a/n I'm not a history expert so I can only apologise if I get things wrong.
The title is from the song Glass Heart Hymn by Paper Route.
I hope you enjoy. :)
...
Time after time, they'd run to the ends of the Earth to save each other –
but it was never enough.
...
Paris - 1990
They walk down the street, their hands loosely intertwined. Their bags are heavy on their backs and the late summer sun is beating down on the pair, stifling them, but they don't mind. They just enjoy walking, liking the easy company and the beautiful streets.
This is where it starts, their journey across Europe. It had always been a dream for them, and to be living it now seems unreal – but it is and they have to keep pinching themselves to make them remember. It had taken so much to be here, but, now, it seemed worth it.
They trail down the path, holding hands, falling in love as they do so.
...
And that's what scares him more than the world. He never thought this would happen - this trip – so he never considered the realities; like how the early morning Paris light would fall on her face just so and how everything would feel perfect to him for the first time.
It scares the hell out of him.
So he does what he does best.
...
It's the second week of their journey. They've stopped in a tiny French town near the border with Germany, weary from a day's travelling. They settle into their little B&B, relaxing and sharing a drink in the soft evening light.
The morning dawns with the noise of the birds and he opens his eyes and takes in the tangle of the sheets, the bags dropped without a care in the world, the whiskey tumblers sitting where they left them last night when they fell asleep in the summer heat.
A feeling descends on him, one that he can't describe, one that almost seems to drown him. This wasn't how things were supposed to happen. She was supposed to be his high school fling, nothing more, nothing less. But then they started dreaming and now the dreams are real.
When she wakes up, she's full of talk of a church that she wants to visit, telling tales of its beauty over breakfast. He begs off, saying he's feeling the effects of the sun but convinces her to go on her own – she can't miss it just because he's not feeling up to it.
But as he watches her go, the feeling of guilt in his stomach won't go away.
...
All it takes is a moment. A moment to shatter everything.
It happens in slow motion. The door opens. He sees her face, watches how it falls when she sees what's going on. His face burns with embarrassment and shame. The girl hurries to dress, but neither of them notices her as she flees. They let her go unchallenged, unable to meet each other's eyes.
He keeps replaying her face in his head. That's what kills him the most. The fact that she didn't look surprised – she looked like she'd expected it of him.
It takes one second to make everything crumble and he knows that if he's being honest he'd meant for it to happen. But now, looking back, he's not sure why. He was a coward, looking for the easy way out because he's scared of what the future may bring – of love, of a family, of responsibility.
He wants the pieces to start coming back together, for things to reset, to fix themselves. But as he watches her walk out of the room, he knows they never can.
...
"You can't go, Iz."
"I can do what I like."
"You can't go."
"I can do what I like, Alex."
...
She disappears into the night, taking her half of everything – plane tickets, money, food. He watches her go, watches her got swallowed up by the darkness, and it takes him a long moment to realise that she's not coming back.
He's lost her.
She's going on without him and it kills him slowly inside.
...
He follows in her footsteps, tracing a curve across Europe, taking a path that had been thought out between them months ago. He's sure she's still following the plan, but he's not sure why. She could be anywhere now – she could have gone back home. But he continues still, knowing somehow that he's just a step behind, that he has to find her and then she'll know that he's not a coward anymore.
It took losing everything to realise that he can't give it up. She may have supposed to only be his high school fling, but now she's so much more than that. Maybe she always was.
...
He follows her through Rome, Bern, Berlin, Amsterdam, all the capitals, but also all the tiny villages, pictures of which used to adorn her bedroom wall back home – just dreams then, but reality now.
Autumn falls somewhere on his journey, the trees turning golden, the leaves falling like orange snow and carpeting the ground. It always was his favourite season.
He finds a picture of her in the pocket of his jeans after a while, and takes to showing it to bar staff, the people running the hostels, the B&Bs, asking them if she's passed through. The answer is always yes, that she didn't chuck it all in and go home. But it always means he's one step behind.
...
The Christmas season leaps up on his seemingly by surprise, thick snow holding him up as he crosses in Madrid, on the final leg on the trip, so carefully planned in advance months ago. Things haven't turned out like they planned – nowhere near – and travelling alone is awfully lonely.
...
He spends Christmas day on a plane out of Madrid, joining all the holiday tourists with their suitcases and big happy grins. He just goes to sleep and pretends it's not happening.
...
He finds her in London, on a Tuesday just after New Years.
