So guys, when last we spoke, I mentioned how tremendously impressed with the remake I was.

I don't own anything, anyone or anywhere you recognise. Sapphire, along with a few others who'll crop up every now and then, are mine.

Oh boy. OH BOY. That was before I completed the story. And I know it's too early to rave about it, I'd absolutely hate to spoil it on anyone, but guys. I'm so happy. After that ending, you could say I was on cloud nine.

I'm so sorry. I'm such a dork, but face it, you loved it.

One thing I will say, I regret not pre-ordering the version with the soundtrack. Knew I would when I was ordering it as well, is the annoying bit. That extra £25 would've been so worth it.

Big thanks to those who read and favourited the first chapter of this story! Missing the elusive first review, will have my fingers crossed for some insight into how you think it's going so far :)

Stay safe, everyone. And on we go!

Chapter 2 - Smile

The heaviness in my chest turned to burning, an all-consuming sensation that seared down every limb with a vengeance that I had no comparison for.

Well. That wasn't necessarily true. In fact it wasn't true at all; I had felt this exact sensation six times before, exactly six. That was all I recalled about those occasions, because the nature of the pain made it impossible to comprehend anything but.

How long? Again, I wasn't able to comprehend that. It could have been seconds or weeks. Being aware of that was disconcerting. Between the withdrawal and the containment within the mako itself, along with being kept in the same poorly-lit lab for the entirety of my time there, I was completely unaware of how long I had spent there. It meant that my captivity could've lasted really any length of time and I would be none the wiser.

I had already surmised that it was likely over three months, though that was really only a guess. It had been based on the weather of my current destination, which was reminiscent of early spring, with that lingering chill in the bright early morning. But then, who knew where I was? For all I knew it was summer here.

Speculation was getting me nowhere, and it was really hard to focus on anything. I would've retreated to my happy place and spent some more time dreaming, but sadly that demanded some level of serenity that I couldn't really reach right now.

Aching, burning, tightness, pins-and-needles all over my body. My limbs felt like they were made of lead, leaving me incapable of even twitching, of the slightest movement. I wasn't completely unaware though.

I was lying on my back, on a bed that wasn't completely uncomfortable, though the mattress was almost moulded around me, probably very old and well-used. There was a draught from a slightly cracked window, the occasional gust of wind rattling a loose window pane. It was helpful, because while the breeze was just a few degrees colder than would be comfortable ordinarily, my body was burning up, working overtime.

Even more helpful though, was the woman who kept replacing the wet rag on my forehead and dabbing it over my face and neck. It was only a very small exaggeration to say I hadn't felt any better feeling than those gentle presses against my feverish skin.

I was able to draw the conclusion that days were passing, because the cloth dabbing came frequently at regular intervals, followed by an extended period of time without. It was also accompanied by a chillier breeze from the window, which would be pushed further open - I presumed to keep the room from becoming a sauna by morning - and often rain.

I supposed all the rain (April, maybe? Wasn't 'April showers' an expression?) would have annoyed me if I was functional and ever outside, but I had decided that it wasn't all bad. The pitter-patter on the tiled roof over my head, while surprisingly loud, made for some very pleasant white noise in the dead silence of the night.

Well, what would have been silence, if not for the roaring in my ears, or the painfully loud and fast beating of my heart. Sometimes it felt like it was only gravity keeping it from leaping out of my chest. Thankfully those times were brief and infrequent, and when it passed and let my heart ease back into a more sustainable rhythm, I'd feel better than I had for quite some time.

Then of course I'd get accustomed to that level of wellness, so that relieved feeling didn't last long. But it was nice while it lasted. If the wet rag was the best feeling I'd ever had, this would be second best feeling, perhaps.

The dark cloud to that silver lining, so to speak, was that I wasn't getting better. There were fluctuations for the worse, but my level of health eventually returned to the pretty low plateau that it had been since I collapsed on the stairway. This was the longest I had gone out of mako since I was first placed into a capsule back in Midgar, with two days as my previous record; by my measure, we had that beat at least three times over now.

