My Angel

My Angel: Chapter 1

It was too empty.

It was dead.

This was my nightmare, it was my living - waking nightmare, cruelly mocking me with reality.. I gripped the front of my shirt, a harsh stabbing hitting me in my chest as I slid down the tree, slumping to the ground.

Whatever I'd been looking for, it wasn't here - it never was. I thought that maybe coming would give me some closure, or some kind of relief. Just anything to help ease the weight, but I was an idiot, as usual, just like everyone said. I was pathetic.

I was nothing without... without her. I was nothing in comparison. I was a boring, plain, weak, nothing human. I choked out a gasping cry as a few tears ran down my face; my whole body shaking as the night she left me replayed in my head. When she told me the truth. When she left.

I thought she'd loved me. It felt like I was breaking all over again and this stupid, horrible meadow was just... I couldn't handle looking at the reminder of what I couldn't be for her. What I could never be.

It took a minute, but I forcibly shook my head, letting the thought go - or at the very least trying too. I could still remember Charlie's face this morning. The look of fear he had when he saw me this morning. It wasn't hard to tell that he was freaking out, that I was slipping back into my depression, that the progress I'd made with Jules was just gone.

This was the opposite of healing, or closure, or whatever it was that he had been wanting me to do. It added to the hurt that I was letting him down like this, that all the effort of at least pretending I was ok really was just pretending.

But this place had been magical, our place, and I thought... I just thought that maybe seeing it again, it would somehow kickstart my heart, or something, that it would bring me closer to her or at the very least make me feel alive again.

It just ended up showing me how distant she was. Like me - my meadow was empty, devoid of the love she gave. It looked like it was dying.

I shook my head hard again, closing my eyes tight as I tried to stop hyperventilating. This was a mistake, a stupid one. I needed to get out of here.

Shakily, I put a hand on the tree, standing up, as I force myself to slow my breathing down. I tried to take a step back the way I came, but my stupid legs were numb, my whole body was, I realized. I don't know how I'd even gotten to my feet like this.

At least Julie isn't here to see this, I thought, so glad now that I didn't end up finding this place with her. It would've made the tears running down my face so much more embarrassing. I'd have never lived it down, not that I would want to in the first place, but it's nice to at least have one thing go my way, to have a bit of luck in at least something.

Is it really luck that you're alone? Seems like it happens a lot, the traitorous thought shot through my head. I can't help letting out a frustrated growl, a scowl on my face as I fight against my own thoughts, if for nothing but Charlie's sake that I at least look normal when I get home.

"Shut up," I muttered out shakily, letting my shoulder rest against the tree, leaning on it hard as I waited out my episode. There's not much else I can do without someone here to drag me out of it.

That's when I saw it, just in the corner of my eye.

My head snaps up, my eyes zeroing in on a figure, who was walking out from the trees from the north, about thirty yards away.

I was numb, and my head was working valiantly to tear me down with its words, but the wave of emotion that tore through me overpowered everything I was feeling. The elegant way the figure floated along the ground, the pallid skin, it made me hope for a fraction of a second.