Minor Post-Winter War spoilers; some parts and speculations of couples are strictly AU though.
The feeling of being lost, even when you're loved. (But never by the one you love.)
(It balloons in the pit of your stomach and you silently hold your breath to dull the ache.)
He's not perfect, anything but.
His hair, its always a mess; a bright, offhand shade of orange that shines even in the blackest darkness shadows can manage to breed; to muster. He's too tall, too skinny, and he's narrow minded and his vision is so terribly tunneled; fight fight fightwinfight fight fight always lingers within his sea of thoughts while yours is filled with worry and love. His fingers are unnaturally long and the tips callused to a fault, like they're sandpaper against your delicate flesh. And by chance, if they ever accidentally do brush against you (which happens few and far between), they leave a burning burning burning mark on your skin, and you find yourself satisfied with this lasting, gnawing feeling. It hurts, almost.
But you don't care, you don't mind, because you love him, right? Because your life revolves around him, everything that's him, and as if it's simply nature (like the birds and the bees, and the morning and the night), you thrive upon him.
(Even when he thrives upon anything but you.)
Your kindness, your intricately with him, it's never enough. You're never bitter though, never bitter that all this love you give him is pooled beneath his feet, forgotten, discarded, and walked all over. Never bitter that your pure adoration for him never humbles him or his actions. Never bitter. Ever. Even though it creeps on you, growls venomously in your ears, traces your breath, and threatens to claw at your eyes and drag out your tears.
Pretty, pretty princess; what a silly little girl, once whispers one of the masked monsters that lock you away from the sun. It snarls and sneers at you, breaking you minute by minute, trying to steal away your faith and hope buried within him, waiting on a prince that already saved his Queen.
(The bitterness, oh god the bitterness, it seeps down in the back of your throat, settling in your lungs. You can't breathe. Help help help -!)
He does help you. He does save you in the end. Just not the way you want.
He doesn't save you from the ache that harbors in your heart, he doesn't fight off the uncomfortable knowing you intuitively have.
The glorified hollows were defeated, yes, but the made up images, the shattering of your heart, they never leave you. He doesn't love you he doesn't love you he doesn't love you He loves -
The Queen.
(But the Ice Queen, even if you tried, you could never hate.)
Oh good golly gosh, you do wish you could, though. But that's not you, that's not you at all. Because your heart isn't like that. It swallows up your insides; it never leaves room for hate to fester. So you love her instead, because she's a friend after all, a friend that becomes nearly the antonym of you - the complement of him.
So maybe you're a little unwilling to accept all the undeniable facts that are written so clearly in your fate.
You know you love him. You're certain of it.
You know his soul, in this life as well as the next, belongs to her instead. You try to forget. Please, please, please, you just want to forget.
(You never do, however. You just watch; you wait for your ugliest fears to come true when she returns to him once again.)
So, in the meantime, you forcibly blind yourself with a perfect boy (maybe he isn't 'perfect, perfect'. Because he doesn't have bright hair and a voice always hoarse from yelling. He has glasses, the shade of his straight tresses black, and when you dream of him, he wears a lot of white, and all you see your prince in is black. He's patient, though, and waits and waits and waits for you, until you're ready to give yourself - or at least, what's left of you - to him).
He treats you beautifully, delicately, like someone of your caliber and sweetness should be treated but it doesn't feel right. You long for the roughness; you want the sweat and the tears and the feeling like you're fighting for something you believe in, even if you're losing so painfully. You yearn for the struggle, for the anticipation, for, maybe even, the heartbreak that brutally mangles the seams of this transcending moment of your life.
Your motions are mechanical from the start, but at least someone finally loves you back, like you love them. Kind of, sort of. And that's all you can ask for, even if, you know, it's not exactly what you want.
(But what you truly want, what you really need, will never be yours. You know. You wish you didn't.)
You know, in your heart of hearts, he's destroyed you. Not the boy you have now, but the boy you never had to begin with.
You smile sadly. Not yours. Never yours. Not ever, never ever ever ever.
So stop dreaming of him, you plea with yourself. Stop, please. You just want peace at some point in your long days.
You can't. Instead, your dreams bleed into each other, and you can vividly see the curve of his jaw, the dark pigment of his scars, and you talk to him a lot. You mutter with your nightmares, you cry with your dreams. And every single night, he comes to you in your sleep, he lets your flittering hope grow wings, and you fly with him, you love with him.
And then, you wake up to the realization that he isn't sleeping next to you; you can't reach over and feel the warmth of him on you. Coolness peels off the surrounding walls of your lonely bedroom and washes over you in his place, and you quietly close your eyes and clutch your chest, waiting for the aching to subside.
(Don't think, just smile. Keep smiling. Keep smiling. Keep smiling. Please. You'll be okay in the end. You pray.)
The days go on, and the gap between your prince and his Queen continue to close, unnoticed by everyone, even them.
But not you.
It doesn't get any better, it doesn't get any easier, but it also, you realize, doesn't get any harder either. When their absence fills and spreads across your thoughts, the turn of your stomach lessens sometimes (not all the time) but sometimes. You feel like that's a start.
There's a hand that comfortingly finds yours occasionally too. It isn't overly callused, and their fingers aren't too long and too thin. It doesn't feel entirely right still, but you smile all the same.
(Silly girl. You have someone that loves you, even when you can't love yourself. Don't be foolish. Don't waste yourself on someone who doesn't want anything you've already given so willingly up.)
One morning, on a day so foggy you can't see the glare of the streetlights from your window, you can feel yourself breathe a little easier.
He still surrounds you with his Queen, and they unknowingly still infect your air, but you don't hold your breath anymore. The aching remains, but you smile a little brighter.
Oh, oh child/your back is straight/don't let hurt curve it that way.