Pushing Against The Currents

by LittleSwimmerGirl

"Water is a mirror. Reflected in it, you see yourself as you truly are." Ellie's never been unhappy with her own reflection. Instead, she has found that the people around her are the unhappy ones. Struggling with the expectations weighing down on her, Ellie decides to spend a year studying in Japan, away from the sport she once loved, only to find herself loving it all over again..

21. Chapter XX

Chapter XX:

Recollection

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"You're the only girl I've seen for a long time that actually did look like something blooming." - F. Scott-Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night.

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A moment of rumbling silence greeted Ellie as she found herself waking up the morning after arriving to the nauseating excuse for a hotel in which she stayed. It was a rare, blissful moment, filled with the distracting sounds of the city moving about, as if it were actually truly alive. Car horns honked at oblivious pedestrians, police sirens sped through the clumped traffic in pursuit of crime and bright, neon signs blinked in the faces of wayward consumers. It signalled the beginning of a new day, although a rather noisy one at that. And with it, came the shower of self-inflicted anxiety that inherently appeared upon Ellie's confinement in a bustling city and the inevitable truth that Ellie would have to explain everything. And she would to explain it today.

Ellie huffed impatiently in her sleep, the mild rays of sunlight pressing against her eyelids as she stretched out along the sea of open space that was the king-sized bed and marveled at the feeling of smooth, spotless, white cotton sheets sliding lusciously over her bare skin. Although she felt rather guilty admitting it, Ellie liked sleeping naked. It felt like sleeping on a cloud, with the white sheets wrapped delicately around her torso and the doona mashed into a tangled mess at her feet. Obviously, it was a rather metaphorical cloud; one that wasn't made up of various gases in the atmosphere and would be freezing to the touch. As much as it sounded nice, Ellie highly doubted that there were clouds made of feathers and Egyptian cotton.

Rolling over onto her stomach, Ellie searched lazily for the warmth of Rin's body under her fingertips, his scent lingering on the edge of his pillow as she laid her head against it. Being in a king-sized bed felt a lot like being out at sea; there was just too many sheets to wrestle alone and too much room for one person by themselves. Ellie was almost drowning in the covers, sprawled out alone in the centre of the bed.

Alone...wait a minute. Although 'panic' wasn't quite the emotion that ensnared Ellie's throat in a vice of dry horror, it was the one emotion that was pretty damn close to what she'd been feeling at that exact moment. It was an irrational feeling, something born of a clingy, childish need but Ellie let herself feel it nonetheless. She bolted upright in bed, a rustle of covers and a flick of tangled brown hair pulling her from her morning daze.

Rin was gone. Where to, Ellie didn't know, but the most important part about the current existential crisis she was dragging herself into was that Rin, the hot-headed smartass himself, had disappeared from their bed midway through the morning. At least, Ellie thought it was still morning. For all she knew, it could have been three o'clock in the afternoon. Or maybe even two years from when she last recalled falling asleep. There was almost no inbetween.

Ellie pulled herself to the edge of the ocean-sized bed, dragging her legs over the ledge and onto the soft, presumably expensive, carpet coating every inch of the upstairs floor. She gazed about the sleek, stylish bedroom, the modern décor of abstract reading chairs and contemporary artworks mounted on the black and white walls giving Ellie the distinct feeling of disgusted nausea. While she loved sleeping in the luxurious bed that sat centred in the room, Ellie still hated the surroundings in which it was placed. Hated and even so much as loathed them.

Clothes lay strewn across the carpet in a haphazard fashion, the aftermath of their rather awkward moment of intimacy the afternoon prior evident in almost every aspect of the room. From the glass coffee table that Rin had almost tripped over in their rush to get to bed to the tear in the back of Ellie's one good underwire bra, a remnant of Rin's frustration at being unable to undo the clasp without feeling the urge to simply rip the expensive scrap of fabric in half. And Ellie was almost sure he would have done just that, had she not told him off rather profusely before he even got the chance.

Ellie yawned, the remnants of sleep still wearing off as she moved about the room, and pulled her hair back into a messy bun that she was sure even Carla would be proud of for it's neatness. Despite the mess that dominated half of the room, Ellie still managed to find Rin's black Samezuka t-shirt strung across the arm of the twisted, Picasso-designed armchair that sat by the glass railing that separated them from the upper floor and open air. She slipped it on without a second thought, the material cold but familiar against her skin.

The t-shirt was bigger than Ellie's usual fit, the shoulders just a tad bit broader and the length of it's torso just a tad bit longer than it should be. Rin's scent, the smell of chlorine, lavender soap and wind, wafted into her nose as she slid the t-shirt over her head. The smell of him calmed her racing heart, settling on her skin comfortably. This new kind of clarity left room for rational thinking as Ellie breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. Surely, he wouldn't have just left. Rin may be a bit of a selfish ass but he's not enough of a selfish ass to just leave her high and dry. Not if he wanted an angry Viking father after him, that is...

Turning her attention to the glass panes that served as a perfect view of the cityscape, Ellie stared out toward the bright, shining sky that was Tokyo, the horizon cluttered by the rise and fall of apartment buildings, blinking lights and skyscrapers that reached toward the clouds. Despite all it's prominent aesthetic beauty, Ellie couldn't help but hold a childish grudge against those formations of compacted iron buildings. She hated the city, hated it so much it hurt. But for these few days, it was her only escape. Her one salvation from her own life. Her own little version of a sanctuary. Beautiful, she thought. A beautiful place to suffocate.

Ellie slipped downstairs in a rush of long, pale legs, her mind on other things and her conscience nowhere to be seen. She was so distracted, in fact, that she almost tripped over her own bag that lay stationary at the foot of the stairs as she made her way into the living room. She cursed herself inwardly for being so damn clumsy, her inner need for coffee kicking in with her lack of self-awareness. If she wasn't careful, Ellie was sure she was going to trip over her own feet. It wasn't as if it hadn't happened before...

The glass coffee table shone like crystal in the morning sunlight that beamed down through, what Rin had dubbed, "The Window Wall", shimmering with bright iridescent colours of green, yellow and red that bounced off the glass as reflections of the sunlight's rays. Ellie felt her fingers twitch, her inner photographer itching to grab her rather expensive Canon camera from her bag upstairs and start capturing the light in digital, high quality images. Ellie wasn't very good at photography. Thanks to her grandfather, she much preferred writing stories over any other artistic pursuit or even better than that, poems. Ellie doubted that whatever photos she would take would ever look as good as others she had seen before but that didn't stop her from fully considering it. Even for a moment.

A note sat poised on the shining coffee table, a pen placed atop Rin's messy print handwriting that made Ellie cringe with every glance. She still found it hilarious at how he marveled at her neat, elegant cursive script. Even if it wasn't really that elegant.

Sitting herself down on the spotless black leather couch, Ellie carefully moved the pen off the note and read the words silently to herself.

Sorry for the random disappearance, Ell. I decided to run out of this ridiculously well-cleaned hotel room and get some breakfast before we both starve or, rather tragically, consider cannibalism as a means to an end. I'll probably be back in ten or so minutes, if we're lucky. Then again, I'll probably end up looking around for something nice to get you for around an hour or so...expect abject lateness. I apologize in advance, Your Grace :)

-Rin

Ellie chuckled, her fingers smudging the still wet ink and staining the skin of her fingertips blue. "Trying to be romantic, are we Shark Boy?"

The note soothed whatever sense of anxiety had built itself up inside of her, with Ellie's knees no longer bouncing up and down in a nervous wait for an explanation in the place of Rin's absence. There was no more sense of dread or cynicism wrenching at her gut, although her unease toward the tightly bound secrets of the future still remained firmly planted in her mind. Ellie didn't understand how but somehow, even Rin's words printed on a bleached white sheet of hotel-authorised paper made her feel as if she could walk though the day without a care in the world. If only such an action were actually possible. If only it wasn't just a pipe dream.

Without thinking, Ellie's fingers found the collar of Rin's shirt and she pulled it up over her nose apologetically, breathing in his scent and shivering with the weight of her unspoken memories resting on her shoulders. She almost felt as if she was ready to open up, ready to put her mind and soul on the table like money thrown into a game of poker. She was so close to freedom that she could almost feel it within her fingertips. So close and yet, it still so unimaginably far away. To be entirely truthful to herself, Ellie knew that she probably would never be ready. However, that didn't mean that she wasn't going to go through with her promise. She owed Rin an explanation, after all. And an explanation he would get.

Today, she thought without even the slightest hint of anxiety lacing her thoughts. It was unnatural to Ellie, a foreign feeling that sent shivers dancing wildly up her spine. Today is the day that it all comes undone.

Ellie supposed she was overreacting as to how intense the day would actually be. How brutally painful it would turn out to be. After all, it was only the truth that was to be spoken and the truth had long since lost it's power and drive to hurt her. The memories had faded, sure, disappeared into the dark recesses of her mind where she no longer dared to look. The bitter truth wasn't a threat anymore, simply because Ellie refused to give it the power to bring her down. Even if for most of the time, she failed to do so without even realising that she had failed. She tried to keep the pain away and that was all that mattered. But there was a reason Ellie had forgotten the truth. And it wasn't just for shits and giggles, that was for sure.

In the end, the never-ending silence of the hotel room got to Ellie. The primal need for noise overtook her already racing conscience and before long, she was curled up on one of the twisted, artistic chairs with a book balanced carefully atop her knees and music blasting from the Bluetooth speakers on the other side of the room. The distraction was a blessing, with words and music shouting louder and louder over the sound of her own raging emotions. Ellie was sure she had been there for hours by the time Rin finally got back, with Tender Is The Night split down the middle and her nails bitten back to stubs.

Funny, Ellie thought. I've never really been that much of a nail bitter before...

The click of the door lock sliding into place dragged Ellie's attention away from the book, her hand cramped and stiff from holding it in one place for so long. The music abruptly ended and with that, Ellie lifted her head from the book and looked toward the source of such an interupption, her attention fully diverted. Silence wrapped itself around her like a cloak. And inevitably, Ellie was faced with Rin's dazzling, charm-filled smile and his bright, shimmering eyes that spoke of mischief that Ellie would rather not have to ask about.

