#arixisley

In the next one, he poisons himself every day. He inhales itthrough his mouth through a cigarette and she meets him when liquid nightmaresrun in his veins and through his waking moments. But he’s charming, as he’salways been, and he reads to her and she thinks his voice is just as musical aswhat comes out of her throat on-stage. He kisses her everywhere like he won’tbe able to next time. They say she’s too smart for him, that she deserves more,but science has always been cold and bleak and clean-cut and he blurs all thelines with the colour he brings into the world.

He tells her he loves her and she almost believes that shecan save him.

But love isn’t about saving people, not to him, and he hatesbeing the charity case.

I can stand on my own.

She finds that this is what echoes in the empty spaces he’sleft behind. Nothing sounds quite the same.

It’s not in the next one, or the next one, but the one afterso many lifetimes, across universes, that she becomes his saviour.

She regrets saving him, at first, pulling him out of thatplane he’s crashed into the Amazon, into her home. She’s lived away from humansfor too long. Plants speak to her in calmer tones, and they worship her as sheshould be. She’s not like her mother; she has more hatred, more instability,and she’s more of a villain than Poison Ivy will ever be. But she’s also tiredof it, and for Christ’s sake, she just wanted to go on a holiday – except thishas clearly lasted longer than she expected it would. (Not like anyone seems tobe looking for her, which is just as well.)

She remembers his face because she almost killed him once,but he greets her like he’s forgiven her and she’s confused. Why should he?What gives him reason to smile, all perfect pearly whites, like she’s justanother person he can help and not a freak who can kill him just as quickly asshe can kiss him (or maybe it’s the other way around)?

He stays with her until she decides to leave. She thinks itannoying, but he’s useful – more useful than he had been. He’s learnt how tofire a gun, and although he doesn’t kill he injures. (There’s always that lookin his eyes after he’s pulled the trigger, and she wants to tell him that he’snot the one who’s been hurt.)

There’s something about him, though, that makes her angrywhen he comes back to the home she’s made for him – he’s never complained,not once – and he’s bleeding, and JesusChrist, why can’t he ever keep out of trouble?

He tells her that they’ve been cutting trees again, and hedoesn’t want her to kill them, so he took them on himself.

Idiot.

She heals him as best she could, sleeps at his bedside, andit’s not long before she thinks that being stuck here is much worse than being out there. He follows her when he’s wellenough.  

She thinks she may have loved him.

Steven thanks her, bids her goodbye, and all she gets fromhim is a kiss on her hand and a warm smile that might as well be the same lightshe’s bathed under for months. Excepthis warmth doesn’t come in bodies pressed tight, in bated breaths in the dark.He’s too modest, too kind, and all she remembers of him is the way she held hishand as he slept.

He is the hero of the story for a reason, because he comesout of a tragedy not with a villain but with the heart of a girl held so softlyin his hands as if it’ll break. But he doesn’t give it back, and she thinks hemay have a collection of them, and she remembers that Isla had fallen for him,too, and he’s broken her with kindness.

She decides that she hates this particular hero.

She hates how he comes to her when things don’t go rightwith the girl he tells her he loves. She hates how she doesn’t try to stranglehim; she hates how she listens.

She hates how she knows that he won’t kiss her the same way ashe would his lover but she kisses him back anyway.

In this lifetime, she doesn’t kill him.

In this lifetime, she doesn’t know if he’s saved her at all,but this is as close as she gets, and when he apologises the morning after shejust turns her back to him and tells him to leave. To him, true love conquersall, except Amaryllis never wanted to be conquered like this.