Stardust (Complete)

Flaws

"How is someone like you single?"

The question caught her completely off guard and hung in the air, unanswered. How do you answer that?

He mistook her silence, and cleared his throat awkwardly, backtracking quickly.

"I don't mean to..."

She smiled, closing her eyes, feeling exasperated, as she always did when her friends pestered her about it.

"It's alright," she assured him.

Stupid question.

Though, it was one she'd wondered, herself, but about him.

She shrugged.

"Somethings wrong with me, I guess," she put simply.

"Ash," he chuckled, his voice light and kind, as always, slipping an arm around her, "there isn't anything wrong with you."

"Oh yes, I forgot, I'm perfect," she countered, rolling her eyes. "Not."

"No," he agreed, nestling into her hair, "but no one is."

She snorted, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Some people even less than others," she joked.

"You keep your flaws in the light," he offered, "you try to improve yourself, instead of pretending to be perfect. I like that about you. You're genuine."

"I guess."

They were silent for a second, and he pulled away to study her.

"Have you ever had anyone?" He'd noticed that there was a timidnes about her, like a part of her that had been unexplored, unloved, part of her mind that she'd never been coaxed to reveal before, and he'd wondered, but she smiled tightly, avoiding his gaze.

"Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"When I was younger." She shrugged dismissively. "You know?"

He tilted his head quizzically as she continued.

"When you're young and stupid and don't know any better and you want someone to love you so badly that you believe it's real, just because they said it was?"

She said it in a great rush, looking anywhere but him, and he felt for her hand, realising that, what he thought was shyness, just a part of her personality, was really something that had been broken. Maybe she'd believed in love, once, before she'd been made skeptical.

"You meet someone you think treats you well, but later realise they didn't. You don't see it at the time though, so you give them... everything..." she said it with a trace of bitterness, and he knew.

Once, she hadn't been so timid, until someone tricked her into giving herself to them, heart, mind and body.

"Then a week later, they dump you once they got what they wanted."

"Ouch," he grimaced.

"Yeah."

She shrugged, completely aloof, and, maybe, because she'd told herself often enough that she didn't care, that it had become a reality, and she really didn't.

Years had past, more than enough that she had gotten over it, at least over him. But, she sometimes wondered, no, feared, that, because there'd been no others in that whole six years since, maybe she hadn't moved on at all? Maybe she was so scarred that she really hadn't gotten over it. She just remembered, too vividly, how she was made to feel; foolish, angry and... flawed.

Like there was something wrong with her, something that repelled people, made her impossible to really love.

"How old were you?" He wondered, feeling a pang of sorrow for a younger version of Ash, a version that had been betrayed by someone who told her they cared for her, only to leave her broken hearted and remorseful.

"Old enough to know better," she said offhandedly, a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth, but that was as far as it reached.

"But, you're smarter now," he offered and she nodded, smiling gratefully.

"I like to think so."