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William Hawkes remembers the worst day of his life in grand detail- from the shouting in the streets to the loud, banging sounds of metal on metal over and over and over. He remembers it like this- but in reality, it went different. To others- bells ringing, declarations of joy, and love and happiness. The end of a war; the end of the Haunting Phantom Scythe. But war brought loss, even with the wins. William Hawkes stood in the street as people fled from their houses- to him, in fear and grief- to them, in excitement and joy, the lack of terror that had them hung from their ceilings, finally gone. The dust settled within his bones just a bit after the achievement of the 'grand loss' of it all. There was nothing else to think about. Kym Ladell was dead. She had died mere hours ago- but really, how long had it really been? Perhaps it had been a matter of weeks, months, years. Perhaps Kym Ladell was dead the moment her sister had died. Perhaps they had died together that day. A haunting tune plays in the back of his mind, and twilight gleams through the window. William Hawkes remembers the worst day of his life, but mostly from the nightmares he had gained from it- he had never taken much from real life anyways. He was too busy reading, falling in love with stories and such. William Hawkes fell in love too many times, in fact. So William Hawkes didn’t know when exactly he fell in love with Kym Ladell. Wait- no, that’s a lie. He knows when he must have fallen in love- the milliseconds after her eyes glided to his when she first joined the team- and she smiled, her eyes shining in young, joyous celebration. His voice ringing out in his ears when he announced her name, welcomed her. But he didn’t know the feeling of love. Will, a young boy- before the stories- was used to sitting at a window all day- waiting for anyone to arrive home, with a smile, and a hug.William Hawkes wasn’t loved enough as a child, it seems. No, He doesn’t know when he realized he was in love with Kym Ladell. His heart twinged in annoyance at the tone in her voice, early in the morning, when he had yet to fully wake up. His eyes avoided hers in deep, horrid shame at the fact that she was likely Lauren’s best friend and he was jealous of the fact- he always pressed his pencil slightly harder on his paperwork those days, when Lauren would laugh loudly at her words- his words in bold, his handwriting less elegant- his captain asking if there was any particular problems at home- and he’d respond with a tight smile and a “Nothing I can’t handle, sir,” and then he’d be dismissed after. He did not love Kym at first– but that was because he did not know the difference between hate and love. He was not loved enough as a child, you see. When he had finally known when he loved Kym Ladell, the sharp taps of a tree hitting against the window on the second floor guest room was keeping him up. He didn’t know what implored him to stay in that particular room- they had far too many. Perhaps he felt it was a waste- to be the only living thing to roam the halls. The portraits haunted his dreams, after all. Some days it felt as if he was a beast of some sort, looking for an exit out of the labyrinth he called home. Some sort of half-man half-bull concoction called the Minotaur and something about Icarus as well rang inside his head that night. A story he knew well because he had loved it. He supposed- Well, really, not supposed, that’s the wrong word- he pondered how exactly he learnt he loved Kym Ladell- more than a coworker, more than a friend, more than anything else he had ever known. Perhaps it was New Year’s Eve… yes , that’s right– the New Year's Eve party. Kym Ladell- the sergeant of the 11th district, sitting in a slightly cold booth at a bar. The lights- somewhat harsh- if his memory serves him correctly, made him squint slightly all night. He vaguely remembers the conversation that led up to it- his realization- something about Lila and Lukas, or something of the sort. He was conversing with Lauren when she bundled his shirt in one of her hands and pulled him down, her other hand- scraping ever so softly against his cheekbone. His eyes went wide- the first time the entire night, and what came next- only he and the stars knew. Her eyes- pools of gold. She melted him- quite like a candle, actually. Without her- well, he supposed he might’ve just been… not all that important without her. Everything about her- her humor, her smile- it was as if she was a fire that melted him ever so slightly, but… eventually, whether or not she knew it, he burned out. He had nothing left, and if he kept thinking of her like this- and then, what would she have? If he were the