I do not really remember anything canon. XD
if this is very irritating, please pretend it is au. (lame author excuse for everything.)
love to you all.
one. london bridge is.
No one ever falls up.
Sorry.
two. the first cut is the deepest.
He leaves them on a Monday in the way he had left every Monday. Suit on, coffee in hand, another distracted goodbye and one more blown kiss as the tires squealed out of the driveway. She remembers bare feet on the cement and waving as he peeled away from home.
Only when the car disappears does she hear her mother crying.
(She wishes that she had caught the kiss.)
three. finding someone to catch you.
She is seven years old and she's heard so much and seen so little that she is determined to find it. He- or they, since one hasn't been quite specified yet- is obliviously coloring a map of Japan with bent crayons, unaware of the meticulous search going on in the small classroom.
She goes about her search carefully, seriously turning over each one of her classmates in her head as they copy numbers from the whiteboard. He is too noisy, he is too dirty, he is mean- she is a Goldilocks without the just right. She works her way methodically down the rows of seats, skipping over the boy with goggles (draws too much, she sniffs) and debating over the new boy from China (not quite, she finally decides).
When she comes to the end of the class roster without a single candidate, she decides that she'll just have to do without a replacement.
four. frostbitten eyes.
She is ten and she is young and impossibly scary for her age. No one calls her cute to her face twice. Falling once is enough for her.
Instead, she throws herself into numbers and strategies and smooth cards that don't bite back, don't run away. They are just pieces of data, bits and pieces of numbers that she can put into place and smooth into neat columns of victory and defeat. X + Y is always Z.
(A fox whispers at her window one day, and the rest is history.)
They whisper ice queen at her back, but now that she has someone who understands, why should she bother with the rest of humanity?
five. now you see it, now you don't.
She is eleven and he is twelve, and they stare at the closing sky as if they have lost their only home in the world. He glances over at her for the space of a blink, a heartbeat, an eternity, and reaches over to squeeze her hand.
For the space of a blink, a heartbeat, her heart whispers a quiet what if.
Don't be stupid, she whispers back, pulling her hand away. Not again.
six. you just don't understand.
She is sixteen and she is tall and young and impossibly scary and fierce and beautiful. She's lost and lost again, and she's tired of it all.
It's not that she won't talk to guys, because she does. It's just that she won't fall in love with them. They don't quite see the point. What's the point of having everything if you won't use it? If you were given those things, got all that attention, then you should appreciate them more! What is the point of being the prettiest girl in class if you ignore every single guy, not for the sake of flirtation or coquetry, but just because that's what you felt like doing?
They're calling her the ice queen for a different reason now.
She holds her head high and looks past the hungry eyes.
seven. it's not flying, it's falling with style.
She is seventeen and she falls in love. Her heart tumbles head over heels so fast that her head gets a concussion and checks out of her life for a while.
It is a match made in astrology charts, in matchmakers' equations and romance novelists' dreams. This boy with one foot in the shadows, who's tired of cameras and bright lights and just wants to do what he loves in peace and silence. Same childhood pasts, same understandings- they even like the same foods. He understands her because he understands himself. They are exactly right for each other.
She hears Ryou (of all people, he is giving her advice?) telling her to be careful. Ryou, who has gone through a few dozen strings of girls and has ended up in a serious state of storm clouds after each one. Ryou, the boy with a new one true love every week, is telling her to be careful?
She hears, but she is already gone.
eight. a river in Egypt.
He has friends and she has friends and the two circles never quite mesh together. She doesn't give herself up- she would never do that, would she? Of course not. She just- she just spends less time on herself now. And he will too, eventually. It's completely logical: she should spend time getting to know her boyfriend's friends too. Give and take, Akiyama. Haven't you been babbling about this for a long time now?
He shakes his head and closes his eyes.
One morning, she wakes up and can't remember the last time she laughed.
nine. build a bridge, lock a tower.
She is seventeen and she is tall and young and impossibly hurt and fierce and beautiful. She's lost three times now, and that's good enough for her. She's not crying, because she's done with crying. She's not sad, because she's done with that too.
She got what she deserved, they whisper, trying to justify their satisfaction. After all those years, she finally knows what it's like to be rejected!
No more falling down, she says, her eyes dark and stone cold.
In reply, he doesn't tell her I told you so, but his kindness hurts more than an ocean of salt in her wounds.
ten. gravity is inevitable.
Falling in love, she believes, is subject to the laws of gravity.
You take a leap, and if you're lucky, you meet in the middle for a few seconds.
Then you fall.
eleven. take a note.
She has decided that falling down should be avoided at all costs, and has changed accordingly. Destiny, however, seemed to have missed her memos.
No matter what she does, he ends up at her side, chattering or laughing or doing some other annoyingly cheerful thing.
Can't a girl just go through a breakup alone? she asks the heavens, just once?
Nope, it smiles back at her through sky blue eyes and cloud-white teeth. Sorry.
Eventually, she just gives up.
twelve. you can get used to anything.
He seeps into her life, like light through the window she was sure she patched and painted over so long ago. He slips through the cracks and ends up dragging her off to help him buy birthday presents or do homework while listening to a band he met the other day at the grocery store or to stay up late simply tossing twigs off a bridge as the moon rises higher in the sky. She makes sure that her heels are firmly planted in the ground, but lets her toes rise up into the air every once in a while, tasting the old feeling of weightlessness.
When she wakes up in the morning now, she is smiling.
thirteen. pause button.
But then again, she has never really liked change.
Change has always been worn cardboard boxes and footsteps fading away. Change has always been her mother plastered on billboards and microphones shoved into faces and leaving another tiny bit of her self behind in order to keep up with the sweep and the rush of life on the express train. Change is skinned knees and hearts shattered on impact. Change is falling.
So when he says those words, she is afraid.
fourteen. coin toss.
I love you.
The coin spins in the air.
-- squealing tires peeling away, forgetting to laugh, empty closing skies--
-- firelight dancing, blue sky eyes, you don't have to be alone--
-- ice queen, shadows, falling--
-- a hand in yours--
The coin falls.
fifteen. heartbeat.
She leaps.
sixteen. beyond gravity.
She realizes that this time she doesn't fall.
(The other word for it is flying.)
-liahime.
is thinking about a name change, since this isn't really me anymore.
any suggestions?