Sunday

Originally, Kanaya had planned to meet Rose in-town and travel the whole way with her, but an emergency forces Rose to leave three days earlier to stay with her father in his house conveniently a third of the way there, so instead Kanaya kisses her family goodbye, promises that she'll call Sunday, won't waste the time and money and will have fun. The experience of riding the train alone without having to watch out for wayward siblings is novel and enjoyable and she wastes much of the journey watching the sun play over the fields and wondering what the area around the school they'll be staying is like and blinks back into awareness at the station she'll be switching trains and meeting Rose at with some surprise, unaware that the time had passed so quickly.

Rose waves at her from the platform as they pull in and greets her with a short, soft hug, thanking her for coming and regretting that she couldn't meet her in town. They have half an hour before their train arrives and they laugh over lunch in a small coffee shop where the sun shines in Kanaya's eyes and reflects in Rose's hair as they relax in friendship, easy and un-awkward, and Kanaya forgets and remembers each second why she loves Rose, from the curve of her smile to the turn of her tongue, her boundless intellect and her swift fingers, rising in the air to demonstrate some experience or another and flying from cup to phone to show Kanaya a picture of her father's new dog, eyes rolling at his childishness as her soft smile calls Kanaya home like a lighthouse, always there, always there.

The train arrives and the two pile on, sliding into a table seat to continue their conversation, eyes alight with joyful conversation, the tripping tongues of two best friends separated for too long for whom every minute is too long to delay some new item of news, some new gossip or confession. It's easy to forget her regrets when Rose is there and happy and she knows she shouldn't but she does anyway – it's a good thing I came, she would have been so unhappy – and of course she knows she wouldn't be really – Rose is perfectly capable of functioning without her – but it hurts to think of her brilliance shining on someone else and she drinks up every minute of it as the tracks beneath her whisk her off to the back-end of nowhere.

Rose has researched the area – of course she has – and she reels off pointless facts to Kanaya as they wait for the coach, judges their new classmates as they look excitedly out the window and Kanaya knows it was worth it to come for this, for Rose's happiness and the way she looks like Kanaya just makes it all better even as she knows that the two will not learn together, may not even room together, but they are there together anyway, so why not enjoy it? And if she's distant, Rose says nothing, and if her smile comes a little late, Rose does not comment – of course not, she never has, always willing to forgive Kanaya's oddities if she forgives her own and is a crush an oddity too big to be forgiven? But no, no thoughts like that, and she quells the idea as soon as it rises and smiles at Rose and takes the outstretched hand and follows her lead in who she talks to and hey – wouldn't you know it, she's making friends and finding connections – a book here, a musician there and one girl who's on her third go here and she's in, she's in, and the lady at the desk gives her a name and a number and she meets Rose to compare and yes – they're rooming together. Of course, the Lalondes have pulled some strings here or there and she meets Rose's smile with one of her own and asks her not to get them lost but it's easy to forget they're anywhere new when she follows Rose, trusting her to get them home and dry.

It's easy to remember they're somewhere new when they find their room already occupied by one of three – the girl is vapid and haughty, from some well-known boarding school somewhere and clearly judgemental of Rose's conservative neckline and Kanaya's own flowing summer dress – "it takes all sorts," she says, and leaves – and Rose wrinkles her nose and says "if clothing's all she cares about, we'll blow her out of the water, right Kan?" and begins to unpack, and Kanaya wonders about the peacefulness of the next two weeks.

Rose herself is all about Classical Greek but on her advice Kanaya went for Latin – one less alphabet to learn says Rose – and Rose spends the evening tutoring her, preparing her to get a head start the next morning until the first assembly then dinner, spent with some friends found in the line, and Kanaya wonders.

There's no denying that Rose is more popular than she will be here – she had a way of speaking that both invites you in and keeps you at a distance – and there's no denying that already eyes are turning their way – she knows they invite stares – and there's no denying that some small selfish part of her wants Rose's attention all for herself and yet-

And yet, she knows somehow that she will not emerge from the next two weeks the same. Something is going to change – for better or worse it always does – and she knows that her only chance is to pray for favourable winds.

She doesn't pray often – the presence of a higher figure is never one that convinced her – and yet, as she turns to her neighbour to compare lipstick brands and the effectiveness of repairing your own clothes, she spares a prayer.

No harm in it.