"Guess who is the best thing since sliced bread?" Rin proclaimed proudly, arms spread in a wide gesture toward the trolley filled with an unspeakable amount of food that surely would hurt Ellie's fast-rising hotel bill. Stealing a piece of toast from the leaning tower in the centre of the white cloth-covered trolley, Rin grinned arrogantly at his little achievement. "I think the answer is quite clear at this point."

Ellie laughed, although the sound was more forced than expected. "Oh, I don't know. Russel Crowe's a pretty good option. Even better than that, Chris Hemsworth."

Rin pouted and feigned offence, crossing his arms over his chest and huffing in annoyance. "No. No Australian actor will ever be better than me. My brilliance is too great to be ignored."

"Yes but Baz Luherman's brilliance is unfortunately more substantial, my dear. As well as Ian Thorpe's and Geoffery Rush's. Oh and Suzie O'Neil. Never forget the great Madame Butterfly."

"I feel like I've just been stabbed with my own incompetence. When did you become so mean?"

"First day of high school, my friend. You gotta learn to kill people to survive." Ellie slipped her bookmark in between the pages of her book and stood from her chair, stretching the muscles in her legs as they ached and complained with the movement of walking. "Don't worry, Rin. This is, unfortunately, how the rest of us peasants feel every day."

"Oh, I'm crushed. I've been degraded to such low standards."

"That you have, min kjæreste."

Rin smiled wider as the rough Nordic language rolled off Ellie's tongue, her memory sparking with happy visions of her grandfather smiling widely and calmly addressing his wife, Ellie's harsh spoken grandmother, with such a name as she cajoled him for mocking her in the old-fashioned parlour of her old home in Tweed Heads. Her father dancing her mother around the dining room table, grinning manically as he bellowed the lyrics of an old Norwegian nursery rhyme from his lively, hectic childhood. It was a sure sign of love in her family, to be addressed with such a name. That love was only amplified when it was said in an overly sarcastic tone.

The words came with a flood of bubbling, happy memories but Ellie never thought that she would ever feel strongly enough for another person as to utter those words with such confidence and surety. Her grandfather would be appalled.

Ellie could only imagine what he would have said to her in those moments of lovesick weakness. What happened to my headstrong, mud-stained granddaughter with scrapes at her knees and the blood of the local australiere boys underneath her fingernails? You have become weak, little one. Weak and lazy. Where is your head at? Why listen to your heart when you can listen to your brain? You are Norskaustraliere. A girl with the blood of thieves and warriors. You should know better than to use your heart over your brain. Think, girl, think.

Ellie smiled softly at the thought and picked at the grapes that hung over the trolley's ledge. Her grandfather always had been one hell of a storyteller. It had made for an interesting childhood. She could feel Rin's curious eyes on the back of her neck, the tingling sensation of being watched sending tiny electric shocks down through her bloodstream. Whatever you say, bestefar, she thought to the phantom voice in her head. Whatever you say.

Hands grasped at Ellie's waist, Rin's palms sliding over her stomach and enclosing her in his arms. His chin rested on her shoulder and his breath tickled the hairs on the back of her neck but he was warm, familiar and for all intents and purposes, Ellie's one safe anchor to this hellish earth.

"What are you smiling about, Khaleesi?" Rin murmured into her neck, kissing the space where her neck met her shoulder. "You're not usually a very cheery person of a morning. Especially when you ask Carla about it."

"Just old memories, that's all," Ellie replied. "Memories from when I was little, actually."

"Oh? Please tell me you were one of those girls who wore little pink dresses and had tea parties with her dolls all afternoon. Please tell me you were that child."

"You have rather unrealistic expectations of Western culture, Shark Boy. Are you sure you ever lived in Australia? Or did you just never talk to a girl while you were there?"

Rin scoffed at Ellie's comment, clearly offended despite the sarcasm in her tone. "Just answer the question, dumbass."

Ellie laughed at Rin's childish behaviour but replied, nonetheless. "I was actually quite the opposite. I used to be pretty boyish and rebellious. A constant nightmare to my parents. My grandfather used to love me for it though. He was the one who used to defend me against my hurricane of a farmor when I used to trudge through the house with dirt stuck to the soles of my shoes and cuts and bruises all up my legs from brawling with the boys down the road."

"Your grandfather sounds like a man with decent morals. And possibly a soft spot for you."

"Mm, does that sound like anyone here?" Ellie received a poke to the ribs for that one, though she did think she was deserving. "Yeah, I guess those morals served him well. If only those morals hadn't made an exception for cigars the size of a small tree trunk, pipes that smelled of raw tobacco and dry humour that often offended those who were neither family nor Norweigan." Ellie chuckled at the thought. "I think you would have been his best friend, had he lived through the cancer that stole him from the world, that is..."

Rin's grip on Ellie's waist tightened, a subtle murmur of comfort passing between his lips as if worried she was going to cry out in anguish at the mere mentioning of her grandfather's death, which had actually occurred almost ten years ago. The dark change in conversational tone was a little disheartening. But Ellie didn't particularly mind it. That was how it all fell to pieces, after all. Her grandfather, his empty study and the false promise that everything was going to be alright in the end.

Nothing was going to be alright after that. Not for a very, very long time.

Ellie, under no free will of her own, began begrudgingly sharing the memories of her former hometown over a plate of warm, familiar food that settled the rumbling storm in her stomach. Ellie thanked the Lord that she barely even believed in for somehow assuring that the hotel was that of an international outlet for tourists, which meant all the familiar foods that Ellie had come to love were up for grabs.

Toasted white bread with the purest of butter smeared across it's surface, scrambled eggs, breakfast sausages, bacon (despite the fact that she detested it), orange juice and thank the Gods, even Sunshine Punch. Not crappy, half-assed Tropical Punch. Sunshine Punch. Not to mention the coconut pancakes Rin had somehow managed to order, on top of everything else. A whole stack of them in fact, a whole stack that Ellie had no inclination to ignore after inquiring as to what they were. While they weren't as good as those from home, they still tasted of a brilliant familiarity that sizzled and burned in Ellie's bloodstream like a childish sense of excitement.

"Did I mention that I love you, min kjæreste? Because I think I should say it again." Ellie poked at her final pancake, wondering silently how she could possibly finish off her meal after eating so very damn much. "I love you," she repeated. "Like more than life at this point."

Rin laughed tiredly, running a hand through his wind-blown hair, and leaned back against the headboard with a huff of exhaustion. "I have to agree. I love me too. Never in my life have I ever made a better decision than this. Coconut pancakes are fucking delicious. And I didn't even like pancakes to begin with. My God, what is happening to me, Khaleesi?"

Ellie chuckled. "Nothing bad. I can assure you of that, min kjæreste."

"Okay, stop. What does that even mean?"

Ellie paused mid-way through her final slice of syrup-covered pancake, a small square of the sugary sponge skewered at the tip of her fork. "What? Min kjæreste?"

"No, I'd like to know the meaning of life, Ellie," Rin deadpanned, sarcasm dripping from his tone. "Of course that's what I want to know, Ell. You've only been saying it for half the goddamn morning with no explanation as to what the hell it actually means. Should I consider drawing up a 'sarcasm' sign for future reference?"

"Actually, you should shove that sign up your ass, Sharkie," Ellie retorted, laughing through the food in her mouth. She had to make sure she'd swallowed everything she'd been chewing before she decided to answer Rin, lest she end up becoming her four-year-old cousin Danila at the dinner table, who yelled and spoke with her mouth full regardless of how many people scolded her for doing so.

Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Ellie explained. "Well, it depends on context. It's literal translation is 'my boyfriend' or 'my girlfriend', depending on who you're saying it to and a few other variables that make no sense thanks to Nordic dialects having weird-ass language rules. But in other translations, it becomes 'my beloved' or 'my dearest'. My grandfather used to say it to my farmor when she was angry. Which always seemed to make her about ten times more angry than she previously had been. Quite the tragedy for everyone in the household, honestly."

"Oh, I'm touched, Khaleesi," Rin said, hands placed mockingly over his heart. "You know the way to my soul. But seriously, I understand your grandmother's annoyance. Your grandfather does sound like one hell of a patronising bastard."

"Oh he was," Ellie replied, "And an arrogant one too. He requested that whenever I talked to him, I should call him 'Bestefar'. Which is politically incorrect in general Norsk, although not necessarily always, but he only got me to call him that because it literally translates to 'best father'. He was always trying to outdo my dad in terms of spoiling me, one way or another."

"And hopefully, your mother was the voice of reason?"

Ellie chuckled softly, dropping her fork onto her plate with a loud porcelain clatter, and rolled over onto her back with a pleased sigh. Her head lay pressed against Rin's thigh, her hair splayed out behind her as she pulled it free of it's confining bun. "She wished she was. She spent more time working and apologising to the parents of the boys I'd beat up than anything else. She kind of forgot to leave out some spare time to really stop my bestefar from doing anything he wasn't supposed to. My farmor was the one who did most of the disciplinary work in the house anyway. She used to beat me over the head with her cane and chastise me for everything that she deemed immoral." With an appropriate eye roll, Ellie groaned. "She could be a right old bat when she felt like it, that's for sure."

"What exactly was immoral, by her standards? Was it like...putting your feet up on the coffee table or balancing your elbows on the table when you eat at dinner? That kind of stuff? Because both were pretty much unacceptable when I stayed with my host parents in Australia. And strangely, also at home on occasion. Never even tried to understand that stage in my mother's grieving process to be honest..."

"No, she didn't really catch me out on things like that. Although she did scold me for coming to dinner covered in dirt once. But I only ever got hit when I did things like getting blood on the ridiculously expensive family heirloom rug that my grandfather gave to my grandmother on their first wedding anniversary." After receiving a questioning glare from Rin, Ellie shrugged, a lazy smile spread across her lips. "I did a lot of stupid things when I was younger. Like a lot, a lot."

Shaking his head, Rin leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, murmuring the words, "I suspect you were the child who didn't always do as her parents told her to."

Ellie grinned wickedly, meeting Rin's gaze with a glint of mischief shining in her eyes. "Only when they told me I couldn't do something."

"Was that something jumping off roofs and skinning the family cat?"

"We never had a cat. And I only jumped off that one roof to prove a point, nothing else."

"You broke your leg doing that, didn't you?"

"Arm actually. In three places. I got a purple coloured cast though."

