ME: Wow, I am alive after all…
CHIBI JENNA: Oh…yay.
ME: (Sigh.) You're so enthusiastic. But alas, anywho, I have returned! Yay for me, etc, etc…(Coughs.) But anyway, I am indeed back, though I might not be the most update-y girl in the world for a while, as exams bear down upon me like great, big…monsters…and stuff.
CHIBI CHAO: Nobody cares, get on with it.
ME: Ah, right. Well, disclaimer please!
IF I OWNED GOLDEN SUN I WOULD BE RICH…I'M NOT. THOUGH I DO WISH I WAS…
ME: Right-o, on with the fic. 'Tis another wonderfully angsty little number, which came to me whilst listening to the also wonderfully angsty band, Snow Patrol…which I also don't own, by the way…
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Her voice is choked, like his hands are around her throat.
But that's ridiculous, of course, because he's dead. He can't touch her, however softly it might have been. He can't hold her, with arms that are safe, like he really, really loves her.
He can't kiss her either, because ghosts don't have any breath left to kiss with.
His eyes are closed, and from her seat she can't see if they're still blue.
He's in a box now. Shiny brown mahogany, brass handles. It all looks very nice, if you don't care about what's inside.
Yes, nice and tidy, put your dead in a box. Forget what they mean to you, because they don't really mean anything anymore. They're just dead. He's just dead.
She isn't going to cry, no need to make a scene after all.
And she was never one to make a scene. No need for tears when people say they can see the way your heart breaks through your eyes. And oh, isn't it just breaking now?
She doesn't know. She doesn't know why the water still rushes to meet the shore, doesn't know why the clouds keep raining down on her. Don't they know he's dead?
And she's so cold she's shaking. Watching him now, going into the ground.
They closed the box now. She'll never his eyes again, no, too late. Too late, too late. He's trapped now, under the ground, with nothing but that impersonal, grey stone in his place.
It doesn't even come close, doesn't even measure a fraction of what he meant to them. Just a slab of rock, (Even though he would have liked it, it was tasteful.) it still can't come close.
No stone can measure a man after all. Not even the tallest mountain in all of Weyard.
She thinks now of mountains, what they faced, and falls to her knees.
They've all gone home now. Back to their homes, back to their normal lives. For them life goes on, after all. And they can come back and mourn, maybe on this day, maybe on this day every year until they're all old and grey, but life still goes on.
She might have prayed, once upon a time, as she was on her knees in this wet earth.
But now the faith is gone. And it seems like something she should never have lost, as it might have been valuable, once upon a time.
That's a lovely phrase: once upon a time. And maybe if she's lucky, she'll remember it, and faith won't matter anymore. Because it makes her life seem like it was a dream, a nice little fairytale she can repeat to whoever will listen. Someday.
But not just now, because right now she can't seem to think of any fairytales with happy endings.
And she thinks she's been here a long time, because now the sky is growing dark, and the sun has been put out. (They had buried him at dawn, it was always what he wanted.)
She wonders if anybody will come to find her, or if she'll just stay her forever, on her knees at the feet of his great, grey monument. In this gentle rain, as slowly it seems to work its way up to a roaring thunder.
She stays here for a day, perhaps. Until they come and take her home again.
Hot cocoa, warm blankets by the fire. And they're good friends, they mean well. They like to tell her stories, and keep her awake all night long just to make sure she knows that life is still worth living.
Slowly, she watches them all begin to move on.
And when they do, she wonders why she can't. Wonders why it keeps on raining outside, when everybody feels alright again inside. Everybody except her.
But she still hasn't cried though. They notice this.
Why don't you cry? They always ask. Because I can't. And then they leave her alone for a while.
And she's getting used to being alone. She stays indoors and reads poetry when it rains.
She reads all the time now, poetry mostly, but she leaves the fairytales on the bookshelf, untouched and gathering dust. Too many memories. Too many fantasies gone unfulfilled. Because she's alone now. There's no fairytale magic in that.
So here she is. In the end. On her own. Because her friends don't come round anymore, they think they've lost her somehow. And honestly, they have.
Because when he died little broken pieces of her heart got trapped in his coffin, with him. And he's gone now too. He's dead. He's just a slab of rock, no matter how important he used to be. No matter how much he might have meant to them, to her.
Outside the rain falls, drawing shapeless patterns on the window.
He's gone, but she doesn't cry. She never cries.
Maybe she's the dead one.
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ME: Hah, told you it was angsty, didn't I?