I always knew it was going to be him. He was like the sunlight, I needed him so badly and when he went away it felt like I was dying. A hand on my shoulder is a normal gesture from anyone else but when he did it, it was worth so much more. It was like something so far above me was reaching down just to touch me, to give me an experience of what I could have but could never reach.
I tried really hard to be everything he saw in me. I studied and learned, I kept out of trouble and I remained on the sidelines even though it got me more bruises than anything else. And every day I wanted to give in, to give up and go back to being the old me he'd smile at me and it was like the whole world had begun glowing and everything would be alright tomorrow. I never understood what he saw in me the first day we met. I was headstrong and stubborn, and while everyone said I had talent none of them wanted to deal with my temper.
He was the only one. He would talk to me outside of training, we'd eat together and talk and sit outside to watch the stars. The little things made me fall in love. The way he would smile before he'd laugh, how no matter how cruel or mean I had been he would still be there. It was like he was everything I was not and I loved it. For every rough edge I had he was softer, for every flaw he could make up for it, my temper, something I was infamous for, was tempered by his calm flow. It was everything I could ever hope or dream for.
And he never even knew it. For every touch I thought of as more, to him it was just a kind gesture. Extra hours training together, was just to teach me discipline. He hadn't even planned on talking to me first, he had been ordered by the higher ups to even come near me. It burned. It tore a hole in me when I first found out and I couldn't fix it. When I first looked through his folder in the dark hours when no one is supposed to be up, let alone sneaking though those kind of papers.
They're the only reason I got kicked out.
I had raged when I read them, and I got myself caught and in a moment every instinct from before him came back and they dragged me out kicking and screaming. I left soon after, not that I was going to be allowed back in anyways. But it's easier for me to say I left on my own, easier to say I went looking for him, then it is to tell everyone I was kicked out, that I was a mass of rolling self-hatred and doubt.
It was close to a year before he came back. He was different though, and it wasn't just the mechanical arm and the new scars, he was distant. But then I never really knew him, so I wouldn't be able to tell really. From what I did experience though, he confided in people less, he talked more but quieter and with more authority then he ever did before. The worst thing was he fell in love. Not with me, it would never have been me, I was the poor unfortunate one he tried taking pity on. Instead he fell in love with her.
She was the kind of girl he would like, I didn't doubt it. She was strong, a leader, but she also knew when to keep a level head. She was nothing if not polite, and she was special in a way I could never be. In short she was everything I could never even hope to be
She was the impossible standard.
The masked beauty I had been comparing myself to for years. Any hope of being his was ruined when I saw them together for the first time. I wasn't even lucky to find them doing something as mundane as kissing, no I walked in on something so much more. I ran out as fast as I could mumbling apologies as I went.
I shouldn't have even been crying about it. I didn't have the right. He was never mine to begin with so there was no reason I ended up in tears on my bed, door locked and shut and the music blasting as loud as I could so I couldn't hear the sounds. It hurt more than was right, but I never tried to deny I was in love with him. Maybe it would've been better if I had stayed in denial. Maybe I wouldn't have been hit so hard when I saw them together. Instead it only feels like my heart was ripped out of my chest.