Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Or the last line.

random and not really my style. or maybe it's totally my style. but either way, this kept running around in my head and i had to get it out.

Despondence
—

they aren't the same people they were when this began,
the ones they were before it all began.
because there was a story before the story, after all.

i want you so much, he told her once.
but that was a long time ago,
before everything had changed.
she'd said, you can have me.
and neither knew then that she was lying.

he closes his eyes and pictures her the way he wants her to be,
the way he thinks she may have been once,
but he can't remember that far back anymore.

her smile is tight and her eyes are cold.
she taunts him with every breath, every step.
he never realizes she thinks the same about him.

he wonders vaguely how long people have been fucking up their lives
can he trace everyone's individual disasters back to the beginning of time?
or is it only a newly-acquired skill?
he hates how the only thing he's good at lately is making her feel bad.

her eyes catch his,
and she can visualize the two paths in her head,
but she just can't decide which one she wants to follow.
and she knows that she will not get what she wants from everyone else
until she figures out what she wants from herself first.

she should tell him no.
she should walk away.
she should go to bed.
and in the morning,
emerging from her slumber,
she should be a different person.
a better person.
but what she should do and what she will do
are definitely not the same things.

there's no privacy; no luxury; no time.
his main job is done,
but he has other obligations now.
and he's either half a world away and thinking of her,
or half a world away and too busy to think.
when did being with her stop being an option?

she thinks the easiest thing she has ever done
was falling out of love with him.
she hadn't meant to.
she hadn't even noticed until –
until she did notice.
and by then, not loving him was all she knew how to do.

he wants to be happy with her,
and she with him.
but can they really have a life based on good intentions
and wishful thinking?
or will they eventually need all that emotion they seem to be lacking?

she doesn't have to love him.
he isn't going to make her.
there are plenty of people who want him.
but does he want any of them?
does he even want her? love her?
maybe not (probably not),
but it's the last thing he recalls being able to feel.
even if it was too long ago to matter.

but there are times
(though few and far between)
when it's just the two of them,
her body warm and pressed to his
and her breathing slow and even,
that he can almost remember who he used to be . . .

so who is he fighting for here?
her, or himself?

she'll scream,
she really will,
if he doesn't hurry up and give up on her soon.
it's over for both of them
(it has been for some time now)
but she refuses to be the one who ends it.

she was once so much a part of his identity
that he knows he can't lose her,
if only so he won't lose more of himself.

he used to be hers.
she used to lace her fingers with his and be able to swear,
with her head on his chest,
that she could hear their hearts beating together.
so where did that go?
where did they go?

he hasn't seen her in ages.
his heart hurts when he thinks of her now,
but it isn't nostalgia
and it's certainly not love.
he decided to stop loving her a long time ago
and he won't look back.

if there's one thing she can promise to herself,
it's that she'll take the past with her,
and that she'll always
look back on their time together
as a guideline
for what not to do.

and when the words fade,
when the page stops,
when the end is here –
well.
there will always be a story after the story, too.

—

when you leave someone in the past,
do they go on without you?
will you meet up with them years from now,
on a busy street or in an overpriced restaurant,
and listen as they update you on their life?
is their life real after you walk out of it?
or does everyone disappear when you leave the room,
when you turn off the lights,
when you don't do one last glance back?
is that the case?
or is there someone, right now,
thinking the same ridiculous thing about you?
do you disappear when the lights go off?
can you prove that you exist?

—