Ten

The air on the patio was crisp and refreshing, though Luna couldn't bring herself to enjoy it.

Where had things gone wrong?

When did Auros go so far away?

There was fighting...but he hadn't had to leave. They'd told him that.

Mark said that Auros had been living on the streets for much longer than they'd thought...but wouldn't say how long.

She knew Auros wouldn't tell her.

The Auros she'd known was gone...but even this Auros cared too much to worry her with something like that.

She felt like she was lost, wandering in a boundless void that had only one escape, and the people who should be guiding her were lost themselves.

She heard them calling her, telling her it'd be ok...but when she saw Auros in the hospital...when the doctors wouldn't give them any real details...when they'd had to argue their way into the room...she knew he was lost in a different way.

"Life is difficult...the only legitimate direction comes from within," he'd told her one night. He had this faraway look in his eyes, as though he were saying it as much for his own good as hers.

She'd always worried about him, afraid for his safety and his health...but he didn't know how to care for those things.

When he'd moved back in...some part of her hoped maybe things could be like they had before...but Mark was firmly against it...and Auros...Auros seemed like he was in a haze most of the time.

It was almost as though he'd just given up, like the fight in him had ended and he hadn't really realized it yet.

They had the same conversations, did the same things, the three of them...but something had changed in him.

His eyes didn't shine like they used to, didn't glimmer and dance when they talked about things they loved.

And then there was this girl...this...this girl.

Yohai being there drove her up a wall.

Luna wanted to shake her, to make her leave...but then...she didn't really have any footing to make that kind of demand. It was her and Mark's apartment, so she could do it on those grounds...but some part of her knew that if Yohai left...so would Auros...and who knows what that would lead to.

Nothing good...she was sure of that.

A tiny winged lizard landed on the railing beside her and exhaled electricity. It lit up the darkened patio for a moment, and in that instant, she could swear she saw Auros.

Her Auros.

The Auros whose eyes gleamed with delight when he won a boss battle, who still had that fire in him, the fire that burned away any kind of obstacle he faced.

He had the same expression on his face though. Like he was sorry, desperately sorry for something.

It was almost as though he was trying to apologize for being alive, trying to earn every breath he took.

He thought she didn't see those looks, didn't know how desperately he despised himself...but how could she not?

She spent more time with him than anyone that she knew of.

She knew what he liked to eat, what he liked to do, how he did it. Luna had spent more time learning how he worked than anyone else he talked to.

How could she not know how he felt.

She thought back to some of the arguments...tried to remember what he'd said, and why he said it...but she couldn't.

How many times had they sat together on this very patio, wrapped in blankets talking while the streets lived and breathed below?

How many times had she had to tell him not to sit on the railing, it was dangerous.

He was confident in his magic at least; certain that no matter the context, he could use it to save himself.

For a moment she wondered how far of a fall he could save himself from...how many stories would it take to kill him if he tried to slow the descent.

Unbidden, the image of him in midair, desperately casting spell after spell to slow himself down, pouring his mana into a futile grasp for survival appeared in her mind.

Something clicked in her mind as she thought on this, and as she imagined him falling to his death, she saw him reversing, moving upward.

He was sitting on a ledge, so high up he could actually see above the buildings.

Kicking his legs like he did at the table, bouncing them off the stone work of the ledge.

A piece of paper slipped from his grasp.

Then, without a word, he slid off the ledge into the inky black maw of the alley below.

As he fell, tears poured from her eyes and she choked back a sob.

The darkness swallowed him and in that murky gloom, weightless and free, she heard him say, softly, so softly that even in this sight, in this viewing, she barely heard him, "I love you."

Luna broke down.

Tears flowed, burning her eyes and cheeks as she coughed and sobbed as loudly as her lungs would let her.

She couldn't escape the sight.

She couldn't unhear him.

She couldn't stop it.

She can't stop it.

Luna, suddenly, was falling with him, the feeling of her stomach floating up her chest almost overwhelming as he turned his head and looked at her.

He'd already said the most important thing he had to say, and he had no more apologies or last words.

Auros was waiting.

For the pain.

For that sudden stop.

Despite herself, despite her screams, begging him to do something, to do anything, to please, please, please, please PLEASE TRY to save himself, to realize that nothing can change or get better if tomorrow never comes, she could still see those eyes, those deep, sad, brown eyes lost in thought.

She focused on them, tried to reach out to him, to touch his cheeks one last time before the end came.

Just as she felt his skin on hers, his eyes changed.

They flickered, like an engine starting, struggling to move its gears into position and spinning up...and then, they flashed.

The air breathed with energy and everything was red.

His eyes glowed even then, somehow more red than the light they emitted.

The walls around them cracked and shattered as his descent was suddenly stopped, as though he'd landed, though he simply floated there and began falling again, much slower.

Luna continued her breakneck pace to the ground below.

Just as she was about to hit the ground, there was a bright beeping and Mark was shaking her, screaming that she needed to break the spell, she needed to stop whatever it was she was doing.

Shaken back to her reality, a new wave of pain and sadness crashed over her as she grabbed Mark and held him as hard as she could, her tears and crying harder now than they had been even before.

She was exhausted, in unbelievable emotional pain and so, so scared for Auros...but in the back of her mind, she had a thought.

A thought that changed so much of what she thought, and what she thought she wanted.

What if the Auros she'd known hadn't died, wasn't gone.

What if she simply hadn't known this Auros.