They'd always talked about London, about how it would end the trip on a high. They'd always talked about the Tower Bridge, of how beautiful it looked. She had a postcard of it stuck above her bed back home.
So it's not surprising that he finds her there, the snow dusting the pavement, and dampening his hair and his clothes and his things. He walks up to her and she looks at him and he knows she knew he was coming after her. She turns and looks at him, giving him a half smile full of grief and sorrow.
"I thought you'd never find me."
...
They go back to her hotel together, in silence, but he lets himself dream – that maybe he'd done enough, that maybe things go back to the way they were. But those three weeks were an idyll, forever shattered, never to be inhabited again. The five months after had been hell, near enough, for him, chasing after her, but now he thought that maybe, he had a second chance.
...
His hope is crushed in an instant. The bad things always take a second to happen.
...
They go into the hotel. A man stands up. He embraces the girl Alex followed through Europe, on what now looks like a fool's errand.
He could follow her around the world and he would always be too late. He would have been too late if he'd chased after her in a fading summer light in France all that time ago.
She looks at him with a look that screams at him 'I wish things could be different' and he knows this is all his fault.
...
But he'd still follow her around the world if it meant he could hold her hand in the summer heat down a Parisian street again.
He knows that'll never happen.
...
They go back to the States.
They drift apart.
Dreams fade and new ones take their place.
...
He never forgets her.
...
Yorkshire – 1880
It's raining. The drops fall; drip, drip, drip, on to the paved yard outside the window. He watches carefully, surveying the beautiful surroundings - somewhat dampened by the dark skies and the constant stream of water from the heavens – around his home.
Suddenly, there's a flash of colour in the dark, a slash of crimson across the grey horizon. The flash comes closer and closer until he realises it is a person, a girl. She's running, a red dress on her back, high heeled shoes slung over her shoulder.
She comes closer yet, and he begins to make out her face. It may be raining, and miserable outside, but none of that matters because she's smiling – revelling in the feeling of the rain on her skin, the ground under her feet. The world seems to lighten up a little.
She comes to a pause by the dry stone wall that surrounds his home, pauses to get her breathe back. She casts an eye over the building and her eyes fall on him. Even if he wanted to look away, he doesn't because he can't. There's something about her eyes, a glint of happiness, which mesmerises him.
His father clatters through the front door, and the moment is lost.
When he looks back, she's gone.
...
Months go by; months filled with wonder. Who is the girl in the red dress who runs in the rain? He asks around, nothing too suspicious, just a few questions down the pub when he has the time, at school when he actually goes, but he never finds out. No one knows who she is.
...
He's in the field, watching the sheep, keeping an eye out for one with a lame leg like his father told him to. The soft evening light falls in rays across the field, framing the landscape in a glow. He's sat on the wall, his mind far away, in a different world, his trusty sheepdog by his side, just watching, waiting, for something to happen.
It's like his life is speeding by him, and he has no choice what life he leads. He will follow in the footsteps of his father; he will take over the farm. He can see the life he will lead set out in front of him and he doesn't want that. He wants to go to the big city, to the lights, the excitement. He doesn't want a future where he turns into a stranger, into a man he doesn't want to be.
That's why maybe, when the girl who wore the red dress and ran in the rain with a smile on her face comes back into his life, he takes a chance on something that can never be his.
...
Just as he's beginning to think that she's never coming back, he sees her one day, on the winding path down to the village. They pass in silence, their gazes meeting. She's wearing a dress, pale blue this time. She stops, they talk, things go from there.
...
Things fall into a rhythm. They meet, in secret, for there is no doubt his father would not approve. They talk for hours, about everything under the sun. They get to know each other inside out.
It's not a surprise when she kisses him. It's just a surprise it takes so long. He knew he loved her from the moment he first saw her, standing at the dry stone wall, lighting up the world with her smile.
...
Months go by. Each day he falls a little further. She does too.
...
She's never tells him who she is, dancing around the subject like it means nothing, but in the back of his head he already knows and that, someday, soon, this will all be over.
He's heard the rumours, about the manor just along the hill from their farm, about the prodigal son returning from his travels abroad to claim the dying Earl's title as the rightful heir - his own father has ranted about it enough, the chip on his shoulder stuck so fast it wouldn't budge.
So he doesn't ask, and she doesn't tell, because they both know she's just a pretty little rich girl with her future all set out for her and he's the poor farm boy with his own future set as sure as the sun will rise in the morning. This is just an interlude - a mistake which, in time, will right itself.
