Run Away ✧ Sebastian Sallow

chapter forty-two

DArkSide by Bring Me The Horizon

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Trigger Warning: This chapter includes sensitive conduct - please see the comment for a full description of conduct.

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It never felt like the world could change in seven days. If it had been created in such a time, it seemed possible that it could change just as fast, but it just never seemed likely. Seven days felt like such an insignificant amount of time as if it had been a few pebbles of sand in an hourglass. In a blink of an eye, Desmond Esper had gone from sitting by her side, to alone once again.

Not much had been accomplished in the seven days since their breakup.

Most of the time had been spent in the loneliness of his dorm. All of his classes had gone unattended, but he couldn't get himself to care about them anymore. The year would be ending in a few short weeks and then his attendance wouldn't matter to anyone. All of them would graduate and part ways, forever.

Seven days had felt like forever without Antheia Wytners.

"You have a visitor," Amit Thakkar called as he entered the shared dorm. All of his roommates had been light-footed the past week around Desmond, no one had given him a hard time for mopping around their room all day. A gesture he was grateful for.

Desmond already had his suspicions about who his visitor was. "I'm not really interested in talking to anyone right now," He admitted, "Can you tell him that I'll send an owl to him later." There was zero intent to follow through with that promise. He had nothing to write about because there was nothing that he wanted to talk about.

The past seven days were spent laying about his dorm reading over books to try and forget about the sinking emptiness in his chest, trying to find an answer to how things could have been saved. A year of his life had flashed by in a blink of an eye and he was still trying to understand what had happened. Anything of importance he read over, but found no comfort in it. Every night he'd find his way back to the letter that Antheia had given him and wonder if they had made the right choice. Was it all a lie? Should he have tried harder to get her to change her mind? Or had he just accepted that something had always been wrong?

He read the letter over and over again trying to find answers in it. It was an endless cycle of sorrow and doubt that he hadn't been able to break out of. There was certainly no point in discussing his heartbreak until he could understand how to stop it.

Amit shrugged his shoulders with a shy smile, "I'm afraid you'll have to tell him yourself this time." As he stepped away, Desmond hadn't realized the taller boy was hiding behind him in the shadows of the Ravenclaw Tower. Ominis Gaunt had been growing frustrated by the excuses and after seven days he decided that was enough. 

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"Even stars burn out," Ominis had told him later that day, "Nobody is perfect in this world. There is nothing that survives time, everything comes to an end, but it doesn't mean that you should act as if there is no time left anymore."

The afternoon had shifted to the point where the drinks were tasting like it was time to speak philosophically about life.

At first, Ominis had attempted to conceive Desmond to join him at the Three Broomsticks for drinks. However, he wasn't thrilled about being around that many people in his sour mood. His friend's presence was company enough. Rather the two found some solitary in sharing a bottle of firewhiskey and wandering around the castle grounds. The better part of an hour or two had passed and about half the bottle of liquid between them. It wasn't until they found their way to the lake's edge that the night turned into a discussion of life.