one between a weirn and its astral or a demon and its anchor or between two hunters who become partners in heart. But even stronger than all of it, Teresa has experienced hate. And fear, and loneliness. So no. If there is something like love at first sight, it doesn't apply to her and therefore has no place in her life.
...
Cassidy seems different.
Of course, there isn't anything she has to pin it on, much less to prove it. Watching him closely, Teresa has the growing feeling that she has been missing something. Like she has been looking away for a second and looked back again only to realize that something has changed but she doesn't know what. It nags her. She tries to hide it but sometimes she has to leave the room in order to stop herself from screaming on the inside. It's the way he moves and the way he smiles, the way he talks and the way he is silent. The way light falls onto his face which suddenly seems so more angled, so more foreign. There has been a time when she would have known him everywhere. Now he seems like a stranger. He looks straight through her and it irks her – the feeling of his expressive, green eyes on her while he doesn't realize she's right in front of him.
On other times, she watches him encourage Marina when the little seer is down, and he jokes around with Ten and Jay and organizes their shifts with Terrance and Teacher and spars with Jaq. He is all ragged edges and sharp angles and dangerous thorns and she is afraid to cut herself, to have him add to her many scars. But like an insect drawn to the flame she can't help but seek him out. When he sits in the library, studying, or when he goes over some papers in the kitchen. When he watches TV with Ten and Mar on Sunday nights. When he and Terrance check their equipment. She hovers in the background, desperately trying not to be noticed, and curses herself for her foolishness.
Because really, what is she trying to prove?
Sometimes, even his voice seems different. Deeper, quieter. His rare smiles pierce right through her. His chuckles make her ache in want of something she refuses to think of. His cocky grins fuel her anger, something that will never change, and she is glad because it's the only thing left that reminds her of who she is. The warmth of his body when he's close makes her shy away because she wants to feel it so much she feels like crying. She wants to feel him – touch him – but she's afraid he will vanish into thin air as soon as she stretches out her hand to try to confirm he is real.
He won't stay. Nobody ever did.
At the same time, while watching him, tenderness floods her, warm and not entirely unwelcome. It's him, Cassidy, whom she already knows for such a long time. She has watched him grow up, as he has watched her. She has been there when he first came into their house, became a part of their Clave. She has been there when he killed his first demon, when he learned, studied, hunted and graduated, when he started to rise through the ranks of hunters. She has followed him trough night and day and knows him well enough to know he's far from perfect. He's a perfectionist, and he basks in his victories more than he should. He can be impatient, and almost cruel in his honesty. He loves to make people see their own faults, no matter how small and insignificant. He has been there when Jay, Nadia and Terrance were taken and when they fought the Sohrem. And, differently to others, he is still there, and Teresa desperately prays he won't leave even while she knows he will. She still remembers the read-headed boy who looked at her with a smile she didn't answer when they first met. She can remember the time when he had his first crush, when he fell in love for the first time, when he cried over his first kill, when he was down for two weeks due to a demon attack and a failed mission. She has seen him reach out and take hold of the world. And she wishes he'll have anything he wants, everything he wishes for. He deserves the world, no matter how painfully, wonderfully, beautifully imperfect he is.
She never thought it would feel like it does.
Because, at the same time, she loves him so much she feels like smiling. And crying. And dancing, and screaming, and laughing out loud and raging. It doesn't matter that he doesn't know and never will. It doesn't matter that they are Clave siblings, a fact which is enough to make a relationship impossible. It doesn't matter, nothing matters, because she loves him so much she wants to reach out and feel him and wants to run from him at the same time. Feel his hand on her arm. Never see him again to never have to feel his eyes on her again. See the light in his eyes. Leave the Clave, the house, the city, the country, leave this world and never return. Feel his taunting, infuriating, scalding smile. Forget the way he looks like, the way he smiles, taunts and cares. Forget him and never remember him while never wanting to let go, while she keeps every little smile, thoughtful look and watchful glance catalogued away in her memory. Nadia didn't seem happy when she realized it but Teresa knows her best friend's lips are sealed. And Nadia should know she needn't worry – Teresa is the last person on earth who would tell anyone. Nobody needs to know about this, nobody should know because those feelings belong to her alone. Cassidy belongs to her alone, the quiet, polite, silly, reasonable, annoying boy who grew up to become the man she knows today and whom she loves more than anything.
...
And really, there is no thing as love at first sight.
Because Teresa knows exactly when she fell in love with him: the moment when she saw what he had become, the one day on the street, when light fell into his face like a thousand golden sparks. A normal day, entirely normal, and her life will never be the same again.
Teresa knows exactly when she fell in love with Cassidy.
And she's still falling deeper and deeper.
A/N: Whoever reads this and decides to review - meaning, either nakimina or Snowlia - I apologize for not answering as usual! I'm away for my working vacation again. I'll see you around fall. Have a great summer!