As much as I tried not to stew over it, I often found myself worried about that. Six days later and zero sign of improvement was a concerning statistic no matter how much of an optimist you are. I had started to really wonder whether this would actually break, this… fever, maybe? It definitely wasn't the right terminology, but it was the closest thing I could compare it to.

Hopefully it'd break. I didn't relish the thought of just lying here and sweating for the rest of my mako-free life. Would it be possible for me to communicate with my cloth-dabber enough for her to understand what it was I was missing? Maybe a little dose would help rouse me a little.

This must be what a smoker feels like when they quit, I supposed. Even harmful substances shouldn't be cut out completely by an addict without a weaning process first, and mako wasn't harmful.

Well, it could have been. Maybe it was? I still wasn't totally clear on what it was. Shinra converted it into electricity, right? Or something like that. That seemed like something that would be harmful.

But I had been exposed to it for so long. I still wasn't totally accustomed to being in the world again. The chilly breeze was such a relief to my clammy skin, and yet when it blew too strongly it felt like a flame was licking up my arms and cheeks, at every exposed inch. The bed I lay on felt like it was sucking me down, like gravity was trying to make up for the lost time I had spent suspended in the capsule, my feet having only occasionally brushed the base.

It was in the silence and solitude, when my dabber was no doubt taking a well-earned break, that I felt these things strongest, that I wished most to be able to do something to combat it, and equally felt least able to. So I tried to dream, which inevitably went nowhere, so I was stuck, just waiting for a time when I was able to dream.

Keenly aware of everything that bothered me so much more than it should, and entirely unable to do a thing about it.

So I lay there. Getting dabbed with a wet cloth, too hot and still inexplicably breaking out into shivers occasionally, unable to lift any limb or muscle.

Being ill is the worst.

…

"I thought SOLDIERs didn't get ill," I complained, scowling.

He stuck me with a surprised look. "Who told you that?"

I took a few moments to think, rubbing a finger along the bridge of my stuffed nose as I did. Only blurred, shadowed figures in SOLDIER uniforms appeared in my mind's eye, none stepping forward to own up to their claim. "I dunno," I eventually admitted, voice nasally and obfuscating my 'n's. "Someone did though. I'm sure I heard it somewhere. Something about a better immune system…"

"Rest assured," he denied with a scoff, "we're SOLDIER, but we're still human. We still get the common cold." He examined me for a moment, smile playing on his lips. "Unless you had been hoping you were above all that, now that you're a SOLDIER too?"

"Maybe," I grumbled, before straightening up, throwing a doubtful look his way. "I've never seen you get sick," I mentioned sceptically, folding my arms.

He puffed out his chest with a smirk, "That's because I look after myself." He watched me for a moment, my cynical look never wavering, before letting out a chuckle. "You don't believe me?"

"I believe that you're not above lying," I sniped back with my own smirk. He spread his hands wide, putting on a wounded look.

"That hurts. Though you surely know me better than that. Why would I lie to admit a weakness?"

I pouted, because I couldn't come up with a passable response for that question, leaving me with a feeling like he had pulled the wool over my eyes. His smirk widened, eyes creasing slightly at the corners, his head tilted back slightly so that he was looking down his nose at me.

"A fanciful notion, but sadly baseless. Even the great Sephiroth has the occasional bout of the sniffles."

As was common with him, the General's name was mentioned with a bite of derisiveness. It didn't linger though, and was forgotten as I giggled. "Sorry, sorry," I said weakly, "I just didn't think I'd hear you say the word 'sniffles'."

"Words are my specialty. If there's any more you care for that I haven't yet said in your presence, please do provide me a list."

"I thought Materia was your specialty?" I questioned, holding up the small crystal in my hand as I did so, as though he wouldn't know what I was talking about.

"I'm versatile," he divulged, eyes twinkling. "That's what makes me such a good SOLDIER. That's why you need to learn to use Materia as well."

How annoying. How dare he turn the conversation into a valid argument for his evil death gems. "I was sure I heard that though, that you were the best with Materia in all of Shinra," I murmured, brow furrowing.

He watched me and said nothing.