beast, William pondered, listening to a stray branch from a tree tapping against the window- in a room that is not his- then she’d be the hero. A haunting tune played in his head- and the tree continued to tap at the window. He was alone- there, at that time, at least. He was alone- truly, terrifyingly alone, and he looked up in the ceiling in a calm, almost-not-there manner. He did not go to sleep. Nightmares would only plague him if he did. He was not alone the next morning when he arrived at the precinct though, the air filled with warm sunbeams falling through the curtains. The air was golden- or it might’ve just been the loud, unchanging voice of his so-called “partner in crime”, Kym Ladell.His coffee, strongly bitter- his paperwork, exceedingly boring. “And then-” The voice interrupts his not so out-of-place thoughts, and he looks up, finding Kym leaning against the edge of her desk, hands wrapped around a mug filled up with what seems to be enough sugar to poison even a hummingbird, talking to Lauren. His heart skips a beat- almost like it’s trying to escape its cage beneath his skin and flesh and bones. His heart skips a beat, but in the way a candle’s flame starts to flicker. Softly. Warm. “Ladell,” his voice rings out along with his heart- in this somewhat unsteady panicky manner- but he seems to be the only one to hear it. “Unless your conversation is case related, please, keep it down.” She only salutes him in response and leans towards Lauren- who looks at him with interest; seemingly she’s picked up on his bad mood- continuing to converse slightly quieter. He may not be alone at this moment- but somehow, it feels as if he is. He is in a labyrinth of his own making- he does not reach out for help, but he begs for it all the same- he was not loved enough as a child. The rattle of footsteps and the sharp, stern voice of his captain makes his head swivel up, and he watches in horror as he announces Stephan Hawkes to the room, and he waits in tremolos, horrible time as his father walks over to his desk and with a low voice he announces that ‘you need to come home’ and ‘your mother…’ and ‘public announcement’ and a ‘now.’ And the only thing Will can really get a hold of in the moment is the fact that his heart is beating more so out of fear than anything else. And the only thing he really ever remembers doing is glancing at Lauren and Kym who talk in hushed tones and send worried glances his way. And then he heads back to his labyrinth, where he belongs.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“How could she have died? I- I don’t understand, she was perfectly fine-” William takes off his coat in one fell swoop and paces from the door to the coffee table and back, frantically. In a panic, or like he's about to go into a state of... something. There are portraits in the hall staring at him, waiting to haunt his dreams- but right now they don’t have to. They are haunting his reality- his mother’s smiling eyes, and his brother's wrinkled nose. They are gone, they are gone, they are gone and they are not here- maybe they never were. Maybe it was always just him- he does always seem to be the only living thing enclosed within the halls. There is a cracked photo of Will and his brother and his childhood friends on the side of his desk. One day, when he was still a child- one day, after he started to read storybooks- he kicked the leg to his dresser, on accident- and the frame came falling down, etching spiderwebs into the glass. The photo does not haunt his dreams- not to the same extent of the portraits. The eyes in the picture stare at him when he comes home after long days, and sometimes he stares at it. Picks it up, feels guilty about it, puts it back down. It does not haunt him, not yet. The spiderwebbed glass does not cut him, because he only picks it up on days that are long. He does not pick at the wounds, but only because they had already scarred over. The portraits are a new type of haunting- the kind of thing that shouldn’t quite be there, like rain in the winter. Like the tapping of a tree on a second story window. Like the fact that he loves a girl and will not tell her- it's the kind of thing that doesn't make sense but happens anyway. “I just- I don’t understand- Father, how? How... Why today-” he runs his hands through his hair- something he was taught not to do at a young age- but it shines through some days, when he's full of stress. When he presses pencils to paper harder than he should. Will turns towards his father, still at the door, and he watches as the older man walks over to a maid- which William realizes has been there the entire time- and asks for coffee, sugar, no cream- and he waits until the maid nods and leave to spin around and