{fairytale} endings [Cici]

My mother once told me that the most powerful substance in the world was strong enough to kill a person, it was strong enough to make people get lost in their minds, searching and searching for this substance. She whispered to me every night that it was amazing and that the people that found it would be forever happy, holding it and cherishing it within their souls and their life’s. Mother would sit beside me at the window when I was young and she would point out to all those who had this magic, this powerful substance, she would tell me fairy tales and stories laced with the magic of what she spoke of, they were all so happy and bright. But then she would hold me tight and cry on other days, begging me to never find the magic, begging me to help her escape from it. She would tell me it tore people apart and destroyed lives, she would whisper the words that I feared; that her beatings, my father’s cheating was all because of the most powerful thing in the world. She called it love.

I use to tell myself when I was young I would never be foolish enough to fall in love, it tore too many hearts and left too much heart ache in one’s life and I knew that I couldn’t bring myself to fall in love, to fall head over toes over a girl. I didn’t want to be like my mother had, tears down her cheeks as she begged for her life to end. For the man she loved to leave her alone and be with the whore he always made out with. But when he finally did leave she cried for days on end, she forgot about me. Wallowing in her own pity she sat on a chair for a very long time, she did not move until she got up and walked to the door. Only then did I speak up and ask where she was going. She replied with a few simple words that hit me with little to now meaning at all. “I’m going to find my love.” I don’t know whether she found it, but a few weeks after that father came home. I did not understand it, she hated him and yet she called him her love, the man she wanted to spend her life with.

It was a crazy stupid thing.

I didn’t even try to stop myself from falling for Freya. I couldn’t. She was such a determined, little girl that held so much hope and carried so many dreams about the world around her. She had stories, all of the true, about the way the world should be, how it should be run and what it should truly be like. She had a fire in her eyes that could light up at any second, any time when she was upset or hurting. I fell in love with her, I don’t regret it, and I have loved every second and every minute of knowing her. I just regret the choices that we made. “Kormiko!” The words rose above the sound of a busy street. My eyes flashed with surprise, it was her Freya, that was her voice.

Thin arms wrap themselves like a vice around me and I let out startled yelp as I stumble a few steps in Freya’s grasp. A smile spreads across my face, a million emotions race through me. Until now I had not be sure, I had not be positive that she was really her and alive, and she had found me. I turn around and hug her tightly back, my hands reaching around her back and pulling her in tightly to me. “Oh thank God.” She whispered and I realised that she was crying. I hold her tighter my heart pounding in my chest as I look at her for the first time clearly and properly since the night she had been torn from me. Her hands are clutching at my shirt so tightly, but I don’t care, I don’t because she is here and if she has found me then that means she doesn’t care. That means it doesn’t matter that I destroyed her life and I ruined it. She was right her in front of me and she was so very real. She wasn’t a dream; she wanted me, just as I wanted her.

Her eyes are red and puffy, but they are still the same as when I first meet her. She is still here and she is still perfect, she is my Freya. “I thought you were...” She breathes, I look at her puzzled, before she leans forward and kisses me. It feels amazing to feel her lips on mine just like all those days ago when we had first kissed. I kiss her back with a passion that startles me, I wanted her. It hadn’t been long enough when she let go and leaned back.

“You have a tongue, oh thank god.” She whispers again. I look at her as her words sink in. She thought I was an avox. Did she think I had been tortured? I assume yes for the look of distress and relief that played on her face. She clutched clumsily at the place where her heart was as if it was a miracle that I still had a tongue in my mouth.

I wondered of what she thought of me not coming to find her, would she yell at me? Scream my name the way she had the night before the Peacekeepers had taken us. Would she glare at me with hate? Would she despise my choice to not want to see her because I knew that I had ruined her life, because I knew that everything I had done had destroyed everything she had? I needed to let her make the choice. I needed her to find me and tell me she loved mean still wanted me because of what had happened. I couldn’t bring myself to go up to her house and like a prince of every fairy tale climb up there and tell her I loved her. She had to be the one, she had to be the one to make the choice as to if we still could be together after everything that had happened. I looked down at her as she speaks again. “Why...where...I was waiting...how could you even...I thought you they still had you! I thought they were torturing you and that I'd never get to see you again and...and...”