"Like, that day you introduced me to Materia," I offered, and looked away, casting my mind back. "We had the day off, and we were bored…"

"…small amount of low-level Materia…" came his voice from to my left, though he had been standing right in front of me. I looked up at him again, to see he had turned his face to look in that direction, looking sombre.

I followed his lead and turned, seeing a familiar scene laid out in front of us. He stood with his back to a table, in a room with metal walls and artificial lighting. One hand was out, open with his palm facing the ceiling, in a gesture of presenting what was on the table. He wore a familiar smirk, self-assured and all-knowing, and slightly teasing.

Some paces in front of him, to my eye looking disappointingly small and pathetic, was a fairly slight kid with a helmet pulled low over her eyes. Her arms were hooked into a pair of crutches, which were slack at her sides as she stood still with one leg bent slightly at the knee. She looked sceptical with narrowed eyes behind scruffy blue strands of hair, as he continued, "They're pathetically weak, easy to control and cost very little mana to cast, so they're perfect for you."

Whether by observing the rude statement or from recollection, I felt indignant on my past self's behalf. I scowled at the man by my side, whose smirk reflected that of his counterpart. "That was uncalled for," I admonished.

He adopted an innocent look, "But I was being considerate, I picked the Materia based on your experience." I raised my eyebrows, unimpressed. He chuckled under his breath, as his double procured one piece of Materia from the box and held it out, explaining its use.

"…considering my successes so far as a Cadet, I can only expect this little ball of magic-y-ness to grow teeth and bite me," she sassed back without inflection, her eyebrows raised. I let my own expression fall flat, keenly aware of how I was still pulling the same expressions, finding it eerie because I didn't feel very similar to the person in front of me anymore.

The man at my right let out a chuckle, drawing my attention. "I thought that was funny," he disclosed to me, looking almost wistful as he watched the pair in front of us, both quiet and immobile for a moment or two. He glanced at me, and looked slightly tickled. "You couldn't tell? Staying quiet like that was my way of composing myself."

"You know how happy I would've been if you'd laughed at that?" I asked, and when his look turned to mild surprise, I thought again about what I'd said, and grimaced, looking forward again to see the man place the crystal into my hand and resume talking. "I mean, it would've been nice to know you didn't have nothing but contempt for me, back then," I continued defensively, folding my arms.

"We did have a rocky start, didn't we?" he speculated distractedly. I rolled my eyes, because that was very unassuming phrasing, from the man who was the root cause of the rockiness.

"That's one way to put it," I murmured dryly, refocusing on the scene before us, which had frozen as we had been talking.

The man expressed his knowledge in front of us by lecturing for a time about Materia, while the girl warily examined the small, warmly glowing crystal in her palm. The words were muffled and obfuscated, as if through a radio with a poor connection. The man at my side sent me a wounded look. "You weren't listening?" he accused, pouting.

"I was!" I argued defensively. "Just, it's been a while. Plus, you were talking for a long time…" His exaggerated pout didn't lighten at all. I sighed and let my shoulders droop. "I'm sorry, okay?"

He bowed his head with a smirk; one that gave me a warm feeling in my chest, and put an unconscious reflection of it on my face. "There is no hate, only joy, for you are beloved by the Goddess; hero of the dawn, healer of worlds."

I didn't wait for him to look up and meet my eye, turning my head forward to watch our doubles so quickly that I might have given myself whiplash. I heard the girl snort in amusement, saw her tutor smirking at her, and turned my head to the side, frowning, cheeks warming unpleasantly.

It wasn't fair. How come he could be so mean but be so… confusing? Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe he just didn't have a better Loveless quote off the top of his head. It probably meant something different than it appeared. There was probably some hidden insult in there.

It just seemed, awfully… sweet.

Probably just there was no more appropriate quote from the poem. Definitely, that was it.

Ugh, cheeks, please understand and just cool down already.

"I remember this bit," he murmured, in the same soft, almost reverent tone he had previously spoken with. Placating, soothing even? Was this his soothing voice?

