A/N: Written for the LJ 10lilies "the long road" challenge what seems like a hundred years ago.

Another Path

It all begins with a single step onto that dirt path leading off into the great unknown; one does not know where it ends, and once upon it, one does not even remember where he or she has begun.

It is a road Gaz was accustomed to walking alone, though she could not say she was surprised when Tak began to walk beside her. She remembered Tak distinctly, and although both had walked markedly different paths in the past, their second meeting was a source of little surprise and much amusement for them. Soon, when they turned to look behind them, their two paths had combined into one.

Distances began to close; the wide berth between the two girls as Gaz walked on one side of the road and Tak walked the other soon became no more than a sliver between them. Occasionally shoulders brushed, then touched; soon hands linked, and something more profound than lips and teeth met.

Strands and fibers of each began to intertwine, like two strings of DNA curling around one another; each fork that appeared in the road was no matter of discussion, as with one mind both pairs of feet turned onto the same path. With an eternity spent in tandem, the one moment when Gaz turned one way and Tak the other became a central crack as the links between them snapped.

That segment of the path ended with an explosion of violence; Tak was angry at Gaz's "disobedience," Gaz was angry at Tak's "megalomania," and both were filled with a deep despair and disbelief that they were two seperate beings with seperate wants and needs that they couldn't have expressed it any other way than spitting into each other's faces. Tak marched indignantly down her path, and Gaz trudged on the other way, smoldering.

Gaz tried to insist to herself that she was better alone, that the air was crisper now that it was not laced with the scent of stars and electricity. For a time her brother appeared beside her, attempting to understand and leaking insecurity as he grasped feebly for words to comfort her. She could not say that his presence was not wanted, but she also could not say that his presence was not a nuisance, and she could never tell him to stay. She realized sooner than he did that he could not help, and he left, pursuing his roads and highways, leaving her only to struggle with the ache for Tak and the self-forced notion that she could not accept such weak emotions.

The lack of Tak wrapped around Gaz like sheets of gauze, so entrenching her thoughts that she barely noticed she had stopped, the road at an end. It was only then that she heard a sharp, attention-demanding cough, and turned to see Tak standing there. The solution was obvious, yet the two girls chose for a peaceful silence, staring into the star-speckled sky before them.

Wordlessly, they joined; Tak's foreign hand had always felt more natural inside Gaz's palm than any human's. Long fingers and restless minds intertwined, and the two walked as one into the night sky.