Beautiful Collision
"Exes and Whys"

Will was lying flat on her back on the bed, feet propped upon the pillow as she dangled Caleb's birthday present over her head, letting the stone sway like a pendulum from side to side. Self-hypnosis was her last resort for getting any sleep tonight. Well, actually, raiding her mother's medicine cabinet was the last resort, but she really wasn't angling to go that far.

Her algebra text was propped open upon her desk, alongside a fresh piece of notebook paper and a pencil. None of it had been touched all evening, sticking her with the joyous task of finishing twenty equations sometime between breakfast and homeroom tomorrow. She couldn't help it. She just hadn't felt like doing much since the big fight—much of anything, really.

I think we should take a break, Matt had said to her, avoiding looking her directly in the eye all the while. And that had been it. No promises to call, no agreements to pick things up again a couple of weeks down the line. No guarantees. No good-byes. Just a broken…thing hanging there, not quite severed, but a long way from being whole. Like a hangnail.

A hangnail? Will almost giggled in spite of herself at the ridiculous analogy. Not only was the break-up fallout making her listless, but it was also apparently scrambling her brain.

Her friends were, for the most part, making valiant efforts to keep her distracted. This afternoon Hay Lin had roped her into helping fold at least a thousand crepe-paper flowers for the Chinese New Year Parade float the Silver Dragon was sponsoring, and while her fingers would probably permanently be stained fuchsia, it had certainly gotten her mind off Matt for a few hours, as well as all the free dim sum she could eat. The day before, Irma had somehow talked her into crashing a LAN party that Martin was hosting, which had culminated in the two of them fleeing into the night and giggling madly while a Silly-String-covered-Martin yelled to Irma that he'd send the cops after her ("I live with the cops!" Irma had shouted back triumphantly in response. "Do your worst, Tubbsy!")

Taranee, meanwhile, had brought her a new book to help pass the time: Why Men Are Scum. "I'd wanted to get you one on Su Doku," she'd said apologetically, scratching her head, "but the salesgirl said this was the most therapeutic for the newly dumped. You know, in retrospect, she did seem kind of angry…"

And Cornelia…well, Cornelia had been willing to listen, offering an ear to bend over the phone now and again, but ultimately Will thought she was probably too preoccupied with her own issues with Caleb to pay much heed to Will's. Or maybe the pendant had something to do with it. The blonde had raised an eyebrow when she'd fibbed to the others about where she'd gotten it from, and had cast it a number of lingering sideways glances that made Will uncomfortable. She'd finally ended up taking it off and sticking it in her pocket.

It made for a pretty good worry stone, although her fingertips on the smooth surface would invariably lead her back to that same sunset. That same strange, oddly soft look in Caleb's eyes that had made her run for her life.

She wondered if he'd even realized the way he'd been looking at her. Maybe he'd been imagining Cornelia in her place. Yeah. That made a lot more sense. He hardly could have been looking at short, redheaded, perpetual-screwup, how-did-this-chick-become-leader tomboy Will, who was everything he didn't want in a girl—in fact, practically the polar opposite of the one he had.

Still doesn't explain why he gave me this, though. Will watched the stone swing closer to her nose, her eyelids fluttering just a little. Maybe he decided it wasn't good enough for Cornelia. Or maybe he just felt sorry for me. She closed her eyes for just a moment, a grainy impression of the ex-rebel leader hovering in her mind. That…has to be it…

A trio of muffled thumps brought her swiftly back to consciousness. It sounded like someone knocking at the front door, Will thought, sitting up abruptly as she pulled the necklace back over her head. But it was almost nine o'clock, which pretty much ruled out her friends—unless it was Irma, frantically looking to copy her history questions again because she'd been pranking Martin on the phone all night and hadn't remembered her homework until it was almost time for bed…

Or maybe, just maybe…it was Matt. Maybe with a bunch of flowers, or maybe just one—yeah, one would look more pathetic. One wilting carnation. Dripping wet from wandering slick streets outside in the—wait, it wasn't raining, but still. The flower was enough. He'd have a regretful puppy-dog expression on his face… Will sprang off the bed, a surge of hope in her heart, and was about to throw open the door to her bedroom when she heard her mother's voice.

"Well…yes, she's here. But she's asleep, I think. Ah, may I ask, exactly how long have you known Will? You're not one of Matt's friends, are you?"

"No. I'm not." Familiar, male, and most emphatic in tone. Will's eyebrows shot up nearly to her hairline. What was he doing here? Now, of all times? "I've known Will since she first became a G—uh, I mean, since she first moved here. I used to work at the Lins' restaurant."

"Oh, that's right. I remember Hay Lin saying something about having a boarder who worked for them," Susan's thoughtful voice drifted through the door. "An older boy. You…you're not in college, are you?"