It was a soothing voice. It was a very nice voice to listen to. But it was also the opposite of what I wanted to hear. I didn't want to be rude though, so I glanced back to those in front of us. The little Cadet had an annoying air of cockiness about her, a smirk on her face as she moved the item of great power about in her hand like it was a toy. Her tutor standing before her had his hands on his hips, looking justifiably unimpressed with her.

He challenged her to recognise a Healing Materia, which she foolishly and boldly accepted. He crouched in front of the table, unlocking the doors to reveal a case indistinguishable from the one currently open on the desk, and began to enter a code into a keypad on top of that case. It was as he stood up to full height, towering over his student with a greater Materia in his hand that I started to remember how this particular encounter concluded.

A rocky start, he had said to me. This was one of those particularly sharp edges to that collection of rocks. And not just because we were dealing with Materia.

Materia were rocks, right? Crystallised… something-or-other, so probably fairly rocky. Not that I'm a geologist or anything. I just like making terrible puns.

Point was, I remembered where this was going. I wasn't sure if the man beside me was as aware as I was, but I was very aware, and very concerned. Seemed like a good time to turn off whatever mental projector was playing inside my head, but I wasn't quite sure how to do that.

So instead what happened, because my own head obviously hates me, was that the scene before us advanced as if on fast forward, a blur to our eyes with the occasional image lingering; the girl as good as baring her teeth in anger with glaring eyes, a smug glint in bright blue eyes behind auburn strands.

A sudden nauseated feeling made itself known in my stomach, as we saw a distorted and barely visible image of the girl being hoisted into the air by a strong gloved hand fisted in the front of her shirt. The crutches that had been in her hands clattered to the floor behind her. Words were hissed in a cold voice, "Don't play games with me."

That voice didn't sound right. I was certain it was as I recalled it, because I had been frightened then, and it was emblazoned where some of the rest of the scene was a little bit less clear. But something about the voice seemed wrong. After his soft murmur, and the warmth it had inspired in me, I just wanted to strike this off, because this was past.

I bowed my head level with the floor, and my eyes caught on his hand at his side, a couple feet from my right side. Gloved as it was, it was hard to tell, but the leather looked strained and tensed, spread smooth over the back of his hand, which was curled into a fist.

I recalled what I had felt at the time, held in the air without effort, by a man who was filled with anger because of something I had done in a thoughtless moment. I remembered not fear, nor anger, or anything similar. I had just felt sad. I had been off to a rocky start with my tutor, that was undeniable, but I felt we had been slowly building bridges before this time. There was speculation at the time that we had actually bonded over a conversation earlier that day, a tentative but undeniable olive branch, and less than an hour later it had been snapped. I was sad, because I had made a special effort to get along with a prickly individual who gave the impression I was little more than an inconvenience to him, and had thought I had made progress only to have my hopes for an amicable relationship between us thrown back in my face.

I felt that again now. And I stared at his hand, because I knew that somewhere along the line we had bonded. I had learned to spot nuance and subtleties in his words, and had some appreciation for it, where I might have had little patience before. He had a little more patience now as well, less quick to anger, and was a little more open and honest - but for all his improvements the man was still a hothead, and I feared that he would see this event and see what we had been, not what we had become.

My fingers twitched, not far away from grabbing his hand, but not doing so either. For some reason, touch still felt like a boundary that we hadn't quite broached yet. I hated my hesitancy, but still gave into it, shaking my head and looking away.

I couldn't even look at him. I was too afraid to. Would he have looked upset, or even distraught? Would he have been angry? Maybe he would've been stony-faced, serious and aloof and keeping his emotions inside.

Maybe he didn't care. Perhaps he thought his reaction was reasonable. Emotions were riding high that day, after all.

Then his counterpart threw me to the ground. I couldn't help flinching. An involuntary reaction, one which I detested having, because the man at my side had surely noticed. The last thing I wanted to do was cause him grief.

Ugh. Why did I decide reliving this particular memory was something that we should do? What was the purpose anyway?