I stare at her numbly, letting her words sink in. I had not seen her because I couldn’t. I had not gone to her house and told her I loved her because couldn’t she see, didn’t she know that I needed her to do that for me I needed her to come to me and tell me she loved me. I had almost gone to her, but I needed her to tell me, I needed her to come and find me and save me from the problems that I carried. I couldn’t have this fairy tale rescue where the male always save the female, when the prince always was willing to sacrifice his life for his princess, this time I needed it the other way around. I truly needed Freya to come and save me from myself and what I believed. I needed her to hug me and tell me she loved me so that I could then love her back. I couldn’t find her; I couldn’t have gone to her house and helped her. I wanted her to understand why I hadn’t, she needed to understand me, and the fact that to know that I could again lover her and be with her she had to make the choice. She had to tell me.

Life was not a fairy tale and right now it told me just that. The prince would always save the princess, evil will always fail while good proves to be better and win, always coming to the end triumphant. But I didn’t need to warrior to slay a dragon, I didn’t need a princess to save, I was not a prince, I was not a warrior or even evil. I had no part in fairy tales. But I needed my happy ending and I needed to be saved. “If you want me to leave, you might as well tell me now, before I waste any more tears on you.”

It was all she said, she tried to move away from me, but she was crying so hard that she just slipped back into my arms. I placed my head on hers and I held her tightly. I didn’t want her to go. I loved her. I never wanted her to leave me again; she had to stay with me forever. She couldn’t leave me again like she had before, I couldn’t leave her alone ever again, she was my girl, and she always would be. For a moment I squeeze my eyes shut tightly as a tear slips through them. I had missed her so much and seeing her here right now in front of me was a dream. Freya was my miracle.

”Freya, I never want you to leave me again, I have told you before now, I told you a long time ago that I loved you.” I reach down and kiss her lightly on the forehead. I smile and pick her up hugging her tightly, I was never going to let her go. “I missed you so so so much.” I look at her, assessing her making sure no one had laid a finger on her, suddenly I was worried, had they hurt her? “Did they hurt you? Did they lay a finger on you? Because if they did…” My eyes darken, if they had hurt her, if they had touched her I would hurt them all, she was mine and no one would hurt her as long as I was here for her.

Only a little while a go I was walking in a past arena, after having gone on the wrong flight. The land was clean and fresh and stunk of the death, the lives that had been killed. If you closed your eyes and listened hard enough the screams of dying children could be heard in the air, they rung clearly and floated through the arena, like night mares, ghosts that wanted to escape, that wanted to be free, but they never would, they were stuck in that hell hole that horrible place that had been there death, their pain and sorrow.

It had been the last place that they had seen. I myself had hated being there. Seeing such a place only reinforced my hate for the Capitol, they had caused such pain and agony, suffering to some children who were so young as they could barely grasp the concept of death. It was not fair, but then life was never fair. I had never expected or dreamed, or even for a brief second thought that I would meet the girl that I would forever be in love with.

I had bashed into her, her sharp retort had bitten into the sickly air and I had instantly disliked the young arrogant girl. Her eyes had been filled with only the emotions of someone who hated everyone around her and wanted to just simply leave and run and forget the dreaded world that she lived in. But they held that look that said she couldn’t, she wouldn’t leave, and there were secrets that lay hidden there, truths and lies that filled her mind. I don’t know, but I think it was her eyes, the stories that were in there and the fact that she was different, it made me go with her, talk with her and unearth the mysteries that she knew, that she told me.

