Do you really care that much? His thought echoes in her mind, and she almost answers. She wants to tell him that of course she cares about him; more than she cares about anything or anyone. He is all she has in this empty, unfair world. He is her only source of happiness, when she dares to allow herself to have it. Her reply is there, formulating in her head, until she can taste it on her tongue, and yet she retracts it before uttering a sound.
She is grateful, then, that he doesn’t have the ability to read her mind, the way she can his.
It makes it easy to push those feelings aside, to shove them to a far corner of her heart until they would begin to collect dust. It would only complicate things, if he knew the extent of how she felt. Of how she compares everyone she meets to him — no one is as handsome as him, no one is as charming as him, and no one is worth her time quite the way he is. Even though she leaves, and likely will always leave, he is the only one she will ever return to.
”I’m fine,” is her quiet reply, shifting her blue eyes away from his in an attempt to seem nonchalant. Of course he had noticed the way she tensed up. He noticed everything. Starsin often relied on her gift to gauge how others were feeling; she didn’t always understand how to read their subtle body language and silent words, but she was getting better at it. All it was really doing, however, was lending her the tools she needed to hide herself from the rest of the world.
Her slate gray skin trembles involuntarily at his tender touches against her neck, the tension in her muscles slowly releasing and becoming soft beneath his lips. She doesn’t know why she can’t always steel herself against him, but she has found that sometimes, it is futile to even try. His last words make her tilt her head up at him, regarding him carefully from behind a thick veil of forelock. ”How can you possibly be happy with me when I always leave?” There is a clip to her words, though they are not entirely cold, and her jaw tightens momentarily as she turns her face away from him, not allowing him to see the guilt and confusion that fills her eyes. Her mother had always left and she hated her for it. She doesn’t understand why he is not the same, and if it weren’t for the fact that she could read his every thought she would think he was a liar.
@[Ophanim]