Oh yeah. I thought he claimed himself as a Materia specialist. It didn't seem like that was the case now, because no further words were discernible; he was speaking, berating his young student for her insolence and her false claim, and perhaps rightfully so. But beyond the actual tone of reprimanding, or the consistency with which the words flowed, it was muffled like before. The girl was clutching her injured knee, staring at her tutor with a pitiful wounded look. Soft green tendrils of light beginning to shine from between clenched fingers went unnoticed, until it shone bright enough to make her squint. Perhaps exaggerated by the light, which soon lost its hue but shone just as strongly white as it had green, but the colour that drained from her face in such a short space of time was startling. The scene faded to black almost immediately after, leaving me clenching my left fist, unable to ignore the feeling of a phantom crystal embedded in the centre.

"Amell? …wake up! …Cobalt!"

In the sudden silence that followed, coupled with the stark blackness in front of us, the tension was stifling. The person at my right side was coiled tight, and I still couldn't look. I couldn't even hear him breathe, and I didn't dare to blink for fear of my eyes rebelliously drifting to him, needing to see how he was and equally feeling unable to.

"Huh," I huffed, cutting through the silence with great strain in an attempt to break the ice, "I guess you didn't say that."

The atmosphere was thick between us, a heaviness in the air that had my mind ticking over, trying to come up with a way to navigate it. He hadn't deserved to be subjected to that. I hadn't wanted to subject him to it.

My fists opened and clenched at my sides, over and over. I wanted to turn to him, tell him that I held nothing against him, even wrap my arms around him and squeeze until he shoved me off, whether that took less than a second or over a minute. Probably the former, if he wouldn't dodge it in the first place, but that didn't matter. It wouldn't matter so long as he knew that I didn't care about how he had acted, how rough he had been. I knew that since then something had shifted between us, that he wasn't as angry, that he was kinder, so I had always been careful to avoid bringing it up. I assumed to bring about such a change required an epiphany of sorts, and though I might've been grateful for it, it wasn't my place to ask.

He was still the same snarky, sarcastic know-it-all, of course, but with the sharp corners sanded off a little bit. Of course, I gave back some amount in that category as well. In fact, most of our relationship was based on sarcastic retorts and as little meaningful conversation as we could get away with. That was nice. But it also made it impossible to address issues like this, when something delicate and emotional came up for one of us and the other scrambled to avoid the topic and instil cheer by maintaining the norm.

I looked down at my hands, fisted and white-knuckled, desperate to reach out and comfort him. If I looked at him, I would do all the things I wanted to do so desperately. But how could I? That wasn't what we did for each other. We made meaningless conversation and got on each other's nerves, that was it. So I deliberately, slowly, unclenched my hands, and looked up to where our past selves had been, sensing a sudden change.

He was nowhere to be seen, but the little pale-faced blue-haired one was lying in a bed, resting fitfully. And over her stood a man with hunched shoulders—

Burning—

A white lab coat—

Prickling in my limbs, sweating, burning, deep in my chest—

A dark ponytail, round glasses, a deep scowl—

A voice that lacked feeling, mocking, speaking of… something, I didn't know, but it stuck in my craw—

A glass cylinder, weightlessness, and a feeling of serenity that just felt wrong somehow, but so, so easy—

My back arched, my breath coming in irregular, rattling gasps. And here was me, my usual gullible self, thinking I might actually have been getting better when I was able to dream.

I had a frantic compulsion to run, which felt as necessary to my survival as the gasps of air I was taking, each breath more painful than the last. Had I been in my right mind, I might have recognised that I was deep in the throes of panic, that this was the real fight-or-flight response (a term which I had thrown around in the past, obviously incorrectly) but I wasn't in my right mind.

All that I had were three words.

Pain.

Breathe.

Run.

When my sight returned to me, dark around the edges and blurred as it was, I looked straight up into the high ceiling of an attic, with exposed wooden beams and unadorned lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling. Bewildered, I tossed my head from side to side, trying to scope out my unfamiliar surroundings.

I was in a bed: that much was obvious. To my left was an old-fashioned panelled window, slightly open and letting in a cool draught, the wind disturbing the threadbare curtains. It must have been the middle of the night, with only the faintest golden light visible, perhaps from a streetlight.

