note(s): this is for the The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, round two.

"'cause everything inside me looks like / everything i hate
you are the hope i have for change /
you are the only chance i'll take"
–switchfoot, on fire

She knows without looking at her watch that she is late. Vaguely, she imagines him – sitting there at their table tucked into the corner of that little coffee shop in London, reading a week old newspaper. Waiting for her. There's a smile on his face and every time the bell above the doorway rings, he glances up, assuming the person who's walked in is her.

The smile falls just a little every time its not.

She was on her way, she was – until she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her hair is clean and in a neat side braid. There's no make up on her face. Her skin is blemish free. She's pretty, in a natural but not quite striking way.

And yet, all she can see is her faults. The self-hate wells up slowly, has been doing so for a long, long time. It's only now that she can feel it bubbling closer to the surface. Her fingers twitch. Her feet itch to turn and run. She suddenly feels as if she's being suffocated.

Lucy tells herself not to do this, she really does, but if there's one person she never listens to it's herself. She turns away from the mirror and tells herself she's going to apparate to the alley outside of that little coffee shop.

She ends up on the streets in Paris and she can still see him, waiting for her. But that's his fault, she tells herself. Everyone knows she's a flight risk. Everyone knows Lucy doesn't stay, Lucy never stays. Relationships are the one thing she doesn't know how to do.

He should have known.

It makes her feel better, but only a little.

.

She stays with her cousin, Dominique, for a while. Makes the girl swear to tell no one that Lucy is in Paris. "Promise," Lucy had hissed, eyes wild and her grip tight enough to leave a bruise on Dom's wrist. "Swear to me you won't tell anyone." And Dom, never one for violence, blinked in shock. She'd never seen Lucy like this before, but she nodded. "Alright, alright. I promise."

That had been two months ago.

Although none of the family really visits Dom much in Paris, she gets frequent letters and phone calls. Lucy would never admit to it, but she reads ever single letter at night while Dom is in bed and listens in on every single phone call.

Of course, Dom already knows this much, because she's Dom and she pays attention.

So, one morning at breakfast, she brings it up.

"You miss them."

Lucy blinks. Dom, she wants to ask, are you on drugs? Where is this coming from? "I miss... who?" She decides her best bet is to play dumb. Dom just rolls her eyes and continues buttering her bread.

"You miss our family."

"I-" Lucy starts, but Dom interrupts her.

"You miss him." She says earnestly, and Lucy bites her lip hard, the taste of blood rushes into her mouth. And there's that suffocating feeling again. It's like someone has suddenly shoved her head underneath water.

"I don't." She says once she's able to regain control of her breathing. "I don't."

"He misses you."

Lucy shrugs, keeps her face impassive. "Well, that's his fault." That's what she's been telling herself, anyway. It's his fault for falling in love with me. It's his fault for trusting me; for believing this time could be different. For thinking that I could actually love him back enough to make myself stay.

Dominique frowns deeply and sets her butter knife down.

"Luce-"

"I should go."

.

She packs her stuff and she leaves, and no one is surprised.

Paris was just another plastic bag; constricting, suffocating.

.

Lucy goes to many different places after Paris and they all have one thing in common: they're the largest cities in the world and yet, none of them are quite large enough for Lucy. There's never enough space, never enough people to get lost in, never enough buildings.

She goes back to London.

Lucy tells herself once again she's not going to do this. London is big enough, she thinks. She can easily avoid him. Easily. She drops in to see Molly, timing it just when she knows Molly will be at work. Slips the key out from underneath the mat and opens the door, slips inside. Drops her bags on the floor.

And then, she apparates.

.

Their booth is still the same as it ever was: Coffee rings stained into the top of the table, bubblegum of many different shades and flavours underneath it. There's a new tear in the red fabric of the booth. She stares at it for a long moment, running her hand gently over the back of it, before she scoots into it.

And that's when it hits her – it's not London suffocating her, it's not Paris or New York City or LA or anywhere else she's been. There are fingers around her neck, but those fingers don't belong to a city or a boy with dark hair and dark eyes. Those fingers belong to her.

It's her, it's been her this entire time, and she doesn't know how to fix it or change it, but there's a reason she came back, there's a reason she's never come back to anyone like this before now. She didn't understand many things before, but she supposes lack of oxygen can confuse people.

She allows herself to breathe.

Lucy stands up from the booth and makes her way out of the door. The bell rings in a way that she considers ironic.

.

She rings his flat several times until the door finally opens. Lucy takes a deep breathe and prepares herself to see him again. Only, it's not him who's opened the door. Karma, she thinks, feeling her head spin. Karma is a bitch. She left so many people so many different times, half of which she couldn't even remember thanks to the influence of alcohol.

It was her turn to get hurt.

"I- oh. Um."

"Babe? Who's at the doo-"

She backs away and thinks, if I were anyone else-

But then she stops herself, because that's how she got herself into this mess in the first place. She fucked everything up, she did. Not him, not her family, not her friends, not any of those one night stands or previous boyfriends.

It was all her.

Maybe, she thinks in those few moments that she stares at him and he stares back, things could have been different. She came back. She never comes back, but she came back for him. He was different, special.

She apparates away.

.

Maybe he was special enough for her to come back, but she thinks maybe she should find someone special enough for her to never leave to start with.