addresses Will in the same small, somewhat voice from earlier, voice hushed, slightly frantic. “If you’re going to react this way over the death of a lowly woman- who we both knew was going to die soon-” “Lowly? She was my mother- she was your wife-” The air comes out from his throat before he even realizes it was sitting there. The words claw at his throat and escape- and the air does not get a chance to hold his voice, before the sharp sting of impact comes down onto Will’s cheeks and he is stunned to the moment of ‘he hit me, he hit me, he hit me ’, and there is not tune playing in the back of his head- there is no music, not even the haunting type- not even the cracking, unrhythmatic beat of a tree against a window. There is nothing at all, not even a whisper. Not even a creak. The only thing he can hear is the insistent beat of his god-forsaken heart, and by the time his ears stop ringing and by the time his eyes stop blinking, and by the time he realizes he is not dead, he picks up the rest of his father’s words. “-not interrupt me again. If you think I am not grieving then you are a fool, William. I know you like to believe that I did not love that woman, but she was dead by the time your brother left. It was always in her destiny to die.” And then with rage, without thinking- like a rabid animal, like a beast- like a monster from a story book, William swings a closed fist at his father and the snap of a broken nose comes from behind it. William pauses, eyes wide, as he watches his father sneer and bend down, catching blood into his hand. And then- without thinking, he grabs his coat back in his hands like it is the only thing he can hold onto, and he heads for the door. “If you leave now, expect to never come back! ” The shouts of his father fall behind the slam of the door, and Will takes a moment to breathe in the air from outside- he releases it, watches as it dances up in the air, and feels the way his heart tries to escape from its cage behind his chest. He takes a moment to breathe, that’s all really. That’s all he does, before he takes another step. He is out of character today. He is all webbed glass, no photo behind the case. There is a chill in the air today- a bite in the wind. He looks at the sky for a moment- considers if he should go back to work or not. He shrugs to himself suddenly. Fuck it, Something inside him says, and he walks down the street, determined, in the broken, agonizing type of way. He decides that he might as well do something dangerous, something reckless. Something that a beast might do in a storybook, maybe. Like getting shitfaced drunk and forgetting the rest of his day. – William Hawkes is drifting somewhere above the clouds. He is reaching for the stars- and then he is reaching towards a melting candle- flickering like crazy to stay alive. He stares at it, and then moves, his body moving as if molasses- to blow out the flame. It does not go out. Despite how much he tries, the flame does not falter. To his surprise, when he looks down at his hand, he is candle wax. He watches in horror as the entirety of it melts away, looking into the mirror and finding himself to be an ugly monstrosity whose screams for help only sound like roars of rage and then- And then he wakes up in a room, that is not his house, that seems to be, quite noticeably, not in his neighborhood. His head hurts, and it also hurts to see. It hurts to breathe, but in the type of way that happens after a panic attack. It hurts to breathe in the type of way that he was trying to breathe in the entire world- the wind, with the sea, and the earth- and he almost succeeded in doing so. It hurts in the way it does when you burn yourself- you can’t really focus on anything else but the pain beneath it- sweltering and piercing. “Hey,” someone says, and his head swivels so fast he’s afraid it might break for a second. In the doorway standing in some upsettingly domestic pajamas stands his sergeant, Kym Ladell. “Are you feeling better?” His heart doesn’t skip a beat, and for an odd second, for an unexplainable reason- he’s afraid all his grief might bubble up again, and that he might cry. “What?” He says instead of just- sobbing right then and there. His voice is shaky and rough, like he didn’t drink enough water the night before. Kym brings her hand down to her side, and shifts on her feet. "Yesterday you…" She pauses. Doesn’t say anything, and just lets the silence sit in the air, like when words sit in the back of his throat when they make eye contact in the precinct out of nowhere. The silence sits like his heart does in his chest- trying to break out, with a scuff here, and a cough there. The silence does not break for about a minute, and then when it does, it sounds like