TYL (ten years later).

at the very last moment

It always comes back to this.

There's something indisputable about the way his farewells end at "bye", a clipped gust of a door swinging shut without the balm of "I'll see you again" to relieve the sterile silence. The tension that strains the air equates to a roaring waterfall—but their interaction is disconcertingly stagnant. Ever so slowly, pooling water drips onto the quarry below to carve out an indentation of weariness.

What are they waiting for?

She loathes the word "safe." It is a Band-Aid over a weakness, and there are too many ways to worsen a wound by smothering it. She wants to loathe fairytales too, but admits that would be hypocrisy. She could not deny herself her fantasy; that would be emotional suicide. The little girl in her entertains the notion of cakes and an incorruptible love. The woman she has become slaps that little girl about the face and tells her to get a grip.

He'd told her as much.

At the end of the day, the world is a fact, he'd said, not an opinion. So quit wishing and get a move on.

He had never explained why he himself wouldn't budge from his habits.

They've perfected their exchange of harsh, grating words, gaining empty satisfaction from the cracking of the other's façade. The fallout is overdue, but neither summons the resolve to pay the fine and get on with it. There is sore solace to be found in tranquil unraveling, a sense of "I've been fighting it for so long; just allow me this bitterness to bathe in. Let me catch my breath and unknot my muscles and then we'll talk of drowning." When did "Why should I care if you die?" beget the subtext "I need you"? When did childhood resentment evolve into the complexity of reading between the lines? Perhaps he should swallow his pride and do something that defies himself and his fronts. The fact that he even considers stepping out of himself for her fills him with red fury.

I don't want to want you, his glare would read, and hers would hiss, It's a little late for that, don't you think?

She watches him stare into space from the other end of the kitchen. The man's tie is crooked, and the buttons don't correspond with the buttonholes. His skin is a pallid canvas, taut over his bones and wrung dry of color, of humor. His eyes, in contrast, are a shock of forbidding emerald, a piercing shade wont to harden, not soften.

Shame and compassion rise like foul bile in her throat. There is something to be found in his gaze, but it is pointedly aimed elsewhere.

It took seventeen years for her to distinguish between love and devout admiration.

Keeping her eyes downcast (because if he won't show his, she'll do the same), she walks over the forest green tiles (their favorite color) and reaches his side. Pulling him to his feet, she undoes his shirt to redo the buttons, working her way up with measured calm in each flick of the wrist. Her slender hands drift upwards to his striped tie, and for a moment he thinks she's going to choke him.

Of course, she doesn't.

But the specks of rancor and feeling in her cinnamon eyes might have well as strangled him.

With no outlet, their sentiments built up behind the dams of their obstinacy. As her hands slid down the silky length of his tie, he caught them, tightening his fingers around her wrists. He crushed her to him, his chin digging into the back of her neck. The vaguely floral scent of her hair filled his nostrils, and he knew that he had just taken an irrevocable step outside of their boundaries. A boundary drawn to bring them to respectful acknowledgement, instead driving them to near-insanity and insuperable ache.

His maroon dress shirt bunches in her fist.

She purses her lips into his shoulder, smothering a weak sound. How can the world be a fact? Its people lust for suffering, and we're feeding ourselves to the flames.

The intractable man before her is a solid wall of skin and bones and lean muscle, and she has never felt more terrified.

What if I need you too much?

Is what she doesn't ask.

Believe in me. I'm trusting you not to get yourself killed. So believe in me, too.

She won't be that damsel with a bleary-eyed distress; fairytales are gruesome and someone always dies. She wants to shatter the rose-colored glasses in her fist and let the shards dig into her palm, running red, running dry. The brunette was naïve once, but hope naturally tends toward overestimation. Once upon a time, Haru won a game of chess with her father. Once upon a time, it had felt like sweet victory. It was enough.

But time waits for no one.

Now and again she has felt and tasted the signature rust of coppery lifeblood: slick between her fingers, weeping from her abdomen, retching up her throat.

You don't know cleanliness until you know dirtiness.

He supposes she's a mystery. She plays hard-to-get with masterful expertise, but not to evade him, nor seduce him. Just to sate her chauvinistic sense of dignity, a personal "fuck you" to the world that has brought them to their knees. Granted, it would be inappropriate of him to condemn her, given his own warped pride.

It's five in the morning and the sun hasn't risen, but as he heads out into what may or may not be his last day, he is warmed with the heat of resolve, and a little bit of something else.

It's five in the morning and night ebbs from the dawn, but as she passes the corridor into the base, she parts the blinds to prepare for midday sunbreak.

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