||the deep end

||notes :: I'm hiding for a little while. I'll be back to review/answer messages in a bit. In the meantime, here's my substitute for canon - utter crap. Critique is always adored, but this is just a substance-less little piece of dramangst, it's really wishy-washy and I'm totally aware of that xD I just wanted to write a semi-canon pairing, 'cause it's been a long time...

The second-to-last line of this makes me happy. Also, Present Tense is my new boyfriend.

And if you find the hidden message in the title I will love you~

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If she walks far out enough, lets herself sink deep enough; the waves lull her to sleep, and it's then she wakes up.

She fights it - like she does everything - but ends up caught between the undertow and reality. When her eyes open to stark mad white, it's all she can do to blink back the sting.

He is still gone.

"I'm sorry," she says, because this is what you say. "I'm sorry for your -" my "- loss." And selfishly, she says no more. Runo nods, wavers; aqueous eyes are red-rimmed, and she can only think how weak, sheltered, this Earthling is.

"If he were here, he'd be missing you already." The human girl mumbles in a mockery of camaraderie, tone carefully neutral. "Yes -" She squints. "- He'd ask you to come back home with us."

She juts out her chin, staring through the noncommital sighing and the transparent lies written on the girl's palm. "He's just gone ahead, is all. If he missed me that much, he would have stayed longer."

Runo blinks once, twice, then nods. "Yeah."

She thinks she should retort to this, say something in her - and his - defense. She then thinks that maybe she is imagining the poisoned look, the sharpness of cerulean eyes against the stoniness of that face. She thinks that the two of them never deserved each other.

"Goodbye, Runo."

The girl nods once more and steps through the portal. They never see each other again.

.

The wind blows grains of sand - each one sharp and biting - relentlessly against her skin. The breeze is bitter; when she steps into the water red unfurls in plumes, staining the frothy surface. She watches with dull eyes as the vivid color is pulled back in the undercurrent. And then she's in waist deep, entranced in that familiar melting feeling, soul awash and blank. She stands lonely, and when the waves' crashing dulls her ears, his voice is very clear.

It's when his shouting escalates that words die on her lips hopelessly, like her very heart and soul, all the practiced sililoquies -

everything she's ever wanted to tell him

— are trifling fragmentations.

She sinks. Her eyes snap open.

"Mira." The ceiling is acidic white, intensely burning behind her eyelids. "Where is he?" She doesn't recognize the voice in the room, and it scares her. The sudden rush of oxygen is dizzying.

"On Earth!" she cries out frantically, gasping for air. "He went back to Earth!"

There is a deep sigh, and a soft thud as someone leans back against the straight edge of a wall. She imagines the look that she's so used to seeing; disappointed and condescending.

"No. He didn't."

"Then where -" She stops, leaving red handprints on the sheets.

"He's not on Earth and he's not here" - is the only answer she receives. "I'm sorry" is her imagined condolence.

.

"Dan is dead," she breathes into the empty air, because this is what no one else is willing to say.

Saltwater falls freely down her face.