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4 years ago

There were many reasons why Zuko was particularly uncomfortable this afternoon. Katara had sequestered them in the darkest corner of the library, the place where the chill fled the day's dying warmth and hardened into something almost tangible on his skin. The chair he had been forced to select was likely designed by someone who had never needed to remain seated for an extended period in their life, all angles and harshness and aching body parts. The exhaustion that hovered just behind his eyes made it difficult to focus on much of anything, let alone the very important Critiques of Modern Humanitarian Aid essay they had due tomorrow that he was supposed to be drafting.

But the bulk of Zuko's irritation could be laid at the feet of the gangly kid who had approached the table and placed himself firmly between Zuko and Katara. The kid whom Zuko had never met or heard of before today. The kid with grey eyes and a close crop of dark hair and the hint of tattoos peeking out from both sleeves. The kid whose name Zuko had forced himself to forget the moment he heard it. The kid who brought the bile to his throat with every shift closer to Katara, every doe-eyed stare aimed her way, every laugh and simper at one of her frankly pathetic attempts at humour. The kid who – the thought made Zuko just about pass out to escape the shame – was officially Zuko's competition.

"I'm just not sure about this part here." The kid pointed to yet another of the inadequate components of his own essay. Zuko watched his eyes dart almost shamelessly from his laptop screen to Katara's face. He tried to take solace in the determination with which she avoided the kid's gaze.

"Okay, well let's have a look, then." Katara was all generosity and sunshine. As usual. "It looks fine to me. You've addressed the question, given examples. Maybe just add another reference at the end?" She glanced at her watch. Two pairs of eyes followed the gesture. "Don't you have a lecture?"

Zuko felt himself relax. Watched the kid stiffen at Katara's dismissal. Assigned the smallest amount of effort possible to the task of hiding his smirk.

"Uh, yeah." The kid made absolutely no attempt to remove himself from their presence. "But it's just stuff from the textbook, anyway. I can probably skip it."

Zuko swallowed the latest wave of bile. Had to shove his hands into his pockets to avoid slapping a palm to his forehead in exasperation.

"The essay's not due 'til tomorrow, it can wait." Katara gently lowered the lid of the kid's laptop. "You can't skip your lecture."

Zuko tried to suppress the elation he felt at the kid's noticeably sinking shoulders.

"Yeah, you're probably right."

"I know I'm right." Katara flashed him one of her more dazzling smiles. "I'll see you later, Aang. Good work today." As if he were a child in need of positively reinforcing feedback. A gold star in his workbook. A lolly from the jar.

"Thanks, Katara. You're the best." He did not look at Zuko as he said goodbye, swung his backpack over one shoulder, disappeared around a bookshelf.

Katara heaved a sigh. Leaned toward Zuko with an elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. "Hey." The smile she gave him was lazy.

"Hey." The smile he gave her was entirely instinctual.

"Sorry about that." A quick roll of her eyes. "I didn't think he'd need so much... assistance."

He didn't know how to articulate the magma burning a hole in his stomach. Her gaze flitted across his face.

"You don't need any assistance, do you?" A teasing quirk at the corner of her mouth.

"Not here, ma'am. This essay's positively writing itself."

"And I'm sure the wordcount will agree with you, if I just have a teeny little look–"

"It's not quite ready for a critical gaze." He snatched his own laptop away from her reach. Lingered with his face too close to hers. Let his smirk soften. Told himself he was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent not flirting with her in any way.

"My gaze isn't critical!" She leaned around him, groping for the device. "I just want to provide some... friendly encouragement."

The magma roiled, spat. Burned out of his control. "Like you gave that kid?" A superfluous quantity of acid decorated his jibe.

"Aang?" She leaned back into her chair. He tried not to see the confusion narrow her eyes. "You knew he was studying with us today."

"Yeah." He should stop talking. Right now. "I just didn't know he'd need so much assistance. Like you said." He couldn't look at her. He found the library's carpet surprisingly detailed.

"I wasn't just going to say no."

"Of course not." As if that wasn't one of the things he admired most about her.

"What the hell, Zuko?" He tried not to hear the way her voice had hardened. "What exactly is your problem right now?"

"That... kid!" He threw his hand in a violent gesticulation to the library in general. Stared confidently at the space an inch from Katara's head.

