Iplier and Septiceye One-Shots and Imagines - Book 2

Bittersweet (?)

As far as he could tell, her eyes had always been bittersweet.  There was nothing she said, nothing she did, that made him think that.  It was always her eyes and the way she smiled.  Sometimes it was a true smile; sometimes not.  They were always hiding something from him, something he couldn't quite grasp.  It reminded him quite like waiting indoors in a storm: you weren't in the middle of it, couldn't feel a thing about it, yet if you listened, really listened, the storm was all you could concentrate on.  That was all she reminded him of.

A beautiful storm.

Nevertheless, with all that said and done, her emotions he still couldn't place.  It wasn't sad; not in that sense, at least.  It was a pale melancholy, a dull sunrise after a lightning storm, a lonely chirp of a cricket in the late evening.  Sad, lost, alone.  But was melancholy the best way to describe it?  When he saw deeper, it wasn't all misery, not like that.  There was happiness in it, a bleak sort of future of hope and turmoil thrust into one.  Hope, nonetheless.  So, at the end of every day he was caught up on thinking about it, all he could stick with was bittersweet.

He often asked her if everything was all right; what was a lass supposed to say to that?  It wasn't like he could insist; she hid it too well.

He knew little of her past.  It wasn't that she wasn't keen on telling him; he knew that if he wanted to, he could unravel her like an old tapestry and pluck the string of her past away until he discovered a new colour of humanity.  No, he knew he could do that.  He just couldn't ever bring himself to.  She vaguely brushed upon it, never diving too deep, never enough to pique a stranger's interest.  But it did his.  However, his reason to not ask?

He was scared.

Not fearful of her past.  He was well aware of how she was raised and born.  He didn't quite know what he was hesitant about, really.  Something in the back of his mind told him that maybe some demons should be left to rot in their cages.

However, one can only resist for so long.  So when he found the courage, he asked her.  What keeps you up at night?  Why are you afraid of the skeletons you keep in your closet?

She spoke nothing, but her eyes betrayed that same bittersweet moments flashing before her eyes.  He felt the aching of guilt deep in the pits of his stomach, knowing that he had brought up something not rightfully his to take.

Then she stood on the tips of her light, ballerina feet, and planted her lips on the corner of his.

That was a year ago.

A year gone and past, and the man was a year older.  The girl had aged, not physically but mentally.  Her smile were more tired, yet somehow wider.  Her mind was wiser, yet still clinging on to that naïve childhood she so hoped to keep with her forever, like blades of grass still grasping on to the last drops of morning dew in the early mornings.  Her eyes stayed the same.  It was already too old for her.  She had lived a thousand lifetimes and she had survived a million wars.  When life entered her in her mother's womb, it wasn't the first time, and when death would take her, he knew it wouldn't be the last.

Her bittersweet eyes held too much knowledge for this to be her first life.

There was nothing he could do about it, though.  Nothing to soothe her dying soul, nothing to calm her aching mind.  She clung on, wearily, to the last bits of what she could take of this world.

Until she no longer could.

He felt her fade that night.  Somehow.  At almost four in the morning, a piercing sharpness woke him from the clutches of sleep.  He cried out, for nothing had pained him like that one second.  And then, just like that, the pain was gone.

And he cried.

He cried not because of the pain, but for the reason of the pain.  To this day, he knows not how his body told him of her passing, but he knew she had gone away.  Wracked with sobs, he fell out of bed, almost screaming with his mental agony.

Hot tears streamed down his cheeks and neck.  He felt them cling onto his skin along with a cold sweat, stinging and freezing him.  Snot ran from his nose, but he made no move to wipe it away.  He barely noticed  it.  He felt sick to his stomach, as if a bad fever had overtaken him in those mere minutes.  His hands shook, his vision blurred, and he cried and cried until he could no more.

And just like that, it was done.

Her melancholic smile, her wizened gaze, her bittersweet eyes, were nothing more now than a mere memory; a fantasy only he would remember.  Clutching onto it desperately, he climbed back into bed, trembling and shivering weakly, waiting for morning and the sun to rise.  That's what she always told him.

Wait for the sun; it holds secrets that no man can touch.

So he waited.  Waiting, crying, in a desperate agony.  He would wake up.  He would see her again.  He would look into her bittersweet eyes, and he would know the meaning of happiness all over again.

Wasn't this all just a bad nightmare?

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Word count: 932