Rin shivered, as if disgusted by the thought. "Oh dear God, I can't believe I was worried about getting a girlfriend who would use my money to buy clothes. My money won't be used for clothes. They'll be used to pay off fucking hospital bills instead!"

Ellie thought an elbow to the gut was a deserving punishment for that particular comment.

And so sparked the blissfully distracting conversation about the families that they belonged to, the differences and surprising similarities between them and the stories of growing up in a world that seemed to revolve around swimming and the occasional achievement in academics. Ellie talked of her life before her long bout of indifference toward simply existing altogether, the childhood that she cherished. She told Rin of growing up in Tweed Heads; the hot summer days that seemed to go on forever accompanied by a long cooling swim at the beach every afternoon.

School days filled with laughter and childish innocence, energy bursting from every inch of her skin with every kilometre it took her to run home of an afternoon. Ellie could still smell the scents that wafted out onto the streets from the local bakery every morning on her way to school, the smell of raw dough and pastries clawing at her gut with a childish requirement for anything sweet.

The air outside her house reeked of frangipanis, her neighbours' tree overgrown with the colourful tropical flowers that reached over the boundary fence like the guiding hand of an almighty God and deposited a stray few of the sweet smelling petals into their family inground pool. Ellie remember her father vowing in anger to cut down that tree when he had the chance; Ellie had cried for an hour in abject horror at the mere thought of such an act.

The sounds of seagulls and waves of salt-filled water crashing into the sand reached out to Ellie each afternoon, her towel slung over one shoulder and a smile polluting her face. She remembered how the sun used to feel on her tanned, freckled skin, how the heat used to be soaked into her pores and warmed her to the point of excess. Ellie never minded, however. She was always too busy chasing after her grandfather for his full attention and beating the local boys at ocean swims to have cared about the heat at all. Or anything else, for that matter.

Rin smiled absent-mindedly through all of her stories, twirling his fingers around her tangled locks and making comments here and there to keep the conversation from becoming completely one-sided. There was a distracted look about him that caught Ellie off guard, a glistening glaze over his eyes that told her that he may not be fully listening. He was thinking, pondering logistics and carefully measuring out the perimeters for the questions that Ellie was sure he would ask. Ellie couldn't bat away his curiosity this time, couldn't hide behind her protective layer of sarcasm and angry hysteria at this point in their relationship.

She had to give some kind of explanation for her actions. For her anxiety. For the copious amount of pushing others away that she seemed to do. Ellie was a puzzle, a well-designed maze. Only the truly skilled are able to navigate her mind, break through her defenses. Rin had become one of those lucky few to ever come close to something like succeeding.

Grazing his fingers over her cheekbones, Rin smiled down at her, his eyes glinting in the mid-day sun, and sighed, leaning back against the headboard with Ellie's head cradled in his hands. "You're such a family-orientated person," Rin laughed, almost sarcastically. "I never even knew."

Ellie frowned. "What do you mean by that? You sound almost sad."

"That's only because I am," Rin replied. "I'm in love with you, Ell. There's no doubting that and there probably never will be any room for doubt on that subject. But no matter how much I try to convince myself that I'm fine with this...thing between us, I'm still sad, horrified even, that I'm in love with a girl who I barely know anything about."

Ellie felt her blood freeze in her veins, her heart stuttering with nerves as she sat up, swallowing against the lump stuck in the back of her parched throat. The sheets rustled around her, her fingers clenched around the pure white cloths. Ellie couldn't deny that she was anxious, the truth of her own past weighing down on her body like bricks chained to her ankles. Ellie forced herself to speak, even if the words weren't as truthful as she wanted them to be "Don't be ridiculous. You know me as well as any oth-"

"Oh yeah, sure. I know you well enough to converse with you. I know the general information; your favourite foods, what books you read, even the make-up brands you prefer. I know everything but then again, I know hardly anything at all. Your family is a mystery to me. You've never talked about your childhood until today. I never even knew anything about your grandparents until this morning. I've never heard about any of your other friends unless by coincidence. I'm walking into this relationship blind, Ellie. Blind because you've pulled the wool over my eyes. You don't want me to see you because you're too afraid of how I'll react when I hear the truth you're so afraid to speak of."

Ever the dramatic, Ellie thought with a saddened smile. Although, Ellie couldn't say that she was any different. Maybe that was why they got along so well. They worried over nothing and took trivial matters to heart no matter the consequence. Ellie and Rin were almost perfect for each other, now that she thought about it in more detail. Besides their completely opposite views on swimming and life as a whole, that is...

"Ask me then," Ellie whispered, her voice timid as she mustered whatever shred of courage she still had left inside her. "Ask me what you want to know."

Rin raised an eyebrow, curious with her words now. Not angered but instead, puzzled by her actions. "That's a little unlike you, Ellie. Don't you want to just avoid giving me answers like you always do?"

Ellie's knuckles grew whiter around the sheets she clutched at so desperately, her nails digging hard into the soft cotton fabric. Don't look back now. Don't look back. Do what you promised. Do what's right. These phrases, these sacred words, churned and repeated in Ellie's mind like little mantras that floated and fell through the air of her mind. She couldn't back down now, couldn't escape the promises she'd made. Ellie had to talk, had to answer back, had to give up whatever last bit of her soul was left to give.

Ellie didn't know if she was prepared for such a thing, didn't know if she could go through with it without breaking down halfway through. That didn't matter, however. Because she would have to push through that mental block whether she liked it or not. For Rin's sake. Maybe even for hers as well.

"Go ahead," Ellie consented. "Ask away before I lose my nerve. God knows it'll happen soon if you don't push me into it..."

Rin nodded, the harsh, accusing look in his eyes fading away as he reached out to her. His fingers wrapped around Ellie's wrists and gently tugged them from their deathly vice on the sheets, her muscles shivering and shaking with the thought of the seemingly impossible task she had placed in front of her. When was the last time Ellie had told this story of herself to another living person? No, it had never even been told in the first place. The words had never been spoken. Only memories lay in place of the untold tale. Feeble, needle-like memories that poked at Ellie's mind like some botched ice-pick lobotomy.

Shivers danced across Ellie's spine and her teeth chattered quietly as she awaited the coming of Rin's questions. The arms he had wrapped around her waist were comforting and diverting to say the least. Just as the subtle rise and fall of his chest against her back was calming. Just as the tiny electrical currents that ran from his fingertips into the skin of her palms was grounding.

Everything Rin did had an effect, Ellie realised. Like Newton's third law of physics, for every action he took, there was an equal and opposite reaction. For every word he spoke, there were two possibilities as to how Ellie would react to their meaning. For every inch of skin he touched, there were two possibilities as to how Ellie would cope with the invasion of her personal space. For every question he asked, there would always be two options Ellie would offer him as an answer: a sugar-coated lie or the harsh, bitter truth. It was his choice which he version he preferred, although Ellie knew which version he would want regardless. And for some reason, it didn't bother her. It comforted her even. No more lies. No more hiding. Just me. Just me...

Rin's first question was, surprisingly, the easiest of them all in the beginning. "When did the anxiety first start?" he asked. "Why did it start? Was it just a thing that came with growing up or moving away or-"

"Oh, min kjæreste. You asked the wrong question," Ellie answered, her throat dry and her head aching. "The question isn't why or when my anxiety started. The question should have been why I moved away. What caused my parents to up and leave a house, a town, a lifestyle that, for all intents and purposes, they intended to keep on living with until they died of very old age?"

Ellie sighed. She was babbling, becoming nervously philosophical for no particular reason. That didn't stop her from going on, however. "You should think less literally, Rin. Especially if you want me to answer these questions properly."

"Being literal is the only thing I have to go on right now," Rin growled, so obviously frustrated with the turn of their conversation. "Excuse me if it offends your metaphorical tastes."

"It doesn't offend me, Rin. It just makes the truth a little more unnecessarily painful, that's all." Another sigh passed her lips. God, how she was tired. Tired of hiding, tired of lying. Tired of her endless spiral of self-pity, although it had been so very good to her in the past. "I'd best give you an answer then, huh?"

Rin said nothing in response, only burying his nose into her hair and letting the silence serve as an invitation. Ellie began, even though she very nearly could feel her heart trying to hammer it's way out of her chest with every breath she took. It's hard to control your fear over something when the very thing that you fear is not a physical being or even series of mental thoughts that can be repelled with positive reinforcement; it's a psychological issue, branded into her mind and with no intentions of leaving any time soon.

"My anxiety wasn't caused by something that you'd expect it to be, like school work or swimming, like it usually is. It was actually the side-effect of grief. My grief over the death of my grandfather, who died of lung cancer during the winter of my eighth birthday. The doctors found the tumour late. It was diagnosed terminal on the spot, with no hope of some miracle surgery saving his soon to be ended life and no real time to say goodbye. Doctors gave him a month and a half; fate handed him two weeks to spite the very doctors who promised my family time with him. It was not an easy passing, least of all for my father, who took it harder even than my grandmother, who broke down in violent sobs in the parlour the night my grandfather passed away in his sleep.

"It had been such a rare sight, seeing my grandmother kneeling there on the expensive rugs she cursed me in Finnish for dirtying, sobbing in loud, pain-inducing gasps for breath that only made me even more confused and upset as time went on. You have to understand something, Rin; Norwegians, even those like my Finnish-born grandmother, they do not show their emotions lightly. Even at the worst of times.

"I'd grown up around the stoic influences of my sarcastic, offensive grandfather and hard-working father, who's brothers and sisters were infinitely more stoic than them. For my grandmother to break down, for her to get down on her knees and curse the God that she worshiped for taking my grandfather away from her, it was an exceedingly bad situation that my family had found themselves in. My grandfather meant everything to his wife, to his children and their partners, to his grandchildren most of all. He was the teller of stories, the comic break from everyday life that we all needed. And he was gone. Stolen from the world as if he truly were just another mortal man with an immortal disease.

"The funeral was what affected me the most. All solemn faces and brisk handshakes. No real sympathy in place of proper tradition. No one wept, no one cried out in anguish as my grandmother had so many nights before. Not even my closest cousins showed an ounce of outward grief, even though they were almost as familiar with our grandfather as I was on a daily basis. I feigned indifference just like everyone else, telling myself over and over that it was what had to be done for the sake of the family. It was what was expected of me. Complete and utter indifference toward the death of another was the norm and I wasn't about to question my parents or my relatives on their resolve. No way in hell would I do such thing given the timing. No sir..."

