A/N: This note applies to all chapters: italicized quotes are not mine. I have set up an account at the picture sharing website "we heart it" if you would like to see the pictures and quotes I reference for my interpretations of these characters. Google "we heart it" and click on the first link that comes up. Search for "oh_darling13" in the search bar. It will say nothing found, but click "Hearters" at the top. Click on my name and click "collections". Scroll down to see them all. Click the collection with the character's name on it and scroll down to see all the pictures I've collected that remind me/inspire this character for me. None of these pictures belong to me.
This story is called "Run To You" and is inspired by the Pentatonix song of the same name. I highly suggest you listen to it as you read.
Sophia sits on the sand of the beaches of her islands, from Santorini to the Dardanelles to Athens. Greece. Her eyes are sea green and drowsy, opening and closing slowly as she watches the waters wash into the Mediterranean. She remembers her mother, and Sadiq, and wishes amongst everything that she could forget.
How strange to think we were once lovers.
Never forget who you are.
Sometimes beginnings aren't so simple. Sometimes goodbye is the only way.
And after everything she'd said, and after everything he'd done to her, and he didn't understand…
But you gave me wings. And I used them.
You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
And oh, she thinks, as her heart sinks slowly to the sand, but I don't, mother.
It's a first love kind of thing. No matter how bad you hurt me, I'll never be over you.
It's so hard to forget someone who gave you so much to remember…
"A tornado flew around my room before you came,
excuse the mess it made, it usually doesn't rain in
Southern California, much like Arizona,
my eyes don't shed tears, but boy, they bawl,
when I'm thinkin' bout you."
~"Thinkin' About You," Frank Ocean
Do you think about me still? he wonders as he gazes towards the water flowing down the strait from the Black Sea. There's a reason Sadiq prefers Istanbul and the smaller towns outside it than Ankara. Regardless of how Co—Istanbul may affect him sometimes, there is some sort of thrill of watching the same water that he knows she is watching, somewhere west of here, where the land changes from his to hers, across the river where her mother once warned him to never cross, the river where her golden hair had vanished, the river he rode straight through when he heard screams and saw fire and found her little girl, but not her, the little girl with dark, fine hair and sea green eyes that were so similar to her mother's but different and—oh—
It's going to be one of those nights again.