Beautiful Collision
"Liberation #1"

A week and a day after Will's birthday found Caleb not mucking out the stalls of a hoogong stable, but rather sitting in Cornelia Hale's room on Earth, feeling vaguely bored. He was waiting for her to make herself "presentable"—something else he'd never understood, as the way Earth girls painted colorful stripes over their eyes only made them look like ancient warriors preparing for battle. Caleb usually sat on her bed whenever this ritual was taking place, but this time, it made him uncomfortable for some reason, so he'd opted for the desk chair.

There was a thick, dog-eared tome entitled "SAT Study Guide" upon her desk, and he began flipping though it, intrigued—but it was full of descriptions of strange things like dangling participles and diagrams of Xs and Ys. It didn't look like much of a battle plan to him. Nor was it enough to hold his interest. Instead he found himself thinking about the fact that he and Cornelia had probably said ten words to each other since they'd met up this evening. That was getting to be more of a common occurrence, the two of them finding little to say when they managed to find themselves alone together. Yet when he'd found himself alone with a certain redhead, he'd barely been able to shut up.

Oh, he'd wanted to say more to Will. He'd wanted to tell her everything about himself and Cornelia, all about the door-slamming and barely averted fights in public (whether that public was a Meridian tavern or the movieplex in Heatherfield) and the number of times he'd lingered pathetically in a phone booth on the street in front of her building, waiting for her to look out the window and let him know everything was all right. Because if she was allowed to vent to Elyon—and Caleb knew she did, on a regular basis—then it was only fair that he have a sounding board as well. And, well, there wasn't really anyone in Meridian with a sympathetic understanding of semi-hysterical teenaged girls from Earth.

He'd wanted to tell her the truth of the situation, the other reason he'd turned down Elyon's promotion. That he couldn't take being in such close proximity to Cornelia on a regular basis anymore. It was absolutely true that his main interest in life now was restoring the livelihood of the commonfolk, but it hadn't been the only deciding factor for him.

Elyon had been understanding. She knew the scope of the devastation her brother had wrought upon her kingdom—after all, she'd helped to wreak it. And Cornelia knew it too, having been one of the party instrumental in bringing Phobos down. But that didn't keep Cornelia from taking his refusal as a personal slight to her best friend, and, by proxy, an insult to Cornelia herself.

He'd wanted to unburden himself when Will had prompted him with the mention of his girlfriend. He trusted Will, probably well more than she realized—after all, she was usually the first to lend an hand and then an arm when he'd gotten himself mired in something or other. But she was also Cornelia's friend and fellow Guardian. Who also happened to be a girl. Caleb had learned fairly quickly that Earth girls tended to band together and take each other's side in such situations, invariably leaving any males out in the cold.

So he'd kept himself in check. And he'd listened to Will, and discovered that all was apparently not perfect in the world of Will and Matt Olsen, either. Caleb had never been especially fond of the guy; he'd been a hindrance, an interference at a crucial time in the past, and he'd distracted Will from her Guardian duties in the process. But he made Will happy, so let bygones be bygones, right?

That no longer appeared to be the case. Will had fibbed to him, tried to save face, but it was about as futile as stoking the fires on an already sinking ship. She was miserable. She'd run away from her own birthday to try and escape her misery. And Caleb had found himself quite suddenly wanting to remedy it. Depression did not suit the brave and often stubborn leader of the Guardians. Especially when it concerned some nancy Earth boy who wasn't even worthy of her.

So he'd given her the pendant, still wrapped as he'd done it months ago now, watching those eyes—like rich loam, the reddest shade of tilled earth—for a change, even a subtle one. And she'd ended up running like mad, as if she couldn't put enough distance between herself and him.

Well-handled. He'd been pretty damn presumptuous in gifting her with something forged by his hand that he'd once intended to give Cornelia. He probably wasn't even on her list of Ten People You'd Most Like To Share An Oubliette With—well, not the top five, anyway. And he was giving her jewelry. No wonder she hadn't returned to Meridian in the time since. His only solitary visit from Will so far would no doubt be his last.

Cornelia sauntered back into the room, surrounded by a cloud of some kind of flowery essence that made his nose itch. She hadn't changed all that much in the last couple of years, he thought. Still willowy, blonde, and impossibly beautiful—with extra emphasis on the "impossible" part. With eyes like frost and a tongue sharper than a chisel when she was displeased. Her taste in perfume had gotten worse, though.

He was aware of all her faults and yet, he still loved her. Or at least, he thought that had been the case. Now he wondered at the truth of it.

"Be glad you don't have to bother with that," she said, noticing the SAT book propped open before him, which he'd stopped perusing almost as soon as he'd begun. "I know I'm going to flub it big time. I just hope my parents aren't too dead set on the Ivy League. I probably won't even get into Brown."