They will never end up together, no matter how many feelings become entangled and no matter the hearts that will be broken.
The pretty little rich girls don't marry poor farmer's sons.
...
No one knows, of course no one does. They sneak around in the darkness and the fading light, pretending that this is nothing, knowing time is running out for them.
But they never talk about it. They never asks each other if they have a future because it's as clear as day to them that they don't have one. It doesn't stop them though, because even if they don't have a future, right now is enough for the moment.
...
He's in the kitchen. His father is out, mending a broken wall damaged by the recent storms. A knock sounds at the door, he answers.
It's her.
She never comes to the house; it's always their place, by the cherry trees on the road out of town, so he knows then that something has happened. She's crying, crumbling in front of him, her eyes sparkling with the injustice of it all.
"I'm sorry," she says and he knows that she's lost to him now, that it's over. He can see the ring on her left hand that wasn't there yesterday when their fingers intertwined as he kissed her. "I'm so sorry."
It's raining again.
...
It ends the only way it could.
She stands in a church marrying a man she doesn't love for the sake of honour, whilst he helps his father birth the first lambs of spring.
He tries not to think of her. She tries not to think of him.
It doesn't work.
...
She moves away, with her new husband.
...
The day before, he looks out his window, a flash of crimson lighting up the sky. She stands at the dry stone wall. They meet gazes. He gives her a nod, a goodbye of sorts because words are failing him, she looks back and smiles. It lightens up his heart, but only for a second.
She's not his anymore – not that she ever really was in the first place.
...
They follow the paths carved out for them at birth.
The pretty little rich girls don't marry poor farmer's sons.
...
New York - 2005
"Stevens hits the ball cross court...and Karev can't get it! And that's it, folks; that's the point needed. World number one Izzie Stevens is the US Open champion for the fourth time, beating her arch rival Amber Karev 7-5, 6-4, 6-4."
She sinks to her knees on the court. All those months of training have paid off yet again – it never gets old, even though this will be the fourth time she's won this open and she's won all the others too. She's not world number one for nothing.
She glances up and watches as her opponent, the girl everyone calls her bitterest rival, sobs, staring up into the sky. Looking at her, Izzie sees the flip side – there can only be one winner and that means there has to be a loser. But this their home open and the national pride runs deep. It's killing the girl to have lost.
Her coach runs onto the court and as they high five and she congratulates her, Izzie is still drawn by the scene on the other side of the net, at the despair and anguish. She knows it could easily be her on that side – in fact last year it had been. Karev's coach hovers on the side line, unsure whether to trespass into the young girl's sadness. He makes a decision and goes over to her, awkwardly holding her as the tears slide down her face.
Izzie remembers at that moment that Karev has a new coach; her brother – a tennis superstar in his own right, a former men's world number one, recently retired early due to a recurring wrist injury. Tennis talent clearly runs deep in that family.
A reporter runs over and she's quickly rushed into an interview, but she can't help but keep flicking her eyes over to the other side of the net. Alex – she remembers his name too – looks up at her at one point, their eyes meeting and suddenly words fail her.
She shakes her head and gets on with telling the reporter just how happy winning has made her.
...
It's a similar story at the next couple of tournaments. They come up against each other, battling for supremacy – the newspapers can't get enough of it, of the two beautiful American tennis stars who don't exactly see eye to eye. Izzie's not sure when the rivalry began, probably almost as soon as Amber burst onto the scene, threatening her long held number one spot this time a couple of years ago.
He's always there too, part of Amber Karev's team. She'd be lying if she didn't think he was good looking, because he is, but they never talk, not really – a perfunctory hello here and there when they pass in the halls during tournaments.
You don't talk to the enemy and he's the enemy.
...
Except, one day, they do.
It's a quiet Saturday. She's taking part in a charity competition. He's commentating.
She gets to the final, wins it easily. Afterwards, when she comes out of the changing rooms, there he is, leaning up against a wall, on the phone, talking loudly. Their meet eyes.
When he hangs up, she's still there.
They get talking, about something, nothing, everything. He asks her out for coffee. She says no, brushes him off. He frowns; she shrugs and walks away, because the thing is – she wants to say yes.
...
They don't see each other for a few months after that, in the off season between opens – and anyway, even if she's not consciously doing it, she's avoiding him and she's pretty sure he's avoiding her too on the scattered occasions they do turn up at the same place at the same time.
...