Kym is trying not to cry. The silence isn’t really all that silent, really. “We uh- we have breakfast on the table, if you… want some.” Her sentence ends with a high tone at the end, making it seem like she’s asking a question. It only makes Will want to cry more. It only makes his heart skip multiple beats. “Sure,” his voice cracks, and silence surrounds them. And then, after maybe a few seconds- after a moment, a melody begins to wrap itself around the air, like the warmth from a hearth, and Will perks up a bit, at the sound of a piano playing. “Is that-?” She blinks and with a trembling voice goes “Oh- Yeah. My mother-” she stops mid sentence, pausing to look at William. “My mother plays it. ” Will closes his eyes for a moment to listen- just a moment, and he’s brought back to a time where he was young enough to wake up in a house still too big for their family, but in a fitting way. A time where the fires were stoked and warm, and when they’d have breakfast altogether as a family. Rafael, playing some new tune, and Will would wake up with a smile- no nightmares, no stories yet- and he’d sit with his brother learning the new piece of melody. But he is no longer a child. His brother left, and his mother got sick, and he sleeps in rooms that are not his to make the space around him seem less massive than it is. The portraits in the hall haunt his dreams now. There are no more pancakes for breakfast, and there are no more tunes- except for the ones playing in his head- a ghostly memory of something that barely exists at all anymore. He opens his eyes, and Kym is still there, in the doorway, and it is different. He has woken up somewhere that is not his home, but if he squints his eyes enough he could pretend it is. If he drank his coffee surprisingly sweet, and if he looked out the window with a tilted head, he might make something of this place- he might read into it like a storybook. He doesn't love his home, if he could call it that. There are no warm smiles or hugs, and there certainly are not any more piano lessons, or music in general, outside of the tapping of trees on windows. “She’s good at it,” William comments, his voice sounding like an instrument that needs to be tuned, and Kym blinks. He hums to the melody a bit, as if he forgets that Kym’s there- which physically, emotionally, he knows could never, ever really happen. “‘A Lullaby’, right?” “You know it?” “Yeah.” His voice breaks off- and he guesses his face must too, because something changes in Kym’s stance once again, and she offers him a hand to help him out of the bed. “I think we should have something to eat,” she whispers, and he swears a part of his heart breaks off, just so he can keep it, and give it to her someday. He is in love with her. He is in love with Kym Ladell- and he doesn’t know what’s worse- that he knows, or that she doesn’t. There is a certain grief that sits just beyond his ribcage with this fact- that he is in love with her, and that he is in her house, about to eat with her family, and she does not seem to know that sometimes late at night he dreams of this. Of eating at a table with other people he could call family. But he grabs Kym's hand when she offers it, and he gets up all the same, brushes off his pants that he's had on since yesterday- and fixes a smile on his face. He stands there like that, just for a moment, to breathe in the air around him. It's warm, and it smells like overly sugary coffee, and it just… feels how a home should feel. His hand grasps Kym’s hand for support, and he nearly falls on his face- he's thrown off balance for a moment, and she holds him steady, and her hand is warm and soft, and he does not let go. And neither does she, and there is a tune playing in the house somewhere. And it is not haunting, and it is a nice change- and he does not remember yesterday night, and he does not belong. He is bringing his ghosts into the room- he is making the lighting from candlelight flicker and falter- despite everything being sunlit. He is bringing down the mood by being there- in his grief filled vessel. Kym seems to notice his mood though, because she squeezes his hand and she leads him through her home, small and simple. It’s not easy to get lost here, he realizes, looking at the quilt on the couch. It is not a maze, dark and looming. “Oh, you’re awake!” The music comes to a stop, and a short chubby woman with dark braided hair makes her way over to them, and goes to shake Will’s hand suddenly. “It’s so nice to see you again, Mr. Hawkes. Good morning.” Her smile is wide and unforgiving. Fierce, in the kindly sort of way. “William is fine- Mr. Hawkes is my father. And... forgive me for being blunt Mrs. Ladell, but I’m afraid I don’t remember meeting