No Ring To Rule

Mike was alone in his study working on another screenplay.

El had been acting a little weird and mostly avoiding him all day long and he wanted to give her space. He knew he would have to ask her what was going on before they went to bed. With El he never knew if it was going to be a big thing or a small thing. She took the smallest things to heart, while sometimes shrugging off the big things.

That's one of the things he loved about her. She could be unpredictable some days, and other days Mike knew exactly what she would do or say.

Today though, had been a little odder than the other odd days. Mike stopped and smiled to himself. Who else could say that about their wife? Who else even had a wife like El. Nobody that's who. Only his closest friends knew how special she was, and how special she was to him.

Mike didn't think he's get over the initial shock he had when El came up behind him when he was sitting at his desk.

"Mike?" She said in a small voice. Uh, oh. He knew that voice. Something was really really wrong.

He turned around, trying to expect anything. He could tell she'd been crying. It broke Mike's heart to hear her cry, or to know that she had been crying. For the most part El did very little crying in the last few years. Their life together and been idyllic, stuff of faery tales and Harlequin romances. They'd never had so much as a disagreement. To Mike it wasn't about his own happiness, that was taken care of by just being with El. He put all his time and effort to make sure El was as happy as she could be. He made sacrifices gladly knowing that putting a smile in those beautiful eyes was worth anything he could do.

So when he saw that she'd been crying, he wanted to fix it immediately.

"I'm sorry Mike." She held up her hand. Mike did a double take not quite sure what he'd missed.

El was no longer wearing her wedding ring.

Mike went cold. No no no no no no no. It couldn't be that. There hadn't been any indication that they were having problems. None whatsoever, El wasn't very good at hiding her emotions, that was another thing he loved about her. So this had to be something else.

"I'm sorry Mike." She said again, "I still love you...I l-lost m-my r-ring." El's tears poured out of her eyes in torrents.

"Watch this El." Mike said, he went over to the window, opened it up, took off his wedding ring and threw it outside.

El was wide eyed, questions creeping into her eyes, still sprinkling tears.

Mike gathered her in his arms, hugging her tightly.

"Our love is not about little pieces of metal we wear. The rings are symbolic, some people don't even wear them. We can get new ones if you want, but it's not about the rings. It's about us. It's about the way we feel about each other. Nobody who see us together would even question our love. We bought the rings to be traditional for our parents, and I'll admit I wanted you to have a traditional wedding... but I never needed any of that. You were all I ever needed Eleven. From the first night I saw you cold and alone in the woods. I knew that night you were all I wanted. The year we were apart was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. And when you came back I knew I never wanted to be apart from you again."

Mike stood back, kissed her softly, brushed away her tears and held her hands up.

"We do not need rings El, we just need each other….and we already have that."