Ellie paused briefly, taking a deep calming breath in hopes of at least halting the shaking of her hands that had reached almost violent peaks. The memory of her grandfather's death was not a pleasant one, no matter how much she aged and the gap between the 'then and now' increased. Grief could last for years if it wanted to. It was the most resilient emotion of them all. Not to mention the most painful...

Rin brushed her hair back behind Ellie's ears as it hung limp on either side of her face, the dull brown strands mixed in with the sun-bleached streaks of a darker shade of blonde. People often remarked that Ellie's hair didn't suit her face; it was long and straight with occasional brown waves that were streaked with the natural colours of the sun, while her face was plastered with a pale tan and a strong jawline that almost, almost, resulted in high cheekbones beneath her eye sockets. Her face wasn't necessarily beautiful, not like Carla with her perfect complexion and dazzling white teeth. She was interesting to look at, mildly appealing in her looks whilst repulsive in her personality.

"You were made to keep quiet," Rin breathed. "Just because your family's tradition demanded it. How cruel..."

Ellie shook her head. "Not cruel. Understandable. People don't stray from what they believe. It's only normal that you'd expect my parents to enforce such methods of living upon me, even if my mother was more outwardly sympathetic than my father."

"You don't force a child to do something like that. Everyone grieves in their own way, regardless of how deep traditions run."

"Yes, well, it made no difference to how I was treated and made to grieve." Ellie placed her head in her hands, wiping her eyes free of the phantom tears that were slowly pushing their way to the surface. "My grandmother hardly spoke to me after that. She wore black all the time and sat in her chair in the corner of my grandfather's office, staring out the window and screaming in Finnish at anyone who tried to disturb her. Which was mainly me, considering I spent most of my time in his office after his death."

Ellie could still hear the sounds of her grandmother's hushed, manic whispers as she thought on her lost hours spent in that fine, high-walled office. She could still smell the harsh pipe tobacco had been melded into the fine leather chair upon which Ellie found the courage to cry. She could still feel the soft paper of her grandfather's manuscripts beneath her fingers, still hear the melancholy and dread that dripped from every word he had writtem. Her grandfather did not write happy poems or pleasant stories. He wrote poems as they were meant to be written; he wrote of life, in truth and brutal honesty.

"It didn't take long for my parents to decide that staying in that house, with all it's memories and meanings, probably wasn't going to end so well for a girl who was forced to live in a world that eliminated the need for proper grief and any other emotion for that fact. My father was no better than myself. He could hardly even stand to be in the house most of the time. He avoided looking at the photos that lined the walls, he avoided going near his father's office, he avoided any place that was significant. Just as long as he stayed away from the pain, it was manageable. The grief wasn't so bad. But that only lasted so long before the pain surrounded him like the open sea. Just like it surrounded me from the beginning."

Ellie swallowed hard. The water was lapping at her knees now, the watery panic slowly filling up the glass tank that she had found herself trapped in since the beginning of explaining her life story. Her annoyingly sappy life story. Ellie was sure if she ever wrote an autobiography, she'd make a fortune on the amount of First-World bullshit she'd gone through. After all, the world thrived on tragedy.

"We moved to Bathurst about a month after my grandfather's death," Ellie blurted out, forcing the words from her tongue as they stuck to the roof of her mouth. "There wasn't much notice heading my way at the time. My parents just sat me down after dinner one night and told me, with absolute candor, that we'd be moving within the next few days. That was it. No preparation, no forewarning...no attempt at any kind of humanly emotion, even.

"I was expected to up and leave, uproot every faucet of myself and push away every friend I'd ever made without any time at all to say goodbye. At the time, I guess it's fair to say that I should have spoken up. It would have stopped plenty of things from going wrong, that's for sure. But then again, I was only eight years old and I was already developing that compulsive need to please people, regardless of their interpretation of me. The beginnings of a major anxiety disorder, as diagnosed by Carla, who seems to think I need help."

"Which you do," Rin remarked with a cocky smile. That smile gave Ellie to energy to continue, gave her the will to smile and retort back even.

"Not that you've already noticed," she muttered under her breath.

"You underestimate my observational skills, Khaleesi. I always notice you. I'll notice you till the day I die."

Ellie chuckled, her laugh genuine, and anchored her body so as to face Rin with a wide grin. She pressed her lips to his, briefly, and said, "Well, aren't you the confident little liar?"

They kissed for a while after that, wrapped in each other's arms with fingers tangled in each other's hair and hands tugging at t-shirt hems. Ellie couldn't say she was happy at being distracted from her moment of truth. It had taken her so long to gain enough control over her emotions to even contemplate giving up that little piece of her soul that remained. How could she be so easily deterred? How could she be so selfish when she'd promised Rin answers?

But Ellie had seen that momentary glint in Rin's eyes as he kissed her, a spark of pity that echoed in her soul and gave her shivers that ran to the bone. He kissed her neck and nipped at her skin with his teeth, earning an elbow to the ribs and a shaky laugh that resulted in more short, sweet little kisses. It was blissful and quiet, a happy occurrence to say the least. If only it wasn't a lie. Rin was purposely distracting her, pulling her away from her own crushing truth and holding her down in the reality that she was faced with. University scholarships. Elite squads. The 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. A choice...ultimately made by herself and herself alone.

Ellie didn't know whether to thank Rin for his caring attitude toward her fragile emotions or to slap him for making her think so damn hard about the future. It was a tough decision, especially when she had someone purposely sliding their hands all over her body in an attempt to keep her mind in a scrambled, indecipherable mess. In the end, she did neither. Ellie gave in; she blamed it on teenage hormones, as always.

They made love that morning, between the beautiful, white sheets of the bed they'd shared that night. It wasn't so much about the awkward laughs and initial embarrassment this time around. It was slow, methodical, a learning experience. They still laughed and teased each other like children as they always did but Ellie felt as if this time, the experience was different. Not drastically but just...different. More insistent. More quiet. More time to think about what was going on rather than just devoting everything to the person looming over you.

Ellie didn't think she enjoyed it any less; any moment with Rin was better than any moment back home, by herself. She simply thought that she was too distracted to really enjoy herself. Too distracted with being distracted.

Well, Ellie thought with a smile. That's a first.

---

Ku'uusi. The frangipanis dripped with the rain that plummeted down in magnificent white curtains just outside Ellie's bedroom window, the sky erupting in angry battle cries between the lightning and the thunder. She could feel the vibrations created by each mighty warrior through the pane of glass that separated her from the outside world, her fingertips poised against the hardened surface of the window.

Her grandmother stood beside her, grey and frail and dressed in black. She watched the sky with a solemn expression, her mouth set in a frown and her forehead creased with wrinkled lines. The thunder roared with every movement, crackling with energy behind those greying mounds of water filled clouds. Her grandmother huffed impatiently at the sound.

"Raukka," she hissed between her teeth. There was a glint of playfulness in her blue eyes, a look of childish wonder. "You remember what your bestefar taught you of the battle in the storms, lille venn?"

Ellie nodded. How could she ever forget her grandfather's stories? The thunder roared and battled, making as much noise as it could in hopes of scaring the lightning away. Avoiding a fight was the best option for the thunder, as it had no real strength or power of it's own. The thunder was a raukka, as her grandmother had said. A weakling. A wretch. A coward.

The lightning, however, was silent. It was strict and cunning with it's plans, striking only when the time was right and conserving energy until the battle was done. And the lightning always won in the end. Every single time. "Why is this, lille venn? Why, child?"

Ellie remembered staring up at the ceiling for nights on end, wondering and wondering why the lightning, with it's electric blue cracks that lined the sky and silent approach, won over the mighty, roaring thunder.

Ku'uusi. 'As good as new'. The last words her grandmother said to her before she left her home for a new one in one state over. Her real home, that was. The home that smelt of frangipanis and pipe tobacco. The home leaked with happy memories and life. Ellie's home; her one true home.

Ku'uusi, lille Ellie. Everything will be alright in the end. Ku'uusi.

As good as new. No, farmor, Ellie thought. It's not as good as new. It's only as good as good will allow. I don't want to leave. Please don't make me leave.

Ku'uusi, lille Ellie. Ku'uusi.

Oh, how I wished it was, farmor. Oh how I wished everything was as good as new. But you can't erase the past. And with the past in the way, nothing will ever truly be as good as a new world seen from the eyes of an innocent child, with no memories and no culture.

No responsibilities.

No memories.

Freedom. True and complete...freedom.

---

Ellie had hardly even realised that she had been having a nightmare until she finally decided that waking up was probably the best way to resolve the influx of horrifying images that flashed and shimmered against the back of her eyelids in a bright flurry of colour. The sun had already begun to sink beneath the great rise and fall of the buildings that lined the horizon, rays of subtle pinks, blues and yellows splashed across the sky like an artist's unfinished work. It was a beautiful sight to wake up to; a wonderous thing to behold whilst gasping for air and gagging at the feeling of her hair sticking to the sweat on the back of her neck.

Reality was soon cleared of the insufferable white noise that filled Ellie's ears, Rin's panicked questions coming into focus and the feeling of his fingers against her biceps jolting her into awareness. And strangely, one of the first things she noticed, above everything else, was that her throat ached like there was no tomorrow. Had she been yelling or screaming in her sleep? That'd be a first. Dreaming in general was hard enough for Ellie to achieve. Talking in her sleep almost seemed as impossible as the probability of time travel.

Rin's current state of panic zeroed in fully after a few seconds, his persistent yelling in her ear causing her to jump with fright upon initial hearing. "Oi! Snap out of it, would you! Ellie, what the hell?! Talk to me-"

"Ow. You do know that I hear out of that ear, right? I'd rather not be made partially deaf today thanks to you, Rin."

The boy breathed a sigh of relief, dropping his forehead down against Ellie's shoulder in surrender. He hugged her tight to his chest, his breathing erratic with the adrenaline that coursed through his veins. "Fucking hell, Ellie. Don't ever do that to me again. I've had enough fucking minor panic attacks in the last week alone."

