When she tried to recall that night, she couldn't.

Rather, she could, but not with any fluidity. The big picture was lost on her - all she'd found in its stead were thumbnails of clumsy touches, fumblings where there should have been deft manoeuvres.

She remembered that she had been crying in the room alone, and she couldn't quite understand why: the night was meant for celebrating their first unassisted step into the world that had been little more than an abstract to them the past of their lives. She recalled that this sorrow had come quite suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of drinks. She'd seen his smile, had heard his laugh from the very edge of her sensory field and had been flooded with all the emotions the alcohol had been working rather diligently on stripping her of for the past few hours. She'd been burdened with knowing what was to become of that boy. She'd known that his loud, abrupt, and utterly free laughter would be incarcerated, only to be exercised in times of a derisive nature. His bright smile would fade, no longer luminous, but rather depleting, and while that poor imitation of his former smile would still light up his face, it would no longer make those around him wish to join him in his glee.

She couldn't realise the mortality of that smile, of that boy, as much as she wanted - needed - to, not while enveloped by six people completely ignorant to what was to come, so she excused herself from the party, though no one noticed, and that's when she found herself in the room. All she'd been looking for was a place devoid of people that had already either passed out or pulled, or perhaps both.

And then he had stumbled in, the boy with the mortal smile. He hadn't noticed her at first, just the bed on which she had been sitting. He smiled to himself at his luck, a lopsided, closed-mouth grin, his eyes opaquely hidden by hair, half-descended eyelids, and veiled by alcoholic stupor.

She'd taken to ignoring him as he hadn't acknowledged her. When she heard him stop his mindless mumblings and drunken giggles, she'd thought he'd passed out and so was very surprised indeed to see that he'd stealthily found his way to the floor before her and was kneeling, addressing her.

She remembered he'd attempted to clear her cheeks of the tears spilling down them only to nearly stick his finger up her nose and in her eye before finally getting the hang of it.

"What's wrong?" he had asked, voice full of wonder and awe, as though he'd discovered some great lost artefact or something that definitely proved that the answer to the universe was forty-two.

Of course, no one knew the answer was forty-two yet.

She didn't say anything, merely cried harder at the sight of him - impaired vision or not - she'd never seen him more beautiful.

She didn't remember telling him anything, but she must have done because he was sitting next to her on the bed - when had he done that? - pulling her to rest against his chest as he held her, occasionally kissing the top of her head, reassuring her, and telling her not to cry. Oh, how he hated to see her cry, especially if he was the cause of it.

He had no idea.

And she cried.