"Aang," she repeated. The kind of repetition that deadened the word, solidified it into a missile, launched it right at his chest. "His name's Aang."

"I know."

"Then stop calling him 'the kid'."

"Why are you defending him?" Why am I attacking her?

"Because you're... attacking him! For no reason!" She shot her own hand toward him, aggressive in a way he had yet to observe in her. "Did I miss his persistent assaults on your honour?"

He clenched his jaw so hard he knew she would see him stiffen.

"Is there some eternal feud between your families I'm unaware of?"

He dropped his stare back to the intricate colours in the carpet.

"Did he kill your dog? Steal your Xbox?"

"No." Just a growl, really, not even a word.

"Then I'm truly perplexed as to why–"

"Excuse me." An interruption to the right. A heavyset, darkly clad security guard with the sagging eyes of a man who had been at work too long. "I'm going to have to ask you to keep the noise down or move along."

Zuko blinked. Katara was standing in the next moment, scooping up her backpack and laptop while simultaneously attempting to kick her chair out from under herself.

"My apologies." She looked at neither of the men beside her. "I was just leaving."

The security guard watched her go. Turned to Zuko.

"Me, too." He ducked his head, ducked around the guard, ducked between the two nearest bookshelves in an attempt to cut Katara off from her exit. "Katara!"

"Don't you dare try to follow me, Zuko." Her voice reached him from the right. She was closer to the door, closer to escape.

"Sorry, already am." He pitched his response over the shelving as he reached the library's entryway. "Where are you going?"

She was right in front of him. She didn't turn to reply. Perhaps she assumed he would keep up with her despite her insistence he do the opposite. "Away from you."

"Katara." A definite whine edged his voice now. "Slow down."

"Why? So you can insult my friend to my face?"

"You'd rather I do it behind your back?"

"Yes!" She didn't slow as she brought her foot down in the middle of a puddle. "I don't know why you're being such a dick about Aang."

He tried not to react to the name but the shiver came anyway. A shiver of revulsion. Of disgust. Of terror. "Idon't know why you feel the need to invite every stray to our study sessions."

"Oh, please." She threw her hand back in a dismissal of his words while dodging an oncoming student. "As if you've ever done a single iota of study in that library." As if she'd noticed all the times he'd looked up from his work to see her and just never looked away.

"Katara." He pushed himself into a jog. Drew level with her. Took her hand in his own. "Kit. Stop. Please." Tried not to breathe too heavily when she turned to him.

"Why would I bother?" But she didn't reclaim her hand. She looked at him and something shifted in her gaze. "Why Aang?"

Because he's in love with you, too, and there can only be one victor.

Because I'm selfish and I don't want to share you.

Because you spend time with him, and I want every single second you've got.

Because I love you. Because I'm an idiot. Because I'm an idiot who loves you.

She gave him longer than he had expected, hoped. Long enough that he wanted to run his thumb over the back of her hand and slip his fingers through hers so he was truly holding her. Long enough that his breathing slowed. Not his pulse. Long enough that it felt like she was searching him, waiting for something. Long enough that he sobered and knew he could never say even one of the things he was thinking about her.

He opened his mouth and she opened hers.

"Great. Thanks."

In a second, he was empty-handed and alone.

Later, when it was dark and he was no longer empty-handed but still very much alone, he texted her because he was afraid she wouldn't answer his call.

Zuko: I'm a jerk.

Katara: Yeah, you are.

Zuko: I'm also really sorry.

Katara: As you should be.

Zuko: Don't hate me.

A long pause. Several moments of those three moving dots. Of his pounding heart.

Katara: Never.

More dots above his trembling thumbs.

Katara: You're also the dumbest person I've ever met.

Zuko: Sure am.

*             *            *

This party was already an exponential improvement on the previous one because he didn't have to guess if Katara would be there. He knew Katara would be there because she was currently rummaging in her purse for something, keeping step with him as they traversed the suburbs surrounding their mutual acquaintance's home. And Katara was keeping step with him because he had oh-so-casually asked if she had been attending this particular function, and when she had confirmed, he had even more casually offered to accompany her on the 26-minute bus ride from campus to the bus shelter two blocks back.

The pavement smoked beneath the evening sunset after a day of constant, misting rain. Katara didn't avoid puddles, much like a similar occurrence outside the college library, and he liked the way she barely looked up from her ceaseless foraging to acknowledge what must be an increasingly wet sock inside her sneaker.

