sum: "I'm never going to love anybody as much as I love you." / or, the story of falling in and out of love with someone, never really falling out of love with them / tara&christian, AU

notes | because i just watched season three, episode eleven and argh what is christian supposed to mean when they said that they can't be together — and he's just breaking my shipping heart and it's really heartbreaking since i'm going to be sticking with TaraChristian until the very end ( which is only three more episodes, sadly ) and i just wish that they could find a way to be together, because they're perfect. they fight and they have problems, but they're perfect for one another, and they're the only ones who still need to realize that they can find a way to be together; hope you guys like this, :)

fraying fairytales
tara&christian

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"when adults say, "teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. we need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. we think that we are invincible because we are. we cannot be born, and we cannot die. like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. they forget that when they get old. they get scared of losing and failing. but that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."

— looking for alaska ; john green

Everything starts, perhaps, Tara thinks to herself, when she came to the National Academy of Dance.

Before then, she wouldn't start pointing out her flaws, her arabesques slower and slower until she could find a flaw in them — whether it may turning her hips out more, or perhaps realizing that her ankles weren't weak enough to be en pointe, just not yet until proper training was giving; and everything was much simpler back on the farm in Australia. Nothing would ever be the same again after she had been accepted into the Academy, even at the beginning of the training camp, the only way possible to be admitted, and though everything had its own mix of evils and goods, she would never want to live without the memories, the everlasting friendships and bonds that were created there;

But, Tara had to remember that those everlasting friendships and bonds were broken just as easily, whether it was quick, or the entire love story of two individuals that played out across three years, ending so quickly, so painfully without a single goodbye and no matter what the other person thought, it seemed as though they were never going to work well together in the first place, so there was no point in really trying harder in the first place. They had already tried hard.

She remembers to not think about what had gone wrong, trying to think about the perfect moments, her favorite days when everything had just felt like magic and those days where there was nothing but horrible and horrible and everything just collapsed upon her back. Her back; yet another problem caused by the National Academy of Dance; Tara thinks back onto the best moments there. The time of her life.

.

Remnants of a late night movie marathon trail across a thin leather couch, buttery fingerprints pressed strongly against a cherished violin, a blue velvet cloth lying delicately upon the fine strings that are coated heavily with rosin, remnants of a broken rosin left upon the floor. The black velvet case is left half open, the bow perched in the middle of the case that is collecting dust near the edges, the silver buckles closed — there are food crumbs, such as crackers and cream Oreo's scattered upon the floor. Of course, it's not her violin — she's tried playing the delicate instrument, ending up with the feeling of never really flying; it doesn't come across the same feeling when there's that magic moment, just her and the violin.

Life as a fifteen year old seems to be difficult enough, and she rises early in the morning, awakened by Abigail's alarm clock ( and that girl confuses her more than anything, because she's most definitely the best dancer in their year, but she always feels the need to prove herself, to show that she's better than everybody else by being horribly nasty ) and Tara doesn't understand what Sammy sees in Abigail; she takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes.

Tara falls in love, not really but still, on a Tuesday morning; it's the first day of the training camp, and she doesn't really even know his name or the fact that he'll probably ruin most of her first year, and impact the very beginning of her second year as well here at the Academy, or that he's her best friend's older brother who's notoriously famous for breaking hearts, but all she knows that he takes her breath away. She's had crushes on people before, of course most of them being strange farm boys who don't understand anything, but Ethan's different. At least, that's what she tells herself.

Everything happens on one perfect day, and the entirety of their relationship was doomed to fail from the start, and Tara remembers what Kat had been telling her all along, about how the two of them were never going to work. It's not really about him, after a while, but she swears that she's in love with him, and then everything seem so to be going well until she meets Christian, or gets to know the side of him that most people don't.

They're playing on the beach one day, reaching forward for the volleyball on the sand, a light breeze blowing in from the each, and they both dive into the sand at the same time and she can almost see Christian close his eyes, but she's the one to make the first move. While she's dating Ethan; Tara realizes that she had all of this coming but it doesn't make it any less horrible, and she tries to forget about it and makes him promise to not tell anybody, to pretend like it never happened but then their pas de deux dancing starts getting worse and worse ( but she's the one who made the first move ) and then it all comes to Abigail.

Tara doesn't even understand what she did to make this one girl hate her so much, but apparently she did something — whether it was never being a good enough friend or maybe not waking up early enough, or just being competition for Abigail and her needs to always be the best, in anything and everything, but Abigail's the one who sends the photo of Tara and Christian brushing lips. She doesn't dare to call it kissing.