To my right was a door. Door—

It was all my wild mind could perceive before I was barrel rolling out of bed from beneath a light sheet and staggering towards it. The most difficult journey: I felt like I was on a boat in the roughest storm, the way I teetered on confused feet and how the world seemed to spin in circles and rock from side to side, but despite all that I kept stumbling forward, door always in my sights.

It might have been seconds or hours into my journey to the door when it swung open unexpectedly. A man with deep lines in his face and hunched shoulders took two shuffling steps when he met my eye, and time stopped.

I inhaled painfully with burning lungs.

Run.

I pitched one foot forward, and the world toppled over on its side, with a painful thump to the side of my skull that rattled my brain.

"Foolish child," a gruff accusation, an impressive display of bravado from a man whose heartrate had doubled in those few seconds. A hacking cough followed some seconds later.

Would he have ran, or fought? I supposed he hadn't faced the choice that I had in such a short space of time. It wasn't pleasant to think that I might have been the source of such a reaction. Particularly in someone of advanced age who wasn't in the best of health.

I say advanced age, but I was a terrible judge - that meant over forty. He could've been a reasonable sixty-year-old or a forty-year-old who didn't take the best care of himself.

Approaching footsteps, fast and nimble, but hitting the floorboards and stairs with decent force. "Pops?"

"…some improvement…" was all I could make out from the following grumble, as he shuffled back the way he came.

"You could help," an accusation from the woman who dabbed my forehead with the wet cloth. Footsteps approaching, very close, stopping inches away. "What happened, huh? The one time I'm sleeping properly…"

Even slipping into unawareness as I was, I still had adrenaline rushing through me, still wanting to flee beyond the reaches of human compassion. I remained stiff and tense, and as she wrapped an arm around my shoulders and hefted me upright into a sitting position. Every limb and joint was coiled like a spring, rigid and ready to spring into action at any misplaced hand or overly quick movement. Likely that action would only be an aimless throw of a limb or two, so probably not that impressive. Particularly given that the sensible part of my consciousness knew that these people were no threat; a part which I preferred to ignore over gut instinct. Or maybe it was paranoia.

"Wow. You are tense, madam," she grunted, heaving me back to the bed. I was not a sack of potatoes, I could move by myself. I willed my limbs to move. Run.

Nothing happened, and I felt betrayed, more so than I probably should have. I could feel my limbs, they were tense, they weren't hanging loose, and I definitely remembered how to move. But it was like there was a loose connection somewhere between my brain and the rest of my body. I could feel everything, but actual movement was outside my reach.

At least I was still capable of stupid humour. In my own head at least.

Footsteps retreated, garbled voices conferred, a door closed. The compulsion that had gripped me, repeating with every heartbeat roaring in my ears, started to recede.

And suddenly everything was dark and silent again. And he was there. The pain of my thundering heart eased somewhat.

But he was turned away from me, head slightly tilted in my direction over one shoulder. His face was cast into shadow, or what little I could see of it over his collar and behind his fringe.

Arrhythmia attacked and pained my heart once more. How could I subject him to that, and then leave? No one deserved that, least of all him.

I didn't dare to look my gift horse in the mouth and wonder why he stayed, because if I thought of it, he would think of it, and would surely decide I wasn't worth remaining for.

"You think that I would leave?" he hit the nail on the head, as always, with a quiet murmur. Was he always a mind-reader, or has that only been since my mind conjured him up? Because I feel like that probably did have some effect.

"I don't—" I stammered, stopping quickly with exasperation as I didn't know what I was intending to say. I took a moment to breathe a slow, calming breath, and composed my thoughts. "I caused you pain, so I would want you to, for you."

Predictably, my gaze dropped to the floor. Cowed by guilt, hoping for forgiveness, unable to meet the eye of the person I hurt, the person I cared about. Afraid of getting no further opportunity to make up for it.

Suddenly, his pristine black boots were there, not a foot away from my smaller-but-still-too-large pair of scuffed SOLDIER boots. They were pointed at the toe, but blurred, like far too much of everything in this otherwise vacant realm.

"I caused that pain." The rare admission of guilt had me recoiling, feeling somehow disturbed. That didn't really sound right.