Ellie swallowed hard, her throat burning as if someone had decided to shove a white-hot branding iron into her mouth. It didn't exactly help that the back of her throat basically had the equivalent amount of moisture to that which was present in the Sahara Desert. Jesus Christ, I need a drink. Of both bloody kinds... "Sorry to severely impair your ability to function," Ellie croaked, her sarcastic tone betrayed by the scratching noise that was her voice. "Would it be too much to ask for a glass of water at the moment or should I wait for His Majesty to finally pull his head out of his ass?"

Rin, despite his foul mood, let out a soft chuckle, his voice thick with sleep. Ellie supposed that, in her presumed sleep panic, she woke him quite severely with her uncontrollable thrashing and strange yelled babblings. She'd apologise later, Ellie decided, when she wasn't drenched in sweat and shaking to the bone. It'd seem so much more like a believable apology if she actually tried to put some effort into executing it.

"Fine, fine, Miss Tempermental," Rin replied with a touch of frustration hinted in his voice. "I'll be back in a second, okay?"

Ellie nodded, the absence of Rin's presence giving her the chance to breath out a shaky, childish sob. She was being an idiot, really. The dream hadn't even been frightening or traumatic; it was just poignant and nerve-racking, to say the least. It was that unterrifying a nightmare that it puzzled Ellie as to why she was even shaking so badly in the first place. Perhaps she had forgotten how badly moving away from home had affected her. Maybe she was just imagining things. Maybe...

Rin reappeared within a few moments after his departure, his long legs bounding up the stairs, taking them two at a time, with a glass of clear, still water grasped in his hand. He handed it to her without a word, sitting perched on the edge of the bed with the setting sun casting shadows over his face in the dim lighting. Ellie accepted the gesture without a second thought. Her throat burned with the lack of moisture present in her mouth and Ellie wasn't in much of a mood for niceties. Not that she was ever in the mood for them to begin with.

"So, dearest Khaleesi," Rin announced, a light sarcastic flourish lining his tone. "What is all this disruptive yelling and screaming in your sleep about? Sorry to tell you but you never did seem like the type that suffers from chronic nightmares."

Ellie swallowed her first mouthful of water before responding, her throat protesting stubbornly as the liquid was forced down her oesophagus. "I was screaming?"

"Well, no. Not exactly. You were more mildly thrashing about in your sleep and muttering these weird-ass words over and over again like a crazy person who should be in a padded cell of an asylum." Rin chuckled at his own joke, earning a disappointed eye roll from Ellie. "What were you saying, anyway?"

Ellie shrugged, finishing off the glass in another two uninterrupted mouthfuls. "Why don't you tell me? It's not as if I'm going to remember what I said whilst asleep, Rin."

Rin snorted, unimpressed with her response. "Well, I don't fucking know what you said, Ell. Ku-something and another word starting with this weird accented 'r' sound-fuck, I don't know. How do you even expect me to know Norwegian? I am Asian. European languages are just weird jumbles of syllables to me."

"Sorry to burst your not-so-European bubble Sharkie but I think I was actually speaking Finnish, not Norwegian."

"Oh, right because there's a big fucking difference."

"Actually there is, thank you very much. They are two very different countries. The fact that they are situated side-by-side on the world map should just be completely disregarded in this matter."

"Doesn't fucking sound like it," Rin muttered under his breath, his mood worsening with every word that escaped from Ellie's mouth. Ellie supposed that his bad mood could be attributed to her rather rude interruption of their afternoon doze. Rin always had been a terrible morning person, according to Sosuke at least.

Timidly crawling over the tangle of bedsheets toward him, Ellie reached over and gently tugged on Rin's ponytail. "Hey, asshole. No need for the obsessive swearing. We're in Tokyo, not Longreach."

Rin raised an eyebrow, the corners of his mouth twitching as he resisted the urge to smile. "What's wrong with Longreach?"

"We don't talk about Longreach," Ellie replied.

"Why don't we talk about Longreach?"

"Because Longreach is the place of all boganish hell, that's why."

Ellie supposed that in the beginnings of this ridiculous little conversation, she had made her inner goal to make Rin laugh a little too obvious to start with. However, that didn't stop Rin from letting a smile spread across his face in the midst of his bad mood, his sharp, shark-like teeth flashed in the shape of a cocky grin. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me the rest of your little life story after that rather distressing wake-up call?"

Ellie pressed her cheek against his shoulder, sighing with a feeling of content. "I suppose I should. Maybe this time we can get through it without having sex halfway through, huh?"

"Aw but that's my favourite part."

Rin soon grunted in pain as Ellie drove her fist into his ribs. "Get your head out of the gutter, asshole," she hissed. "You shouldn't be thinking of that right now."

"Excuse me? As I last recalled, I am an eighteen-year old male with enough testosterone and pent-up anger to fuel the Soviet Union's fallen army. What do you think I think about most of the time?"

"Um, mathematics?"

Rin groaned as if Ellie's answer had physically pained him. "Oh God Ellie, how did you ever manage to seduce me into dating you?"

Ellie snorted, rolling her eyes. "I didn't seduce you, Shark Boy. I lured you in with my impeccable talent for sarcasm and low expectations of life."

"Hm, just what every man desires."

"Indeed. Now, can we please go out and get some dinner before I eat the ass out of a low-flying duck?"

"I highly doubt that kind of food would have enough proteins in it for an elite swimmer, Ell. Far too many stray feathers." Another elbow to the ribs was a necessary punishment in Ellie's eyes for Rin's needlessly ridiculous comebacks.

Rin didn't completely ignore Ellie's request, however. Within the hour, the two were stumbling out onto the crowded, overflown streets, fingers interlocked as they walked through the bustling crowds and giddy smiles plastered across their faces. The claustrophobic cluttering of people jammed so very close together irked Ellie at first, her heart racing at the feeling of bodies so close to her own. The very thought of people breathing down her neck, arms brushing against hers, hands reaching where they weren't supposed to made her want to climb out of her own skin and cook herself alive in a vat of boiling water. It was all too personal, too in-your-face and right there for Ellie's liking. It was frightening for her, to say the least, and every muscle in her body shook with disgust as she pressed herself against Rin's side and buried her face into his neck.

For a few strides, Rin simply humoured Ellie's irrational fear and wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her tight to his side. He whispered comforting phrases into her ear, joking and smiling ever so convincingly in hopes of distracting her from the fear that had wrapped itself around her mind like some vicious mental python. Ellie would have been grateful, had she not remembered that Rin now seemed to be constantly distracting her from the things that made her so very uncomfortable. It was a form of pity, really, and Ellie wasn't inclined to accept any of it anymore, no matter who it came from or why. She refused to, simply because almost everyone around her seemed to harbour some kind of selfless pity toward her. And Ellie had had enough. She'd had enough of that mindless pity four years ago. But no matter how hard she tried, Ellie couldn't bring herself to let go of Rin. She was paralyzed by a fear she hardly even knew she had. It was degrading to say the least, miserable even.

When it became obvious that his plan to distract Ellie from the cause of her recent anxiety wasn't exactly going as well as he'd hoped, Rin resorted to brisk sarcasm to get Ellie moving. And perhaps even a bit of confidence trickery to go along with it. "Oi, you planning on watching your feet for the rest of our time out here? It's quite a waste of sight-seeing time, I can assure you."

Ellie groaned, muttering a quick flurry of flustered Norwegian under her breath before stating bluntly, "Oh, why don't you go take a short walk off a long-ass pier?"

"I would but unless you're comfortable with getting as wet as me, then I guess we're both out of options considering you won't stop clinging to me like a five-year-old child."

"You're a despicable human being."

"And proud of it, Khaleesi." Feeling bold, Ellie dared to glare at Rin for a simple moment, only to be met with a cocky grin that she so desperately wanted to slap clean off his face. "Oh, so now you show your face? Would you care to join me in looking up at the nonexistent stars and bright-ass blinking signs that make me feel like I'm going to develop epilepsy?"

"How is that an appealing offer in any way?"

Rin scoffed. "Just look, you idiot. You might find that it makes you feel a little less claustrophobic and a little more interested in the not-so-immediate surroundings."

Ellie cursed Rin once more, her heart racing in her chest, and dug her nails hard into his forearm. She wanted to look at the bustling world that surrounded her— God, how she wanted to look —but every subtle brush of arms against arms, limbs clashing with limbs, made her want to shrink back into herself until she was no longer there at all. But, obviously, reality doesn't work that way. And so, Ellie dared to lift her gaze and open her eyes to the bright, neon world that surrounded her.

The night air felt warmer than Ellie had anticipated, the pollution of the city and general hot-ass summer weather settling on her skin like a cloak worn on a ridiculously hot day. Rin laughed as she shivered in disgust, tugging at her shirt in an attempt to let some of the cooler air replace the furnace that was her body temperature. It was an uncomfortably hot night and the added humidity only made Ellie feel even more like an oven turned up to it's highest setting.

The streets were busy, busier than any overly-cramped day at Bondi Junction or rush hour in Circular Quay. So many people, jammed uncomfortably close together, hurried by without a second thought spared for the sheer magnitude of life that surrounded them day by day. Ellie doubted she could live in a place like Tokyo, with so many personalities and livelihoods packed together like livestock shoved together in a pen for slaughter. The city irked her even more as she thought about the logistics and from the slight grimace that crossed Rin's face every so often when they passed through a monstrously large crowd, Ellie could tell that he didn't favour the city over his quiet hometown either.

She briefly wondered what it was like for him living in Australia, with the constant language gap and unfamiliar culture getting in the way of his usual charm and upbeat demeanor. Ellie knew small details about his time there. She knew that he swam for the SOPAC team that trained at the Homebush pool. She knew that he briefly went to a Catholic primary school before moving to Kings during his early high school years. She knew his time there had been hard, so much so that he avoided talking about the details all too often and changed to subject to avoid any more questions on Ellie's part. If he'd hoped to hide his feelings from her, Rin wasn't fooling anyone. Ellie least of all. She'd mastered the art of avoiding explanations long before he had and could spot anyone attempting such an act from a mile away.

