One Last Time [Vauseman Fanfic]

21: The Silence

I'm buried in this house,
I'll never leave this floor.
A page full of je t'aime's for you,
I know I should have said it more.

--

2 months, 1 day.

There were 4 different kinds of silence. The first was the kind of silence where you were on your own or in a quiet place, reading, writing or thinking. Nobody is speaking but somehow the world is speaking to you as you get lost in the page of a book or lost in the words that spew out onto the page through ink, even lost in the jungle of your own thoughts.

The second kind of silence is the comfortable one, the kind of silence where you're with someone you know better than you know yourself and you can just sit there for hours in silence, not needing to utter a single syllable because the silence says everything for you. It says all of your love, emotion and everything that you cannot find the words to say.

The third kind of silence is the painful silence; this silence is the type that makes you cringe both on the inside and out. The kind of silence that only appears when you've done or said something so incredibly stupid, or hurtful, or selfish that there are no longer any words to describe just how much you have done wrong and so only the silence pertains, telling you and torturing you at the same time.

The final kind of silence is the eternal silence. This kind of silence is not one that many people get to experience many times in their life, some only once; or twice if they're lucky. This kind of silence is the strangest because it is neither good nor bad, it is neither welcome or unwelcome. It is stuck in a strange grey area that you have to tiptoe around for fear of disturbing the delicate balance that creates it. This is the type of silence that only occurs when you have witnessed or been a part of something so great and something life-changing that the silence falls and lasts a lifetime because in that moment you cannot bring yourself to disturb it by saying the words that form slowly in your brain. You keep that memory, that silence, instilled in your brain for a lifetime. This is the kind of silence that Alex had heard twice already. Both times in the mere space of a few days. The first time she had experienced this silence was when Piper had left her alone in their apartment in Paris after her mom had died. Alex was so confused and hurt that she let the silence of the apartment close around her like a suffocating blanket, she couldn't even bring herself to cry. The second time she heard that silence was at her mom's funeral, she had been standing at the foot of her mom's coffin, the whole church waiting for her words but all Alex could do was stare at them. Everything she had planned to say was lost in space and time as that silence wrapped around her again, this time a warmer and more welcome cushion and everyone seemed to understand what it meant because one by one they smiled at Alex and nodded.

It was with this knowledge that Alex walked into the dorms and turned to see Piper sitting on her bunk, waiting. Alex had experienced all four kinds of silence with Piper before and each had made her as giddy as the next. It hadn't taken her long to realise that she was in love with Piper the first time, she had been so afraid to admit it to herself and to Piper that she tucked it away; convincing herself that she could just ignore it until Piper said it first. Alex had no qualms with admitting her love for Piper now, it was a burden and a blessing to her. She took a shaky breath and started towards Piper's cube, each slow step Alex forced herself to remember something about Piper that she loved.

One step, Piper's smile. Two steps, Piper's laugh. Three steps, Piper's strange courage. Four steps, Piper's eyes. Five steps, Piper's smell. Six steps, Piper's humour. Seven steps, Piper's ability and inability to love. Eight steps, Piper's sense of adventure. Nine steps, Piper's innocence. Ten steps, Piper's skin and the way it felt on her own. Ten steps, Piper.