– All or Nothing, by Westlife (O-Town cover)
There she was, and there he was. It seemed like something bigger than him – something immutable as the years went by. She liked him, and he liked her, but regulations – or so they said – were keeping them apart. What was worse for him was that the awkwardness between those two didn't seem to stop during quiet team moments. Even when fishing, the little looks seemed to speak volumes; volumes of a book which he couldn't read, and, in the end, had no wish to.
As the years rolled by, he wondered how long they would wait for one another. There were rumours that they had already started something, but he knew better. He knew them too well to believe the wild rumours. It was as though there was something else stopping them from being together. What, he didn't know – why, he didn't want to know.
He had come to realise – oh, but too late – that what he felt for her was far beyond the realms of friendship. He knew that, given the chance, he could make her happy... but she had never once looked at him that way. Perhaps if those first alternate universes that they had encountered all those years ago, had been different...
But even then, no. They were living a cliché. Forbidden love. Oh, it sickened him to even think of it as that. But it seemed that way to him all the same. And he was in another cliché – as the third point of a triangle. It depressed him to say the least. This wasn't how lives were meant to be lived. This wasn't how humans were supposed to exist, in a perpetual state of pining.
He couldn't face this any more. Not any more. He just couldn't. So he left the room during one of their many awkward moments.
After he had gone, he looked at her, and she looked at him. She said, nervously, "Sir? I..."
He gazed at her, a silent albeit sad acceptance in his eyes. He said, "Away to it, Carter. Go after him and put a smile on his face."
He watched her leave. She seemed nervous, but determined too, and something else. He looked down at the table; he didn't like to think deeply while sober. This was one more thing he would have to think over a lot while semi-inebriated. All the same, as he watched her leave, he noticed that she moved much more freely.
She was happy.
And that's all that mattered.