Monday

Kanaya is a morning person. Rose is not. Kanaya wakes at 7 AM for her 9 AM class, Rose wakes at 8:30 assuming Kanaya has brought food back for her (she has) and that she remembers where her first class is (she does). The two separate fifteen minutes later and regroup at lunch to compare classes and classmates – Rose's is easy for her skill level but she thinks it might get harder later so she won't ask about leaving, her class is full of stuffy boarding-schoolers and students who don't believe that her private educated self deserves to be there; Kanaya is completely bewildered and really needs to work hard to keep up, her class is generally people signed up by parents who don't really care about doing well so at least she's not at the bottom of the class – and do their homework under the sun, sharing pens and nuggets of wisdom.

At some point, some of those they ate with the previous night drift over to compare – between them they cover most of the classes offered, and they laugh out loud at Rose's impression of one of her classmates – and it seems that the minutes pass too soon till they have to separate and Kanaya reflects on her way to the classroom that she was happy to share, happy to be part of a larger group of friends that they shared rather than the intersection between the Venn circles of Rose's friends and Kanaya's – of course, they intersect elsewhere, but you'd never find such a group at their school and yet – she would not call them friends yet, but friend is the only word she has, and she thanks whatever higher being responsible that she was there to see the crinkles next to Rose's eyes as her impression sets laughter alight.

Class passes as normal – bewildering and far over her head – until a flurry of knocks announces the messages for the day: tonight's lecture, tomorrow's trip into town, auditions for the play, those who want to work on props and costumes head to the art department tomorrow at lunch. "Perfect for you, eh?" says one classmates afterwards, and another backs it up with "I did it last year, it's fun!" and a third says "I've already been recruited – come with me, I'll show you the way to the art department and you can choose then," and she's recruited, her name on the list, and her classmates' conversation carries her out onto the lawn where Rose awaits and she leaves them there. Rose is, of course, immediately the centre of her world again, and some part of her takes a second to think of how odd it is that she merely needs to be in her sightline to be her focus and her homing call, while most of her measures the brightness in her eyes.

All Rose can talk about is how much her classmates annoy her and how she spends most of her time already counting down the minutes until the breaks so she can find Kanaya again, and Kanaya barely has time to tell her about the play and how she won't be there for lunch tomorrow before one of their dinner friends – Nazia, she tells herself - descends upon them to bewail in dramatic tones the class between auditions and lunchtime seminar and departs to find some other friend to dump her dramatics on, leaving the two overwhelmed and Kanaya out of place.

She struggles, she thinks, sometimes, to find her place – between the cool intelligence of Rose and her kind and the critical intensity of her fashion-minded friends – and Rose has her friends and Kanaya has her own – that place where she belongs; that group of strangers thrown together by time and circumstance – but that place where she fits? No, she has not found that yet – she comes closest when by Rose's side, she thinks, but then everything feels at once more blurred and more intense when Rose is around, as if she sharpens all her senses and dominates them all the same, and she knows, knows, that it is wrong and inappropriate to feel this way about her best friend but it's hard.

It's hard when Rose smiles behind her glass at some silly comment of hers.

It's hard when Rose sits forward and talks so animatedly about some passion of hers.

It's hard when Rose is there and beside and so easily gathering the gaze of those around her, so unaware and yet so seemingly hyperaware, as if she knows everyone in the room and how they feel about her and yet as if she couldn't care – all in the intensity of her awareness focused on one or a few and she knows, knows, how it feels to be at the centre of that and yet it was not enough, never enough, and yes she notices the way people look at her and her and them and the ideas that form in their minds she wonders sometimes how it would be if they were true. Would Rose turn that intensity elsewhere, leaving Kanaya to know that she would always dominate some part of her mind like Rose does for her? Or would it be worse/better, always at the centre of her gaze rather than sometimes, most of the time?

It's selfish.

It's all she can think about, watching Rose talk animatedly at dinner to some boy about some topic she knows nothing about, and counting the looks she catches.

"Sometimes I think I've made a mistake," Rose says. "Goodnight."

Tuesday

It's odd, Kanaya thinks, how quickly they settle into routine. Morning two of thirteen and already they are stuck in their own patterns, turning and revolving around each other like clockwork, separating for class then joining together again for breaks, lunch together then separation as one goes to the library and the other the art department, more classes, another break and the long gap before dinner where they catch up on each other's day.

It's odd, Kanaya thinks, how much they have to say to each other. They became friends swiftly through a joint sense of isolation and a series of shared interests and yet, every day, their conversation takes new turns, runs down new roads and branches off and off into topic after topic, entrapping those around them in their bubble of dialogue. Every day they wake up and do the same damn thing and yet, there are never awkward silences between the two – they work together like clockwork and when one does not feel like speaking the other understands, and they silence shared is soft, comfortable, the silence of one's room when they sit alone waiting for the other to come online or sit at their desk, the only noise the occasional murmur of happiness or confusion.