Three years interacting with the people of Earth, Caleb thought, and half the time he still had no clue as to what they were talking about. They shared a common tongue, and yet there remained a language barrier. He'd mentioned that to Taranee at some point or other in time, and she'd responded with a long-winded answer about "Mexican Spanish" and "Spaniard Spanish" that had left him even more confused. He decided not to press Cornelia for clarification—something in her face told him that Brown was not an enemy encampment or a monster's lair, and that if he inquired about it, she'd end up huffing at him for his foolishness.

She was still talking, anyway. "I can barely find any time to study, what with homework and the school play and trying to keep Will from getting all hysterical every time she calls…"

Caleb's head snapped up to attention. "Will?" he repeated.

"Yeah, she broke up with Matt," Cornelia answered distractedly, now pushing aside hangers in her closet. Luckily she hadn't noticed his sudden interest at the mention of her friend. "Or he broke up with her. Half the time she's blubbering and I can't make out what she's saying. All I really know is they agreed to 'take a break'. She's all torn up over it, though. She keeps talking about wanting to work it out with him—"

"Why would she want to do that?" Caleb heard himself say, a tide of disdain swelling within him as he slammed the book shut. "After what he did to her on her birthday? He's not good enough for her."

He didn't fully realize what he'd said until Cornelia turned around to face him, a purple sweater clutched in her hands. Her knuckles had turned white around the hanger.

"How did you know about that?" she asked slowly. "You haven't been back here since then."

Uh-oh. "No…I haven't," he faltered, but truthfully.

"Then how did you know what happened on Will's birthday?" Pale blue eyes glazed over with frost. Displeased would be the understatement of the year, Caleb thought.

"Because she told me." There was no point in trying to evade the truth, he told himself, especially when the truth was nothing to be ashamed of. "She tore a new portal to Meridian on her birthday and found me at the ranch. It was a coincidence. She needed to talk, so we talked."

"A coincidence." Cornelia exhaled through her nostrils. "Out of all the places in Meridian a portal could have randomly dumped her, it just happened to to dump her in front of you. That's pretty amazing."

He was not going to engage her this time. He was tired of this; this constantly putting himself on the defensive every time her suspicions were raised. "Yeah, it is pretty amazing," he replied in an almost nonchalant tone, which appeared to make her even angrier. Bright spots of color glowed on her high cheekbones.

"Well, she does have four very good friends right here on Earth. Any one of whom would be more than happy to lend a shoulder for her to cry on. Why she had to go all the way to Meridian for moral support, I can't understand." Cornelia's hands were planted so firmly on her hips, Caleb wondered if she might have bruises tomorrow.

"She said she needed to get away from things for a little while and forget about her birthday. She wouldn't even talk about Matt until I pried it out of her. She was more interested in listening to my problems." Caleb decided not to give her a chance to ask what these problems were. "What should I have done, told her to get lost? Will's my friend too, Cornelia. She's lent me a hand more times than I can count; the least I can do is give her one back."

Cornelia turned back to the closet, busying herself with clothes-arranging once more. No longer being able to gauge what sort of dangerous territory he was heading into by her facial expressions made Caleb uneasy. It was like fumbling through thick fog when you were feet away from the edge of a cliff.

"You know, Will got a really interesting birthday present." Clack. Clack. The wooden hangers sounded in protest as Cornelia continued shunting them to one side of the closet, a note of false cheer in her voice barely keeping the acid from boiling over. "It's this pendant that looks kind of like that one rock you were always playing with. The one you picked up in the quarry when you were on Cedric's chain gang."

Yeah, the pendant I made for you. And it was a worry stone, not a plaything. He couldn't remember now why he'd hesitated to give it to her in the first place. He guessed they must have been having a fight at the time, and afterward he'd just been waiting for the right time to give it to her. And then, when Will had been standing in front of him…it had seemed right, for some reason. The wrong girl at the right time. Or was it the other way around? "That's what Taria riverstone is mostly used for," he answered noncommittally, wondering whether or not Will had told Cornelia everything, and if she was just baiting him to see if he'd lie his way out of it. "Ornamental purposes."

"She said she got it at a flea market."

Caleb silently thanked Will, while at the same time feeling a little offended that his handiwork was only good enough for the junk stalls Earth people called "flea markets," which never sold fleas. No, I'm sure that's not what Will meant. She did say you were talented, once…

"And I can't help but wonder," Cornelia said in an increasingly terse voice, finally banging the closet door shut and turning to face her boyfriend once more, "how she managed to find a piece of Meridian jewelry at a flea market in Heatherfield. Because the odds are kind of astronomical."