"Spirits, I can't believe I don't have one."

"One what?"

"Hair elastic." She held up both empty wrists for his inspection. "How can I even call myself a female after this horrendous failure?"

He slipped his own elastic off his wrist and held it out to her. She raised an eyebrow.

"What?" He sounded more indignant than he felt.

"Your hair's barely long enough to warrant one of these." But she accepted it and tied off a ponytail anyway.

"I think you forgot something? About me being a hero, a gallant saviour, something along those lines...?"

She shoved him in the side. So hard he almost tumbled into a hedge. "You will never hear those words from me, loser. At least, not about you. Unless I'm flat-out lying–"

"Okay, geez! I was kidding, Katara. Ki-dding." He knocked her arm softly. "And I thought we were friends."

"What gave you that impression?" But when she looked up at him her smile wasn't mocking in the least.

"Obviously another one of your famous lies."

"Obviously."

There were already too many people crowded into the front yard when they arrived. Zuko paused at the gate before he could think to keep moving.

"Zuko?" She was a step ahead. She turned back the moment she felt him leave her, her face arranged into the picture of concern. He forced a smile.

"Okay, confession. I haven't actually been to a party since that one two years ago."

Her answering smile was twelve per cent teasing. "And now you're having an overwhelming attack of the hermit heebie-jeebies?"

"That's mean. You're mean."

"I'm also in need of much drinking and dancing and I cannot possibly do it alone." She locked both arms around his bicep. "So, you're coming with me. Sorry."

He was not sorry in the slightest. He was also in possession of a solo cup far quicker than he would have thought possible. He raised an eyebrow at Katara and tried not to lean too awkwardly against the kitchen counter.

"Don't look at me like that!" She sipped and smiled and leaned her hip into his. "We both know you don't know the first thing about quality alcohol. I'd better be in charge of the drinks tonight."

"Drinks? As in, multiple?"

"You're pathetic."

"You love me."

"I tolerate you."

"Same thing."

Three drinks in and he was finding it nearly impossible to keep from smiling every time he looked at her. He forced her to join him next to the pool, pulled her down beside him on the single lounge chair that was definitely too small and definitely the best place for them to waste away the evening. The sun spilled amber, violet, rose across the dimming sky. He leaned back, tipped his cup back, enjoyed the feel of her thigh pressed almost painfully into his own, the warmth of her arm and her waist and her skin.

"Tell me something, Zuko."

Anything was still several drinks away. "Can I plead the fifth?"

"Don't be an ass." Her elbow in his bicep. "Why exactly did you come here tonight?"

"Well, obviously I'm very interested in drinking and dancing the night away." He felt her turn to look at him. Studied the dregs at the bottom of the cup balanced between his knees.

"C'mon. Why agree to come, then bother to invite me? It's not that hard to realise you're not the biggest fan of house parties." And maybe because they were so close there was nowhere else for her to go, or maybe because her head fit just right in the crook of his neck, or maybe because she pitied the desperate way he pined for her, she settled her head onto his shoulder. Sighed. Tucked her arm around his.

"I know I'm pretty terrible company."

"I didn't say that."

He waited for the insult. She didn't give him one.

His vision was already filtered through the twin hazes of liquor and a setting sun. His thoughts were already blurring into something easier to articulate. He had already convinced her to sit right where he wanted her – as close as possible.

"I know you like parties."

"I do. So what?" He felt her stiffen, listening.

"If I'm going to spend time with you, it'd probably help if you enjoyed yourself."

He heard her exhale. With disappointment?

"You're a dork."

"I'm at least an endearing dork, though?"

A pause. He imagined her smiling. "Sometimes."

He pressed. "Now?"

"Yes, now." Two syllables delivered as though they had been forced out of her. The gentle pressure of her hand on his thigh. Resting. Warming. Staying.

"Tell me something, Kit." He spoke to the immeasurable distance between him and the horizon. He felt the point of her chin on his shoulder, the weight of her gaze on his cheek. "Why bother coming if you knew I was going to be terrible company?"

"I never said that," she grumbled, tucking herself into his side again. "And there's no way I'd let you suffer through a party alone. I'm not that mean."

"I wouldn't be here if you hadn't come."

"Oh."