"Karev serves for the win. Stevens gets there easily, sweeping the ball back over the net. Karev replies, striking the ball well. Oh, oh – that should have been easy for Stevens but she makes a mess of it and Karev smashes it back over the net, and all she can do is watch it sail past. And she's done it! Amber Karev is the 2006 Wimbledon champion."
...
"You shouldn't have gone for the drop shot."
She glares at him and keeps walking. She knows it was a stupid decision that lost her the match, but the tide was going against her already and if she hadn't lost that point, she probably still would have lost the match.
He comes after her. She ignores him.
They walk down the corridor in silence.
"Go away, Alex."
...
They drift around for a bit longer, dancing around the questions that keep coming up. Life goes on as normal as it can, but they keep moving closer and closer to the line she drew in the sand the first time they talked properly. They can be friends, that's it, nothing more, nothing less.
But then one rainy day in Arizona during a dreary fundraiser the tide comes in and washes away all her carefully constructed defences.
...
They're both dressed up to the nines, the guests of honour as they are. It was supposed to be Amber and she'd been happy with that – but then the girl had pulled out with food poisoning and he'd gallantly stepped into replace her.
The evening is boring – a couple of speeches here, a bland meal there – the whole evening is too civilised and she wishes she didn't come. He keeps looking at her, with those beautiful eyes of his and sooner or later she won't look away.
It happens around ten. He looks over at her while she's talking to some rich benefactor and she meets his gaze for a second too long.
He wanders over. They get talking. They sneak off together in the garden behind the hall.
Afterwards, she tries to blame it on the drink, but she's only had one glass and they both know you can't get drunk on one glass.
She kisses him and they go back to her hotel room together.
...
It starts something. They sneak around, following each other round the world on the tour, meeting in London, New York, Melbourne, Paris – and anywhere else their paths cross.
No one knows, that's how things work.
...
"You look beautiful when you're sleeping."
She blushes in the pale early morning sunlight. He just says it again.
Then he says he loves her and she pretends not to hear.
...
"This has been an unsettled match all round. This is not the Stevens we're used to seeing on these clay courts where she usually excels. In fact, she's not lost a game on clay for two years – not since that tightly fought contest with Grey in the 2003 final. Torres hits a back hand over the net, and it drops sweetly – oh, but that's what I mean, she's usually great at shots like that but it goes wide and out – and that's game, set and match to Callie Torres. The defending champion has been knocked out in the first round. What a shock!"
She'd be stupid if she didn't connect her disappointing exit at the first hurdle in the French open with the newspaper headlines that morning.
She's a fiercely private girl and she hates having her business splashed over the front pages instead of the back where she belongs for her sporting achievements.
There was a reason she should never have crossed that line all those months ago and now is that reason.
Everyone knows.
...
"I'm sure you've heard the breaking news this morning. Not only is the defending champion and world number one, Izzie Stevens, out – you heard me right, OUT – at the first round stage, but so is last year's runner up, Amber Karev. She lost in straight sets to number forty seven seed Miranda Bailey."
...
She's in her hotel room, packing when he makes an appearance. He's heard about her loss, she's heard about Amber's. He says it doesn't matter, she says nothing's mattered more. Everyone's talking, talking about how she's only sleeping with him to learn her rival's tricks and how he's using her to find out how to beat her to help his sister.
It doesn't matter that it's not the truth – it's both their reputation's that are in the mud. No one understands.
They argue, long into the night over it. He thinks they still have a chance, she says they need to move one.
When he leaves in the morning, words ringing in his ears that can't be taken back, there are photographers waiting for him.
...
They go back to avoiding each other.
...
Amber seeks her out the next time they compete in the same tournament. The younger girl asks her why she was with him. She shrugs, says it's none of her business and continues smacking the balls across the net, but with slightly more venom than usual.
She keeps asking, Izzie keeps saying that it doesn't matter anymore.
Amber gives up.
...
The papers tire of the story after a few weeks. Nothing stands in the way anymore – what she was scared of happening happened. The story can't be breaking news for a second time.
And yet they still don't talk, still avoid each other.
Because the words said in the hotel room in the heat of the moment still haunt them.
...
Somewhere in France – 1945
It's her past that does for her future.
...
They watch, together, the burning orange skies through tired eyes and with broken bodies.
"They're coming, you just wait," he whispers into her shoulder as he holds her, trying to ward off the cold. "They're coming – the Russians, the Americans, our boys – they're all coming to save us."
