A/N: Hello! I'm back and I thought I'd bide my time in-between stories by drabbling some closure on Aylee and Axel. Hope you enjoy!
The In-Between:
I bit my lip and stared into two startling sapphire eyes, my own eyes. They trailed down my visage, tracing my perky nose and full, Cupid's bow lips, until they dipped past my pointed chin. My pale white teeth sunk into the pillowy flesh of my lower lip as I furrowed my well-trimmed brows. Something was different, I concluded, but what exactly?
I was physically no different from before The Time Away, as I found myself referring my adventures in with the Organization. My hair was still dark as ink spilt across pallid parchment, my skin still a creamy porcelain pale. I flexed my hands in the mirror, fisting and relaxing them.
That look in those eyes, I found myself tilting my head with interest, that was different. It was no longer a look of naivety or inadvertent innocence. Instead, I stared back at myself with a sense of someone who's seen a piece of the world and is all the more wiser and knowledgeable for it. It was the gaze of a warrior, of a diplomat, of a grown woman.
I was no longer a gangly teenager caught in the in-between of childhood and the tangled throws of adulthood. It were as if my previous life were a heavy winter coat I shrugged from my frail shoulders, in favor of warmth and sunlight.
"Hey- Aylee!" Trixa burst into our joint bathroom, something that would have startled me to tears previously, but now I hardly blinked. "You almost ready yet?"
"Yeah," I nodded, a small smile grazing my features, "Just a minute."
Trixa rolled her eyes and snatched a beach towel from the counter beside me, slinging it over her shoulder.
"Don't dawdle!" She tsked me, wagging an accusatory finger. "Yuro promised to bring a friend for you so you don't feel like some third wheel or something this time, so hurry up! The beach waits for no one!"
I pursed my lips and shook my head. "I don't want a date."
Trixa was applying a fresh coat of coral pink lipstick in the mirror, smacking her lips for effect.
"Don't be such a prude." She admonished. "C'mon, have some fun!"
I didn't answer, merely waiting for her to vacate the room in a flurry of coral pink persistence while I fished for my sunglasses in my drawers.
How could I tell her that I am, in reality, from a world far away from this one? And that the one love of my life, new and past, was somewhere out there finishing is role in a story too enormous and entangling to tell in one sitting, and that I was patiently awaiting him; a steadfast Penelope for my Odysseus, a Juliet tipping back my priests' poison with complete abandon in the hopes for a life with my Romeo. But I was no delicate flower, no; I was a warrior princess, guarding my loves heart with all my might.
I was myself, wholly and truly, I concluded, nodding to the mirror justly.