Probably not a good start to my career as a TLC fanfiction writer, but I was thinking about - you guessed it - eyes. Thorne's eyes, to be exact, and how much Cress loved them.
I guess this is what happens when I'm feeling particularly angsty.
I'm sorry in advance.
She saw his eyes every night before she went to bed and every morning when she woke up, something she had wanted since the day she found out about his existence.
But not like this.
They haunted her. His brilliant blue eyes. Cress curled up in bed and tried to imagine Thorne's arm around her waist.
"You are a famed hero. The world commends you for your bravery," Cress whispered. She closed her eyes, savoring the feeling of knowing that for once, the words she whispered to herself were true.
She braced herself for the lie her imagination would feed her next.
"Thorne is right by your side."
She never could shut off her imagination, could she?
Cress sank deeper into her bed, pulling up the covers over her head, feeling a few tears escape from under her closed lids as she began to sob over what was. Over what could have been.
She had loved him. He had loved her. After the revolution, perhaps they could have traveled the world. Perhaps they could have helped deliver the letumosis antidote. Perhaps they could have settled down and started a family.
No matter what, they would have been together.
Cress dug her fingernails into her arms, pressing them in tighter until she was sure she had drawn blood, but she didn't care.
She would give up buckets of blood for Thorne. She would take a knife for Thorne.
A few scratches on her arms were nothing compared to the massive ache in her chest, where Thorne's absence had left a gaping hole. She tried to fill it, tried to recall every shade of blue his beautiful eyes could be.
The rich blue of a hot sky in the middle of a desert, glazed and unfocused.
The deep blue of the Earth's oceans from the Rampion, lit up with laughter.
The husky blue of the shadows in Levana's atrium, wanting for more.
She would never forget those eyes, painful as it was to keep remembering.
Cress's eyes fluttered in the darkness under her blanket as her mind, against her will, drifted back to the moment when her world had come crashing down around her.
She had run as fast as she could, practically flying down the hall to Cinder, not knowing Thorne would be there, leveling a gun at his friend. She had been standing at the entrance to Levana's throne room, right there, when Thorne shifted his arm. If only she could have pushed herself faster. If only she could have hurried a bit more.
If only, if only, if only.
She could have stopped him.
Instead, she had been forced to watch, as he raised the gun to his head.
She had been forced to look into his blue eyes as he fired.
I don't forgive myself either.