She just watches the snow fall a little more, landing in his hair, in hers but she doesn't feel it. She can't feel much anymore. She looks up at him after he falls silent, instead drawing lazy patterns on the back of her hand, the skin mottled and blue in the fierce cold.
She stares at his eyes, thirty seven years old just like the rest of him, and she sees the child he was looking back at her, clinging to hopeless dreams because that's what you do, even when the world has been set of fire and buildings crumple as planes bomb the innocent and people die for no reason, every day, everywhere.
She sighs and looks away. She doesn't say a word, doesn't crush his childish hopes – because what good what that do, lying here in the snow, under the trees and the thin army issue blanket that they sent her across with, a year ago now; the only thing they have left after all these days out here, waiting for someone to find them.
She knows it'll all be over long before the orange horizon claims the grey skies above them – but she doesn't voice her thoughts aloud. What good what that do, at this late hour?
Instead she grips his hand tighter, flashing him a smile that she doesn't mean, trying to remember a better time than this.
...
Do you want to help?
One question, one simple answer. She had always wanted to help, to make things better; it was her nature. So when a stranger, sat in her kitchen, cradling a cup of boiling tea, asked her that question, she answered without a second though – without wondering where it might lead.
It led to bloody footprints on hardwood floor and to snow settling in her hair as her blood turned to ice. To oblivion.
She didn't know that then, of course. Maybe she wouldn't have said yes, if she knew.
Or maybe she would have.
...
"You can always say no. Just go home."
They kept saying it, time and again, but there came a point when she stopped believing them – when she was in too deep to just walk away.
...
"He'll be waiting for you," he told her, standing with little clouds puffing out of his mouth, staring off somewhere into the middle distance as she watched the plane landing on the runway, arriving only for her. She was the cargo.
"Bonne chance, mademoiselle."
"Au revoir, capitaine," she says, her native tongue feeling strange on her tongue after years of absence. It was the reason she was here, that things had lead to this moment, but it still felt wrong of sorts to speak this language.
He gives her a cursory nod – this is just work to him – before walking away and that's when she realises that she doesn't know his name, not that it really matters.
...
He's waiting for her just like the Captain told her he would be, on a side street in a small French town, near where she was dropped.
Silently, he leads the way, twisting down cobbled lanes that remind her of a childhood she never lived through, for her father, though from this land, moved across the ocean before she came to be. He always used to talk of his home and she knows he would be proud of her.
As time goes on, this unwavering faith fades and cracks, to be replaced with the notion that if he father still felt anything, for after all he was dead and buried, it would be the opposite of pride.
...
They get to know each other over long, empty nights when there is nothing better to do, sharing whiskey and secrets that should not be shared, not with things dancing by a thread as they are between life and death.
But long nights are lonely and why chose to be alone when there's company to be enjoyed?
..
Plans put into action by others come and go.
Things get blown up. People die, not directly at her hand, but close enough to terrify her at the ease at which people just...disappear. Friends, enemies – it no longer matters once they stop breathing.
...
He's always there, by her side, as the seasons change and move on and people fall in and out of focus and importance.
He stays and things maintain a balance, an equilibrium of sorts.
...
It's not until the evening sun slants through a window in the house as she nervously taps on the table, listening to the wireless one summer night, that she realises that she loves him.
...
It scares her to hell and back.
Not that then she knew what hell felt like.
...
She never kills anyone. Never have her actions directly led to another human being taken from the Earth. Things are what she destroys; not people.
Not until she falls in love with him, and lets him do the same in return – because as sure as the sun sets and rises with clockwork infallibility, it's what paves the road to oblivion.
She kills him as sure as she drove a knife through his heart when she holds out a hand and asks him to run with her as they watch the men walk up the drive, holding death in their hands.
...
One night, she begins to question their very existence.
The woman who she became when she flew over the sea at the midnight hour all that time ago is not the woman who worked in an office in Manchester from nine til' five and spent Saturday's shopping with her girl friends for the latest fashions, waiting for the rest of her life to begin.
She wonders who he is back home – is he a soldier, an army officer just like everyone she knows seems to be these days, or is he ordinary, like her? Does he work in a bank or an office like her, from nine to five, with the weekends his to do what he pleases? Does he have a French father and English mother who met on the train from Exeter to Manchester, like her?
Do they really know each other or are they just pretending?
...
The morning light slips through the curtains as she rests her head on the pillow and watches him sleep.
The sheet is soft on her skin and sleep pulls at her, threatening to overwhelm her, but she doesn't look away.
