Disclaimer: They're not mine...
Set right after 'When comes around...'
Even though he knew...
He was waiting for her outside the bar.
A couple of hours ago he had decided that he'd had enough of seeing her dancing too much, drinking too much, talking, flirting to just too many guys. He had taken himself outside, but he didn't leave... He never left in such a situation, bracing himself for the long wait ahead in some remote corner of the shabby street.
When she finally came out, dragging her feet – it was funny, but in all this time on Seefra she still hadn't gotten used to heavy drinking... When she finally came out, dragging her feet and slightly swaying, he just walked over and silently offered her his arm. She accepted it without wondering about him still being there, taking his presence for granted as she had done so many times before.
He walked her home, none of them speaking. When they reached the Maru she stood on her toes and planted on his cheek one of those kisses he detested, drenched in the indifferent gentleness that she so well knew how to place like a wall between the two of them since they had met again.
As the doors of the old freighter ship closed behind her, he felt a dull pain getting hold of him, as he realized that those silent walks through dark streets now and then were all they had left of what they once had shared. Everything else, the laughing, crying, joking, talking, even remembering, everything else she did with someone else, people she had met here, the others from their old crew, but not with him... Never with him. Not once.
Even though he knew that a great deal of time had passed...
Even though he knew that, whatever the story they had shared together, it was by now probably over...
Even though he knew...
Maybe it wasn't... Or maybe it was...
But maybe not for him...
Standing at the window of his own so-called home and staring into the dark skies above he wondered once more why she let him walk her home at all on those rare occasions?! Why she still put up with him from time to time, let him talk her into some trip or other? Why she agreed to let him stick around her, and why he didn't manage to stay away from her for good?! She seemed to loathe him with a passion – and he loathed her back for it, but not as much as he loathed himself...
Occasionaly he succeeded in keeping his distance from her. It was a struggle each time, and each time it was futile, for whenever he thought that he had finally made it, she came looking for him. He wished she wouldn't do it. He wished she'd let him be. He wished she'd leave him alone. And wished that that were true...
It was not the first time that something like that happened. She'd told him – years ago – that she didn't want to lose him. And then made it quite clear that she didn't want him, either... That she wanted the two of them to keep things as they were. And that she didn't want to choose between too many possibilities. And so he spared her the trouble to choose at all and decided by himself: to stick around yet walk away, to leave without really leaving, to look someplace else for whatever it was he wanted. He never found it, though.
Maybe it was true after all - that he wished, that he needed her to leave him alone. But then again, maybe what he needed and what he hoped for were two different matters altogether. He shook his head, angry with himself. It was not true. He knew it. And saying otherwise didn't change a bit about how things really were...
What he wished and needed her to do was to let him approach her from time to time... To let him tell himself that things were like before... To let him come and go... To let him tell himself that maybe with time...
Even though he knew that he was lying...
The others knew. But didn't understand. They told him not to worry, that she still liked them, liked him... well.
She liked him well. And he... He just liked her simply . There was a difference there. And had he found the strength to be completely honest with himself, he would have had to admit that this difference measured the distance between 'loving' and 'loving not'.
This honesty although... That would have hurt too much! And so he kept telling himself that this was just another battle in this war of theirs, that they had been fighting with each other since the day they met. It was a not always open war, a tedious one, a war he felt himself growing tired of sometimes. Yet it was also a war holding a certain, heartbreaking beauty. Why did the only war holding beauty have to be the only war he knew he couldn't win? But then again... maybe he could... Simply by not ever letting it come to an end.
Even though he knew that everything had to come to an end, eventually...
Yet she was still there, and she was there to stay. And nothing ever came to an end, really.
Even though he knew.