Broken Trust, Misused Alliance
"I love you."
You look up at me from your book as if I'm the strangest creature on this good green earth, in addition to having sprouted antlers. I see your Adam's apple rise and fall as you swallow with difficulty.
"Pardon?" comes your croaky reply, as you try to act as if you don't know what I've said when your face, already flushing a dull pink, sells you out.
"You heard me," I say, running my tongue over my thin, dry lips. Your eyes follow the progress of my tongue as my lips glisten with saliva.
That dull pink has now traded in for a vibrant red; you're beginning to look like an over-ripened tomato. Still you say nothing, your eyes flitting from meaningless object to meaningless object, trying to avoid my piercing gaze. You open your mouth.
"I — surely you don't —" you manage to mumble, your book slipping from between your sweating palms and landing with a dull thunk at your feet.
"But I do," I say clearly, my voice echoing loudly in the loneliness of the room, bouncing off of the bare walls and reverberating around us, shaking me to the core.
Neither of us says a word. You break the pressing silence, bending at the knees to pick up your fallen book, your neck and ears shining at me through the soft, flickering firelight like a lighthouse to the lost ship. I can still distinguish that faint birthmark at the nap of your neck in its reddened state, the dim lighting unable to hide your crimson stained skin.
You straighten out, unable to delay the process of picking up that forsaken book any longer. It now gives you an excuse to stare intently at it, jerking it from one hand to the other occasionally.
Neither of us moves. It seems as if we're planted firmly to the ground. I await your response. You must have more to say, to explain, to shun me away with. You, on the other hand, have no reason for staying here. You are awaiting me to admit it as mistake, I presume? To say it was merely a slip of my absent-minded tongue?
It was a slip of the tongue, that much I will admit. I meant not to say it, no matter how the thought of those smooth, cool words slipping from my tongue and over my lips appealed to me. No matter how I would relish my thoughts becoming words, I had said I wouldn't say it.
But Dumbledore had said, as he often did, the world is a place of cruelty and hate, breaking trusts and misused alliances, but the only thing that holds the world together is love. Not power, not strength, not fear, but love. True, acquitted, passionate love, whether between two friends or two lovers, it held the world as we know it together. Without it, the world would fall to pieces.
But you do not seem to be able to grasp the concept of someone holding more than platonic feelings towards you… as I do. Either that or you wish not to. You wish to lock yourself in, hiding from people. Or perhaps, merely from me. You've loved before, this I know. Your family, your friends, you love them, do you not? But me? The thought is absurd.
"You do not."
My head jerks up as these harsh words pass over your lips, and I take a moment of silence to study you.
Your face has lost its pink tinge and has returned to its original pale color, though your eyes are flashing dangerously at me. Not that they haven't done that before. I ignore your warning and carry on.
"Then this feeling inside me, what is it? If not love, then what?" I ask, shaking my head at you.
Trying to persuade me out of my feelings is as if trying to tell a dog it is a cat. You cannot change the makeup of me anymore that you can change the makeup of an animal. I'll like who I like, hate who I hate, and love who I love, and you cannot stop me or change the fact.
You purse your lips at me, giving me a frank look over. What is it you are looking for? Fault in my words? Deceit on my lips? Lies on my tongue? There is none.
"You're wrong," you say, shaking your head at me, your hair flicking across your forehead gently. "You're misinterpreting."
"Am I?" I say softly.
My tender heart has already been broken, why must you shatter it more? Have you not done enough in rejecting me in my weakest and yet strongest moment? Why must you question my sincerity?
You tuck your book under your arm slowly before turning to me.
"You are," you say, and slip out of the room as silently as you slipped in, with all the grace and peace as one person could possess.
I sigh and drop to the worn couch behind me. The dancing light of the fire flutters across my sullen face, darkening the hollows of my now paled cheeks. My thin fingers twist in the fringe of one of the couches many fraying pillows, my heart twisting the already distorted thoughts running through my mind.
Why must you push me away so? Time after heart-ripping time, you reject me, tell me I'm wrong. I tell you I love you, the height of my emotions, and you shun me.
Whatever bond we had left, it has now diminished. The wall of our friendship has finally crumbled around us, nothing but fragments of memories left to dwell on. There's nothing more than stale memories and worn emotions to chew on late at night when I can't sleep, thoughts of you keeping me up late and into the dawn.
I've finally broken your trust, the trust I took so carefully to, pulling you in slowly, letting you read the paper before me at breakfast, letting you pass through the doorway first. The trust it had taken for you to open up to me, to talk to me as we had, to tell me your dreams and your secrets. The trust it took for you to listen to my dreams and my dark secrets.
I misused our alliance, using it to do things with you when I only wished for your calming presence. I would help you with your work only to hear your voice; I would follow you only to know you were still there. You were there when I needed you, and I for you. We had that alliance for comfort, knowing the other was there. I misused our alliance to learn about you, to grow closer, and now it's gone.
I've broken our trust, misused our alliance, and lost my love, all with three small words.
Do I regret doing so? But of course. I wish my foolish tongue had not acted on a whim, as it often does, but it is now behind me, in the past, and there's nothing I can do to change that.
Perhaps I wish these feelings had never been aroused within me? It would take naught but a fool to think so. I am happy to love you, and would do so again if I had the chance.
But can I regain your trust? Only time will tell.
Author's Notes: Hey, I hope you liked it! A, ah, review would be nice. ;)
Anyone want to venture a guess as to whom this ficlet is about?
--alisa