We yelled we argued and thought, we hated each other, more then we liked one another. I couldn’t understand how I could possibly do anything she wanted to, but we did. We broke into a building and set it on fire, just to find the secrets hidden inside. It was easy. The hard part had been afterwards. I had said a few words that the young girl had taken wrong, she had ran off; screaming she hated me and the night had turned into more pain then victory. Then I woke up in the Detention Centre.

It is amazing how differently you see a person after going through hell with them and for them. It is amazing to see a girl you thought could be dead right in front of your eyes, but when you realise there is perhaps a good in this world that you did not yet know of. I could not, however, stop myself from believing that this was too good, there was just too much happiness and it was like the stuff of a fairy tale, a dream and I never believed it would come true. I didn’t understand how this all happened, to me it was making no sense. Why had they let us go? Why was Freya here in front of me alive and healthy? Why did I stand here with a tongue and a smile on my face?

There were so many questions that I could not answer, I was not smart. “No, Kormiko, don’t you get it? They can’t touch us. They can’t touch either of us. We’re their pets, not their slaves, and once they hurt us, they’re hurting themselves. We are them.” I stared at her as she stepped back; talking to me, telling me the simplest of answers to questions that had plagued me. Was it really that simple?

“I was angry at you, Kormiko,” My eyes harden, but I don’t show her how that makes me feel, I did feel hurt that she felt that way.

Had I really made that big a mistake? Had I really and truly done the wrong thing, by walking away when I believed I had been right? I didn’t know what to say to her, so I just looked away from her, she was the one that had always been good with words. I was horrible with them, I fumbled over them and could never come up with the right things to say.

“I cried and I cried and I cried over you and you never came to wipe away my tears…but it was all just plain stupid. I never came looking for you, and I should have because it was my turn to be strong.” I bite my lips and turned myself to face her again, she was right I had never gone to her when she was crying and when I knew Freya would be in pain, scared and terrified. I hadn’t done anything, I had walked away and left her and waited for her, because I had needed her to come to me and be the one to find me and hold me. I wasn’t weak, I wasn’t stupid or silly, it was the truth, it was the absolute truth.

“I should be the one apologizing.” She continued, I open my mouth to speak, to tell her, but she gets in there first. “I'm so sorry for everything that night. I was stupid and immature.” Then she says something she had never told me before, she says the words that I had told her, the things the words that I believed did not mean so much anymore, she had easily brushed them off the day I had told her, telling me that she had no clue what they meant. And here she was right now, speaking those exact words to me, the words I had always wanted to hear.”I love you Kormiko.”

”I love you too, Freya.” I breathe. I cradle the young girl in my arms and hold onto her tight, she is all I had and I never wanted to let her go. I cared so much for her and there had been so many ups and down sin our lives, the world that we lived in. There may not be as many as others, but for us it was enough. “I don’t ever want to have to see you be torn from me again. I agree with everything you said, though, about the Capitol and why we are here and not dead or in some district as an avox. They can’t do that to us. I grinned. “What do you want to do now?”

When I look into her house I see a rich array of colour, expensive tapestry and fragile paintings that mix with the bright interior of her house. I soak in the expensive carpets and neat, oh so very neat house where everything seemed to be lined up in perfect rows, nothing looked out of place; it all seemed to blend in. It looked so much different to the girl that I saw, her rugged clothing, her fresh and normal face –normal to be compared to my standards, absolutely crazy and dull for Capitol standards. I wonder for a brief second what her parents possibly look like, did they have crazy hair? Skin the colour of peas? Tattoos that covered every inch of their body? Piercings that littered their skin, even in the most private of places? I shudder at the thought. I was happy with my dull boring look. I stood out in the Capitol crowds, but to me I looked normal, I was the one that looked like the rest of the people in this world. I wasn’t the freak.

