freefall
She wanted to live, but this was wrong. She had wondered, a fleeting thought, if it was wrong of her to live.
Lisa, he called, arms spread like wings, called like she is worth something. It was infinitely simpler for her to have been killed, she knew. The conclusion had been obvious enough to reach.
Their eyes had locked, and the balance tipped. His eyes were kind, and they burned, but they did not burn with promise of devastation, of misery. She swallowed brimming uncertainty and chaotic turmoil, and jumped.
.
.
.
Lisa likes to spend time on the rooftop. It's a nice place, where the likelihood of her causing an explosion or triggering the fire alarm is the lowest. She finds that Twelve is often there, too, spending countless afternoons in the sun.
Twelve is always enchanted by something in the distance, beyond the skyline. At first glance it is as if he is gazing at the sky in awe, drunken with a picturesque view, but Lisa thinks that maybe he is looking at a sight that she cannot see. She supposes that this is what creates the gap between her and them, why she will never be one of them. It must be beautiful; it must make everything worth it.
She twists the knob with her free hand, and the door swings open. Twelve is leaning against the railing, watching the sky again.
"Lisa," he acknowledges, but doesn't move. Sometimes Lisa wonders, if he wants to be free too.
"Hello," she says hurriedly, and sets the laundry basket she'd been carrying down. Twelve shifts, so that she can see that odd smile of his. It is a grimace, it is fake, it is emptiness. It melts, quickly, from his features like snow in spring, ice cream in a blistering heat.
"Why aren't you happy?" Lisa says, unthinkingly, and claps a hand over her mouth, muffles the gasp. "Sorry! I mean! When you smile, you don't seem like you want to…?"
She must have crossed some sort of line. Twelve lets silence sway between them, thread through cotton and wind. She fidgets with the hem of her dress, and counts in her head the seconds of absent words.
"I was hoping you'd understand by now. Maybe I was expecting too much," he says, finally, smile easy and without care, spreading across his lips, shadows of a cloud-hidden sun spilling across pavement. "We don't seek happiness; we seek change."
"That doesn't mean you won't come across happiness," she says back, without pausing to think, again. She has to mentally berate herself. "That doesn't mean you can't be happy!"
Twelve blinks, the smile crumbling if just by a bit. He lowers his gaze as he scuffs his feet across the ground, kicking an invisible pebble. When he looks up again, Lisa sees a something new, something genuine and true in his eyes.
(This is how he smiles, she smiles back, this is how he smiles.)
"Maybe," is all he offers, as he turns to go.
Lisa stands there, dazed, until the click of the door as it sounds in her ears. She unclips a sweater from the clothesline, folds it to place into the laundry basket. What they are doing is wrong, Lisa thinks, but she finds it far less so than she does the world, thinks of Nine's back, thinks of her own spared life. Are you going to destroy this world, she asked; he'd laughed, and that realization will always linger, bittersweet.
.
.
.
For the briefest moment, it was as if time and space had stilled, and amidst collapsed rubble she saw him, wind-woven hair and wispy smoke.
And it was the inevitable that she would fall, fall, fall - fall into his waiting arms.
A/N: or, u kno, shakespearean version - to jump or not to jump. idk. i'm a train wreck so bye. thanks for re a d
for seiryuus on tumblr