you.” Kym, suddenly becomes unrooted to her spot, drops Will’s hand and coughs suddenly, as her mother lets out a wild laugh, and William sees the resemblance between mother and daughter, their rounded and rosy cheeks are the same, and they have the same type of laugh. Loud, interrupting, aluminous. “We have pancakes ready,” she says, joyful, as Kym moves to the kitchen. “You made it very clear yesterday that you wanted pancakes for breakfast.” “Oh.” He speaks. “Yeah, I’m sorry- I don’t get drunk often. I’m… I’m sorry that you had to take care of me.” “Oh,” Kym’s mother waves, as if she is trying to take away such thoughts from his mind. “It wasn’t a problem at all. Kym brought you home yesterday and you were so adorable, it was just so hard saying no to you.” Kym laughs in a strained way, as her chair scrapes along the ground as she sits down. “Mom.” She grates out, just as another voice starts to talk. “Let him eat a little before you start gushing about him like he's a dog, Darling.” And Will looks over to who he assumes to be Kym’s father- as his eyes twinkle with a mischievous air to them, and his lips point up in the type of way that joy often leaps forth from. “Besides, they’ve got work today, right Kym?” Will pauses, and watches as Kym’s father winks at him from over his coffee mug as Kym’s mother is turned, offering Will breakfast from the pan. “Uhm… Yeah, I think so,” she lies, looking over at Will, who stands in the kitchen, not alone, but lonely anyways. “But we’ve got time to eat. You know, they don’t want us to show up starved.” "For someone who works a lot, your father sure does know your schedule better than you..." Mrs. Ladell scolds, and Will speaks up, slightly with a smile, forgetting that he does not belong. "We do. Have work today, I mean." He lies with them, some sort of mirth frothing up within his chest alongside his heartbeat. Kym smiles at him, in a sad but joyous kind of way. Words ring through his head to describe it- soft, warm, quite possibly apologetic. Indestructible, is another word that comes to mind, as she lightly knocks her heel into his ankle. And even with everything going through his head- tunes that slightly haunt him in his sleep, to the dull and dry headache from a hungover- to the knowledge that if he tries to go back to the house he was raised in he’d be denied- even knowing that his mother is dead, and even knowing that he does not have work today, he smiles back. And he lets his foot nudge her ankle back, because he is hungover and there are pancakes on the table and it has something he has dreamt about. And he is okay, and he is still here despite it all, and he still has the rest of his day in front of him.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Upon flowers of reds and blues and purples, there is a casket made of fragrant wood, and in front of the bed of… flowers and dead things sits William Hawkes in a suit of black. It is his mother's funeral today, and with it, a cold, foggy, depressing day follows.Wind howls along the hills, and the cold air nips at the tips of Will's ears and nose, making them red. If his eyes didn’t betray him with the tears, it’d be the only thing to show he was there at all. From behind him, comes a noise of crinkling, and William let's his eyes slowly turn, staring at a man with a good places down a bundle of purple hyacinths. “Rafael?” He asks, unsure. William was the only one to show up. He is the only living thing in his life lately, besides Kym. Lauren couldn't make it, other affairs to attend too, and his father… somewhere. He considered asking Kym to go with him but… it's fine. He can be alone, for once. But he isn't alone, not now. Will watches with some sort of emptiness as his brother makes eye contact with him. “I’m sorry,” His brother says abruptly, eyes broken, filled with some sort of grief. “I’m so sorry. There was nothing- there was nothing I could do to stop it.” Will blinks, confused, but takes the apology anyway. If he takes note of the knife underneath Rafael’s formal clothes, he does not say anything. They stand there, looking down at flowers on wood. And they do not say a thing- they do not shuffle their shoe to the side, or cough, or anything. They do not sit side by side and play piano- they have no need to, not with the tune in the back of his head. But afterwords… he has nowhere to go. And so, that’s when he finds himself in a labyrinth of his own making- a house with too many rooms, not enough people, and portraits that haunt his dreams. A house he should not be in, he is not allowed. But without him it's all hauntings. He is the only living thing left to roam the halls anyways. It's eerily silent. Not a sound, besides maybe a window open. A tapping of a tree on a