Her glare was challenging, and Caleb found himself glaring back, unflinching. So what if he confessed, he thought. It didn't mean anything. It didn't mean he had feelings for Will besides the ones he'd always had—deep-seated feelings of protectiveness and camaraderie. He harbored those for each of the Guardians. Hay Lin had become like a little sister to him during his time living in her basement. Taranee had the greatest tendency of all of them to flinch in the face of danger and sometimes needed his protection, despite being far more powerful than he himself was. And Irma—well, she neither wanted nor needed the protection, but she was lively and honest and the sort of person you were glad to have at your back. He cared for all of them.

But it was Will he'd met first, and Will whom he'd counted as a friend first, in spite of their somewhat strained first meeting. So, sure, Will sort of had pride of place in his affections. Platonic affections, he reminded himself.

There just wasn't any way to make Cornelia understand that, though. So he kept his mouth shut.

Cornelia's hard gaze remained on him for a few moments, apparently waiting for something incriminating to slip from his mouth, and only backpedaling when nothing did. "So, are you staying at this ranch or what?" she asked, settling cross-legged onto the bed, facing him. "Because this…is getting kind of hard."

Caleb silently agreed. There was one portal between Earth and Meridian the Guardians allowed to remain open; one that linked Elyon's palace to Cornelia's basement, for rendezvous purposes. Three years ago it would've been far too risky to leave a tear in the Veil unchecked, but Elyon had guards posted round-the-clock at her end and Cornelia had told Lilly that the basement was crawling with brown recluse spiders, so as keep her from nosing around. There hadn't been any problems…other than the fact that the farther Caleb wandered, the more difficult and time-consuming it got to make the trip to the palace. Particularly when he felt doing so to be more of an obligation than anything else.

"I'll stay until I'm not needed anymore," Caleb said flatly, well aware of the irritation flaring up in Cornelia's eyes. "Then I'll move on to somewhere else. I've already told you this."

"And where does that leave us?" Cornelia demanded suddenly. "I never know where you are. Every time we want to see each other, we have to plan it three weeks in advance! I can't just get together with my boyfriend after school like every other girl. I have to sit there by myself like some complete reject because he's off—building mud huts or something deep in the jungle primeval—"

He couldn't believe how selfish she could be sometimes. "I'm doing what needs to be done," Caleb snapped, standing up so as to give himself a temporary advantage. "You think that just because we toppled an evil empire, everything's automatically going to be fine? My people are still starving and homeless, Cornelia, almost three years after the fact. And if that means wandering from village to village for the rest of my life, slaving and getting my hands dirty until that's not the case anymore, then that's what I'm going to do."

Cornelia just sat there seething, teeth slightly bared as if she were on the verge of gnashing them. Caleb pushed on, not entirely certain of the words coming out of his mouth, but certain that they needed to be said.

"And if you wanted to be like every other girl, you shouldn't have picked a guy from a different world. There are probably a thousand guys here on Earth who'd throw themselves at the opportunity to be at your beck and call. But I'm not going to do that. I have other obligations beside you. And if you want to be with me, you're going to have to deal with that."

There was a deafening silence. Caleb could feel the blood pounding in his ears from his unexpected outburst.

"So," Cornelia said in a low voice. "I'm just one of your obligations, huh?"

Had he really said it out loud? "I—I didn't mean it like that," Caleb faltered. Sure you didn't.

"Oh, sure you didn't. Fine. I understand. Well, you don't have to worry about that anymore," Cornelia spat, long cornsilk hair swishing violently as she leapt off the bed and gestured toward her bedroom door. "Your final obligation to me, Caleb, will be to get the hell out of my house. Likewise, don't expect me to be looking for you at the palace three weeks from now."

"Don't worry," Caleb said, narrowing his eyes. "Even if you look, you'll never find me. Ever again."

And with that, he stormed out of Cornelia's room, down the stairs, out the front door and was all the way to the sidewalk when he realized that the only way back to Meridian happened to be behind the door he'd just slammed, in Cornelia's basement. He felt like kicking himself.

I guess going back now would kind of ruin the effectiveness of my storming out, huh?

He glanced up at Cornelia's window. Sure enough, she was watching; but she scowled and yanked the curtains shut the moment she noticed him looking. Caleb scowled back into the night, wondering how on Earth he was supposed to get home now, then realized that there was one more option. One who hopefully wouldn't slam the door in his face; who might even be glad to see him.

He took off in the direction of Will's apartment.

A/N: This was going to be a much longer chapter, but the second half just WILL NOT END, so I thought I'd put this up for now.

Taria riverstone is actually a deliberate reference to Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä manga; it's what Nausicaä's earrings are made from. And hey, I liked the name. :)

Thanks for the reviews; feedback is always appreciated!