She knows they would do well together. They fit together like clockwork she thinks again, and sometimes she wonders about her fear. She couldn't say that she knew Rose's dating history off by heart and yet, she thinks, she has a general idea of how it goes: she knows Rose enjoys the attentions of both genders, she knows that she's open to relationships with both and she knows she has (at least a short) history with both.

In short, she's not worried about Rose's sexuality.

Perhaps, she wonders, it is fear? Fear that Rose values their friendship too highly to take the step into relationship, fear that Rose could never see her as more and thus it is more sensible just to stay as friends and wait for the crush to go away, fear that Rose could not even imagine the way she feels.

Perhaps, she is just a coward.

A wave of noise breaks on the shores of her consciousness and she turns to the left – there is some confusion amongst those working on props and the sky outside is darkening. The art director calls an end to the night and she spills out of the puddle of light with her companions, comparing techniques with one and fabrics with the other as she drifts out to the grass where Rose sits, talking to some classmates. The smile that breaks across her face seems almost as bright as the light illuminating them, and she introduces her with a smile, returning swiftly to their discussion on some obscure part of the text they are reading – something well beyond her comprehension and thus something that allows her to observe.

She watches the sky darken above their head, as the minutes tick on until the lecture starts. She watches the dust motes float in the light illuminating the group. She watches silhouettes in the other buildings. She watches packs of students pass in clumps, each enraptured in their own world. She watches the way Rose's eyes flicker from person to person, the way her smile quirks up in the corner when someone makes a point she agrees with, the way she sits forward to emphasis a point. She watches the way the boys look at her, appraising, like she is some new species in their collection, to be marvelled and wondered at and maybe, maybe, touched. She watches the way Rose's eyes light up at the conversation.

She feels the bubbles of jealousy rise in her chest and counts the minutes until they head back to the room.

Wednesday

Their roommate moves rooms. Having unpacked all her stuff, she now repacks it, wishes them well and leaves. They do not see her again.

The sky darkens and rain plays across the window. They both mourn that they will not be able to have their evening discussion.

The theme for the Saturday night party is announced. Discussion bubbles about costumes and the art director complains about people coming in and out for the rest of the week.

Kanaya does not sleep. She sees the day in snapshots. She drifts from place to place, absent.

Rose cannot meet her for lunch. She eats at her sewing machine.

The cast for the play is announced. The director and his counterpart stand at odds as to costumes – the numbers have changed.

The first few trickle in to get their first fitting.

Later on, a few more do.

Kanaya sees the day in snapshots.

She drinks three cups of coffee. They have replaced the caf with decaf. She blinks sleep from her eyes and picks up her pen.

Rose is not there again.

Classes end, eventually. She thinks about skipping the evening lecture.

The next group to be fitted walks in.

Rose is there.

It's cheesy and silly and ever so cliché, but it's like the world snaps back into focus. Rose smiles at her and, when waiting for her dress to be pinned together, apologises. Says that she was caught up all day working with a classmate all day. Kanaya does not care. She sees the world in HD video, focused exclusively on Rose. She hates her guts.

She keeps her touches as minimal as possible, measuring and weighing and deciding, sorting and placing and saying goodbye.

In the dark of her room, she will remember how it felt to have her so close, for her to be right there and soft and touchable, pliable and turning and moving as Rose directs. It's sweet.

For now, she feels the bubbles of guilt rise in her chest.

She moves on to the next person. She forgets their face as soon as they turn away.

Name taken, clothes on a hanger, label placed, face forgotten.

She goes and goes and goes.

She does not skip the lecture – she sits next to Rose in a darkened room and pretends that every nerve end is not on fire. Pretends that she does not unconsciously bend towards her like a tree towards the sun. Pretends that when Rose turns to her to mutter some comment in her ear, she does not feel each individual hair on her neck raise up. Pretends that they are nothing more than friends.

Pretends that she is not jealous as she walks behind Rose and some friend who has caught up with them.

Pretends that she is not guilty as her night-time imaginings say: same placement, different situation. You take off all her clothes. You kiss her neck. She laughs at you, accuses you of ulterior motives. You acquiesce. You walk with her back to your bed. Her skin is soft against yours. You feel her smile curved against your neck and her breath spiralling across your shoulder.

Pretends that is it the first – that it will not be the last.

Pretends that she is not acutely aware of Rose sleeping in the other bed.

But she sleeps this time.

Thursday

Thursday's skies are clear and blue, cerulean silk that stretches to infinity. There is a brightness inherent in Rose's frame and the curve of her smile and Kanaya cannot help but to be infected by it, a small light that she keeps inside her even as the day drags on, even as breakfast tastes of cardboard and she struggles through her classes, even as the same commitments drag them apart and lunchtime her art friends ask her to sit with them and she declines and makes her way to Rose's table where she feels like she is naught but an interruption.