I follow Freya into the lounge room, I stare at the contrast of colours and to my own home, my home consisted of nothing more than a few simple pieces of furniture and all the other small necessities that I needed to live, like food and water. My riches were in the shop that I owned and the clothes that I designed and made my money and everything expensive and good I owned came from there. I held a small apartment above my shop, so access to my sup[plies was simple, the clothes I often designed were boringly simple and plain, but the Capitol residents loved them, they were different from the exotic, crazy stuff that they normally wore.

She tells me a story about a fish and I look behind her to a small fish tank that held, but one lonely fish that swam in tiring circles around and around the tank. As she continued to talk I watched, her words sinking in to my head, she was, of course right. I did see it. Freya and I were different, I know that most people do say that, most people do turn around and tell you that they are different, that they don’t follow; they stand out from the crowd. I didn’t see the other Capitolites as the same as us, they were all sheep they looked towards a leader their Shepard; President Snow. I didn’t follow him, I wasn’t a sheep, in a way in that herd of sheep I was a goat. I was similar in some ways, but then when you truly looked at me I was completely different from them. Like any sheep I was trapped in a pen and if I could escape it I would be free, I could see the other goats on the other side of the fence, but no matter what I did I couldn’t get past the Shepard that blocked me. He didn’t want me to be with the rest of them.

When I looked at Freya, she was like me, we were both odd, we didn’t belong in this crowd of people, and we were meant for the others, on the other side of the fence. We just needed to find a way to get past the shaped that guarded us and to the people that were so like us. And sometimes you are stained with the memories of others, those stains hold you and change you and they make you different. I knew that if Freya and I ever got to the rest of those people they would see us as different, out pasts have tainted us. We don’t truly belong with ever and yet in a way we want to be with both. No matter what side we chose we will never be welcome, we are just too different; we hold too many different values that have destined us to be forever seen as outsiders. And it scared me.

Freya walks over to the fish tank and rummages around in the water for a bit, with a net she scoops up the fish and chucks it into a plastic bag full of water. It was like one of the “win a fish, here’s the bag. Do what you want with it” carnival kind of things. To my surprise she walks over to me and hands me the fish. I take it and just stare at her dumbfounded. I gape for a second thinking of something to say, words to fall from my lips, but I don’t know what to say. I shove the fish back at her, but when I look up she isn’t there. “Freya?” I call. No reply. I hear a sound coming from above me. Hesitantly I place the fish on a table beside the sofa and I watch it swim, dazed, going around in small circles as if when it reaches one side it realises that is no way out, so it spins around and heads the other way to only realise that that way will prove to be just as useless. It looked pretty dumb and quite funny.

After a few brief seconds Freya reappears with a box. I frown slightly as she dumps it on the ground and begins to pull out books. ”Freya is that the same box as the one we stole from the place?” I asked, because it was the only thing I could manage to say. I knew it was the exact box and I already felt stupid for asking. “Err, sorry, yeah I know it is the same box.” She looks at me briefly, before going back into the boxes. She pulls out one. “I know things about computers. I mean I do know quite a bit of things. I have had to learn how to because of running my own business. Hacking can’t be too hard if you have a manual, right?” I asked with a small laugh as I took the book from Freya. It was small, but as I opened the pages I felt a familiar sense of knowing. The symbols and words made sense to me. I wasn’t good at much, but I knew computers and I knew clothes, I also knew Freya. When she spoke the next words a devious smile upon her face I knew exactly what she wanted to do.

”Do you have a computer?”

I couldn’t settle on one thought in my mind, they spun around and around in continuous circles. I flitted from one idea to the next, not yet quite sure which one to settle onto. Confusion embedded itself into my face and I knew that it would be easily see in my eyes. My mind was like I maze everywhere I turned there was a dead end; I had to keep running and searching to find the right way, the only way to get out. After I speak Freya’s body tightens against mine and I sigh quietly to myself. With as much strength as I dare to muster I hold back the wave of anger that wants to consume me.

