Distance
It hurt. He knew it would, but knowing was never the same as experiencing. Such extremes of emotion, all at the same time. Fear and frustration. Relief and elation. Sorrow and...understanding.
He understood her unease. He understood her attempts at retreat, how her heart was trying to close-off, trying to distance her emotions to protect herself.
He also understood how useless it would all be in the end. He was already inside, and no amount of wishing was going to change what they were to each other. On both counts.
He pushed away from the door with a heavy sigh, turned back into the room and just stood and stared at it sightlessly for a long moment.
Again, the random thought that he should back-off, and let them both pretend until this breach of heart, and moral fortitude was firmly behind them. And again, his emotions violently rebelled. The heart wanted what the heart wanted. It cared nothing for rhyme or reason. Wrong or right.
He was so in love with her, and what's more, he recognized the possibility of love in her. She was 'open' to the idea, even if her conscious mind didn't want to be.
I didn't imagine last night. I didn't imagine her reaching out to me.
He sat himself right down on the edge of the bed and stared at his hands. Stared at the curve of fingers that had always been familiar to him, but he now regarded as if there was an air of newness here.
There is, isn't there? So much has changed, that nothing is quite the same as it was before.
This new world held uncertain terrain, but that was nothing new to either of them, not since their birthday.
These little reminders of relation and impossibility didn't bother him anymore. They only bothered him when he let them.
And he refused to entertain such doubt. If he wanted to get though to her again, he had to be firm enough in his own confidence for the both of them.
The urge to form a fist in determination sparked in his reflexes, but he ignored it, keeping his hands open and relaxed. He studied the maps of lines in both his palms and picked out the subtle differences between them. Then he heard the muted rumble of pipes as the water came on in the bathroom, and he wondered why he hadn't heard it this morning.
Would things be different now had he woke up first? For some reason he felt that they might be worse.
When he imagined her awakening...Well, he just couldn't do it. Even his had been an ever-tightening band of emotion.
It still twinged, though. He wanted to be there for her. He wanted to comfort her. He couldn't bear seeing her in such distress.
Aya always turned to him in her distress, always relied on him to keep her back from trouble, and pull her up from the situation when she found some way to fall into it anyway.
But things are different now. Her denial was going to feed directly into her wariness. The thought of so much distance between them made him quail.
They had never been separated before, excluding the weeks after their birthday (the hardest weeks of his life, to tell the truth). Somehow mental separation seemed so much worse than what had happened then. Because then he had known in his heart that she was missing him just as desperately as he was missing her. That she was thinking of him and wishing for him. And that was a connection all its own.
She will miss me. She will think of me. I am curious to see which act she will choose to push me away.
Now he made that fist, his eyes no longer seeing his hands.
She can push me away as much as she needs. But I will still keep coming back.
I have to try.
He gentled the fierceness out of his mind, his eyes refocusing on reality. He sighed.
tbc...