Did you make friends? Ellie wondered, her fingers tightening around his palm. Did you swim the way the wanted to, the way you dreamed to? Or did the world break you, like it did me? Ellie couldn't help thinking about these questions and their answered that remained unsaid. She doubted Rin got away from Kings without some experience with bullying. Private schools weren't the safest of places for many people, where money and family name meant everything and the rich looked down their noses at the working class. Ellie had the luxury of going to a middle-class high school, where the standards weren't so high and she had friends that protected her from any harsh comments that came her way. Did Rin have friends who protected him at Kings? Or was he forced to fend for himself?

Ellie couldn't imagine Rin in an environment where he didn't have friends by his side. She refused to, in fact, as the image felt so unnatural in her own head that she physically cringed away from it. It was too jarring, too saddening for Ellie's mind to handle. And so, she drove her thoughts and questions of Rin further back into the far reaches of her mind, where she dared not think on them again.

Despite all her discomforts, Ellie was still able to stand in awe of the tall, towering structures that loomed over her head at every turn and the bright, flashing neon signs that blinked and sparked in great bursts of colour before her eyes. The florescent flurry of colours eventually made her head ache, the different variations of distractions becoming too much for her mind to keep up with. The colours were beautiful, no doubt, but after so long, the overload of information being forced into her head was just too much.

Ellie finally remembered why she didn't like cities so much. The combination of people confined to their own small, non-existent spaces and the bright, flashing signs whose colours bounced off the pavement was all a part of a living, breathing society that survived only within the city's boundaries. It all flowed like water from a fountain; the seamless transition between busy train routes, the indifference of the people within, the mindless, never-ending routine of city life. It was a dead existence, a pointless cycle. The people there lived only for the benefit of the city itself, not for the people around them or even for their own sakes.

It disturbed Ellie; it made her feel inexplicably sick. Not just because of the generic reasons but also because the people who lived there reminded her of herself and her impulsive need to act as if nothing was wrong, even if she may be screaming on the inside. She acted to please others and not herself, only because she was afraid of the consequences of speaking her mind. People followed in other's paths, producing nothing new, nothing outwardly original. Never in her life had Ellie wished for home so badly, for the long, sweeping fields of drying grass and the cool nights sitting atop her roof watching the stars. As well as her mother yelling at her from below to get the hell down before she breaks something, like a beam in the roof or possibly even her arm whilst climbing down.

Eventually, after wading their way through the seemingly endless crowds, the pair eventually found their way back to the hotel. They'd been wandering around for over three hours, pacing from shop to shop with Rin inherently trying to keep the conversational mood light. They joked and playfully pushed each other around the stores that they entered, trying on clothes that were far too 'lolita' for Ellie's tastes and terrorising young teenagers who got in their way. The city didn't seem any smaller or any less daunting than before but with time, Ellie got used to world that lived on around her.

"Okay, just saying, you couldn't have possibly gotten into the Youth Olympics when you did without some kind of hyperactive drug or something. I was hardly even focused enough to match the 30 second state qualifying time for State Age Championships at that how the hell did you even do that?"

Ellie laughed, the sound bouncing off every surface in the marble lobby, and elbowed Rin painfully hard in the side. He grunted in pain, delivering a backhand blow to her forearm in response.

"Oh hush, will you?" Ellie scolded. "I've already had enough of that speculation bullshit from the media and Swimming Australia back when I actually tried. Hell, I'm still getting crap like that from them now. It's just a little more silent nowadays. Not that it doesn't affect me but..."

Rin watched Ellie with a thoughtful gaze, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards in a knowing smile. "I feel like you're about to start reminiscing about 'the good old days' and I'm worried I'm not going to have popcorn to enjoy the show."

"I didn't realise my boring life story interested you so very much."

"Well, it only interests me because you kept every fucking faucet of it to yourself. You would think your charming boyfriend would get preference in terms of knowing things like that but no! Not in this relationship, I say! Vague answers and half-assed promises is what you should expect!"

Ellie laughed shamelessly and childishly poked out her tongue, shoving a fist into Rin's stomach. Ellie suspected that it hurt her more than it hurt him, the impact sending a jolt of pain spiraling up her knucles, but she wasn't going to show that to Rin as he doubled over in mock pain and cried, "Oh it hurts! Take me to the hospital! I've been attacked by a seventeen year old viking with anxiety problems!"

"Oh honey, if I were a viking, you'd be unconscious after a punch like that. Just sayin'." Slamming her finger into the elevator button, Ellie turned toward Rin as he stalked toward her with his trademark smug grin plastered across his face. "You know what? You're an ass, Matsuoka. And because of that, you will be paying for dinner."

Rin's smile only widened. "Gladly, Khaleesi. My worthless currency for your invaluable secrets."

"My invaluable secrets are worth more than gold, min kjæreste. Your worthless currency, however, is what gets us a buffet."

"Modesty is definitely not your strongest trait, is it?"

Ellie shrugged, pressing her back against the marble wall as they waited for the elevator. "Only when it suits me, Sharkie. Only when it suits me."

---

The Youth Olympics, according to it's ambassadors, was meant to be a learning experience for young elite athletes with aspirations bigger than themselves and ability and skill beyond that of the average teenager participating in sport for the sake of it. The Games were meant to teach them something about the hard work and dedication that was involved in living a life revolved around their chosen sport; the underlying traps of substance abuse, the temptation of bad sportsmanship, the pressures involved with winning and sponsorship and everything else in between.

The Games were meant to teach the teenagers how to cope with the stress that was sure to come barreling toward them at a hundred miles an hour when the juggling act of work, school and training became too much. That's what it was meant for. However, that was not what was delivered to Ellie in her first fleeting experience at the Youth Olympic Games.

Ellie's first initial memory of the Games was on an unusually hot afternoon in the London Olympic medal presentation hall. Every athlete had been jammed into the hall on the fifth day of their second training week in London, with each and every team pushed into their divided sections to avoid any conflict between the disciplines. It was unbearably hot, at least for those who came from the countries where heat was an unusual thing, and everyone was on edge after being dragged out of their afternoon four-till-seven training sessions with literally no days notice whatsoever.

The swimmers sat dead in the middle of everyone, towels wrapped around their soaked bodies and red rings circling their eyes. They'd be the first in the hall, the first to be unfairly dragged out of training for what would turn out to be just some useless motivation speech that the Committee had forgotten about until the very last minute. The rest of the athletes filtered in every ten minutes or so, one sport after the other making their way into the hall. The triathletes seemed most grateful for the interruption of their training schedule; they sat beside the swimmers in the hall, sweat pouring down their necks in a flood of perspiration. Ellie's friend on the New Zealand Triathlon team sat beside her that afternoon, her tanned skin slick with what smelt like lake water and body odour. Ellie hadn't minded, not when her nose was blocked by the stench of chlorine.

"Transition practises," her friend had explained. "For every item we didn't get in the damn box after the swim, we had to do the ten kilometre circuit of the run, then do half the swim again."

"Ouch. How many times did you have to run it?" Ellie asked.

Her friend winced. "Seven, although I was halfway through my eighth time. My goggles kept bouncing off the side of the bucket when I threw them in. Couldn't get it right."

Ellie nodded in response and idly fiddled with her braid as she waited for the next Olympian to bound up onto the stage and unleash another motivation speech which she didn't really need to hear after the last ten that had came before him. As it turned out, however, the speech wasn't that bad nor was it's presenter: Cameron McEvoy, member of the Australian Swim Team and ever-so-slightly adorable gold medalist. Ellie didn't even remember the speech but she remembered the comments she overhead in the middle of it. The comments made not only about her coach and the Australian team, but also about Ellie exclusively.

"I don't get it," grumbled one of the girls from the American swim team, a tall, blonde bombshell with a nasty attitude to boot. "She's only-what? Fourteen? And she's already getting all this praise from the media. It's not as if she's the only one here with talent and yet, she's all they can talk about. That strike you as fair?"

Her counterpart, a broad-shouldered asshole who's name Ellie vaguely remembered as Jonathon, nodded and sighed with annoyance. "I heard she got a minor sponsorship contract from Speedo. That's why she has the really good powerskins; they give them to her for free."

"It'd explain why she's in the media so much too. Speedo probably pays to have her promoted in Australia. And over here too. They probably don't shut up about her back in her home country. Saying she's the next national hero or something like that. Has she been tested for doping yet?"

Jonathon shrugged, his back muscles shifting beneath his skin with the movement. "Don't know. Probably got the standard treatment that we did when we came in. But then again, some of those test results don't come back for years after-the-fact, so we'll see."

"There is reason for doubt though. A fourteen-year-old doing 24 seconds for fifty fly? A 53.79 for a hundred? There's got to be something wrong with that."

Ellie hadn't thought much on it then, sitting drenched in that crowded presentation hall with her towel sticking to the sweat forming on her back, but as she explained that first encounter with the rumours of her supposed substance abuse to Rin, Ellie recalled how horrifying that situation actually was. Swimmers were scrutinized, sure. Especially when it came to doping and the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs. But children, young teenagers to be exact, usually weren't subject to such suspicion until they started doing particularly well on the international circuit. The Youth Olympics had been Ellie's first international event. There was no cause for questioning as she hadn't won any medals as of yet, no titles, no records, no real reputation at all.

But people could always talk and speculate. Out of the fifteen swimmers in the Australian Youth Olympic swim team, Ellie and Carla were the youngest. They would be subject to the most questioning, especially due to their young age, and they would have even more pressure riding on them due to their incredibly fast times. Ellie hadn't known that, in time, she would be the one to suffer the most scrutiny of them all. She didn't know, of course, because she was a young idealistic child, still filled with unrealistic hopes and dreams.

"I was an idiot," Ellie said over her dinner, her appetite thoroughly spoiled by the tone of conversation. "I didn't understand that sometimes when people say untruthful things, the world listens. And then the world responds appropriately."

Rin sat across from her at the table, jabbing at his meal with his fork as he listened to her story intently. He hadn't said a word since she had began, a record time of unspoken silence for him Ellie presumed. However, the temptation must have been too much for him in the end, as he said, "I guess not all of us are you though, Ellie. You can't blame them for thinking that way, no matter how assholish they were."

Ellie shook her head. "I guess not. But that's not the worst part. The worst began just after my first silver. In Nanjing, China, where the semis and finals were held."