God, no, she's going into Overprotective Mommy Mode again! T-minus seven seconds until she starts demanding to know what his intentions are for me! Will flung the door open and darted into the kitchen, bare feet almost skidding on the linoleum. "Hi, Caleb," she blurted out. "Um…thanks for bringing my keys over. I can't believe I left them at Hay Lin's again."

Keys? mouthed a bewildered Caleb to Will, who nodded frantically. "Uh…no problem," he said slowly.

Susan glanced from her latest unsuspecting victim to her daughter, her hard expression of appraisal softening into a smile. "I thought you were going to bed, Will," she said innocently, taking a sip from the coffee mug in her right hand as she gestured with the other to Will's nighttime ensemble of spaghetti-strap camisole and matching print cotton pants, both prominently featuring a cartoon frog with a crown.

A five-alarm blaze raged across Will's cheeks as the scenario sank in. My mom, Caleb, and me in my frog-prince pajamas. This is officially a nightmare. That's it. If she offers him crackers and Velveeta, you're going kamikaze out the window.

"Not anymore," muttered Will in response to her mother, as she grasped Caleb by the wrist and began pulling him back toward her room. Caleb quirked an eyebrow at her, but allowed himself to be hauled without comment. "Uh, Mom, Caleb and I are just going to talk for a couple of minutes, okay? I know it's a school night and all. He won't stay long."

"Oh, of course," Susan answered, still eyeing Caleb a bit suspiciously from the kitchen counter as she stirred instant creamer into her mug. "Uh, Will, honey, one more thing. If you forgot your keys at Hay Lin's, then how did you get into the apartment this afternoon?"

Crap. "Uh…Irma taught me how to jimmy locks," Will called back in what she hoped was a nonchalant tone. "She's picked up a lot of useful tricks from her dad. Sleeper holds, cooking with pepper spray, all that jazz." And with that, she pushed Caleb into her bedroom and shoved the door with her foot, leaning heavily against it once it clicked shut. "I'm sorry," she said somewhat plaintively, gesturing for him to sit. "She will eat you alive, if given the chance."

An almost-smile appeared at the corner of Caleb's mouth as he straddled the back of her desk chair, arms folded across the top rung. "Don't worry about it," he replied. "There are overprotective parents in Meridian too, you know. I'm guessing your mother was about to ask me what my intentions were?"

"Actually…yeah." Will sat back on the bed, surprised. "How'd you guess?"

"Traditional protocol in Meridian. If a guy wants to court a girl, he's obligated to announce his intentions to her parents first. Which usually means getting slammed with questions for the next three hours until they're satisfied he's honorable. Of course, it doesn't happen much anymore. It got kind of hard to observe etiquette and protocol with a war going on."

Will felt herself blushing again at the notion of Caleb asking her mother permission to court her. God, what a ridiculous idea, she told herself. "Is that what you did when you and Cornelia started dating?" she asked, a bit teasingly, before recalling that Cornelia was not exactly Caleb's favorite topic these days.

His expression made it clear that that was still very much the case. "I didn't exactly give it that much forethought," he answered, chin drifting down to rest on his folded arms. "We just kind of…jumped into things. Without thinking." His eyes—the most perplexing shade of green Will had ever seen, a shifting kaleidoscope of forest and earth and dew—flickered up to meet hers, and caught on her pendant along the way. "You're wearing it," he said, a note of gratitude in his voice. "I was afraid you wouldn't like it."

Will's hand self-consciously flew up to her neck. "I can't wear it around Cornelia," she admitted. "I didn't want to tell the truth about where I'd gotten it, because I just knew she'd take it the wrong way and flip ou—"

"We broke up," Caleb said, his gaze having fallen to the carpet as she spoke.

Will gaped. "What?"

"That's kind of why I'm here. I didn't want to bother you this late, but I didn't think Cornelia would let me back in her house to use her portal, not after I told her I'd never see her again. I thought about rigging open the basement window, but the building has some sort of spell upon it that sets off sirens when you try to break in. We really could've used something like that in the Infinite City, you know?"

Will just sat there, staring, one hand frozen on her collarbone, mouth hanging practically unhinged until she reminded herself to pull it in. Had he actually said what she thought she'd said? In the same breath as discussing the usefulness of a security system in a rebel stronghold?

"You…broke up?" she managed to ask.

Caleb nodded.

"You and Cornelia. Broke up. Tonight." The ability to form complete sentences had apparently gone out back for a smoke break, leaving Will a babbling idiot.

"It was a long time coming, Will," Caleb sighed. "We're not happy. All we do is fight. And…now we won't anymore. She deserves someone who isn't going to treat her like an obligation. Someone who's willing to fall at her feet and come running every time she calls. I just can't do that anymore. It's for the best."

