Never Alone

9 : 2 1 | A M

By the time Elliot stormed back to the car, Isabella was in tears.

Since the incident, she had very rarely been left alone, people constantly watching over her like hawks as if she was a wild animal destined to lose sanity and attack at any given moment. As if she was a bomb counting down the seconds until she self-destructed.

 Even when she left the apartment to run an errand, she was never alone. There were always people surrounding her. Hell, as of yesterday her aunt had decided to permanently run her business from home just so she could keep an eye on her. Like Isabella was some precious porcelain doll forseen to shatter.

 And she had found it all very irritating. The constant watching made her incredibly uncomfortable. Made her feel more victim than human. Why couldn't they see that she was capable of taking care of herself? She was never going to be able to find her footing if people kept carrying her. 

But now she realized that the constant presence of someone else was probably for a good reason.

The silence was quiet, a peaceful, deadly predator that disrupted her entire being as she was left alone with nothing but her thoughts. Her very, very insubordinate thoughts. They were unruly in every sense of the word, as unmanageable as they were uncontrollable as they spiralled out of control. Catching her in the hurricane.

They twirled in every direction, ricocheting off the side of her head and lodging themselves in her throat as she tainted the silence with her ugly sobs. Gripping the steering wheel. Everything was charging at her all at once, angry balls of fire that burnt and seared the small shreds of sanity she had left. Gripping the steering wheel tighter. 

Shaking.

It was all her fault.

Every single last bit of it.

She had craved for the silence to end. So much. So much that when the music came she had been unable to resist, so desperate to grab onto something melodic that she had ignored the dangerous chords that lay beneath the symphony.

And now that the song had ended she was the equivalent of a faulty piano. Sounds wrong. Looks wrong. Is wrong. And has too many notes in the minor key. In the midst of everything, she had forgotten that bad music still made sound. She was hibernating in silence, too scared to take the risk and play a note. 

She wasn't making music anymore. 

He had taken away her sheet music just as easily as he had placed it there. And now she couldn't play without it. Because she relied on it too much. Relied on him too much. Relied on him so much that she did not recognize the tell-tale signs of him leaving to play his own, haunting tune.

So that was how Elliot found her, throwing the car open with a sort of grieving anger as he did so. But he was too high on emotion to ask her what was wrong. He was too lost in his own stars to even glance at the sun losing energy in front of him. And it was selfish. But it was okay. Because Isabella didn't want planets revolving around her anymore.

So she just looked at him, crying. Stars leaking out of her eyes. Everything pouring out of her as she made no attempt to hold back her pain. For, every time she tried to stop, the thoughts would come again and push the tears forward once more. The dam in her mind had finally broken. The gas that made up the sun was running free.

So she just stared at him. Still crying. And then he was crying with her. And then she was climbing out of the car. And then they were crying together. And then they were holding each other. And then they were crying with each other.

And,

in that moment,

their stars

became

constellations.