She knows they are on borrowed time; that they can't have forever. It doesn't stop her dreaming of what might happen when this damn war is done. Maybe if things end up right, if they win, if they survive – they might have a future.
But there are so maybe variables so it's easier to act like they don't have a chance.
...
And in the end, they don't.
...
He takes her hand and they run off into the night together. They take as much as they can, as much as they think they will need.
Neither of them predict the turn in the weather, but even if they did, they can't stay, not with the police coming and with them the promise of torture and death.
Neither of them considers that both options have the same outcome.
...
He's standing in the doorway. A gun goes off somewhere. She watches in slow motion, unable to do a thing. She watches, waiting for him to crumple. He never does, instead a man, a stranger, somewhere inside the house lies dying. All she can think is that she's so happy it wasn't him. What does that make her, even if he's supposed to be the enemy? What if he was just a boy, following orders?
She swallows hard. As they flee into the night, she can't get the image of the splash of blood on the hardwood floor she saw out of her head.
...
The sky burns orange overhead. Guns rattle over the hill. Soldiers boots ring on the frozen ground.
The blanket is thin and the air is cold.
Neither of them know a thing about it. Oblivion has come.
...
"Alex?" He wakes from his peaceful slumber, sleep making him hazy. She's sitting up in bed, the sheet wrapped around her. He grumbles about being woken.
"What?" She looks at him, scrunching his eyes up at the morning sun.
She turns her head on its side, pulling her legs up to her chest.
"Nothing," She pauses. "Go back to sleep."
He does.
...
In the end, it was her past that does for her future – but she's not sure she would have changed it for the world.
...
Leeds – 2010
They've walked the same halls for five years, but it's only the summer of year eleven that they first talk properly and it's not in school. It's in a sports complex twenty miles out of town. She doesn't know he'll be there and he doesn't expect her to be there either.
She's babysitting a little girl for her next door neighbours four nights a week – volunteer work, of course, so it'll look on her CV in the future – and the girl, Olivia, has gymnastics class on Thursday afternoons from four till seven. It's some accelerated programme for the gifted, looking for the next batch of Olympians or something like that.
Izzie just likes the fact she doesn't have to be at home four nights a week.
She delivers the kid to the woman in charge and realises she desperately doesn't want to stay down here, with all the pushy mums, so she's grateful when the boss woman tells her there's a lounge area upstairs that overlooks the room.
She nods and disappears up. When she pushes the door open, she's not expecting Alex to be there. He's got headphones in, and he's tapping his fingers along, mouthing along to the words. She finds it amusing and quirks an eyebrow at it. She pauses in the doorway, wondering what to do next.
She's seen him about at school, knows him by reputation – he's the school bully, the burly centre back on the school football team, who terrifies the little year sevens as he walks past, glowering – and he knows her by hers – she's the queen bitch, captain of the netball team, the type of girl who'll start rumours about anyone she doesn't like just to keep up her popularity. They're one of a kind really.
He turns and catches her before she can run. Before she can stop herself, she asks him why he's here. Haltingly, he says that his sister's down there and gestures down at the gym. She wonders how he can pay for it – for all their similarities, financial status is not one of them – but doesn't ask.
Quickly, she comes up with some witty line to sooth the awkwardness that's flared up. He hits back with a sarcastic remark and things are just as they should be.
She takes a seat at the back, away from the window and gets on with her homework – she's not a straight A student by luck, you know – and tries to ignore him, but she can't help but notice he picked the seat closest to the window and she finds it sweet he cares about his sister; he might have a reputation at school, but it here he seems to be a different guy.
It worries her, so she goes back to her simultaneous equations as quick as possible, loosening her tie a little.
...
Every week, things are the same. He arrives first, drops Amber off downstairs and goes up to the lounge. She comes a little later; lets Olivia go off and see her friends, before turning herself to the stairs.
They swap insults. He plugs his music in, she gets on with her homework. About halfway through, she'll tease him about his taste in music – like the time she caught him listening to Madonna – or he'll tease her about being such a geek for doing all her homework before anything – he is of the stance that as little homework should be done as possible, if at all. Then Alex's sister will burst in and they'll leave. Izzie will go downstairs and pick Olivia up.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, they learn things about each other. She learns about how his mum works four jobs a week to pay for these classes and he learns how she's more similar to him than she thought. They both have deadbeat dads who ran off when they were little – except her mum was left rich in the divorce and his mum didn't even get a penny.
She learns he's not a stupid bully and he learns she's not an icy bitch, it's all self-preservation, holding onto what they have for dear life. They're just so good at pretending.
