Soft as a Whisper

The boy stood, calf-deep in the falling snow, eyes closed and face turned skyward. He allowed it to fill him, that numbing cold; to chill his body and burn his lungs as flake after flake fluttered to the ground. The cold helped him to think clearly, depriving him of the distractions brought on by warmth and companionship.

Rhys opened clear blue eyes, his gaze lowering until he gazed straight across from where he stood. The boy conjured a small, sad smile. "I still feel the same, you know," he spoke softly. She smiled back in the same manner, and the redhead continued.

"It's not that I stopped loving you - I don't think I can. It's just that... I don't know who I am anymore, and I certainly don't know how to love myself. I never had to before; there was always someone else to love me, instead," said Rhys. "I couldn't cope. Besides, how am I supposed you love you as I should, if I don't even know how to love myself?"

He gave a helpless shrug. The blonde - for Rhys would always see her as blonde, no matter what color her hair became - tilted her head to one side. She didn't respond. She wasn't really there; Rhys was only imagining she was there.

"You're doing well, aren't you, Le?" Rhys asked, tone soft as a whisper. "I want you to be doing well. I..."

Rhys trailed off, his own head canting at the sound of footsteps crossing the snow-covered field behind him. He waited for them to speak.

The brunette carted herself off the fringes of solidarity by running to Azorat for the time being. She would be back in time before anyone knew she was missing with the help of Floo Powder, but handling matters that should shatter a state apart had an unforeseeable toll on her. Merlin, she hated to admit it, but she was bloody stressed. Any more responsibility and she might as well drop down dead.

She had held the list in her hands, the agenda for the next meeting. It was tomorrow. von Klein would surely damn her if she didn't show up first to the conference, the second Session out of three. After all of this she can finally go back to Durmstrang and stop pretending to be Queen of an entire family until her hundred and ninety-second moon turning came about.

By God, how time flies.

The breeze flew past her paper, and it gripped the paper as soon as the Uchitel loosened her hands. She cried out, swearing, cursing in all the tongues she knew. It twirled, swirled, as Lena fumbled around. "Wo bu ke yi!" she shrieked, some sense in her befuddled Mandarin as she continued to chase it, panting.

Landing gracefully on a pile of snow, she pushed the snow out of her path as she trodded on them with harsh steps, damning her youth. In front of her was the redhead that she had been trying so long to avoid. She flushed.

"Can you get that piece of paper for me, please?" she asked cordially, pointing to the damp scroll. Her throat clung onto her bones, and she was sick to her stomach.

---

* I can't.

A quiet, amused huff escaped the boy as he listened to the person approaching. Same old Lena. His heart twisted in his chest.

When Rhys looked over his shoulder to acknowledge her, his expression had formed into a small, warm smile. The boy gave a short nod, then stepped forward to pick up the roll of parchment. Withdrawing his wand, he murmured a drying spell. Moving to stand in front of her, he held it out for her to take.

"Here you are," he said. His voice was just a bit rougher than it had been several months ago, the damage of overusing it after weeks and weeks of not using it at all having caused it to deepen.

"Been awhile." Rhys didn't suggest that they'd both been busy with school or life. He didn't propose that they just kept missing each other. He had always been observant; he knew she'd been avoiding him. Rhys had let her. Perhaps, that had been his way of avoiding her.

Lena tried not to be startled. He sounded different, or perhaps she'd forgotten what he'd sounded like. The low timbre of his voice reminded her of Leon, and his coy smile, and his sailboat cutting across the sky. "Thanks," she replied curtly.

She glanced at the paper, mouthing Charles's name to herself, laughing at some empty spot on her agenda. She pocketed it, her cheeks still flushed from the wind. She blinked, running her fingers across her neck for her pendant as it glimmered in the light before setting her arms down on her side. She began to daydream about the meeting tomorrow, its benefits, how finally, everything of her temporary... predicament would be put to rest.

Rhys didn't have to know about this. She'd told him enough.

"Yeah," Lena agreed, snapping back into focus, "it's been two months, actually." Her throat clenched. "Have you thought about how to spend Valentine's Day yet?" Her fingers fiddled with the pendant on her neck, reading the inscription.

"You're welcome," the boy responded. He watched as she drifted away on whatever daydream came to call. Often, he used to wonder what happened in that lovely mind of hers, what sort of fantastic things she must have seen. Too seldom were the times he had asked.

Two months... Was that all it had been? It felt like so much longer. It felt like it had been ages.

Rhys gave a quiet chuckle. "It's just another day to me, now," he replied. "There's no one. I'm still... working on being less screwed up. I'll probably just stay home."

