By Any Other Name

C.15

L'S POV

After Rosie went to bed when we got back, I sat myself in my chair and stared at the screens, passing out before I could stop myself.

I dreamed of the day I left Wammy's House, the night before. I couldn't remember details, but I remembered a girl.

This girl and I had been friends since she came to the orphanage when we were four. I was alone before then, before her. The other kids tried to play with me, and I beat all of them up. Wammy gave me my own room after that, and I was alone since. Until her.

What was her name?

We played together all the time as kids, spent hours and hours with each other until they had to separate us to bathe or sleep. Most nights she would sneak into my room and we would talk about nonsense until we fell asleep.

The adults gave up on separating us by the time we were fourteen, and by then, we had fallen in love. We followed each other around like lost puppies. She had moved a lot of her stuff into my room, but still slept with the other girls in her own bed some nights. We were the reason most of us got "the talk" at the orphanage.

It was also when she was fourteen when we finally learned that her father was a drug addict, and abusive one at that. He abused her and her mother up until she was three and her mother fleed France to come to England with her. Less than a year later, her father found them and killed her mother before killing himself, leaving her an orphan.

She went through some tough times after that. All at once, her anger problems were explained, and why she couldn't be given certain medicines, since addiction is genetic. She went into a sort of shock, and she sat in my room for weeks on end.

I always was by her, making sure she knew she would be okay and that I loved her.

We had good times, as well. She sang or hummed as she worked, and the kids loved her singing. There were two songs she sang constantly, one was called On Melancholy Hill, and the other... I couldn't remember the name of, but the lyrics came to me at night sometimes, even to this day.

There was soon a time where she would sing the really little ones to sleep. One or two would follow her around during the day, begging her for a quick verse.

Mello liked to sit with her as they did puzzles and she would hum. He just liked her voice, he often said.

Near liked to be sung to sleep, he loved On Melancholy Hill. It was my favourite from her, too.

But when we were sixteen, both close to seventeen, I was given a case out of the country, and I soon found that I couldn't take her with me. So, with all my things packed the night before I left, she spent the night in my room, and we made love that night.

It wasn't our first. We'd fooled around before, had sex and whatnot. But this night, I knew there was something different, something would change when I left. I felt it in my soul, and I wanted to remember her. Her beautiful body, her being, her soul.

It was the best either of us had ever had, given that we gave our virginities to each other and had been with no one else since. I often revisted that night when I was alone and had an itch that I needed to relieve.

I always remembered the soft curves of her body, the pale skin under my hands. How she curved and stretched to meet my touch. It never mattered where I touched her, even something as innocent as her arm or hand, she always reacted beautifully, be it a moan or a smile.

Her smile. I loved her smile, there was just something so pure and simple about it. Her lips were almost always busted from her biting them or getting hit for angering someone else with her anger issues. But when she smiled and her teeth gleamed behind pink lips, I fell in love twenty times all over again.

I remembered the feeling of us being connected. Her calves were at my waist, and she was so warm. So so so warm. I could never forget that warmth where she enveloped me inside of her. She was so soft, so smooth, so inviting.

I remembered a moment where I leaned down to press a small kiss to her neck, and a bubble of laughter from her lips made me look at her face, into those deep green eyes of hers.

"What?" I had asked.

"Nothing. You're stupid." She said, and with a grin, I lifted her up and into my lap, continuing to move in and out of her, watching her mouth fall open, eyes still on me.

"I love you." She smiled, hands tracing my arms. I loved the feeling of her touch and craved it with every cell in me.

"I love you." I said and she cupped my cheeks in those soft hands of hers and raised my face to kiss me.

And that's when I awoke with one name on my mind.

"Aurora."