They make the first truly honest friendship either of them have every had – she always keeps people at arm's length to stop herself from getting burned and he's not exactly the type to confide in people.
Except neither of them will admit it.
...
School ends for summer. Six weeks of summer holiday stretch out in front of them and they expect what was going on before, the weekly meetings at the gym, the secrets spilled and shared, the honesty, brief but refreshing – well, they expect that to stop.
But the next generation of gymnastic superstars, it seems, can't be stopped. So gym every Thursday continues over the break. Izzie's glad to be out of the house, he's glad that his sister's got a chance of a future.
They still talk, just like they always did.
She wonders what's going to happen, because now, things have changed and they don't seem to be going back to how they were.
...
The summer brings parties, too – more parties than term time at least. She drops into a few out of obligation – she doesn't really enjoy them, if she's being honest, which she's not very good at being – and he goes 'cause he's got nothing better to do.
They act like strangers, pretending yet again that nothing's happening. She's still the queen bitch, he's still the school bully. They both have reputations to protect.
...
She can't be falling in love with him. She just can't. They're too different. He's the school layabout he sleeps around, she's the straight A student whose never done anything inappropriate with anyone. He doesn't try and she always does her best.
And anyway, most damningly, after the next two years have gone by they go their separate ways – she'll be off to uni, he'll be wherever he ends up. He's only staying on to sixth form 'cause he was too lazy to apply anywhere else. She's got ambitions of being a doctor or a lawyer, someone that makes a difference.
They're as different as can be.
But as she gets to see this different side to him, the real Alex, she can't help it.
She knows that he can feel it too.
...
She finishes babysitting her next door neighbour by the time the summer's over. Things try to go back to how they were, but their different people now, so they don't fit neatly back.
...
It's one moment of weakness. They're at a party. He's flirting with some girl, she's talking to the boy who's perfect on paper for her and it seems like he's just about to ask her out, when Izzie meets Alex's gaze across the room.
She fumbles in the conversation and it drifts way. He abruptly stops talking to the girl and she goes off in a huff. He comes over. They talk – she asks after his sister. They sneak off somewhere.
When he kisses her, she knows it's been a long time coming. She knows that underneath his facade, he's a good man and he knows that she's broken inside and pretends to everyone she's not.
It starts something neither of them expects. He doesn't do relationships and if she does, it definitely would be with a guy like him. But together, they do.
But no one knows, because they just keep pretending to everyone else.
...
She was always a sensible girl. But he's made her do so many things she never thought she would. Izzie always said she'd wait until marriage or at least until she was older.
But with him, it just feels right.
So when one thing leads to another, she doesn't stop him, because she thinks she loves him more than the world.
...
But they were built on shaky foundations, foundations that burn to the ground one perfect autumn day. Angry recriminations are yelled, damning truths that neither of them want to face are screamed in rage. Because they couldn't let everything fall away, they couldn't be honest.
It's more than that though. He's scared of turning into his father and he's crap at relationships and she's far, far too good for him, so he doesn't fight for the feelings he knows are there. And she's terrified of how she feels for a guy who's oh so wrong for her, terrified of the future – because her whole life up until this point has been about getting away from here, ticking down the days until her life really starts, because this place is a dead end and she can't stay here. Not even for him.
Even though she could. Would it be such a bad thing?
But she walks away and so does he.
And when they go their separate ways that evening, anger running in their veins, both of them already know it's a mistake, but neither of them turn back. They're both cowards underneath it all, pretending things are okay.
...
They ignore each other. Things go back to how they were (not quite, things still don't fit back perfectly).
...
It's a Tuesday when she finds out she's pregnant, the leaves on the trees still turning and making the ground a blanket of orange. She doesn't want to tell him but she has to. There's some sort of twisted loyalty still there.
He tells her he'll be there for her, says all the things she hoped he would, proving he's the good man she thought he was - but the anger is still there, still blinding them. And anyway, she can't take a chance on him, not with his reputation – not when her head's full of so much more. She's sixteen and pregnant and she's scared – she just can't cope with him too.
So when she tells him she's doing it on her own, and his face falls, it takes her everything not to burst out into tears and let him hold her. Somehow, she manages to get more words out, ill thought out words, maybe, but words all the same.
"I can't. You and I – we can never be together. It... it was a mistake"
She's lying and he knows it, but she runs away before she can see his reaction. Before she can see his heart break.
...