"You're staying home?" questioned the brunette. Whatever facade she had tried to pull off for the last couple of months had slipped off her right now like a robe, rendering her naked. "Sure, Valentine's Day is a shitty excuse of a holiday, but you should do something! Like, you know, go boxing! That's what von Klein and I are gonna do." She gave a cool shrug of her shoulders.

She paused, glancing at the panda. It had emerged out of the back of the trees, waving at her. She lifted her arm to wave at it, her gaze fixed on the lovable creature.

"Remember the only Valentine's Day we had together," she muttered absent-mindedly, her eyes floating back and forth between the ginger and the nonexistent panda footprints. "I remember that panda you gave me... I sleep with it, every day. It helps me to stop worrying, especially when the smell of antiseptic in the Headquarters gets to me."

Rhys had no idea who von Klein might be. Whoever it was, the redhead didn't recall having met them. He didn't inquire.

"I have stuff to do around the manor," Rhys said. "M-most things are just staying put. No reason to move them. The rest of them... I don't want them to get damaged. Like some of- I've... just been working of storing some stuff away. Kind of my project, I guess." His eyes had focused intently out over the lake, one hand working in and out of an anxious fist. "Rather do that than watch so many people be happy," he finally concluded.

Rhys dragged his gaze from the frozen water, even as he pulled himself away from the grief that had just tried to reclaim him. The cold was supposed to help with that. It was supposed to keep him numb, and keep the grief at bay so it wouldn't cloud his thoughts. It didn't always work so well.

"I remember everything I've given you," the ginger responded, tone soft. "And everything you ever gave to me." Every gift, every note, every smile, hug and kiss; they were all tucked safely away, cherished. "I still have them all.

"I'm glad you still like it. I mean, that it-" He broke off, drawing in a deep breath.

After a long pause, Rhys started again. "Can't we at least be friends?" he asked. "Or even just acknowledge one another in the corridors? I know that... that I've messed up. I am messed up - I can't imagine there will ever be a time that I won't be. I hurt you. I knew that I would. But Lena, I didn't know of any other way to not hurt you more. I don't know how not to hurt, anymore. Every time it starts to get better, it only gets worse again." He let out a humorless laugh, a sound that was both resigned and lacking hope.

"But I think," Rhys continued, "that if we could just stop avoiding one another - say hello and maybe talk now and then. I think if we could at least do that, things would be a bit better. Everything is better with you."

A hand rose to scratch his head, another cheerless laugh issuing from his lips. "Sorry. I, uh... Seems I still tend to ramble, doesn't it?" Rhys asked, his manner too sad to truly be sheepish. "Just - don't worry about it. Have a happy Valentine's."

The redhead offered a sad smile and started to trudge back towards the city. He didn't like for her to see him this way. Lena had enough troubles of her own, she didn't need his as well.

"Ew happiness," agreed she nonchalantly, "well, happiness is for no one, right? I agree with you; sometimes people flaunt it all too often, and when they lose it they find that they have nothing else to brag about." Her eyes fell towards his hand, but she knew better than to linger on that vision, letting blue eyes skirt on his fist before gazing back up onto his face.

She listened to his words, battling tears. Nauseated, the blonde hugged her body, her flesh paling. She swallowed her pride, inhaling and exhaling confidence. Eventually, she had enough to respond to him, even if it was weak in comparison to his soliloquy.

"I remember..." she muttered, pausing, "I loved you." The past tense was a lie, fallacy formed from memories that haunted her to the point where she stepped further up the insanity ladder every time she thought of it. "I mean... I remember Lapland, and the kiss in Divination, and many other things."

A sentence formed in her head, and her brows furrowed as its foundation began to assemble. "Rhys, you know that I never meant to avoid you," she replied emphatically, every word a myth from the truth, "I just happened to not be able to talk to you. I'm busy and all I really want right now is a break. From school. From the Union. From my feelings."

Lena's mind winded through the fragmented memories she could salvage from her history of twenty fifty-seven, so far. A mirage of her dismembered body floating in Durmstrang's nearby ocean floated past, and she could remember Lora's attempt to save her. She was very much alive back then, though the thought had never fully escaped her head. She then remembered the troublesome dream in which bad things happened...

Her lips parted, as if she was truly in her figment, as if it was Leon right in front of her now and not Rhys. She leaned in for a moment, before realizing that all that was facing her was nothing but cold winter air, and she retreated. "I... I'm sorry," she muttered, though she was unsure if he'd heard, or even seen her.

The brunette replied loudly, "You too." There was nothing she could do but stand there, feet planted in the snow, contemplating all these things she's done.

(ooc: i was watching the appropriate doctor who episode for this post.)