It had started off rather simply — a simple act of kindness that though she would not like to admit she valued, that should not have been required in the first place. Giggles echoed throughout the tight expanse, cotton brushing against tweed against an itchy form of silk, until a mouth was silenced with the abrasive, silencing slap of a rough hand, in which three cuts had been deepened upon milky pins. Tara could trace a lengthy shadow across the slits of the alabaster door, the fine-grained gypsum tracing a luminescent sign onto her palm, soon falling onto the wooden chips. It was primarily her own fault, that she had somehow become to be stuck in this sort of situation, in a closet full of what hopefully felt like wet sand, deflated beach balls, and memories reminiscent of a previous year's disastrous reunion.

Which was why, this year, the Webster Family Reunion of 2013 had to go swellingly well; and it was, at least until details were brought up by Auntie Muriel, who Tara and her current fake date were hiding from ( after all, her father seemed to have liked Christian earlier on during first year ), having quickly evaded the situation from running away, quite literally. Auntie Muriel was a very large woman, with a quirky fashion sense, dressing as though she was thirty five, not seventy five, currently donning a denim top and high waisted miniskirts (decked out in colour). To be quite frank, the peculiarities of Auntie Muriel were the only distraction of the dull party, at least until she has brought up questions about Tara and Christian — which was fake. Packed into a bathroom closet with leaky pipes and dangerous equipment was not how Tara had imagined spending part of winter break. It was simple, however: he had owned her a favour, and this was how he would repay her.

Graduation comes in exactly three months, and Tara and Kat ( more so Tara ) watch exuberantly, full of excitement while they're watching the graduates and Christian just scoffs but she's imagined graduating from the Academy since the age of eight. She hasn't exactly planned it out to a detailed narrative like Abigail, but it goes something around the lines of; A horde of accumulated graduates disperse in broad daylight, drunkly enunciating their newfound statuses to anybody who will bother to listen, though most of the times, strangers upon the street, with this ecstasy in their footsteps as they wander into the new world. A sleek Mercedes speeds, jerking upon neon speed bumps, sending a crude reminder to the car's passengers that though they are Academy graduates, they are still under the jurisdictions of the driving law's strange signs. Four girls sit in the back seats, each retrospectively reminiscing on everything they had just left behind but none of them spend too long upon the dreadful days left behind, as their dancing days are flying into visibility, complete with the shows of traditionally themed fireworks, bouquets of flowers from not-so-secret secret admirers, and of course, the speaking navigational system with the British accent.

She's always wanted four best friends. It's been one of her dreams; but she's made dozens of dreams, and most of them had been crushed as the days and months speed quickly by, filled with heartbreak and struggles to always stay on top and then Miss Raine just confuses everybody, but now Tara ( sort of ) has Kat and Sammy and Christian and she wouldn't change this world for everything.

Everything spirals out of control then, and suddenly she's gotten the role and it's summer break, filled with magic moments. Tara wishes that it could last forever.

.

"And you, with all your little flaws and your little quirks, somehow you keep drawing me back in," she smiles, holding onto his face, and deep down Tara thinks that maybe all that they had to do, all along, was try a little harder. Someday, they're going to be good for each other; nevertheless, it's Christian and everything can change in an instant, like it does now;

He removes her hands, smiling a little, "But, Tara, don't you think that if we were going to end up together—"

"We would be together by now?" She says quickly, dreading the statement but knowing that she would have to admit it one point or another; Tara had just been avoiding her problems for so long, and now, having to face them? It wasn't something that she had expected to have to do, not at least until they had graduated third year, not at least until they were grown up and then she realizes that time has passed by, and she's not the same naive fifteen year old she had been all the way back then when she had started at the Academy. In a way, everything has changed. "Believe me, Christian, it's all that's been running through my head, and," She doesn't know how to say the words, and she doesn't want to, "It's been good. Really, some of the best years of my life but those perfect moments, those magic moments are few most of time we're just fighting, and I think that I've known it for a while, but, Christian? I can't do this anymore. We can't do this anymore."

And then he looks at her, and she feels her heart breaking again, "I'm never going to love anybody as much as I love you." But, they separate and it's going to be good in the long run, Tara just knows it — no, she doesn't know it, but she thinks it. It has to be. Right?

Her mind is a mix of decisions, and what ifs, and she learns that dancing is really only half the battle ever since she started all those years back, with the thoughts of becoming a primo ballerina — but what about her back problems; and she's relied on her idols, which have turned out to be some of the worst mothers in the planet, and some back breaking horrible people that retire when they don't want to push themselves hard, and she can't really rely on anything right now and everything's changing, but she's growing up, and this was meant to happen.

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They see each other another day, one of the last pranks at the end of the school year, just three more weeks until they would graduate. Tara can't believe that everything's over — all the friendship that they've made were somehow supposed to last, but it would never be the same again.

It would never be in this perfect way. He smiles at her, and she waves.

They're just going to have to learn to move on, without one another. And this isn't the fairytale that Tara has dreamt of from the age of a young girl, but in a way, it sort of is; It's for their own good, she reassures herself.

(Or not.)

fin.

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