There'd been a major delay in the preparation of the sporting venues in Nanjing at the time. The Regatta Lake and Gymnastics arena were still in the process of being renovated for the event, with an approximated week and a half long extra time required to run full safety and structural checks until everything was ready to go. As a result, the International Olympic Committee was forced to delay the young athletes departure from the month long training camp in London, even though most of the other venues were well-truly prepared and could be used while the gymnasts, rowers and triathletes waited for their venues to be finished.

However, this did not deter the IOC from postponing everyone's events and starting the trials in London rather than in Nanjing. This, naturally, had made many of the athletes, and coaches included, thoroughly ticked off with their situation. It wasn't all bad though, especially since London's facilities from the 2012 Olympics were still in brilliant working order. The soccer trials began first, before everyone else's events were even set up for the coming days. The Australian team made it through to the semis, only to be knocked out by Great Britain once they got to Nanjing. The heats for swimming were conducted later on in the evening, giving everyone a chance to sleep-in a bit and prepare themselves in due time.

Ellie made it through to the semi-finals without even breaking a sweat for all three of her events: 100m butterfly, 200m butterfly and 400m freestyle. There wasn't much debate over that, although she had beaten the British favourite in her hundred butterfly heat, causing a decent amount of strife between the Australians and the British so as that they no longer sat near each other at meals. That didn't particularly bother anyone on the team, least of all the rugby sevens boys who had also managed to cause some animosity between the teams.

"I broke their captain's nose," explained Sam, captain of the boys rugby sevens team. "Not intentionally. Just got my elbow up at the wrong time is all." The seventeen-year-old smirked, proud of himself. "It's not my fault that my team follows suit and hammered them out of gold medal contention."

Ellie had laughed loudly at the jokes that were made at the dining tables, her new friends making her feel welcome despite her young age and inexperience and in time, she'd even managed to crack some of them herself. But the British weren't exactly happy about being ridiculed. Around the time the venues were finished and everyone arrived in Nanjing a couple of days before semi-finals, the rumours of Ellie's supposed drug use spread like wildfire. Sure enough, the news outlets from all nations caught onto the rumours, presumably from the ridiculous amount of babbling that the coaches did outside the Athletes Village. By the time it really began to affect Ellie, she had already won one silver medal and was about to win a second. Her coach seemed to be under the assumption that, had she not been pulled from her final event out of concern for her mental stability, she would have won a third or maybe even her very first international gold medal.

"I'd had an outburst in the mess hall a day before my last event," Ellie explained. "It was a loud night. You could hardly even hear yourself think over all the chatter. Medals had been won, stories were being shared and for all intents and purposes, things were going fine. I was happy, for the most part. But over everything, I could still hear the whispering. I could still feel the eyes boring into the back of my skull, the hateful glares at the phantom medals that hung from my neck, the rumours spreading from team to team like an uncontrollable blaze. I lost it; I yelled and screamed at everyone to be quiet, to stop whispering, to say what they wanted to say to my face. And when one of the British swimmers provoked me, I lunged. I probably would have mauled her, had half the girls on the rugby sevens team not held me back. No one expected me to go that far. No one expected me to just lose my cool in the middle of the mess hall. But I didn't particularly care about my reputation at that point. I just wanted to rumours to stop, then and there."

Obviously, the rumours didn't stop there. They were barely even hindered to begin with. Once Ellie arrived home a few days early, the Australian news outlets had already began speculating and broadcasting about her outburst. The rumours continued and blossomed even further in the continuing month, despite the various public denials her parents made, official and also not so official. School had become a living hell, with Ellie's every move being watched by teachers and more suspicious students. She only had her small group of friends to protect her, to defend her against the things that were said and heard around the school.

"That's the problem with all-girls schools," Aisha sighed over their lunch one day. "Rumours spread quicker than you can catch them and girls are much better at hiding their attitudes than boys. Someone could be a fucking princess in a teacher's eyes but be another person's worst nightmare all the same."

Aisha had been more than right about that. The walls had ears at that school, with secrets coating the whiteboards and gossip dancing down the corridors. The girls in Ellie's classes began to listen to every word she said, memorized it for later reference and then published it around the school like it was everybody's business. Even the teachers seemed to be listening more intently to her passionate little speeches in class, making their mental notes on her supposed attitude and then sharing those notes with other teachers about the staff room. Soon, Ellie stopped answering their questions so honestly.

She stopped contributing to debates, only spoke when spoken to and kept her head down in her work with no intentions of asking for help if she didn't understand. She visibly shrank, stepping back from the world and absorbing herself in what she supposed could have been self-pity. Others might it have described it as depression. Whatever it was didn't matter because even without a name, that feeling of total isolation stung all the same.

But strangely, even quieting down wasn't enough to stop the news outlets from grasping whatever new rumour had surfaced about her personal views, her training, her coach. Even her parents' treatment of her was questioned at a time. And so, Ellie ceased talking at school altogether. She may as well have not existed anymore as she hid in the back of every classroom, taking notice of nothing and resenting every moment she had to spend in that hell. Ellie didn't want to be heard, she even feared it to a point, and through her fear, Ellie developed what she could only call an unreasonable anger. An unreasonable anger toward the world, it's citizens and the sport that had caused all this pain. Swimming. Oh, how she hated it.

Despite her anger, Ellie never found the courage to stop going to training, to stop waking up in the morning for those brisk-aired runs, to tell her parents that she just couldn't handle it anymore. The pressure to do well, the rumours that always found her, the anxiety of it all. Ellie was drowning in a anxious sea of her own making. And she hardly even wanted to escape it. She was too scared of what her parents would say, too frightened of the possibility that they would be angry with her for just giving up after every opportunity they had practically handed to her. Ellie was trapped, as far as her mind could see. And she was too far in to call out for help now.

"Looking back on it now, I think my parents probably would've been relieved if I'd quit," she said quietly, the hotel restaurant slowly clearing of clientele as the night went on. "It had been so much stress on them, all those news reports and articles. They must have thought they were such bad parents, especially after being told repeatedly that they were. I've never had the heart to apologise. Especially now that they think everything's okay and that I've forgotten the hell we went through."

"But you never forgot," Rin replied solemnly . "You just got good at hiding your pain."

Ellie nodded, a pain that felt very much like heart-ache growing in her chest, and continued on explaining with a shaky intake of breath. Strangely, that hadn't even been the worst time for her. In fact, the worst was still yet to come.

Around the time that Carla ruined her swimming career at a Saturday morning netball game, the rumours surrounding Ellie had peaked in their intensity. Her parents were the ones mostly being criticized; for their treatment of Ellie at home, for their attitude toward her elite sportsmanship, for their constant denial of ever allowing her to use performance enhancing drugs during the Youth Olympics. Ellie couldn't bear to even look at the family TV anymore; she was too frightened of what might come on, what might appear in front of her eyes and ruin her for days to come.

But it wasn't something on the news that ruined her or even some stupid comment passed off by one of the teachers or a classmate at school. It was Carla. Carla and her stupid, self-destructive attitude.

"She'd been arrested on multiple charges. Drunk driving, negligent behaviour, possession of an illicit substance...all the things that should have equaled jail time." Ellie bit her lip, panic freezing over in her blood. She'd never really discussed this with anyone before. Never had she ever said the words. "But, uh...she didn't even end up going to court. I...I made a deal which ended with me...taking the fall for her. I helped her father with the cover-up by taking on some of the charges. Drew the media attention away from her and onto me. By that time, everything had calmed down pretty well but something like that, it...it just went insane."

Ellie sighed with relief, a great weight lifted off her shoulders as if it had been weighing down on her for the past four years. She looked away from Rin, avoiding his calculating gaze as if it were judging her, tearing her apart with every second in hopes of revealing the rest of her well-kept secrets. She knew it was probably a stupid decision, what she had done for Carla. Looking back on it now, Ellie could see the holes in her plan that she hadn't predicted back then. But she hadn't been thinking about the consequences back then. All she had been thinking about was the friend that she would lose, the one and only person who fully understood what she had gone through and who loved her regardless. She couldn't lose Carla's comfort, no matter how selfish she felt in feeling that way. She needed Carla. Ellie needed her best friend to be there for her like she had been there when Carla needed it.

Rin tried his hardest to comfort her, reaching for Ellie's hand that still remained on the dinner table. His fingers felt warm against her skin, comforting. "Ellie...Ellie, I-"

"I'm not finished," she choked out. "Please let me finish before I lose my nerve. Please Rin...just for a second, be quiet."

Ellie didn't have to look back at Rin to know his expression was a pained one. One presumably full of pity. God, how I wish you wouldn't pity Rin. Please don't give me the excuse to pity myself again. Please don't...

When the news reports and newspaper articles began to intensify with their mistreatment of the information fed to them by the courts and Carla's father's 'anonymous sources', Ellie's parents began to consider moving her away to a different school. A boarding school on the Gold Coast, specializing in the coaching of young swimmers and aspiring Olympians. It was supposed to easier there, away from all the troublesome people that had come into her life within the last two years. They were only thinking of the best for Ellie and she knew that, she knew it better than she thought she did. But she fought with them nonetheless, screaming horrible things at them and making the situation worse for herself. It had been a nightmare, worse than anything that had came before.

"I guess I was depressed for that next month or so. My parents tried to persuade me into looking into the new school. I told them off every time, sparking an argument every day without any consideration for them or myself. But when one more argument became too many, I snapped. I drove to Carla's house at two in the morning, sobbing and crying about how they wanted to send me away. Isolate me even more. I don't...I don't really know what happened but I was in a pretty bad place and I...I tried...I tried to...give up on everything. Take away the pain for good. And I guess...it was also a way of saying that...that the media, my classmates, my teachers...it was a way of saying that they don't own me anymore. That I can make my own decisions and that I have a voice, that I can be heard even when I'm dead. That they can't hurt me anymore. But I couldn't do it. For whatever reason that stopped me, I couldn't."

Ellie didn't want to remember that night; the cold, sinking feeling in her chest as she poured the pills into her open palm. The tears that flowed down her cheeks with every shaking breath. The feeling of dread for what was to come. How could she know that what was on the other side would be better than this? How could she know that she wouldn't just end up in a spiraling pit of nothingness for the rest of eternity? How could she know? How?

