If I owned it, I wouldn't be here.

She smiles in remembering it, that one scene in a series of scenes that made them the best friends they were.

She doesn't even know how they'd gotten on the topic; they'd been talking together on the walls of New Hope, watching the people below them. Neal had praised her in her efforts and she had returned praise in kind, knowing that without his support she wouldn't have been where she was.

He'd asked her if she had any regrets and she'd replied with a resounding no. Everything that had happened, good or bad, had brought her to this time, this place. It had made her the person she had become. Still…

He hadn't missed the wistfulness in her voice, and he'd wasted no time in calling her out on it. She'd sighed, and had decided it was probably time it came out, albeit edited.

So she'd told him about her crush when she was a page, careful to make no reference as to whom the object of her affection was. It had been her first crush, she'd told him, but she'd kept it a secret, hidden from everyone. She'd admitted to fluttering and daydreaming and sighing in private until she had finally gotten over it. But, she'd added with pondering sigh, she'd always wondered what it would have been like to kiss him, at least once. She'd guessed she'd keep having to wonder.

Then she'd turned the question back to him. Did he have any regrets, she'd wanted to know. He'd looked at her then for a long, silent moment, as if deep in thought. Just one, he'd said.

He'd grabbed her by the shoulders then, simultaneously turning her towards him and pulling her close. Her small 'Oh' of surprise had been swallowed by his lips on hers. It was a kiss in contradictions: passionate and yet platonic, awkward and yet completely natural, new and yet utterly familiar. His tongue had met hers tentatively, seeming to ask and demand at the same time. It had lasted forever, and yet only seconds had passed before they pulled apart. They both had been breathless.

Now I don't have any regrets, Neal had said, amusement in his voice. Then he had winked at her, saying with a smirk that now she no longer had anything to wonder about.