window and then- And then a voice rings behind his ears and he hears a ‘he is a murderer, William,’ and then a 'there was nothing I could do to stop it' and the sudden realizations fills him that he had just made his father very, very angry just yesterday and he blinks and he runs up the stairs and he rushes to his room with some sort of detached urgency that he is not sure is real. He is not sure he is real, when he opens the door and finds a girl he loves surrounded with blood and dry heaving breaths- with great effort, and little result. Like the rattling of a tree branch on the window, late at night. There is a photograph on the edge of William’s desk. The glass is spiderwebbed from a time where he got too careless as a child. There are joyful, young smiles all around, and there is a haunting air to it- like when it rains in the winter, or when you get home from a funeral and find a body on the floor. “Kym?” He whispers, like he is being haunted- like she is a ghost. And he falls to his knees and tries to access how much blood is really there and- She grabs his wrist, her hand slick with warm blood. “Will,” she whispers with effort, with a rush, like she is urging all of her breath out before she breathes back in. “I’m sorry-” It feels like he’s alone. It seems as if- yes, it’s as if he’s behind a pane of glass- it feels as if he is watching a play- he feels detached. He knows what this is- He knows, already. She is going to die. She is dying. His heart doesn’t just skip a beat- it jumps, runs- cries out in pain. Kym Ladell is dying. Maybe she was already dead. There is a low, almost rhythmic ticking sound, and it takes Will a moment to realize that it is not him, not him, not him, and he watches in horror as Kym slowly reaches to her pocket to pull out a golden watch, and they both watch as it starts to whirr and tick to life. “Oh,” Kym whispers, in the way the wind does against his window- with great effort and little result. “It started working again.” “I love you,” He proclaims to q a dying Kym Ladell. “I think I loved you from the moment I met you. So don’t- don’t die. Not now. You can’t- you can’t die now.” But she stares at him with something in her eyes- and his tears are not healing- if anything, they only make the burning life in her eyes falter, soften, and once again, he is extinguishing a fire. He loves her.
But candles are not meant to last.
“I love you.” Will confesses, in a great burst of bravery. In the stories, true love prevails. He loves her- so she will survive, that’s how it works. That’s how it goes. He loves her, and that will save her. It must. That’s how it happens in the myths, in the stories, in his childhood. But William Hawkes is no prince. He never has been- if it were really a storybook- a foolish, childish storybook, he would be the monster. She is the hero. Hell, she said it herself. Heroes don’t die. Until they do. You see- William Hawkes was not loved enough as a child. He grew up alone, reading fantasy books late at night until the flicker of candlelight slowed and the wick was burnt completely to the end. And so, she does not say anything, and so, the light fades from her eyes, and the wrecked sobs from behind his ribcage and eyes and throat sync up with the wretched unbroken clock. A Haunting tune plays in the back of Will's head. And then- metal on metal. Cries of joy. The worst day of his life, in great detail. A nightmare that haunts him like a tune in the back of his mind- Like the ticking of a broken clock. Like the flickering of a flame- or more accurately, the lack of one at all. Fin. (Events after Chapter Two) "I think I love you." He whispers, his head on her shoulder, and stars above them flicker about- quite like a flame from a candle. Quite like the moments between a heartbeat. "Well, I think I know why Lauren's never told me what you're like when you're drunk." She responds, shifting her feet a bit to continue walking. "No," he whispers, in the way one might after running for a long, long time. Kym gets the illusion that possibly he has been running his entire life, and now it's caught up with him. He whispers in the way wind does against a window late at night- with great effort, and little result. "I love you." "You're- you're so drunk." She says, and he blinks over at her, confused. "I need to- ugh, I need to bring you home." "Hm," he hums. “Your home. I wonder if…” “My home?” she asks, as if she feels offended by the thought that the word “home” uttered from her lips means the place she lives and not him. “... breakfast.” “What?” “You should ask if we can have pancakes for breakfast. Always had pancakes for breakfast when I was-” He yawns “younger.” For some odd reason, they stop suddenly under a stoplight, Will’s