Darling Chaos

10. Chaos

Chaos found himself accusing Darling of everything. It was her fault he left her. Her fault he was unhappy. Her fault he was jealous that she was out there, quite possibly free from the pain he felt every. Single. Day.

But it wasn't fair of him to place the blame on her. He knew he had left her in search of something bigger. He had never been satisfied. He had everything, and yet he had still left in search of more.

It was his fault. Everything.

Today, he stood in his cabin in the middle of a secluded forest in Iceland. Snow littered the windows, falling softly and sticking to the glass. He leaned forward, peering closely and examining the tiny, nearly invisible patterns among them.

They were so fragile and delicate. So intricate, but nearly invisible to the human eye.

They were so breakable.

Chaos looked down at the suitcase in his hand, knowing at any moment there would be a knock on his door that would be signaling his departure to the airport.

Next, his commissioner had told him he would be traveling to Egypt and taking pictures while flying in a helicopter above the Nile River and the Pyramids of Giza. He would get a chance to ride a camel and speak with some of the natives to the Egyptian lands. He would even have a translator. So this next trip would be a dream come true, and not only such, but he wouldn't be alone the entirety of the trip.

Chaos thrived when he had the attention of others. He got his energy through talking to people, through being social.

Darling, he thought, was the exact opposite. Sure, she was kind. Everyone loved her! But even so, she only spoke a lot when she was either nervous or knew someone really well. She was fairly introverted, and he was not.

He had blamed their separation on that fact, for a while. But then he had come to the conclusion there was no putting the blame on anything other than himself. He had failed to realize even though they differed, they brought out the best in each other.

Suddenly he was thinking of Darling. He was thinking of the fact she was afraid of elevator doors because she thought they would close on her hand. So she always took the stairs. He was thinking of how she was always shivering and cold, even when it was ninety degrees outside. He was thinking of her love for Beauty and the Beast.

He remembered that one chilly night three months prior to that day, he had gone onto the roof after a fight with his mother and a long day at school. He had gone up in a bad mood, but as soon as he had stepped foot onto the roof, he noticed the pile of blankets and pillows and the little bundle in the middle of them. He could see the very tip of her hair, but she was otherwise completely wrapped in fuzzy blankets.

Chaos hurried to her side, staring at her laughingly and failing to notice the automatic grin that lit up his face. He looked down at her, popcorn and sodas and chips lying to her right, and a laptop with the movie Beauty and the Beast flickering across the screen.

"Finally! Took you long enough!!" She exclaimed, looking up at him and opening her blanket. He noticed even though she was literally swathed in blankets, she was still shivering. He hurried into the blanket with her, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. She grinned at him, and he felt a little flutter in his chest at that moment. A kind of flutter that was unfamiliar to him, a kind of flutter that told him that she was something he shouldn't be letting go of. A kind of flutter that reminded him that he loved her. He loved that girl.

Darling reached forward, pressing play and allowing the movie to start. She made sure he knew he had to deal with her singing along to each and every song, and he wasn't allowed to complain... even though she didn't have the best singing voice.

So they spent the next two hours watching Beauty and the Beast, munching on snacks, and singing horribly. But all Chaos could think of, that entire night, was Darling and how much he loved her.

That was the first and last time he had thought that he wanted to be with her forever. That night he had wanted to grow old with her.

But the next day, it was as if that night had never happened, and he completely forgot about the extreme amount of love he had for her.

And once he had gotten the proposition of taking his dream job, the fact that he loved her seemed to dissipate completely. Chaos had always put himself first.

And now, as Chaos heard the knock on the front door of the cabin, Chaos knew that his selfishness had gotten in the way of his feelings and had taken control of his heart. His pride and his cockiness had caused him to choose leaving for his own personal gain over staying with the only person who could ever make him happy. He hadn't realized at the time that leaving her would bring him misery.

And now, as he opened the door and greeted the man that would be driving him to the airport where he would start his next expedition, he knew with a surety that everything was his fault. And there was no coming back from that.