Authors Note: I realize I haven't updated in forever, and apologize for that, though surely you've all long given up by now. Reading back through this fic I find it needs some serious re-doing, but I can't very well re-do it until it's done the first time. Perhaps I will forget again, so don't get your hopes up, but for now the chapter this entire story was leading up to. Please enjoy, and thank you.

Helena

At some point in the night Helena and I collided. I normally use this phrase to mean we happened upon each other, but normally it is not four in the morning and we are not in a pitch-dark forest, so in this case by collided I mean collided-like-the-asteroid-that-formed-the-Yucatan –peninsula collided.

In an attempt to re-orient ourselves we were seated some three feet or so away from each other. I knew this was my chance, my only chance, to tell her what had weighed on my mind this past year, especially these past weeks.

Furthermore, it was my last chance to fulfill my duty, the childhood promise I had given her lying in a similar grove. We must have been eight or so, and we swore our unending honesty to each other.

Neither of us could possibly have predicted that promise leading us here. Such are the threads of fate.

"Hermia?" I whispered. My heart pounded in my chest and threatened to overwhelm my lungs.

"Helena! Oh, thank god it's you. Lysander seems to have run off somewhere and I've been wondering around…"

"Hermia, I….I…um." My heart may be brave but it seems I have the mouth of a coward.

She laughed, a bubbling noise from within her throat that stirred a fizzy bubbling within my stomach, like that champagne we stole once.

"Why so nervous?" She teased, moving to my side and wrapping an arm around my midsection. I could faintly discern her face, tilted upward toward mine, a smile ghosting behind her eyes. Then the moon moved out from behind a cloud or a tree or something, or maybe God was just sending me a signal, because all of a sudden I could see her clearly, in all her beauty.

"I love you." I finally gasped.

This was a phrase we exchanged often enough in our friendship, and I mentally kicked myself, thinking she would misinterpret me, that she wouldn't understand.

She must have seen something in my face, or heard some underlying tone in my words, because after a second she leaned upward just slightly, bringing our foreheads together.

I could barely breathe.

Then our noses touched, the barest of nuzzles,

And finally she gently slid her lips against mine.

I couldn't tell, then, if the world had stopped spinning or begun to move at last

Hermia

When she told me she loved me a lens was dropped over the world, and just like a kid getting glasses for the first time, the universe shifted into clarity. I could finally see everything right in front of me, which had been there for so long, but I had ignored it, unable to see the details and unwilling to stress my eyes to do so.

But now it required no effort.

I promised to follow my heart, and here is where it lead me, to Helena's arms.

I leaned up to kiss her, and any lingering doubts slipped away.

We fell apart with a soft sigh. My cheeks were on fire, my heart was beating frantically in my chest.

Her hand reached to cup my face and I leaned in to her, my own hand curling around her wrist.

"What about Lysander?" She said with a swallow.

"A good friend, a frightful concept as anything more. I was using him as a viable escape. And he was so good to me, but…it wasn't love, I don't think. He never…" I trailed off.

"Never what?"

"Never made me dream of seemingly impossibilities. Never made my heart leap as it is now. Never kissed me so sweetly the world faded away until all that was left were the sensations of lips against mine and emotions ripping through my brain."

"Your father?"

"I was running away anyway." At this her eyes lit up.

"Will you…run away with me?" She had just realized the possibility, and it made her giddy with excitement.

My brain said no, it wasn't possible and wasn't right. But I was listening to my heart that night, and my heart screamed yes.

"Of course." Her face assumed the goofy grin of a school girl, and aware that I probably sported a similar expression I erased hers the only way I could think of.

I kissed her again.

This time, she deepened it, moving her tongue softly against the curve of my lips and then slightly in to my open mouth, and I moaned, just slightly.

We were so lost in each other we were legitimately oblivious to our surroundings.

In retrospect, perhaps that was unwise.