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Through The Diamonds
By Nessie
Theme #25: Fence
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Lin is outside for a quick smoke before going back into Annie's store where a meeting for his unit is taking place. With Vicious on Titan, he's had to suffer through a lot more meetings than usual.
He's about to turn and head to the door, but then he spots his role model walking along a half-empty street on the other side of a chain-link fence across the way. He takes a moment just to admire Spike for who he is and what he's capable of. He wants to be like him someday.
But then he sees that Spike isn't alone. He is walking with a golden-haired woman with an angel's face and realizes that it's Julia. They aren't doing anything, Lin observes with a smile. The lucky pair must have the day off, and they're taking a walk and talking and smoking, like him. It almost looks like they're just normal people, two friends out for a chat.
But they're not normal. None of them are.
Julia says something, and Spike laughs loudly. Lin can hear him from this far away. Spike's laugh is confident, and she must have been very funny. He's so delighted that he suddenly takes Julia by the wrist, spins her in a dizzying circle and kisses her.
Right in the street. Right in front of Lin.
His cigarette falls to the ground as Lin realizes that Spike and Julia are desperately, maddeningly in love.
In the next moment, he's terrified. Julia is, for all intents and purposes, Vicious's. And as far as he and anyone else had known, she wants to be. But that's all a lie now.
With the witness of one little kiss through the diamonds made by thin wires of steel, Lin understands that has betrayed them already.
It tears him up inside.