[He's right. She doesn't get it — and, as with so many things in her life, Summer flies too high and falls hard as a result.
She doesn't know what she'd expected. A flicker of joy, maybe, like a candle flame in the darkness. Something he clings to in the midst of whatever makes him so surly, something he hides away and keeps for himself like she's hidden the secret of her own name. She'd assumed, maybe, that falling for him was like falling is for her — the rush, the weightlessness, the laughter bubbling up as she climbs high, high, higher, the way she only really learns how far she was able to go by how far she falls once she's reached it.
But this is —
This is like finding herself plunged beneath Coerthas ice, down into the frigid deep, sucked under until her limbs go stiff from the chill and the weight of the water presses in around her, until she couldn't breathe even if she tried. This is drowning, and falling isn't salvation from it; it's just forgetting, escaping the reality of it only for as long as the falling lasts before the ground comes rushing up below.
His loneliness floods into her, finds her own, forces it to resonate — and it doesn't hurt because loneliness never hurts because there's nothing for it to strike against to begin with. It's empty and hollow and if anything it aches, the phantom pain of something that's supposed to be there but isn't.
And the worst part is that it's still Synchrony. It still works. She can't let go, can't pull away, because it still brings feeling back into her weary limbs, strength back into her wobbling knees. It means he's given her something twice now — protected her twice now, two different ways, and her balance sheet is coming up short by comparison.]
Until you land. And you always land.
[She ought to let go of him, to escape this herself, and stubbornly, she holds on instead.]
no subject
She doesn't know what she'd expected. A flicker of joy, maybe, like a candle flame in the darkness. Something he clings to in the midst of whatever makes him so surly, something he hides away and keeps for himself like she's hidden the secret of her own name. She'd assumed, maybe, that falling for him was like falling is for her — the rush, the weightlessness, the laughter bubbling up as she climbs high, high, higher, the way she only really learns how far she was able to go by how far she falls once she's reached it.
But this is —
This is like finding herself plunged beneath Coerthas ice, down into the frigid deep, sucked under until her limbs go stiff from the chill and the weight of the water presses in around her, until she couldn't breathe even if she tried. This is drowning, and falling isn't salvation from it; it's just forgetting, escaping the reality of it only for as long as the falling lasts before the ground comes rushing up below.
His loneliness floods into her, finds her own, forces it to resonate — and it doesn't hurt because loneliness never hurts because there's nothing for it to strike against to begin with. It's empty and hollow and if anything it aches, the phantom pain of something that's supposed to be there but isn't.
And the worst part is that it's still Synchrony. It still works. She can't let go, can't pull away, because it still brings feeling back into her weary limbs, strength back into her wobbling knees. It means he's given her something twice now — protected her twice now, two different ways, and her balance sheet is coming up short by comparison.]
Until you land. And you always land.
[She ought to let go of him, to escape this herself, and stubbornly, she holds on instead.]
And you wish you wouldn't.