~His POV~
The room was dark; he was dressed darkly from his hair to his jacket over a black shirt, black jeans, dark boots. For a while now, years perhaps, he’d seen things in the same manner, witnessed everything with the taint of the same darkness permeating his eyes –she hadn’t changed that and maybe nothing would. He’d mastered the art of functioning at the most shut-your-brain-off sense of the word. She hadn’t changed that either, he’d probably spent years perfecting the manner of which he was now able to live his life but he didn’t remember it. He didn’t remember a lot of things.

He’d tried hard not to look into her eyes when they’d met, he knew things she didn’t and he didn’t want to quicken the process of her becoming one of them even though he knew it was inevitable. She didn’t have to know and if he could help it, he wouldn’t be the one to taint her. Time took care of things like this, she’d do it to herself as they all had, she had to make the decision for herself because she was marked for it –he didn’t know if she knew or not but in the slight upturn in her smile he’d seen it starting within her. He’d tried to distract her from turning in little ways at first, then crueler and obvious ones but today he’d received his orders, he was to vanish from her life. He’d abide by the No Contact rule. But he knew that wouldn’t stop her from trying to reach him.

~Her POV~
The dreams began at the worst time for her, but really when was it a good time? She’d awaken feverish, she could be overheard talking in her sleep in a foreign language, power outages began happening around her and so did the curious coincidence of people having seizures after looking into her eyes. Her caretakers brought her to church, had her sit with clergy members first then a psychiatrist, then trusted adults, and slowly she began to speak. When she tried to speak about it her body began to shut down, blood sugar dropping and cold shakes taking over, involuntary movements and heart palpitations. It took her years, some medicated and some not, to make it stop but there it was again.

She saw his face once in a dream and his image burned into the wrong part of her brain, where had it come from in the first place? He was back in her life and she began to question him this time like never before. She was older now and he was willing to share with her what she’d never known, what nobody else was willing to tell her. It happened, sometimes that one of them would take interest in her and she’d hoped to hear in person what she’d suspected all along as though making it real. She’d hoped she wouldn’t have to continue the journey alone anymore. She’d hoped she’d find him somehow by speaking to those who’d found their Others. She was always filled with that damned hope.

~His POV~
The problem, he thought freely though not in a way she’d be able to pick up on as he stood a few feet away from her sleeping body, was that this was so much more complicated than she was willing to understand. He knew she understood more than they thought she could comprehend and that she’d learned to express it to an extent. He knew the answers she didn’t but he still wished with a restricted part of him that she would give up her search. He’d seen her set her mind on impossible things before and attain them, he’d seen her overcome tasks she was never meant to encounter to begin with and he’d watched her speak to him as though she knew he was there.

He wanted her to give up her search for him, he wanted her to be free the way she was now, the way he could never be.

~Her POV~
She was upset again, and although she knew why she sometimes enjoyed the struggle. Sometimes she thought she might take up residence there forever, what a simple three dimensional life she’d lead.

She was able to find happiness in the little things but it was never the same. Nothing was the same as seeing the tiny details of the skin over his collarbone where she longed to rest her head again, nothing smelled the way his essence permeated hers, no voice trembled into her ears the same, no other contact electrified her touch the same and nothing else had wordlessly clicked into place the way everything finally did for her in the days that followed the moment they’d met. She could go another lifetime or two without him, but she knew somehow that he had the answers she didn’t; she knew he either was or knew the one she’d dreamt of.

A friend of hers told her, in that look into your eyes while playing meditation music in the background hypnosis way, that she was making connections in her brain between things that weren’t supposed to be connected. That she needed to stop looking and be happy with the here and now. But she’d been here before and wrote another friend out of her life. People were always intent on disillusioning her.

~His POV~
He was amused with her; though she’d given up for a while she was back again. She’d write little stories about him and tag him in things that had nothing to do with him in an attempt to get his attention. She’d already had his attention, she’d never lost it but he took comfort in thinking she was capable of giving up on him, maybe he’d caught a bit of hope from her. He shuddered at the thought of such a trivial, menacing emotion. And for that matter, what good were all of the other emotions?

He took a few steps back and leaned against a darkened wall, the coolness seeping in to the leathery darkness of his jacket. “Hope.” He said aloud and laughed quietly at first. The laughter erupting soon as his head tilted skyward, he caught himself a moment later and lost all facial expression. A moment of weakness? He must’ve caught that from her too.

Notes