Her mother doesn't react to the news exactly like she'd imagined. His doesn't either. Hers tells her how stupid she's been but then holds her, sobbing, until she falls asleep. His sighs, like she's been waiting for a moment just like this one – but when he defends himself, defends her and tells her it wasn't just nothing, that it meant something – important words coming from someone like him – she seems to understand a little more.
...
She tells him that she's giving away the baby for adoption. He wonders why she's telling him when she said she wanted to do it on her own. She answers that it's his right, as the father.
He just gives her a rough nod and walks away. First he lost her, now he's losing their child – he wants to keep the baby even though he knows he hasn't thought it through. All he's though is that this is his kid and he wants it more than he's wanted anything in his life. He wants to prove to her he's not a deadbeat like his dad, or hers.
...
Months fly by. He steps up, tries to change her mind. She doesn't want her mind changed – her baby, their baby, comes first, not her, or him, their child; and giving it up for adoption may be the hardest thing she'll ever do, but it's for the best.
Or at least that's what she keeps telling herself.
...
They find out it's a boy the day the whole school finds out. She's not quite sure how, but all of a sudden everyone's looking at her different and she knows they know. No one says anything to start with, her reputation making people wary. She's still the ice cold bitch to them, still pretending 'cause she's so damn good at it.
But someone finds the courage, or stupidity, to ask her straight out at lunch. She bursts into tears and everyone knows, just like that.
No one's kind to her after that, not that they really were to begin with – but the respect she used to demand disappears in an instant.
The bad things always happen in a flash. This is no different.
...
He tracks her to the girls' toilets in the languages block. It's empty apart from her – everyone's giving her a wide berth right now, and she wants to yell at them that you can't catch being pregnant, but that would be stupid, so she let them gawk at her as they sidled out, whispering about her. When the door swings open, she screams at whoever it is to get the hell out, but then she realises it's him and all words fail her.
All the promises made to herself turn to dust in an instant their eyes meet. She lets him hold her as she sobs into his chest, because everything's falling apart.
...
The swirling rumours are the worst. Who's the daddy? How'd she get knocked up? Hasn't she ever heard of protection?
It all snaps one day in a maths lesson. Two girls behind her – who used to be her 'friends', she uses the term loosely – are speculating as to who the father is. She turns around and in the most matter of fact voice she can muster tells them it's none of their damn business, but that it's Alex Karev's. By the shocked looks on their faces, they weren't expecting that.
She's never skipped a lesson before – she's not a straight A student by luck – but she's had too much, so she just walks out of there. The teacher follows her out, but she's one of the understanding ones, one of the less judge-y ones, so she writes her a note and lets her go.
...
The months fly by, full of more glares and judgemental looks, and whispers and well meaning teachers sticking their noses in and asking her how she is, and doctors and nurses who stare but don't ask, because she's a pregnant sixteen year old and no one understands.
He's always there, hanging back in the shadows, ready to hold her up when she falls down.
...
She gives birth with him by her side and she sees the look on his face when she holds their son. It ever so nearly makes her reconsider, but she just parrots all the lies again. He's not a good man, despite the fact he's proved he is, he's not right for her, despite the fact she gets butterflies when he walks in the room, he's just a gamble too much, despite the fact she's become a gambling woman over the last few months.
She swallows, and the tiny little boy in her arms is taken away and something dies in both of them.
...
More months pass.
Things, yet again, try to go back, but now – well, now there's not really any going back. Things fall back into a familiar routine. She reclaims her spot at the top of the school, and people start to forget as time goes on. He goes back to his bad boy ways. They go back to pretending. But now, it all feels hollow.
...
They finish their exams. She gets all As by some miracle and gets the uni place she always wanted. He gets straight Ds and gets a job on a building site.
They never talk about the fact that somewhere out there, is their son, growing up. But it's harder than either of them expect.
She goes away to uni, and he stays behind, just like things were supposed to be.
...
She comes back, after the first term, at Christmas. He's there too. Old feelings are rekindled, old emotions successfully hidden come bubbling to the surface once again.
She's pretty sure she loves him, now more than ever. He's thought she's been the one for a long time now.
But their so good at pretending, aren't they?
So she goes back to uni, he stays behind.
...
And as the years pass, every time they pass by each other in the street when she flies back for a brief visit or he takes a trip to where ever she's living now and they bump into each other in a book shop, or something like that – it's always there.
But she's Izzie and he's Alex so nothing ever happens and they never get their happy ending.
...
Any thoughts?