She sits cross-legged on the bed, eyes straining to see through the grey haze of sleepiness drifting between her and the pale light coming from her laptop. It's 12 AM; Christa had told her she'd be online before midnight that night, but, Ymir notes bitterly, of course Christa, model student she's always been, will put her studies before her best friend. Nevertheless, she waits patiently, brown eyes focused on the small, empty chatbox hovering in the lower-right hand corner of the screen. The rest of the display is covered with Facebook statuses and pictures, all of them bearing Christa's name and face.
It's how she copes, Ymir - when her goddess isn't around, exuding smiles and cheer even through plain text on a computer screen, she settles for the next best thing: pictures, memories of her. Even so, those are few and far between, as Christa had only started taking and posting pictures of herself the year before, during their final year in high school. But for now, and for what she hopes will be the next four years, these pictures will sustain her.
Week two of their first semester in college rolls around; Ymir only speaks to Christa once in those fourteen days, and even then it's a brief conversation that ends all too soon with Christa being dragged away to go to some dorm meeting. She says it'll only take an hour. It takes three, and by that time Ymir is curled up in a ball on her bed, her laptop having been slammed shut by Ymir's angry roommate, who had muttered something about not being able to sleep with that bloody light on. By the time Ymir wakes up and realizes she's fallen asleep on Christa, it's too late- whatever apologies the blonde had left in the chatbox were long since washed away by Ymir's crappy internet connection and the fact that her laptop was being less than cooperative.
They don't speak again after that. Ymir settles for leaving idle messages for her friend, sometimes asking how her day went, and other times answering unspoken questions of how she was doing, if she made any new friends, if she'd gotten into trouble yet- and always, there is no reply. Sometimes Ymir sees a little grey tag pop up- Message seen at 11:45 PM today - but Christa herself never replies, and each time this happens Ymir feels a portion of herself crumble away. Eventually she stops sending the messages, stops pulling up the chatbox at all, berates herself whenever the blonde's name flashes across the back of her mind. Whatever walls that Christa tore down, Ymir builds back up with the broken pieces of herself, insisting that the less she feels, the better off both of them will be.
Her Facebook disappears just before winter break. Ymir isn't sure whether Christa's deactivated or deleted the damn thing. It doesn't matter, really. What small comforts she got form those pixellated pictures of her friend are gone, and all that she's got left are the mental images that so often swim, unbidden, to the fore of her conscience. When the pictures disappear, Ymir begins to dream of Christa more and more, until she can't bear it any longer and has to start taking sleeping pills just so she can get to class, so her grades will stay up, because Christa would've wanted it, and she wants to live up to her friend's expectations as much as possible. As time goes on, though, Ymir can't help but wonder if Christa even gives a damn about how she's doing.
Christa's birthday comes and goes like the winter storms. Ymir remembers it; can't forget it. She calls in a favor from one of her classmates who also doubles as the point guard of the varsity basketball team. By the end of the night the brunette is doped up on alcohol and at least two seperate things that got shot into her arm, if the pricks in her skin are anything to go by. All she can think of during the hangover is how Christa would never be seen, or even try, doing such things, and Ymir hates herself for every single head-pounding minute of it.
In the end, the walls go up and stay up. Her defense is solid against both the passage of time and what comes with it, weathering the floods of emotions that threaten her sanity every time the name Christa is mentioned. Denied, those memories begin to fade, until Ymir's only impression of her friend is blonde-blue-eyes-short-goddess-Christa and not much else can be said for it. They echo behind her eyes, grey facades of stone, and are built so tall and thick that they dam up two years' worth of tears. Each time it seems the dam threatens to break and everything will come spilling out, Ymir tears down another part of herself to build that wall thicker and higher.
And when a small blonde girl walks past, eyes gleaming like sapphires and beaming like the sun, Ymir's walls keep even that celestial light out.
Christa watches the person she's sure is Ymir go by without a word or a second glance. She turns back to her friend, staring in disbelief at the shambling wreck of a fighter that wanders past. Her breath catches in her throat; her pulse accelerates as she begins to follow after her friend, taking two quick steps for each of Ymir's long strides. In the faint remnants of slushy winter, she realizes it's not her that's left her friend behind, it's the other way around.
Their hands meet, but not their skin; Christa's warm mitten wraps around Ymir's leather glove and holds it with a vise, strong as titanium. Ymir looks down, all spite and apathy, and the blonde feels herself waver. How can she, in the few seconds she knows she has before Ymir will turn away and leave her again, explain the events of the past two years? That the reason behind her disappearance, the reason behind her silence, is because she's thrown herself into her studies every waking minute of her life so she could get back home to Ymir faster? That every time she comes back during the summer, she re-activates her Facebook and tries to message her, not knowing that Ymir has long since given up on that method of communication? That seeing her like this, all brick and mortar again, is breaking her down faster than all the all-nighters and mental breakdowns have?
Instead she pulls down on Ymir's arm, hard, so that the older girl stumbles toward her at a slant. In that moment, Christa brings her forehead against the other's, not with as much force as from times before, but hopefully hard enough to knock some sense into the other. When that's done, she glances back up, eyes icing over with tears that come from the pain of not having headbutted anyone in two years as much as from seeing her friend again.
Ymir stares down at her in disbelief, blinking. Christa breaks first, tears streaming down her face as she slowly removes her hand from Ymir's and turns to leave. Ymir watches her back; a single brick falls from its place in her walls, and she hurriedly puts it back into place before staring thoughtfully after Christa. She takes a single, hurried step in one direction before closing her eyes, shaking her head with a quick twist, and sprinting back the other way.
Christa doesn't believe it when Ymir's hand closes in on hers, tight and warm like it's always been. She sees the tension leaving the other's shoulders at the contact, sees that iron defense she's come to know so intimately all built up, but ready for dismantling. Their fingers find the gaps between themselves and link together, Christa's gentle touch shoving aside the tough concrete that Ymir throws up to defend herself. When their eyes meet again, this time Christa sees Ymir, and not just the fortress she's built. Sure, there's plenty left to work through, and Christa knows she's going to have to do a lot of explaining, and probably more to make it up to her partner. She knows it's worth it, though, tearing down those walls; she's done it once, and she'll do it again, even if she has to them apart one brick at a time.