"But…you told her you were never going to see her again? Ever?"

"Yeah, well, I kind of regret that part now." Caleb straightened and shrugged his shoulders, letting his arms dangle over the back of the chair. "I didn't mean it. We were just trying to see who could hurt each other more, I guess. Maybe in a month or two she'll be willing to talk to me again. You think?"

Will thought that considering it was Cornelia, O High Priestess of Holding Grudges, that they were talking about, a year or two might be a safer bet, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she remembered where she'd left her hand, and what that thing around her neck was. "It's not because…because of…" she tried to say, but the words wouldn't come for some reason.

"What?" Caleb looked confused for a moment. "No. No, Will, it doesn't have anything to do with the pendant or you. Don't worry about it."

"I'm not worried," Will blurted out. "Not at all. I know it doesn't have anything to do with me. I mean, if Cornelia honestly thought—that there was—something—between us, you'd tell her to get her head examined, right?" She didn't stop to notice the way Caleb's eyes seemed to darken at these words, or the way his brow knit in bewilderment. "I mean, we're friends, you and I. We've been friends for a long time. And I've been Matt's girlfriend for a long time. And it was supposed to stay that way." Her voice wavered, dangerously close to cracking into a million shards. "He wasn't supposed to just change as soon as the band took off. He wasn't supposed to start forgetting about me. Letting me sit at a restaurant an hour past closing while I called his phone for the fifteenth time." She kept talking through the tears, now running hot tracks down her face. "Because he never used to be that way, and none of it makes any sense!"

The sobs finally ripped loose from her throat as hot saltwater drowned her eyes and stole her vision. Will buried her face in her hands and cried, really cried, for the first time since the fight, aware of no sound but the ones issuing from her raw throat.

And then…a weight sank down beside her on the bed, and a pair of strong arms enfolded her, one hand stroking the back of her head, tilting it downward so that Will found her face buried in the crook of Caleb's neck. Her fingers clutched helplessly at his back, grasping a fistful of his shirt while her tears left his collar and shoulder sopping wet. Had Will's head not been spinning faster than Hay Lin after a package of Ring-Dings, she might have had the presence of mind to be embarrassed.

Rather, her mind began drifting to other things. How it felt—nice—to be encircled by the protective cocoon of his arms. How hard the planes of his chest and back were from years of fighting and hard work. How he smelled of earth and dry grasses and sunwarmed leather, but nothing at all like a hoogong stable. How from her vantage point on his shoulder, staring past his ear, his hair looked impossibly soft, and how if she reached out to touch it right now, he might not even be bothered…

And suddenly, Will felt something on her forehead, like a hot brand being applied just below her hairline, that sent her crashing quite abruptly back to reality.

He'd kissed her.

Oh, God. He'd kissed her.

Granted, it was on the forehead. Her mother kissed her on the forehead. Great-aunts and uncles missing half their teeth who hadn't seen her since she was in training pants kissed her on the forehead. But this was nowhere in the same league. Those familial, vaguely awkward kisses didn't make her heart pound like a hammer, or cause her face—or any other part of her body—to go up in flames.

Will disentangled herself from Caleb and blinked at him through watery red eyes. He looked every bit as stunned with himself as she was.

"Um," Caleb finally said, a minute or so later when he'd regained his voice. "Will, I—I mean, I didn't—"

"No. It's okay," Will interrupted him. "Really."

They sat there, unmoving, in silence for a few moments. The guilty spot on Will's forehead still burned with feverish warmth. She willed herself to return to the train of thought she'd been following, before all logical, sequential thought had just evaporated in the midst of the ex-rebel's comforting embrace.

"The worst part," she said quietly, scuffing patterns with her big toe into the carpet weave, "is wondering if maybe he's already over me, the way you're pretty much already over Cornelia."

She half expected him—no, she wanted him to get mad at those words. To puff up with his trademark indignation at her presumption, as the old Caleb would have done. To tell her that just because he didn't wear his heart on his sleeve, that didn't mean it wasn't broken. Most of all, to say something that would make it all untrue, so that tomorrow when they woke up everything would be as it should in the universe, where she was still with Matt and he with Cornelia, and he'd never come here tonight. Where he had never kissed her, and she had never liked it.

But true to form—as he had seemingly been doing so often lately—Caleb did, or rather said, the opposite of what she wanted. His voice was calm, but it held every bit as much conviction as in any speech he'd ever delivered to his troops.

"He doesn't deserve you, Will."

Will just closed her eyes. It was a trap. A test—her eighth grade mythology report, to be exact. It was Orpheus leading Eurydice. If she looked up and met those fugitive green orbs now, she might lose herself forever.