Did she know what he meant? Did he know what he meant? It was becoming increasingly difficult to distil his surroundings from Katara's presence. The pool, the house, the glowing sky faded into his periphery, rendered inconsequential by the pressure of her hand.

He didn't bite back his next thought. "I'm going to miss you."

"I'm right here, idiot."

He smiled. Rested his cheek on the top of her head. "No, when I fly out."

A pause. His pulse in his ears. Then, her voice, just a whisper: "Well, you're off to save the world. I'd say that's a noble cause."

"Yeah, but..." Dusk choked the words.

"I'm going to miss you, too."

"Come with me." He couldn't even make it sound like a joke.

"Unlike some people, I've still got a degree to finish, so I'm stuck here for a bit longer."

"Study remotely. Defer." It suddenly felt entirely impossible for him to board the plane tomorrow and leave her behind. As impossible as walking on water.

"Zuko." She pushed herself up onto her side to look at him properly. This time, he met her eye. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were being serious."

She was perfect there, saturated by the sun's withering rays, blue eyes wide and alight and trained on his face. Her ponytail was draped across her shoulder, so close. And then he was wrapping a curl around his finger and avoiding her stare.

"What if I was?"

She didn't move. "I'd tell you you're being stupid."

"Nothing new there." Her hair was soft and warm and part of her and he loved it.

"Zuko." Her hand was suddenly warm against his cheek. He couldn't look away from her now for anything. "Don't go."

He blinked. "What?"

"Don't leave." Two words. Two syllables. Simple as that. "Stay."

For too long he looked at her as his brain refused to reconcile the words he was hearing with the person saying them.

"I can't."

His ticket was booked and paid for. His bag was almost packed. The induction program was commencing in three days' time. Plans and schedules and commitments made months in advance that suddenly seemed to waver when she looked at him like that. When she held him and let him toy with her hair and refused to let him look away from her.

"Surely there's some other not-for-profit you can join here, right? There's loads of people in need in the outer ring alone–"

"Kit." He took her hand in his own. Lowered it to his lap. Looked at her and tried to think and failed. "I have to go."

"Why? Why do you have to?" Her voice was soft with a vulnerability he was almost certain she had never previously employed around him. All at once he felt like he'd caught her in a compromising situation, like he was seeing too much of her too soon. Her fingers tightened in his grasp.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Kit. People are counting on me to show up. People who need me." Five minutes ago he could have spoken those words with all the conviction he was capable of possessing. Now, he wondered how he could possibly deny her when she was asking him so openly to stay.

"Yeah." She dropped her eyes. "Okay."

"Hey." He curled a finger around her ear even though there was no loose hair to push back. "You'll forget about me as soon as I'm gone." This he whole-heartedly believed. He would ache and pine and yearn for the rest of his life, but she would recover like a forest after a wildfire.

"Zuko, if you really think that, you're even dumber than I thought." She swallowed the last of her drink and plucked his own empty cup from his lap. "Don't get into any trouble while I'm gone."

And when she winked at him he saw her shrug her armour back on. He saw the hardening of her lines, the solidifying of her resolve, the intentional architecture of her journey back to the house. He saw her retreating and knew that he had made a grave error.

An indeterminable amount of drinks later and she was giggling whenever he giggled. He couldn't walk straight, which made her giggle, too. He felt his mouth moving and could recall nothing that came out. Katara convinced him to venture into the living room, where people had congregated to move in an approximation of recognisable choreography and stood close enough that he could smell distinct body odours. But when Katara took both his hands and lead him in a very basic, very silly dance to a song he had never heard, it was easy to ignore other people's foul smells. It was harder to follow her movements, but he was rewarded with a laugh every time he made a mistake, and he really should have informed her that she was reinforcing the wrong kind of behaviour with that feedback.

And then she was exclaiming that she was exhausted, spent, dead on her feet, and she was taking his hand and pulling him away from the accumulation of people he'd never met and leading him blindly down a hallway neither of them had ever traversed previously. She tried a door and they found themselves in some kind of den, complete with pool table, couch and television shrouded in cold and darkness.

In the next moment he was positively wasted, too. His hands were dead weight at the end of his arms. He felt incalculably heavy, like a grown man was forcing himself onto his shoulders. He saw the couch and took the lead and pulled Katara down to lay there with him. Two heartbeats. Two synchronous breaths. Two bodies in a room they likely didn't have permission to be in.

