So Take my Tears as Token

so take my tears as tokens

THIS IS NOT MY STORY BUT IT MADE ME CRY OUT OF SADNESS AND BEAUTY AND I WANTED TO PUT IT ON WATT PAD AND ACKNOWLEDGE IT IT IS ORIGINALLY FROM FLUGGERBUTTER ON FANFICTION.NET

The first time she comes home and sees him, still scrawny, and shorter than her-some heavy wall comes up between them, wide, tall, unbreakable.

He returns after six years of aimless wanderlust. Their reunion is tearful like she half-hoped it would be, but only on his part, and for all the wrong reasons: for the moment she peers, hopeful, into the kitchen, and catches sight of boyish curls and still-wide eyes, she stiffens, her entire body buzzing, flooded with a painkiller she never asked for.

When the unnamed drug wears off, all she knows is hatred.

She hates the boy who waits so patiently at the kitchen table, as he pretends he isn't terrified to see her. She ignores the tears in his eyes because sheloathes him. Because he is a boy. Because his feet fit her shoes. Because his height closer matches her sister's, with whom he spends far more time now, anyway. They play video games and tag and tumble through the air with wands and wings and magic, and she watches through windows and fights down the urge to snap the sword at his thin little belt.

For a while she is jealous. She wants that-she wantshim-she wants to see the world from the sky again and run her hands along the wings that have carried her-but the gap between them widens and as the years pass she stops wishing to fly.

She comes to terms with the fact that she is chained to the Earth, destined to be buried in it. He remains aether: he will float freely, ageless, eternal.

"'Brina?"

"Jake." She drops any indication of their familial ties because this boy he has brought back to her is too different-really, too much the same-as when he took him away.

"You gotta know it's not his fault-"

"You're right."

His breath of relief came too soon.

"It's yours."

The boy cannot sleep. He sits on the roof and stares glassy-eyed as the stars blink above him, trying to speak; he cannot understand the nebula in which they converse but he reaches out one still-small hand to see if he can catch one anyway.

Grow up, he thinks they might be winking.

"I'm trying," he says. He pulls his knees close and sits until the stars have fallen. The dawn brings with a tiredness he cannot, for all his years, ever recollect feeling.

She is soon awash with apathy. A shrug is her knee-jerk response. She decides that Jake and Daphne cannot be blamed for her old friend's misgivings; little by little, everyone but he receives absolution. She no longer spares him second glances, ruthlessly ignores his neverending stream of counterfeit apologies, treats him like the child he is with ferocious indifference. be She's never been like this before; always it was stubbornness and screaming and now she just doesn't care, because what can she do? She's not in charge of his biology. She maybe, might have, thought she was, a long, long time ago, but now she knows she's not a factor; she doesn't mean a thing to him.

The years stretch on. She continues to grow, to age, to live; he continues, simply, to be.

He stands in front of mirrors and tries to force his bones to lengthen. He prays for hair to sprout from his unmarred face and scrawny chest; he downs potions and hexes and charms that are Not Safe for Consumption. Maybe, he thinks, he hopes, whenever he tugs on his sneakers, they'll be too tight. Maybe eating so much will aid his growth spurt. Maybe now that Daphne's getting taller, he will too. Maybe, maybe, maybe-but when he measures the top of his head on the bedroom doorframe, it still matches up with the thick black line he marked in Sharpie seven years ago.