Ellie managed to keep the oncoming tears at bay until Rin rushed them into the elevator, empty of all people and illuminated under a bright golden light. Rin hadn't even said a word since she had told him of that night, hadn't dared speak a word of comfort until they were out of sight. Ellie silently thanked him for that. She didn't know if she could keep her own emotions in check otherwise; they were just as likely to come pouring out in the tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes. It'd been a long time since she had cried for this, cried well and truly for that lapse in common sense she had experienced so long ago. She cried because she could, because it was the only real reaction that Ellie could muster in response to that horrible memory of her past. She couldn't bear to think of it but all the same, it was all she could think about.

As soon as the metal doors closed them inside that heavy, steel box that would carry them up to their room, Rin wrapped his arms around Ellie's shoulders and let her sob quietly into his shoulder. He said nothing at first, simply pressing his lips against her hair and taking long, deep breaths in what felt like a calming motion. Ellie tried her best to breath in time with him: in, out, in, out, in, out. But her resolve crumbled as fast as it had been conjured. Oh, how she hated to pity herself. It made her feel so weak that she could very well have slapped herself. But she did it anyway, allowing herself one moment of self-indulgence before she faced Rin's judgement.

Ellie pondered on the questions he would ask as they walked wordlessly to their room. Did you honestly think that would change anything? Don't you realise that that there are people who love you in this world? Don't you realise the pain you would have caused if you had gone through with that? How could you be so selfish?

Selfish. Yes, that was what she was. Ellie had no doubt believing that people thought that of her, had no doubt believing them in saying that. They had reason to say so, no matter whether that reason was the truth or just some bitter white lie. Ellie knew that she was selfish, for wanting to be free of the world that seemed to be standing against her for wanting a voice in the most morbid way. For wanting to show that these people, these people who had made her out to be the villain, were actually the cruelest of them all. Ellie had just wanted to show them that she was, in fact, a person. A person who lived, breathed, felt, made mistakes and could die, just like they could.

"You're so stupid, Ellie," Rin whispered as he sat her down on the bed, his forehead leaning against hers. "So stupid and poetic, like every bloody adult."

Ellie made no effort to respond, only pulling herself closer to him, her arms wrapped firmly around his neck. She didn't want to let him go. She didn't want to leave at the end of the month. Ellie wanted a lot of things but most of them, if not all, revolved around leaving Rin.

Rin lifted his hands up to her face, holding her cheeks in his hands as he forced her to look at him. Forced her to look at his small, comforting smile that almost made Ellie cry out in physical pain. God, don't pity me, Rin. Please don't pity me. I won't have that from you. I won't, I won't, I won't...

"Listen to me, you stupid, poetic, beautiful idiot. You are more giving than anyone I have ever known. You gave up what was left of your reputation, your sanity even, for a friend who otherwise deserved the treatment she was in for. I don't presume to understand what you did. I don't doubt that if I were in your situation, I would've left my best friend high and dry. Hell, Sosuke's a grumpy assshole anyway, so I definitely wouldn't have done that." Rin paused for moment after that, Ellie's sniffled laughter causing some brief sprouts of happiness to blossom inside her chest. Thank God for you, Rin, she thought. Thank God you can make a joke at any inappropriate time and still make me laugh.

He continued, his expression soft and his eyes slick with tears that Ellie hadn't noticed flooding his rose-coloured eyes. Had her story saddened him so severely? Oh, how she wished he wasn't crying for her. Ellie remembered a story her kindergarten teacher had told her when she skinned her knee in the playground. Ellie had cried and cried, the pain too much for her small, singular mind. Her teacher knelt beside, smiling and pleasant, and told her the story of a giant who wasted all his tears and could never cry again.

"Don't waste your tears, Ellie," she said. "Save then for when you are truly sad." Ellie thought on that story as she ran her thumb over his cheeks, leaving her fingertip wet and her heart screaming. Ellie wanted to tell him to stop crying, to tell him not to waste his tears as the giant from her teacher's story had. Rin's tears were too precious to be spent on Ellie. I'm not worth it, Rin, she thought. I'm not worth it, please..

Taking a deep breath, Rin spoke. "But don't you ever let anyone believe that you are deserving of the things that happened to you. Don't let anyone convince you that you are selfish or obnoxious or just a downright horrible person, because you're not. You're stubborn, and sarcastic, and anxiety-riddled, and snippy but you are not what people say you are. Do you understand, Ell? You are not what they say you are and I will love you no matter what comes from their lying, asshole mouths, got it? I love you. That's all you need to remember. I'll love you even if you refuse to love yourself."

Ellie sobbed, her hands shaking harder than they ever have before and her head aching with a deep sense of exhaustion. She was tired, God how she felt tired. It was the kind of exhaustion that seeped into a person's bones and dragged them down until they could no longer lift even a finger. Ellie had no more energy to spare, no more tears to cry, no more words to speak, except for the obvious whispers of, "I love you, Rin. I love you, I love you..."

The two slept soundlessly that night, with Ellie bundled up tight in Rin's arms, his chin rested atop her head and his warmth slowly seeping into her body with every passing second. Ellie hadn't expected to sleep well that night. She expected nightmares, at the very least, accompanied by restlessness and a throbbing headache that wouldn't go away. However, out of the three options available to her, Ellie received none.

"Ku'uusi," her grandmother used to say. As good as new.

Ellie considered in the brief moments before falling into a deep, uninterrupted sleep, that perhaps, in the last year, things had become as good as new. Perhaps...all Ellie really needed was time to think. And additionally, someone to give her things to think about.

In her sleep, Ellie smiled. Why did that someone have to be as sarcastic and arrogant as Rin?

---

A.N: Halle, Halle, Halle. Halle-fucking-lujah. It's done. It's finished (well, the chapter at least.) I can stop writing until my head explodes-PRAISE THE SUN!

Now, before people start questioning me about the multiple things I possibly got horribly wrong in this chapter, I apologise in advance. I tried my best to do extensive research, especially on the Norwegian and Finnish languages as well as the pressures of elite sports (my parents are now questioning me after reading my history tab on my iPad.) But I do apologise if I got something wrong. I tried my best and will eventually correct things if I ever decide to do a rewrite.

But for now, I have spent far too much time on this already. And I'm exhausted, with too many assignments and school camp in a week. So here's the massive chapter for you. It may be a little while till the next one because of a little thing called school. I apologise for that too. Wow, I am doing a lot of apologising right now. Moving on...

In terms of Ellie's early family life, stoic behaviour in Norwegian culture is not uncommon. Many Norwegians don't show their true emotions until they intimately know someone or at least are on good terms with them. In relation to Ellie's grandfather's funeral, she and her parents probably didn't know the entirety of the people there, which would have lend to the general feeling of indifference. Saying this, not all Norwegians are like this. It's like saying that all Americans love guns or that all Australians say "crikey" (which I can assure you, we don't.) This is the more traditionalist view on life, as far as I was informed, and that's just how I characterised her family to be. Yay for nationalities and offending various people (I am so very, very sorry if I do. Cannot say that enough * cries in a corner because I am a failure at writing* )

Secondly, the Youth Olympics, if none of you knew, is actually just like a massive seminar for young elite athletes. They have talks on personal physical and mental health and motivational talks and all that fun stuff. As well as the fact that it's usually the first international outing for many of the participants. Just so you know.

Thank you to IKhandoZatman, Lilween Galatrass, My Father's Daughter and Kyuma Aoi for reviewing. Thank you to everyone else for following and favouriting. I think this chapter took the longest out of all of them to write, even more so to edit. But I'm fed up with worrying about it and I have too many assignments to do to really bear the weight of this on my mind anymore. So here you go. It'll be a little while till the next one but it is coming. I assure you of that.

Kyuma Aoi: My good golly God, where did you go my friend? You disappeared for a moment and I was getting worried xD I'm glad you had a good Christmas and Australia Day. I'm just imagining all the kids trying to put down mats or something in a diamond square for baseball and you going "No, no, no children. This is not how you play a sport." Thank you for the usual review which I always enjoy. I meant to try and make Ellie a little less mature in the beginning but as I went along, I kinda just thought screw it and made her what I actually wanted to make her. I'm glad I've made some kind of complexity in this story, especially since I'm always worried about falling into the usual OC fanfiction pit-falls. Which I no doubt have, in some regards, but at least I'm not a complete failure.

And yes, Sou-kun must always show emotions. I have something really good planned for him in the end too because if KyoAni wasn't going to give him an ending, THEN I DAMN WELL WILL! In regards to the his open-mindedness about WWII, I honestly think Sosuke would be that kind of person. He just seems so calm about everything that I think he would inherently have an open-mind to many things, including the idea that his country did some not-so-great things in the war. Speaking of Japan, I'm actually doing pretty well in elective Japanese. Although I am now scared of misusing the particles that mark everything in a sentence and then turning the sentence "I eat breakfast at 7" into "7 eats me at breakfast." Do you see my slight panic towards this language dilemma? Also, my Japanese teacher is quite mean. Needless scaring my entire class in the middle of class just because it amused her IS NOT OKAY! I sat under my desk in shock as she laughed at all of us screaming in horror.

My Father's Daughter: Mutual confessions of love are always fun to write, although I have a constant worry that they're too damn sappy. Is that a thing? Because it should be a thing. It's been a while since we've talked, hasn't it? School's been getting in the way of my writing and I assume work is piling up on you much more than it is for me. I'm literally dying for the last chapter of your AU. It's too good for my eyes, honestly. It's just so nice to read. I'm sure we'll end up talking more over PMs, so I suppose I should make this short. I'm already using up valuable assignment time *drowns in the amount of work that needs doing.*

LilweenGalatrass: Oh my god, I'm blushing. Stahp, I can't even handle the nice comments. You're too nice. You're a wonderful human being. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Also, thank you for putting up with my long update times. I just can't find the time to write anymore which makes me kind of sad but it's comments like this that keep me going :)

IKhandoZatman: Tell me about it. My friends and I were convinced that they tested the tent on midgets. It was the only explanation as to why it can fit six fully gown men but not four teenage girls of varying heights. So annoying.

Now, I would love to stay and talk some more but unfortunately, I have a English prose to edit and a Japanese speech to write. Please wait patiently for the next chapter as it is coming. I just need time to finish out the first term of school and breathe a little, you know? Enjoy the freedom of a non-stressful life.

Until next time...