Eli was kind of like taking ibuprofen to ease a pain.

It was a comfortable sensation, relieving after the ache, glee-inducing, really. But no matter what, you still had to hurt first in order to get the relief.

She thinks that now as he walks away. She knows this isn't forever. Sure, he's apologizing for "leading her on," but tomorrow they'll be back in the same position again, holding onto each other for dear life; as if they're the only real thing left in this world. (Which maybe they are, Clare's never sure.)

It bothers her how he can give her butterflies and headaches all at once, how he can excite her and make her feel loved, but at the same time terrify her and tear her apart. Their relationship, (Or whatever they called it these days) was heart-breaking at best. He was messed up, mentally unstable, and she, naive and trusting and entirely too pure for him to say no. Sure, she sparked feelings in him, and maybe they were even enough to burn through some of the pain, but nothing, not even her smiles, could start the wildfire required to clean the rubble from his destroyed life.

Sometimes, honestly, she wondered if she were caught in the rubble. She remembers seeing plasters of victims from Pompeii, cast in the ashes of their destroyed life. Somehow she imagined herself as one of those figurines, just an empty cast, destroyed by his messed up volcano.

The very thought made her heart squeeze unpleasantly. Forcing thoughts away, she focuses on the retreating boy in black, already half-way down the street, and wishes him to turn around. Why couldn't he understand that she really didn't care? Hell, he could ruin her life, and she'd still be there at the end, offering an escape and a second option. She was like that, always knowing a way out, a way to just feel. The way she wore her heart on her sleeve so vulnerably seemed both admirable and foolish to him, and sometimes he wanted to do so as well. How could she be so free? Was there a way he could be free, too? Would she let him?

At the end of the street, he pauses. She can practically see his shoulders huff up and down. Clare watches with the childish hope expected, and he does it. For once, he does the unexpected.

Elijah Goldsworthy turns around.

He doesn't run after her, doesn't grin, doesn't profess his love. (This isn't a teenage dream, after all,) but he does smile, soft as rain, and the look in his eyes is something utterly foreign.

So maybe their dark, maybe their relationship is twisted and stupid and doomed from the start.

But god, that look is a relief, (like ibuprofen,) like the downpour after a drought.

Most of all though, it's just the right glimmer of hope; enough, just enough, for Clare to hold onto, the relief from the pain.

Until tomorrow.