He was suddenly so very warm. His skin was aflame, his cheeks burning and his pulse throbbing in his throat, at his wrists, in his ears. But everywhere else his skin was full of Katara. He could feel her pressed into him from his chest to his ankles – the gentle nudge of her fingers against his stomach, the weight of her legs tangled between his own. She tucked her head into the crook of his neck and he could feel her every breath. She was everywhere. All over him. He clutched her with an arm around her waist and she held herself to him with a hand tucked beneath his torso. Even with his eyes closed, the couch rocked them softly, just enough to prompt regular jolts of nausea in his stomach. He was hot and drunk but he was holding Katara and she was holding him.

She shifted, pulling herself closer. "You're leaving me." Her words were stretched into the whine of a child denied dessert.

He ran his hand up the length of her spine. He could almost feel each vertebra through her shirt. "Am not." It was all he could manage with his eyes squeezed shut against the persistent urge to vomit.

"Are too." She nuzzled further into his shoulder and he caught a single breath of her shampoo. Held it in his chest until his lungs burned. "You're getting on a plane and everything. So far away..." She sounded almost sleepy now. For just a second, he was back on the garden wall in a stranger's backyard with her arm curled around his own. But if he twitched his fingers he could feel her shirt and her back and the curve of her waist. Infinitely better.

She moved again, shuffled to pull herself up the couch so her lips were at his ear. "Don't leave me." Her voice was soft as a fantasy, ephemeral as a hallucination. But her hand at his shoulder and her lips at his neck – just a moment of each – were real enough that he opened his eyes. Turned his head. Found her closer than perhaps she had ever been.

Her voice again, a pleading whisper that pulled her face into something desperate. "Don't leave me, Zuko."

And she was close enough and he was drunk enough that it seemed all too easy for him to tuck his hand around her face and pull her in until her mouth was on his and he was kissing her with all the finesse of an intoxicated college student lying on someone else's couch.

For three long moments it felt like a dream. He no longer inhabited his body but watched from above, saw himself with the world's most exquisite girl in his arms, tangled together in semi-darkness and an inebriated stupor. He tried to focus on the way her hair felt between his fingers. The soft yielding of her lips against his. The gentle tug of her hand around the collar of his shirt. The warmth of her breaths and the way his other hand filled the expanse between her shoulder blades.

They were messy and rushed and sloppy. They were drunk. Hungry. Greedy. She buried her hand in his hair and he grasped her with both arms around her waist. There was not enough of him to inhale all of her, his beautiful Katara. He tried to move to the spot beneath her ear but she tugged him back to her mouth with the same urgency that trembled in his limbs. This was it, the last night he would ever have with her, because every intention they verbalised at the airport tomorrow would be eroded with each mile he crossed in the sky away from her. When he was gone she would forget him, create a life that did not account for him. He would never be enough for her. He knew enough to know that.

She smelled divine. She tasted alcoholic and sweet. She was his Katara and she seemed just as much a willing participant in this as he was. He knew he would find that difficult to believe tomorrow. Tonight, he touched her hair and her face and her back and her arms and refused to let her catch her breath and danced dangerously close to spontaneous human combustion.

Somewhere, somewhere very, very far away, a door slammed. It was too distant to be real but he jumped anyway, his entire body shuddering for one second against the couch, and he felt her smile as she pulled away to press a kiss to his throat.

He felt his own hum reverberate through his chest. "That was nice." It was stupid but he thought it and so his mouth formed the words. When he swallowed he tasted vodka.

She giggled into his neck. Ran a finger along his jaw. "Very nice."

"We should do this more often." The words were sticky in his mouth, heavy like fudge.

"Really?" She dropped her hand to rest on his stomach.

"Mmhmm."

"You're leaving me."

"No. I'm just drunk."

"Me too."

"You're going to regret this tomorrow." The words were in his head and then they were on his tongue and there was no reason for them to exist at all but he said them anyway. Scored them with a lazy drag of his hand through the length of her hair.

She responded with another kiss to his neck. "Am I?" Her hand was almost painfully warm on his cheek. "Will you?"

"Nope." He even shook his head. "I'm having a lot of fun right now."

Another of her giggles, the sound he wanted to be rewarded with again and again and again. "Better than that videogame with the guns... and the people?"

