open hearts

Sohalia

Don't try to wake me up
Even if the sun really does come out tomorrow

As she talked, he seemed to calm incrementally, and though her heart still ached and her face still hurt (her nose was still broken), she began to feel like maybe they were past the worst of the pain that she'd inadvertently caused. Like maybe they could come together and start to heal. And as he took her hand, she relaxed a little, letting out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.

But he wasn't done, not by a long shot, and tension began to creep slowly back into her shoulders as he continued to speak. He wasn't wrong, of course - the timing was bad, she could see that now, and though a voice in the back of her mind screamed that this wasn't fair, that he wasn't listening to her, the majority of her couldn't blame him for the questions he'd been asking. Of course he would second-guess her intentions. What had she done to reassure him otherwise?

And so when Jude suggested time apart, it was hardly a surprise, but it was still a shock. They hadn't spent any significant time apart since they'd gotten together - and, truthfully, since before then, when they were just friends. Ever since they'd met, they'd been more or less joined at the hip, and she wasn't sure she knew how to live without him anymore. And even though he said he wasn't breaking up with her, and that he wasn't mad, it still felt like a knife through the heart that he wanted to be away from her.

She wished he was Attuned so that she could open up the bond, so that he could feel what she was feeling, so that he could understand that this wasn't about wanting something other than him, that it was about wanting something in addition to him. But would that even help? Or would that just make things worse? Maybe she was just stupid and selfish, and this was the beginning of the end, and it was entirely her fault.

And, yet again, she had no one to blame but herself.

But even though she didn't understand, and even though her instinct was to hold on tighter, and even though everything in her screamed that this felt like goodbye, she nodded slowly. "O - okay," she whispered, trying and failing to hide the hurt in her eyes. "I - I can find a doctor here, then, and I'll just... stay." She reached tentatively for the bag he'd packed for her. "Where will you go?" she asked. "Can I write to you, or do you want... to not hear from me for a while?"

Don't believe anything you say anymore
In the morn, in the morning