I was tired of the way I could say nothing, I could speak nothing without offending or upsetting Freya. I had proposed the idea that we don’t fight because I couldn’t. I could not match her in words, I could not say things that she could and knew she would win. But it was also because I didn’t want to. I did not want us to always argue, I did not want the first words that leapt from our mouths to be comments that stung and bit into each of our egos. It seemed, however, that Freya did not share my views; she was a hot headed independent child. No, that was wrong, she was not a child, she was and adult, she might be only fifteen, but I never saw her that way I always saw her as an adult, as a girl equal if not better than I was.

Did she think I was being silly? The evident annoyance in her tone made me flush with anger and I bit back a rude comment, she was an adult, she was a girl capable of handling her own and yet she could never hide her emotions, sometimes you had to, sometimes you had to go with people rather than always fighting them. And what was more I was sure she hated me for saying we should take a step back, I was sure that the stubbornness in them made her boil with rage. And it made me hurt on the inside.

Freya had strong opinions, but her fault was she always believed hers to be right; she never had it in her mind that maybe others were right. What was more when I tried to speak with her, when I tried to say something or after I had said something there would always be that annoyance that flicker of frustration or anger that made me just want to snap at her. Did she think I wanted to give up? Did she think that I wanted to let everything go and just walk away? I press my lips into a thin, tight line as I think, trying to hide my own anger, keeping it away from my face.

The only reason why I wanted to take a step back was because I knew that rushing head first into unpredictable situations was not smart. It took planning and time and sometimes when you had no clue where to start you had to step back and look at the situation. You had to gaze at it and try to find flaws, or find new ideas, in new perspectives that you had no yet looked at. I resisted the urge to scowl at Freya, she was smart and yet she was blinded by her head on dash, her stubborn want to just leap forth and go, go, go. She didn’t look, she just wanted to do.

She kissed me as she told me that she would come to my house, but the touch of her lips on mine was suddenly very uncomfortable. I pull away and just stare at her, my eyes blank, expressionless, but in hers they burned. Her eyes blazed with annoyance and despair. And it made me ache on the inside, I gave her a hurt look, feeling my own body tighten as well pulled apart. My jaw was clenched angrily. But I knew that any outward sign of anger would only provoke Freya and make her snap at me. Wearily I realised that I didn’t want her to because I was tired of her upfront demeaning attitude and I had only been talking to her for ten minutes.

Yet I knew I loved her, I knew that even though there was anger behind her eyes there was still that love that clung to them. And still, I knew that it was my love for her that made me hesitate, making me open my mouth to speak. “Freya,” I begin my tone reasonable, nothing in it suggesting an argument. “I need you to listen to me. I need you to hear what I’m about to say as I l have listened to you.” I blurt, I continue my words in haste, not wanting her to interrupt me, not wanting her to take offence. “Please do not get offended when I say that. I know you have listened to me speak before, but please do this again, please, for me.”

”I love you and because I love you I am going to tell you the truth.” I paused, taking a deep breath before I went on, because I knew that one wrong word and Freya would jump on it and scream at me. One wrong word and this could be all over, because no matter how much Freya believed she wasn’t a child you can just never stop being one, even I was still a child at times, and there are those qualities that never leave us. And I knew Freya, I knew that if I hurt her in any way she would ignore me, I would no longer matter and she would sulk and scream and fling words at me that would make me hurt and ache. I knew all this, but I also knew that I had to be honest with her, because I loved her.

”Right now, I feel as though you aren’t listening, look at you Freya, I say one thing and because it isn’t what you want to hear you want as rigid as a board. I love you. Freya, I love you so much, I would go through hell for you and I just want to know, I want you to tell me everything, let me know what is wrong, Freya. I can’t read your mind, I know you, I can see that there is clearly something wrong. I’m not the smartest person, so if you have been hinting anything to me I’m sorry. So please can you tell me. I want to help you, I want you to feel better, and when you hurt I hurt, so tell me.

Because I love you.”