A flicker, then his boots were angled slightly to one side, and an extra foot away.

"Sadly, there is little by way of entertainment here," he lamented, heaping sarcasm over his words to conceal the sentiment beneath. The lilt to his words, peppered with deliberate inflections, made his voice ring out in the silence despite the softness with which he spoke. "Even you being bothersome is more engaging than nothing."

I pouted, to conceal the fond smile that might have shown otherwise. Slightly tearful, because the meaning behind his words made me embarrassingly emotional, I retorted, "I didn't realise you were so fond of me. Offer withdrawn, then, you're here for good."

When I felt like I had acceptably regained my composure, because it wouldn't do to have him noticing any actual emotion I had in relation to him, I finally felt able to glance up at him, hoping to erase my last image of him, sorrowfully turned away. Stood a few feet away, standing tall with his shoulders rolled back, the picture of confidence I remembered him as. Somehow even the red of his coat seemed more vivid, his naturally pale skin looking warm and smooth, when it had been washed out in contrast to the dark shadows that obscured him.

His auburn hair, swept back from his eyes with his chin raised and head slightly tilted to keep it there, lifted and swayed with a breeze I couldn't feel, each strand moving too gently to be real. His eyes shone with a swirl of positive emotions, none too specific but there was no need for specifics. I made a point not to stare too long, despite the enchanting pale blue-green hue, fringed by naturally bold, dark lashes every beauty queen would strive to emulate.

I didn't really care so much about his silky hair, his stunning eyes, or any of the other hatefully effortless, beautiful aspects of his appearance. They were just parts of him, genetics and good nutrition and any other number of variables dictating that, all that didn't mean anything.

There was something that meant something though, and that's where my eyes fixated.

He was smiling. Not a smirk, no cheek or mocking or sarcasm, just a pure, genuine smile. It lifted his cheeks and slightly squinted his eyes, it thinned and stretched his lips, it was imperfect, a slightly lopsided 'v' with a greater stretch to the right corner and, best of all, I put it there. Me! His irritating, waste-of-time-and-effort student, me!

…it felt weird. Like it felt weird in a good way, but also in a bad way. Because the knowledge that I put that expression there was oh-so satisfying, but the mature, pessimistic part of my brain that I couldn't fully ignore reminded me that this wasn't real.

That smile, stunning and contagious as it was, was totally imaginary. It was realistic for sure, and unfamiliar which I found interesting (if I felt stupid sometimes, was this where my extra brain power is going? Because if so I need some real recalibration…) but it was an expression I had never seen, a simulation from my own fantasy.

He had never smiled at me, not like that. I hadn't been able to earn that sort of expression from him, back when I was his troublesome student. I wasn't sad about that, though.

Okay, I know it sounded like I was, but honestly, I wasn't that pathetic, really. It was hard to describe.

This guy, the one who stood in front of me with a charmingly asymmetrical smile, he wasn't real. He was kind of a snapshot I took, one that hung around for me to converse with, to distract me. He wasn't the real deal, but he was a version of the man himself, a version which I depended on. Like an imaginary friend, except not that imaginative because he was entirely derivative.

Picking my tutor to rent the extra room in my brain wasn't a conscious decision. Gaia knew if it had been a conscious decision I wouldn't have picked him. For me to be in a vulnerable position and for my head to decide my comfort would be the man who had all but tormented me in the months before, it was some kind of cosmic-level joke. My imagination hadn't even softened him enough for him to be sympathetic, or caring. Not outwardly, at least.

For whatever reason, irony seeming most likely, his company in this otherwise empty room became my safe space. And though he was always here, and still very human (we had rows, he had mood swings, and we still couldn't have an adult conversation), I was deeply aware that he was not the real thing. Our bond, with its ebbs and flows but consistent solidity, would not be so if we met in real life with months of life missed between us. That was the bit I was sad about. Not that I had achieved more with my imagined copy than with him in the past, but that the real thing and I would never be this close in the future.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, and it reminded me that I needed to cut ties with this comfort blanket and re-join the real world at my first opportunity.

For now, I examined his smile with a wistful one of my own, sighed, and looked away.