Never ownED myself

To love

Original song:
https://youtu.be/xEeFrLSkMm8

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.----  1 Corinthians 13:4-8

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✾✾✾✾    TOM POV✾✾✾✾
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Tom appeared in the part of the forest he knew by heart. A distant stream whispered through the trees, steady and familiar. The season was shifting again. The breeze, once sharp enough to steal warmth, now carried the scent of thawing earth. Snow retreated in soft patches, and soon the branches would burst with new leaves and blooms, transforming the bare landscape into something living again.

He lifted his gaze to the moon.
The last time I stood here... Annie.
The memory warmed his chest. It had been a season and a half since that night on the way to the resistance camp. That is when he realized the ice around his heart had begun to melt.

Annie had fallen asleep on his shoulder, and the simple weight of her had sent him spiraling. After his mother's death and his father's cruelty, he had forgotten what closeness felt like. He'd frozen, afraid to move, afraid to breathe.
Don't wake her... don't ruin this.
Then her breathing had brushed against his ear. For once, her mind had been quiet. Unburdened. He'd shifted to make her more comfortable, but she followed him instinctively, like they were magnetized.
Stay with me.
His heart had surged with a rhythm he didn't recognize.

He had been too scared back then, too overwhelmed by his own ruins to understand it. Now he did. Annie had changed him as much as he had changed her. His heart beat again. 
Maybe I'm allowed to want something more.

Tom reached into his backpack and pulled out Annie's sweater. He slipped his head inside it, inhaled deeply, and exhaled into the cold night.
She gave me the strength to break my bond. To leap when I thought I'd never rise again.

He walked between the trees, brushing his shoulder against the bark on purpose, grounding himself in a world she had made bearable again.

Everything had always seemed effortless for Annie. Even after learning the truth about her mother.
How does she keep moving forward? How does she do it?

Tom looked out at the moonlit clearing. Her eyes had pierced straight through his shell, and he had felt her heartbreak like it was his own. He'd prepared himself to steady her through the storm.
I can handle it. I can help her.

But the past had lashed out at him instead. That day for the first time since his mother's death, he had cried. Cried for her, for his sister, for the life he once had. Annie had cracked open the grief he'd buried so deeply he had forgotten it existed. Since then, he had begun to heal and Annie... Annie had become his compass.

When he reached the crystal-clear water, Tom watched the moon's reflection drift toward the edge as the sun pushed its way across the sky. Day after day they fled from each other, yet always briefly met again holding each other until one slipped away so the other could shine. Like that, he thought, I just want time with her again. Their duties kept them apart; sharing a room was the only thread still tying them together. Most nights he only saw her like a ghost might watching her sleep.

Annie's droopy eyes, the bruised darkness beneath them, haunted him. Tom lowered himself onto the gravel, the cold biting through his bones.

Leah, once so playful, now drifted away from Annie more each day. Their bond had once been whole, filled with laughter. A stark contrast to his own wolf, whom he had rejected out of spite toward his father, choosing magic instead. He knew the hollowness that came from severing that connection, the resentment, the shame of breaking yourself in half and pretending you hadn't. But Annie... her situation was far worse. Leah hadn't abandoned her by her own will. Annie had unknowingly pushed the bond to its breaking point. And now Leah was fading.