complaining about some sort of music stuck in his head, and he takes his head off her shoulder. “Do you like me back?” He whispers for a moment, and then pauses, contemplates, then continues. “No, not like. Do you… love me? That’s worse.” He wrinkles his nose. “How about this,” He says, deliriously. “Let’s get married.” "You're drunk." Kym says, her eyes holding emotion like nostalgia or sadness or something. It seems lately she only talks to the comatose, the people who aren't really there, it seems as if she's actually alone right now. She is speaking to a man- no, not really. “We’re not getting married.” She is speaking with a boy who never got the chance to be a boy. She is talking to someone she knows she loves deeply but she will never say it aloud. She will wake up tomorrow and it'll be different. But nothing will have changed. “No, but really, think of it. We could get married. And then I could tell you I love you every, and I won’t have to ask you if you love me. Because we’d be married.” “Being married doesn’t mean you’re in love though.” He hums, closes his eyes, like he’s listening to music of some sort. (She doesn’t know this- but he is. He is listening to her voice, a melodic thing that does not haunt his dreams. A song that he wishes did, but one he knows he will never come to hate. He is listening to her voice like it is a symphony, because to him, it is.) “It does in stories though.” There’s a pause in the air- a hesitation in her breath, a poem behind her eyes, and a heart that is trying to escape from underneath her chest- a pulse at the ends of her fingertips, and an eternity of silence before she answers again. "You're drunk… and I don't want to lose you when you remember this. I don’t want you to run away from me. You're drunk. I don't want to lose you. If we... If I love you, you'll go. I'll make you leave, if I love you. And I... Don't want that. I don't want you to leave. I need you." “Then I won’t remember this tomorrow.” he says simply, like it doesn’t ache to say such things at all- and somehow the edges of his fingertips find hers as they stand side by side under a streetlight, and she is shaking, trembling- flickering like a flame. She does not want to lose him. But she is burning him away. "Just for the night.” He repeats. “I won’t remember it after, I promise. I won’t even tell anyone if we don’t get married, I don’t really even have anyone to tell anyways." "Will..." The melody of her voice rings like a haunting tune, and his heart skips a beat. The light switches to green, and she sees something change in his eyes. Not like he's hurt or anything but- his eyes change with the light, and something in her changes. Something changes, and she lets out a breath, and the moment is different and she grabs his hand back. Intertwines it in hers. “Sure. I’ll marry you. We’re married now, no take backs.” “Like I’d ever say ‘no’ to see you in a wedding dress.” And she laughs. And they keep walking on. – "Tell me a story." He asks, reaching up, holding the sleeve of her uniform. “A story?” She asks softly, like it does not ache to repeat his words. “What of?” “Hm,” he hums in response. “The type where everyone’s happy. No disasters.” She smiles slightly, thinks. "Alright. Have you heard of the songbirds myth?" She asks, her voice melodic in the type of haunting way, like the ring of a bell. Like the beat of his heart. -- And when he wakes up, there is a voice in the doorway. And his heart keeps beating. And it does not skip. And it does not race, and it does not falter. It just keeps on beating. “Hey,” she says, and then “are you feeling better?,” and then she brings her hand down to her side, and she shifts on her feet. "Yesterday you…" She doesn’t say anything like ‘yesterday you said you loved me’ or ‘yesterday you asked to get married’ or ‘I said yes' or even ‘we held hands after that’. She doesn’t say anything at all, and he closes his eyes and listens to her mother play the piano. And she loves him, and they are not married, but they are- and it doesn’t count anyways. But now he doesn’t have to ask if she loves him or anything, because when he says it, there will be a pause from her afterwards, because they are in love, and in stories when they are married they don’t need to say they are in love, because it’s a given. When he says he loves her, there will be a pause from her- an absence of any words at all, because she does not need to say it. It is already there in the air- from the back of her chest- the flickering beating of her heart, and it is behind her breath, and it is in a certain look in her eye. She loves him, with a burning sort of way- and he loves her, in the melting kind of way. But it did not save them. And it did not save her.