Prompt: Admit
Originally Written: 12.12.2008

"And I'm nothing more
Than a line in your book…"

She can't admit to herself that it's over.

She's finally come home to lessen the burden on Trucy and Phoenix. The last thing she wanted to do was expose them to her sole weakness—her foolish attachment to people. This was something that Maya had neglected to teach her, although there had always been that familiar nagging feeling that pain was imminent. She shouldn't be surprised, let alone sad. But did he really have to abandon her now, when she was tottering on the verge of teenage insanity? He couldn't have wanted to watch her fall, but she did fall.

And she doesn't want to admit to herself that he didn't do anything except to watch, making sure he kept his distance all the while she was silently screaming for help. She had honestly thought he understood her better than anyone else, and while that may have been true, it didn't mean anything in the end. She's such an insignificant aspect of his life—or rather, she had been—and she had been so stupidly starstruck that she had been blinded to the fact that things were falling apart before her very eyes. She had pleaded for him to give her a second chance, and she begged to know, was it her? Was it him? Was it someone else? If she was supposed to have a chance of cushioning the collision, she needed to know where the cogs stopped turning.

But he didn't tell her. He had only looked away reluctantly, debating on what to say or do. Either way, things had been so terribly marred and bruised that they were well beyond saving. And that wasn't even taking the question of whether he—they—had wanted to save them into account. She only closed her eyes, wiped her forehead, and said the words that are stilled glued to the back of her mind, taunting her for making such a cowardly statement.

"We're just too different."

It was a copout, of course. It was an excuse, dressed up to make it seem like she had predicted things would end this way all along, when it couldn't be farther from the truth. The internal warfare that's being waged in her mind at this moment is worrying even Maya, although her cousin and supposed caretaker knows better than to disturb her 'quiet reflection time,' where she sits facing the mountains, hugging her knees to her chest. She wonders if that copout worked—he always had been under the impression that she was just some fortune teller rather than a spirit medium. When he pointed out how strange she was, she had simply stuck her tongue out and said, "You're no more normal than I am."

It's painful. It's more painful than anything she's ever experienced, in all honesty. The events of Hazakurain couldn't measure up to this, if only because she was too young to grasp what was going on in the heat of the moment. It's stupid, she tells herself, to be so upset over something as trivial as a man. But he had been so much more than just a man to her, hadn't he? He had been everything she had ever looked for—someone to confide in. A friend. She hadn't known that, growing up in such a desolate place like Kurain. He had been something entirely foreign to her. How had she let that slip so easily from her grasp, like sand seeping through the cracks of an outstretched palm?

When Maya takes a seat next to her on the porch, she's prepared to be as cold and distant as it takes to be left alone. She refuses to relate the elaborate story of what exactly happened between them to her cousin. The last thing she needs at the moment is to be judged and scolded for not saying such-and-such at this time or the other. Couldn't she be trusted to sift through her own problems by herself?

"Do you want me to leave?" Maya asks earnestly, her normal playful self stowed away for a more appropriate time.

"I don't care." Her voice is dry, raspy; she can't tell if it's because of the prolonged hours of silence or the ceaseless bouts of sobbing that seemed to visit her these days.

She feels herself being pulled close to Maya's chest, cradled like a young girl again. It's a more welcome sensation than she's willing to acknowledge. She's trying so hard to be strong, she can feel her own defenses wavering, even if they're down at the moment. She pulls closer to her cousin, taking a few shaky breaths.

"Sometimes, it's better just to admit that it's done and move on," Maya says quietly, rocking back and forth. "At least you could say to all his fangirls that you were with him and they weren't."

She laughs in spite of herself, or maybe because of herself. It all seems too ridiculous at times; between the intervals of pain, there are times where she looks back and shakes her head, thinking that it isn't worth it to devote so much attention to something that will ultimately be reduced to dust, and blow away with the winds of her own actions.

And now, she can let go.