Disclaimer: If you recognize it, then it's not mine
A/N: I find this terribly sad...it was very difficult to write, because it kept twisting away from how I wanted it to be, but, I think I like this version better anyway.
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There was once a girl, with hair that brushed her shoulders in thick dark waves. Her mouth was happy,
always smiling and laughing, laughing, the lines traced down around her dimples, giving her an air of constant
mirth. Her mouth made those who regarded her carelessly define her vaguely as a happy sort of girl, one who
didn't really know anything about the things that mattered. But her eyes were like the sea, and they were sad
and lonely and tired, so tired, all the time, that those who looked at her a little closer saw she was a suffering
character, a wise Scarlett O'Hara, a vaguely happy girl that was so bitter, that it was remarkable, really, how often
her incandescent smile came.
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And then she fell in love.x
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She didn't know one thing about love, one thing about the pain and the shadows and the shivery,melting wave that enshrouds all those who claim to have known Eros intimately. She was too young and too
naive to understand about sharing half of you with someone else, part of you with another person, who
may or may not hurt you. She didn't know one thing about wondering where he is, or missing him, or holding him
close. She didn't know one thing about hurting him, breaking him, loving him too hard. But she knew quite a bit
about lonely nights, about insomnia, about dreaming of him while she was perfectly awake. She knew maybe too
much about being happy when he was near, about wanting to make him that happy, too...about the slow, giddy
tingle that crept up her spine when he lightly touched the inside of her wrist. She knew a lot about that.
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He wasn't beatiful, she would sometimes muse, studying her face in the mirror, but, then again, neitherwas she. Her classic features, studied seperately, were lovely. Combined, however, they gave an appearance of
something too straight and smooth to belong to somebody real. Her nose didn't fit her eyes, and her laughlines
were sometimes too pronounced for a girl of seventeen. But he made her lovely, he made her beautiful, and his
too-big, overly blue eyes made her classicly weak-at-the-knees, so she supposed the fact that he wasn't the
tallest or the strongest could be overlooked. She was sure that he loved her, too, although he never said so in as
many words. But he spoke to her a little softer, and he would sometimes touch her gently and look at her
imploringly, as though pleading with her to simply understand. And he knew she did when her cloudy eyes
cleared, and she smiled brilliantly, only for him.
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There was sometimes a sadness that blurred at her, that smudged her around the edges, but it was toovague for her to ever properly define. The sadness sometimes weighed her down, ate at her like an acid, and she
knew that she lived too hard, she loved too much, she was spreading herself too thin, and not setting anything
aside for herself. She loved him probably the most, but he gave her something back, he didn't just take and take
like all of the others, and she supposed that's why she loved him the way she did. Her sorrow wasn't as bleak
when he was with her, for he soaked it up, and replaced it with some of his warmth, and, privately, they both
wondered what would happen when the warmth was gone, and all there was left was her sadness.
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Other times, there was a burning life in her, a crushing vibrancy that made her a churning, rumblingribbon of laughter and warm, intertwined fingers and strawberry soft kisses in the moonlight. When she was like
this, and she was so happy, he wouldn't worry about her and the coldness that sometimes creeped in. When she
was like this, he would dream of marrying her, and of having lovely dark-haired babies with misty blue eyes that
made people fall in love with them. When she was like this, he loved her so much that he forgot about her ghosts.
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He held her one night, while the stars blazed far above, and they were tangled in the dewy grass. Herbreath was sweet and smelled of peppermints, and he kissed her mouth to see if it tasted like them, too. She
cried when he stopped kissing her, and said she was afraid of tomorrow, when they would have to leave, and not
be together anymore. He buried his face in the generous expanse of her addicting hair, and let the tears run off
of her face and onto his. Their weariness settled upon them, and, even though tomorrow marked their advance
into adulthood, they felt so old and broken and battered that they were sure it rather marked the apocalypse.
They both knew that they wouldn't see each other after tomorrow. They both knew that he was not enough to
ever make them both happy. They were both aware of the immense price they had paid to be together: her,
the last chance to drive out her demons; him, the sickening grief of watching her wither before his eyes.
Tomorrow, they knew, would be a very bad day. But for tonight, for right now, they held each other, and
pretended that she wasn't broken, and that he hadn't done the breaking.
"Seamus," she whispered, softly, into the silver darkenss, "You know, I loved you for a while."
He nodded mutely against her neck, and sighed into the heavy night air.
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There was once a girl, with hair that brushed her shoulders in thick dark waves. Her mouth was happy,always smiling and laughing, laughing, the lines traced down around her dimples, giving her an air of constant
mirth.
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And then she fell in love.