It's difficult, she thinks as the paving stones pass, to love someone silently. It is difficult to love someone and not tell them and feel the weights of jealousy and guilt and jealousy again. It is difficult to love someone silently and to feel so enraged at the ease with which they interact with others and not feel stupid at her anger. At least she is blessed to be in her light.

And the changes that felt so near Sunday night have gone on holiday.

She conceives her party costume in five minutes and resolves to spend ten minutes at the end of the day putting it together.

Fabric falls between her fingertips and her trance is only broken by the ticking of the clock and the way Rose's heels sound against wooden floor as she comes in with "rehearsals ended early" and "I'm glad the party is after the play, it's good but it'll be nice to relax" and the ever present "god, I wish I knew how you do this".

She sits beside her, impossibly close, impossibly far. Kanaya wonders when her mind became clichéd love-notes. She doesn't care when Rose compliments the finished costume, and says that she should do this professionally.

It's hard, she thinks, as she packs away, to live a life in snapshots and focused around one single being. It cannot be healthy, she thinks, and maybe it's not even love, maybe it's infatuation. But then Rose grabs her hand before she falls and she thinks it's love. She thinks it's love all the way throughout the night, as Rose crowds in beside her in their seats, as she smiles at some mildly terrible joke, as she walks beside her on the way back and throws her head up to look at the stars, clutching Kanaya's arm as she nearly trips.

It's like being in a private bubble again, surrounded and engrossed by themselves and Kanaya finds that, even with days like clockwork, she has plenty to say and plenty to listen to.

Kanaya's classmates work no harder. Rose's classmates think no less of themselves. Languages do not get easier or less intricate and Rose does not leave Kanaya's heart.

The stars wheel on overhead and evening goes through night till rosy-fingered dawn brings in morning and guilt to guilty parties.

Friday

A half-way point of a kind and one day till crunch day, Rose says, and Kanaya brings her breakfast. The sky is clear. Their evenings are never free anymore.

Rose says that the great poets of old took inspiration from the wheeling of the sun and the stars and prayed to the gods for good fortune and fair winds. She says that she reads fragments of Sappho in her spare time and wonders who could have the fortune to have such a sweet tongue. She says that tragedies are more tragic when considered in their context and criticises historians for their lack of sources. She says that comedies are better when modernised and that the best production she saw was also the worst. She says that the more gossipy the historian, the less they are to be trusted. She says that student comedies are funny and theatre productions let down tragedies. Her words run in circles and lose Kanaya in their meaning and their syllables.

She emerges on the other side.

She walks to class with Rose at her side, bids her farewell and sets herself to understanding; she drinks coffee and Rose tries to catch her up; she struggles and struggles and does not understand; she argues with herself and eats fruit over her sewing machine; she watches Rose in the sunlight and tries to understand her words; she gets together with her art-friends and group creates their costumes; she tries on makeup in the yellow light of the bathroom and washes her hands with months-old soap; she talks love-poems on the grass and fits strangers in recycled fabric; she trims white with gold and thinks about reflections; she shelters from a summer shower and runs, hand in hand, from building to building.

The clocks tick on, the sun moves, and Kanaya loves.

It is old and a path well-worn and yet each second is new.

If Roses sees the delay in her movement, the absentness of her mind, the silence of her throat, she does not comment. She keeps her friends and classmates at a close distance. She stays close to Kanaya throughout and, when Kanaya returns from changing, she stares out of the window silently. The wind blows in breathes of air and Kanaya sits on the bed and watches her.

"I love you," she could say, or, "you know, it will be okay."

"You have friends."

"You do not have to fear the truth in your words."

"I treasure every second."

"You made me better."

"You saved me from isolation."

"You belong. Let me belong with you."

Instead, she turns over and brings the covers over her body. After a second, she hears the window close softly and the tell-tale creak as Rose joins on her side.

The third bed lies empty and newly made.

Sweet sleep, brother of death, covers men's eyes. He passes over Kanaya.

Kanaya's experiences are based roughly off my own, with a few changes. (Unintentionally, this same summer school is happening right now). The biggest is that, at my camp, only Greek was offered. However, the one I went to *this* summer offeres Greek and Latin and I didn't want to do Kan the injustice (even in fic) of learning Greek from scratch (*shivers*).
Aside from that, the changes are small and cosmetic, aside from her experience in the art dept which is pretty much the same as mine.

If I had the time, I would have peppered this with Greek phrases but I only had room for two: one taken directly, one constructed myself. 'Rhododaktulos' is one of my favourite words in Greek.

Next chapter Sunday, if all goes well.