Disclaimer: Me is girl. JP is man. See difference? Good.
A/N: Metamorphic readers, I know, I'm sorry. No explanation needed, huh? I just... I don't know, I wrote this on a spur of the moment thing. I'm working on a chapter, though, so just hold your horses.
Anyone else... this is just based on so many sad songs I've heard, and obviously the title is derived from the amazing My Chemical Romance song. Anyway. Enjoy.
The Ghost of You
She walked down the aisle with a grace a ballet dancer would've envied (a first, but you know), with wings so large, so beautiful, so purely white a swan would've been jealous. All eyes are on her, like always, but this is different: they're not waiting for an order that, more often than not, will save their lives. They're lending her their happiness, they're proud of her, of actually getting this far down the aisle without fleeing, or being sick.
Which, being Max, is always a possibility. Her eyes are fixed with the steady, blazing passion I've always loved to mine, and I'm so amazed I'm here, so amazed that this loud, obnoxious, awesome, funny person is going to give themselves to me. To me, of all people, the emotionless brick wall. The emo bird kid. The happiest emo in the world, at that (I'm still not emo, though. Don't get your hopes up).
Just as she reaches out for my hand, I feel a jerking sensation in my naval, and all of a sudden, I'm floating above, watching the scene from, no pun intended, a bird's eye view. I see Max stood at the altar, hand in hand with who I assume is me, seeing as all I can see from this point is a black head – Max was right, I really did need to cut my fringe.
The scene wheels around me – God, I hate motion sickness. How ironic? - and the sudden, jerky movement, isn't the only thing sending my stomach into cartwheels. The face I see, a beaming smile slashed across it, is perfectly sculpted, curving in just the right places, both eyes fully visibly, piercing blue ones with lashings of hazel, if you were wondering. It's not the face I thought I'd see, or the face I want to see. It's exactly the opposite.
The scene distorts in front of me, like I'm seeing it through a film of tears, before beginning to flicker out completely. I reach out, desperate to grab it back, if only to see my love promise herself to someone else, the person who drove me away in the first place, but it's useless, and soon, I see nothing but the type of blackness only ever achieved in the deadest of nights, when not even a cricket chirps (I told Max I was poetic, and she didn't listen. See what she misses out on? That wasn't even funny).
"Hey, Fang?" Max's high-pitched, six year-old voice fills my ears as we stroll outside, heading for the hallowed sandbox we always fought over – today, we had a truce. We'd play together, instead of fighting over it as usual, because when we fought, Jeb got mad and took away our cookies. And trust me, Max minus cookies equals instant death. For anyone around her.
"Max," I looked at her. She was wearing jeans, and a t-shirt, her hair a messy tangle behind her, a small mud-smear on her cheek. Her wings stretched out behind her, magnificent as always despite the mud-splatterings.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" She asked, her eyes wide and innocent, though by now I knew better than to trust her when anything throwable was in grabbing distance of her hands, and I'm including sand in the 'throwable' category.
"I don't know," I answered, more focused on punching a bunch of sand into one small, compact mound – at six years-old, my greatest goals in life were a little different.
"Me neither," Max gave my pile one smack, and, just like that, it was solid. I didn't know whether to thank her, or punch her for ruining my fun. "But we're gonna stick together, right?"
"Right," I said, not really listening as I set about destroying the thing just to spite her.
"Always," she said firmly. "Okay?"
"Okay," I repeated, my eyes narrowing as the stupid pile. Would. Not. Break.
"Fang!" she finally snapped, grabbing my little face in her even smaller hands, forcing me to look into her eyes. "Promise you'll always be with us." Her eyes were fierce, her fingertips making small indents on my skin where she was pressing in. It was an order, but there was an unspoken question biting at the edges of her voice.
"I promise," I vowed, and she let go of my face with a sigh of relief.
"Good," she said, before throwing a fistful sand into my face.
War was on.
The memory flicked and faded in front of me, like an old-fashioned movie. So far away, yet so close. So long ago, yet so recent. A reminder of the time when we were all truly happy, no worries other than who was going to get to the sandbox first, who had the biggest wingspan, who was the tallest (the answer to all was me, naturally). I wanted to beg for more, but it was gone as soon as I had the thought, replaced again with the ghostly wedding scene.
This time, it was like I was the vicar, the one tying the deal, and all I wanted to do was run away, to stop killing myself like this, but I was cemented there, asking the questions of eternity, or so it seemed to me, since I was the one marrying the bird girl of my dreams away. Ironic. Dramatic. A whole other bunch of words ending in ic I couldn't think of right then, since I was kind of preoccupied, if you know what I mean.
I felt my mouth move, heard the words come out, watched the rings slip on their fingers, knew my heart was ripping apart.
It wasn't that, though, that sent me back, in the end. It was the words Max whispered to her new husband after they kissed like it was with their dying breathes, as everyone cheered for them, wolf-whistled (which seemed ironic, considering they were two-percent bird).
"I love you, Dylan."
I jerked awake with a start. This time, I wasn't lost in memories of the past, or the hauntings of the future. I was lying in a cold, wet cave, which I was pretty sure rats inhabited, just me. Just Fang. My 'dreams' came rushing back to me in one cold shock, and all I could see was the images of their entwined fingers, their desperate kiss, like they could never get enough of one another, the love-drunk way they looked at each other, the way my Max looked at him.
I couldn't help it. Maybe the emo side of me just escaped. Maybe I was finally feeling the weight of all I'd left behind that much more. Maybe I was only just realising it. Maybe I was about to discover I was secretly a girl about to start her time of the month.
Or maybe, just maybe, I missed Max. The ghost of what we used to be. What she did to me, ever since the first time I saw her, curled up in that cage, alone and helpless, so unlike the fearless Max we all knew and loved these days.
Maybe I was realising that she was going to move on. Maybe she already had. Maybe this was just preparing me for the future, though that seemed like a loose term nowadays.
Maybe the scientists were right all along – Dylan was her one, true match, and I was just getting in the way.
Maybe I'd just figured out that I'd never be able to really get over Max. The ghost of her would haunt me for the rest of my days. Until she was mine again.
Whatever it was, I flew away from that cave with tears streaming from my eyes for the first time in so, so many years I can't even count them.
I'm coming, Max. I will find you. I'm sorry.
A/N: Damn, sad -.- Sorry. Hope you liked it, in a weird, twisted way? I know it's confusing. I think it's meant to be – so you can kind of make your own assumptions about how it all fits together? Like I said, spur of the moment thing.
Review?