He managed a smile. An almost-laugh muffled by alcohol. Pulled her face to his and kissed her for too many heartbeats. Just one long, lingering press of his lips to hers that he hoped would fill him for the rest of his life, because never again would he be able to hold her this way. Even through his inebriated haze he knew that much. And so his hands tightened around her cheeks and he breathed her in deep and slow and didn't release her until his body forced him to inhale.

Katara moved down the couch enough to rest her head on his chest and he missed kissing her immediately. "I'm going to write you a letter every day."

"Sure you are." It was a pleasant enough thought that he entertained it.

"I am! If you're going to abandon me, I'm going to make sure you can't forget me." She punctuated her assertion with a poke to his abdomen, the kind that was slurred by her own drunken state.

"I won't forget you," he promised. He closed his eyes.

*             *            *

They drove to the airport in the definitive light of noon. They sat in silence, two figures separated by the awkward middle seat in the back of a taxi. It was a beautiful day, the kind where the sky was so blue it could not possibly be real and the sun threw rainbows through camera lenses and peripheral vision.

Zuko stared at his hands to prevent himself from staring at Katara. The entire left side of his body was alert to her presence, each hair on his skin reaching for her, sizzling and thrilling with her proximity. He wanted to turn to her and tell her that he remembered everything they'd done last night. That he regretted none of it. That he only wished he could hold her like that every night, taste and smell and touch her as if he had the right to. But then he thought of the way she would shrink from those words and they died on his tongue.

Traffic was light and their progress was swift. In a heartbeat they were pulling up to the Departures entrance of Ba Sing Se Domestic Airport and he was stumbling out of his seat to collect his luggage from the trunk. Katara loitered on the sidewalk and he tried not to notice the awkwardness stiffening her stance. He shut the trunk, asked the driver to wait five minutes, pulled his luggage to the sidewalk and faced her.

Her arms were folded. Slowly, gently, he coaxed one of her hands into his grip, tugged her to his chest and held his breath until she wrapped her arms around his torso. He rested his chin on the top of her head. As though it had been made to fit there.

"Miss you already," she whispered into his shirt.

He closed his eyes. He couldn't speak. He managed a single affirmative hum.

"Don't forget me when you're famous." He heard her trying to smile.

"Not a chance."

She tightened her grip. Buried her face into his chest. Hiccupped once.

He brought his hands to her biceps and gently eased her away from him.

"Kit. Are you crying?"

He didn't know if he was surprised or in disbelief or concerned at this completely uncharacteristic display of emotion. But when she looked at him her eyes were red and caught the glow of the Departures sign lit up behind him and the sunlight stuck to the track of a tear down one cheek. He swiped at it with his thumb and left his hand resting against her cheek.

"Don't cry." The softest of whispers. He was surprised she heard him over the taxi's idling engine and the scream of a plane in the distance.

"Don't go." She closed her eyes. "Sorry. That's unhelpful."

All of him ached to see her like this. He leant in until his forehead was pressed into hers. Closed his own eyes. Breathed in the smell of her.

I love you, he thought.

"I'm really going to miss you," he said.

She gripped the front of his shirt and said nothing.

He thought about the way it had felt to kiss her last night, tried to grasp at the blurred memories as though he were trying to catch smoke. He thought about kissing her here, on a sidewalk, in public, when his inhibitions were firmly in place and hers were likely stronger than they had ever been.

He loved her, he loved Katara, and there was not a single part of him that knew what to do with that information other than suppress the hell out of it and get on a plane to the other side of the country.

So he pressed his lips to her forehead for several moments too long and pulled away with the smell of her shampoo dancing at his nostrils.

"I have to go."

She nodded.

"I'll let you know when I land."

Another nod. A crumpling of the corners of her mouth. The quiver of a jaw stiffening against tears.

"I'll see you later, Kit." Instead of goodbye. Something easier instead of something impossible.

"See you around, Zuko." A quirk upward of her lips for just a second. The folding of her arms back across her chest. The tightening of his own and the realisation that he was the one who would have to walk away.

She was so spectacularly beautiful in jeans and a T-shirt and her hair in a messy bun at the top of her head. She was undeniably his favourite person in the world, the only thing that eroded the inevitably of his departure. He loved her and he was leaving her because he would never be enough for her. He conjured the face he knew she would pull in the wake of his confession. Conjured the resolve to retrieve his suitcase and move toward the Departures entrance. Conjured the strength to step through as they slid open for him and not look back.