Disclaimer: do I need one?  Is this in the public domain?  Anyway, just in case, I don't own the characters, books, &c.

The gate was closed behind him.

He didn't look back as he limped away, the imperfection in his stride made only worse by his consciousness of her eyes on his back.  Emily needn't think she was the only one with a scrap of pride to hide the crippling ache of love unreturned.

I don't love you.  She had said it, finally, after allowing him one summer of unabashed hope.  Yes, in all its foolishness and vanity, the hope that he'd always believed he could keep in check had finally taken over.  He'd planned the home, the wedding, the life ahead of him almost believing it might happen.

But to marry a star to a jarback?  He might have known it was impossible.  A man destroyed by the ugliness he was painfully conscious of, rendered cynical and misanthropic by the loneliness that never went away.  The ugly do not marry the beautiful; the wretched do not marry those blessed by heaven.  She had been born with a great gift, greater than all his intelligence, all his wit; and those eyes, silver and purple and blue at once, bespoke the mixture of sweet gravity and pungent humor that he fell in love with.

Even at twelve, she had captivated him.  Not in the way she did now, the obsession that chased him through fevered dreams and stained every breath with bitterness.  That came later, as he watched her gift grow and grew to realize that she never saw the shoulder that everyone else focused on, only himself.  Dean.

Maybe she didn't notice the shoulder, but she didn't need to, did she?  The mark of his strangeness had slowly marked his personality, becoming what he identified with, what he thought of himself.  The alternative to self-pity is defiance; he grew defiant with a vengeance.  Learned, as Emily later would, to insult fellow schoolchildren with barbs that stung deep and long.  Then to keep others at a safe distance, aware of the dangers of letting them get too close.  Until he peered over the edge of the cliff and a pair of wide, terrified violet eyes stared back up at him.

He walked down the lane, holding his misshapen body as straight as it could go.  She deserved Teddy, who could give her a love unspoiled by a lifetime of misanthropy and the wild, irrepressible Priest jealousy…

~

He couldn't remember that night without a shudder.  She, Emily, she used to call them "white nights."  She always spoke the melodramatic phrase with a little twinkle in her eyes, because she could wake up in the morning and laugh at anything life threw her way.

Yes, Emily.  It had been so many years since he'd seen her.  He'd sent her that wedding present, the height of masochism or maybe just a momentary victory of romantic, unselfish love over the deeper, jealous, angry kind that was more often ascendant within him.  But since then nothing.  They hadn't sent letters.  It was easier that way, for her at least, although the torture never abated for him.

He pushed open the gate to the Disappointed House, so un-disappointed now it seemed positively fat with fulfilment.  He'd promised himself he'd "settle in" before surprising her.  Exercise a little restraint.  But here he was, only an hour after arriving here, and blood was a furious river crashing in his ears.

A cherry blossom brushed his ear as he passed the tree planted by the gate.  It was white, stained red at the tips with the faintest blush.  He had always loved Prince Edward Island in the spring.