Author's Note I took this from my other FF account, the one none of you know about. :D Trust me, though, these are really mine. I haven't plagiarized anything. If you'd like you can check out the account itself, under the pen name Halyse, which is actually my real name — Ashley — rearranged. I've deleted them under that pen name. I used that account during my absence, experimenting with everything, you know. So…yeah! Enjoy. (:

-/-

Six Years

Because he believed that anything worth having is worth waiting for.

She ran and ran across the streets under the pouring rain, not minding in the slightest the fact that the weather seemed to ask her to get out of the open. Her chestnut hair was tossed around effortlessly by the cold wind as she fought to get through, and her dark brown eyes were slits, squinting through the thick of the rain drops, searching.

She ran for the last time toward a single lamppost in the corner of an intersection between two roads, both of which seemed to have been closed down long ago. It was today, after six years, that she was going to see him again. She'd been waiting this long, counting down two-thousand one-hundred ninety-three days ever since the fifth of July six years ago, and now - finally. The wait was over.

She looked left and right when she reached the small patch of cement beside the lamppost. She remembered it clearly; it was there that they made the promise.

"I can wait you know," he said, looking at her and her scrunched-up face. "What?" he asked, slightly amused by the doubtful look on her face. "You don't trust me, do you?"

She smiled. "It's not that I don't trust you, silly. It's just that I don't trust myself."

He snapped his head back at her as they slowly walked toward the intersection that led to their separation.

"You don't trust yourself?" he repeated, his eyebrows furrowing from an emotion she couldn't tell; his gaze at her was infallible, fixed, unwavering. "Why?"

She fidgeted a bit under his stern gaze. "Well," she replied, looking down. "I never really saw myself fit for anything. I'm not - I'm not exactly the best out there you know."

He scowled. "Not this again," he said, sighing exasperatedly. "You're impossible."

"Impossible?" she shrieked, slapping his arm playfully. "I'm just being honest, you know. There are lots out there who are better, prettier - and I assure you, I'm not really beautiful - and a lot more talented. There are more out there who can catch your eye, who are better than me -"

" - But I chose you," he finished for her. She stopped talking and gawked at him. He was really just like that sometimes: always saying things unexpectedly. He laughed at her reaction. "I chose you."

She looked away, feeling a lump in her throat. She swallowed hard and looked at her feet again, and the silence that followed thereafter was not awkward, but neither was it that comfortable.

From nowhere, he grabbed her hand, taking her by surprise for the umpteenth time that afternoon.

"Look," he began, as they stopped walking and just stood underneath a brightly burning lamppost. "I'll wait. What, six years? Yeah, right. That's nothing."

She seemed to have lost her nerve and her voice, still refusing to believe this and get her hopes up. He saw this confusion, but plowed on.

"It's a promise."

He held her hand tighter and twined their fingers. He touched her nose with his free hand and her face wrinkled in feigned disgust, and suddenly her eyes flicked to the lamppost right beside them.

"D'you think it'll still work after six years?" she piped up. "I think it still will."

He smirked. "Crazy. It won't work anymore. It'll probably be broken or crushed or it might just simply give up."

Huffing, she said angrily as she spun round and hit his face with her then-long brown locks, "I don't think so! I think it'll stand the test of time. Like me. Like us."

Then she flashed him a brilliant smile.

He smiled as well before he spoke, taking his hands out of her grasp and placing them casually into his pockets, looking up at the lamppost. "Tell you what. If that lamppost still works after a six years, then I'll kiss you in the rain. And then marry you."

Slapping him playfully, she gazed up at the lamppost and wished upon it.

She never really took his words seriously, counting it as one of his rather weird remarks, but looking at the lamppost now, as it rained and light was fading fast, she suddenly wondered if he was dead serious about what he said or not. And then she recalled the nickname - crazy - and her heart flared up with the sudden longing of hearing that voice say the blasted old nickname she used to hate so much.

She smiled as she reminisced that moment. There were more occasions like that, where they bantered and argued pointlessly and spoke to each other and fought yet again over her cantankerous mind, but probably for her it would be the most remembered, because it was the first time she felt like it was actually a sweet conversation. It was, now that she thought of it, their first civil talk, when compared to all the rest that they've had.

That, and he was the first true one she ever loved.

The rain continued to fall heavily on her as she stood there motionless, anticipating, looking left and right (and sometimes looking up and down, as if hoping he would somehow drop down from the sky or suddenly pop out from underneath the earth), waiting...until the spreading feeling of hopelessness slowly invading her senses. It was foolish to come here, she thought. Who in his right mind would choose her over all the hundreds of thousands of girls existing out there? No. Surely no one would; after all, she knew she wasn't worth it.

With a crestfallen heart, she cried, hating herself for hoping that he'll really wait, hating herself for being so stupid, hopeful; she crossed her arms across her chest as she stood underneath the lamppost, cursing herself inwardly for her own moronic actions.

Her eyes were firmly closed, and she refused to open them. She just wanted to stay there in that spot and let the rain wash over her. She hated herself.

And suddenly his face burst crystal clear in her mind. The way his eyebrows arched, his black eyes that probed her, the eyes that knew when something was wrong with her, his funny hair, all tousled and messed up in the wrong directions, and last, his smile. The beam of light the flashed her way whenever she said something crazy or when she'd grow jealous over some girl. The smile that he last gave her before he left.

And this time, she couldn't help it. She fell to her knees, on the hard cement, and just cried until all she knew was the light that had gone.

She hardly noticed the lamp light up...

"You'll get sick, crazy."

And her heart stopped. Her eyes flew open as she lifted her head.

"I'll get mad if you don't step out of the rain."

She knew that voice, knew it more than anything, and when she stood up and faced the person who now stood in front of her, gazing at her with intensity rivaling that of an eagle's, her breathing stopped.

She opened her mouth, opting herself to speak as the tears still streamed, but he put one finger on her lips and said, "Don't speak."

She looked hungrily into his face while he smiled. Both of them were now standing underneath the angry downpour of rain. She cried, yes, but she smiled.

"Don't speak," he said again when she tried to speak. "You waited. I waited. I love you, you love me. That's all there is to it."

Once more she opened her mouth but he put a finger to her lips as he looked up and smiled at her.

"Remember my promise?" he said, cradling her face. "It seems you won; the lamppost still does work."

And she shifted her head to look behind her and whispered a surprised "Oh" and he laughed carelessly and so loudly at them, there at the empty street under the pouring rain as he looked at her disbelievingly.

"You are really crazy," he said. "We'd been standing under this place for quite some time now and you hadn't even noticed?"

"No," she said simply, gazing off into the distance. "And quit it with being crazy; we've already established that since we were twelve."

He just stood there, watching her soundly, until he took her face in one hand and kissed her, under the rain, quietly taking her hand with his free one and slipping a ring on her right hand's middle finger.

And all the six-year promises cease and their story begins to unravel themselves.