Set Me Free

'Until one day, he had moved on.'

"The greater the love, the greater the tragedy when it's over."

I woke up the next morning with a heavy head and even heavier heart.

I didn't remember many things from the night before, but the thing I remembered in the most clarity was my goodbye to Daniel. I wasn't ready for it to end like that, wasn't fully ready to say goodbye.

Originally, this is what I wanted. I wanted to forget, I wanted to leave it all behind in the past. Seeing him again just reminded me of how much I needed him. I had never felt reliant on a person before, like I somehow needed them to feel okay again. The feeling scared me. I had always been fiercely independent, okay with being by myself, now I felt a little lost.

I hated to admit it, couldn't admit it anywhere else except for my own head, but I needed him. I really needed him.

And I had just him go.

I watched as he said goodbye, watched as he walked away and out of my life. We had been through so much together that it didn't make sense to give up now, to say goodbye now.

I felt the tears from last night resurface but this time I didn't hold them back. I let them pour from my eyes, I don't even try to wipe them away.

"Elizabeth?" I hear Holly call from outside my door, "are you dead? Passed out? Can you at least reply to me so I know that you're breathing?" This is usually how we check up on each other after a heavy night of drinking. She was used to me staying hidden in my room all day after we had been out, I just have to let her know that I'm at least still alive. I try to stay calm, try to keep my voice even as I reply to her, somehow I don't think I pull it off.

"I'm okay," I choke out, another sob taking over.

Hearing the sadness in my voice, Holly has opened my door and is sitting in my bed with me so quickly, I barely blinked before it all happened.

"Okay, tell what is wrong and tell me now," she orders.

So I tell her.

I tell her all about the warehouse, every terrifying second. I realise as I'm saying it that I never really spoke to Holly about any of this since I've been home. She knew that I had been kidnapped, she knew the basics, but she didn't know the horrors I lived through. We had never been the kind of friends to tell each other our feelings, we had always been the friends that you laughed about it with once it was over. I'm only now just realising that I need it both ways, I need to be able to tell Holly the bad and then laugh about the good.

I then tell her about Daniel. How he helped me survive, how he made the whole experience slightly better, how without him I would have surely fallen apart in there. I then tell her about how he escaped and about how I never told the police about his existence.

I then tell her about last night.

"He was there Holly in the flesh. I never thought I would see him again, but there he was, free and happy and okay. I got to hug him, kiss him, tell him that I love him and it felt good, it felt right. I truly believed that the best way to move on would be to say goodbye, but I'm now realising that it's not. If I'm going to survive the aftermath of all of this, I need to have him by myside. He just walked away Holly. He said goodbye, kissed me and left without even looking back." The tears keep pouring as I tell her all of this. Holly just sits there, letting me speak. She doesn't interrupt, doesn't give her opinion. She simply lets me get it all of my chest and I'm really appreciative of her for doing that.

"Then you have to get him back." She tells me as if it is the simplest thing in the world.

"I don't even know where to find him. He said he had found somewhere to live, but that could be anywhere! How can I get him back when I don't even know where to look?"

"Okay, call me crazy or cliché whatever, but something tells me that you just will. Think about it, you met this boy in the worst of circumstances, exactly at the point where you needed someone to save you. And then last night, out of all the people you could run into, it was him. Elizabeth, I think you are actually meant to be with this guy, and the universe has a funny way of making sure that those special people end up finding each other in the end."

She was right, I was going to call her crazy.

It wasn't fate that put us in a room together, it was a group of criminals. It wasn't fate that made us meet last night, it was alcohol, a desperate need to fit in and poor judgement. Fate had nothing to do with me meeting Daniel and it sure as hell wasn't going to help me find him now. If I wanted to make this work, I was going to have to find him myself and fast. I didn't know how much longer I could go on, pretending everything was okay, without him there to make it better.

"I'm going to find him."

Daniel's POV

Daniel was a mess the next day.

With a headache that reminded him of his bad decisions last night, he also remembered seeing Elizabeth.

That club was the last place her ever expected her to be, however looking back on it now he could remember her saying something about her wild nights out with friends. He believed she may even have mentioned that club by name. Maybe that was what led him there last night, a distant memory of a place Elizabeth had mentioned, his subconscious leading him there in a desperate attempt to see her again.

Some part of him wished that he hadn't.

It was so much easier to try and forget her when she wasn't there in front of him. Now that he had seen her on the outside world, free from the fear, that was all he could think about.

She was smiling, really smiling. She was laughing freely, joyfully. He always imagined her to be the life and soul of a party and now he knew he was right. 

But he had to say goodbye.

She needed to be able to move on with her life without the shadow of him there, reminding her of the evil in the world. She needed to meet someone who she could be different with, someone that hadn't seen that side of her.

The thought of Elizabeth with another man killed him on the inside. It tore his heart in two and then trampled on it right in front of him. He knew that she had to move on, he just couldn't think about it too much, not without thinking that it should be him.

He had tried to deny it, but deep down he knew that she should be with him. He needed her like he needed air, there was no freedom for him if he didn't have her.

But he needed to move on too.

He had set Elizabeth free and now he had to accept it. There was no going back, no grovelling for forgiveness. He had made his choice and now he needed to stick to it.

It was just going to be a lot harder than he imagined.

He could do it, he could go about his life pretending that he wasn't thinking about Elizabeth all the time. He could laugh and smile and talk to people while pretending that he didn't wish it was with Elizabeth. He could fake it until one day, it was real.

Until one day, he had moved on.