"Then who does?" she whispered.

For one excruciating moment, there was nothing but the pressure of silence on her eardrums. Will's left eye slitted open and caught sight of her opened algebra book on the desk. Constants, she thought. This room was a constant. The walls were still white, the bed still unmade, the floor still littered with magazines and dirty socks. Contrast with the variables. The fluttering of her pulse, the tempo of his breathing, his sudden movement as he rose from the bed and strode to the center of the room.

Variables. Unspooling in her stomach. Clenching in her chest.

"I should probably get going," Caleb said in a strained voice, gaze directed at her bedroom door. "It—it's late, and you've got school tomorrow. I could use some sleep myself…it's been a long night."

Will stared at him for a handful of seconds, then leapt up off the bed and grabbed her coat, pulling one arm through a quilted sleeve and fishing the Heart of Kandrakar from her backpack with the other. "Sure. Right," she babbled nervously. "I'll open the portal for you out in the alley. I don't want my mom barging in here with glasses of Tang and seeing it—she'll never get that stuff out of the carpet."

"Portal? Oh, right. The portal." A brief flicker of confusion passed over Caleb's face, as though he had already completely forgotten why it was he'd come there in the first place. Given the direction the evening had gone, Will thought, that was probably exactly the case.

Will shoved her feet into her frog-face slippers, too preoccupied now to feel embarrassed over Caleb seeing them, and led him out into the hallway. The hissing noise of her mother's shower was barely audible, a reprieve Will gratefully accepted. She led the way down the stairs, slippers flapping against cold cement, not looking back once as Caleb's heavier footfalls sounded behind her. Orpheus. Turn around and you'll kill him, she thought absently, then felt like laughing at her suddenly capricious state of mind.

Empty drink cups and old newspapers crunched underfoot as Will held the Heart aloft and closed her eyes, the image of a wheatfield bathed in sunset filling her mind's eye. A rush of cool air and a flash of blinding blue light struck her face as the portal swelled open, tossing her lank red locks every which way. She blinked twice and turned to Caleb. "Unless I somehow screwed up, it should take you back to the ranch."

Caleb turned to face the portal, but made no motion to jump through it. He glanced at Will instead. "You might, uh…not see me for a while," he said in a carefully measured sort of voice. "I'll probably be leaving the ranch pretty soon. I was thinking about heading up north, visiting some of the smaller villages. So don't…don't be surprised if I'm not around."

Will's brow furrowed as she realized he wasn't saying to her. Don't come looking for me.

Why would he say that? More importantly, why would he break up with Cornelia, kiss me, and then say that?

The corner of his mouth tightened, as though trying to suppress something. "I'm…sorry, Will."

Sorry for what? Sorry you kissed me? Sorry you gave me the pendant? Sorry for confusing the hell out of me?

And here she'd been thinking he'd changed in the last three years. The guy in front of the portal was every bit as exasperating at the guy at the bottom of the hole. Sure, he was less boastful. And more considerate. And…fine, yeah, he was more attractive, too—not that she'd been paying close attention or anything. But he was still maddening.

And yet…she couldn't get mad. She could only stare blankly back at him, watching the light of the portal refracted in his eyes, like two tiny bobbing lanterns in the darkness. She found she couldn't say anything, either; her mouth felt dry and cottony, as though she'd been chewing a sock.

Stay, was her sudden urge to blurt out, but the words stuck fast to her tongue and were smothered.

Caleb finally broke off the gaze and stepped toward the portal. He glanced over his shoulder one last time, and maybe it was a trick of the light, but she thought she saw a smile there, albeit one tempered with regret. "It'll be okay," she heard him say over the rush of wind whistling through the torn Veil. "I promise."

And then he was gone.

The hand clutching the Heart dropped to Will's side as she squinted into the blue expanse, not noticing the page of classified ads that the wind had plastered to her leg. For one wild instant, she considered following him. Chasing him down and knocking him to the ground amidst the waving golden grasses. Telling him to finish what he'd started. Pressing her lips to his forehead and seeing if he'd follow her lead.

The maverick Will—the one who was wired on lack of sleep and cream buns from the Silver Dragon, who'd felt a shameful little something explode within her at the brush of Caleb's mouth, and who was currently so lightheaded she fancied herself to be Orpheus—was raring to go.

But Will Vandom, who for a week had felt the world would end if she couldn't be Matt Olsen's girl anymore, held up the Heart again and watched the portal collapse into nothingness, and then turned and shuffled out of the alley, feeling nothing at all.

A/N: I know there has been no "action/adventure" to speak of in a story labeled as such, but it is coming. Hope you don't mind the journey there. :)

Once again, thanks for the reviews; I'm ecstatic you guys are enjoying this.