Chapter One

“I’m going back in.”

The words glide out of her mouth carelessly and calm, a certainty against the infinities they’ve been drowning in. Articulated with such a conviction that Alec has only ever heard spill from her lips once before, branding those three words across his heart for all eternity. She stares up at the boy towering above her, a determined hard glance fighting itself through the remnants of tears and blood shot smoked eyes. Daring herself to ascend to his height she balances herself, equally distributing her weight as she kneels on the shattered ground below her. With buckling knees and wavering limbs, the girl naively attempts to ascend. Only to be knocked down again with an outburst of coughs ferocious enough to choreograph a dance of the glass splintering the floor around them. Each pirouette glinting a warm amber and giggling at its own mischief.

The boy holds out a delicate, slender hand to help the smaller girl to her feet. She interlocks her nervous fingers with his and allows them to settle in the comfort of home. Now at their regular verticality the girl undeviating continues her stare as he holds her steady, an attempt to pin a butterfly still onto a cork board despite the humble breeze fluttering through her wings.

“You’ve got to be joking!” a laugh, choked for air, interrupts his speech at an idea so insanely reckless yet customarily unsurprising. “We barely even made it out of there!” In this moment his voice was the most visible aspect of his being. The sense of concern emanating off him seeming almost tangible. More material than the shoulders he was holding with a firmer grasp every second, more real than the very palpable scene in front of him. He stares back into the other girl's eyes with as much audacity as she had first inspired, yet he cannot deny the softening of his nerves after every occasion where their gazes meet. Like the loosing of a knot in a ribbon bow, aware of its slackening after exploitation. All spirit and ludicrous bravery. He tries to avoid his habit of falling to compliance at her touch, her voice or indeed her eyes. But just as the moon must reveal its disguise during the night, he cannot deny his true nature. His stare softens but his words remain strong.

“Ty,” he breathes, a sense of helplessness weaving between his speech, “Think about what you’re saying!  We can’t save her. I only just managed to save you!” he tightens his grip on her slight shoulders to assure himself of her unlikely presence.

“But you did!” she exclaims, the confidence in her tone attempting to disguise the fact that her lack of understanding is equally as pronounced as his. “And now, we’re here together. Alive. And she could be with us too, all we need to do is go back in there and drag her out!” she manoeuvres herself out of his grasp and directs his attention to the cataclysmic scene before them. “Help me save her. Please. Save her like you saved me”

The girl’s confidence dismisses itself from her like an old acquaintance as her voice becomes less than a whisper, uncontrollably catching on the tears stabbed and scattered in her throat like fatal hundreds and thousands. She ashamedly attempts to hide her face as she burrows herself into the taller boy’s shoulder. Finding comfort in the fact that today he chose to wear her most favoured jumper. The one with warmth and vanilla stitched between its lining. The one which she now notices is freshly adorned with singed threads and ash stained decals. In that moment, hiding and smiling through her anxieties, she decides that it looks better this way. It has a story. A story they could tell together when their future children find it at the bottom of an unpopular cupboard and ask of its purpose. She allows her fragmented tears to roll themselves into this story, hoping that they will stay a secret between the pages of cotton and herself. Hoping that she won’t appear as weak as she feels.

Alec detects the all too familiar texture of salted droplets that poison his skin during his loved one’s darkest moments. He alters his approach, stroking the back of her soot embellished hair with a palm of almost identical size to the circumference of her head, talking in hushed inoffensive tones. Knowing that he could never forgive himself for any occasion where he was to blame for her tears.

“Sure we may be here, and we may be together but look at us Ty.” He guides her away from his shoulder as she acknowledges, seemingly for the first time, the severity of burns, bruises and cuts dressing their skin. She notices that his sharp cheekbone is oozing hot blood and she attempts to stifle the flow with her cardigan sleeve wrapped around the back of her hand. Only to flinch away again noting the wounds on her own skin to be of equal cruelty.  “We’re barely alive.” the boy continues, “You can’t possibly believe that if we go back in there we’re coming back out? “

“Why not? we’re here now.” Sifting back her tears and clearing her throat with a weak cough, she attempts to regain control over her whimpering tongue.

“We got lucky Ty. I don’t know how we got out alive but we did. But if there’s one thing that I do know it’s that there’s no way in hell we would survive it again.”

The girl takes an empowered step away from her partner and points to the catastrophe before them, she collects her calm and begins. “There’s a girl in there, Alec. An innocent girl dying a slow painful death, and we, the people who are supposed to care for her most in the world, are stood outside watching it happen. Arguing over details and practicalities. I don’t know how we survived either but I do know that none of it means anything it she isn't with us.” She takes hold of the taller boy’s arms with shaking hands before continuing. “We love her Alec. We love her with as much of our hearts as we love each other. And I know that if I were in there, left behind, you’d go in after me. So why aren’t we doing the same for her. What’s the point in loving someone if you can’t protect them? “Her voice betrays her, jolting and quivering as if were an unstable plank under a passing train carriage. She immediately relinquishes her hold on him and turns to offer her back, hiding her tears in the palms of her hands once again.

“I am protecting the one I love, right now.” He accepts her offer and delivers his speech to the back of her frame, knowing it would be easier to express coherent thoughts without distraction. “I love you Ty,” he begins plainly, “and there’s no way I’m losing you, not after I already thought I had. Seeing you like that, it broke me. My heart tore itself in two and I swore to myself that I’d never let that happen again.” He places a gentle hand on her shoulder and guides the girl to face him, looking into her injured eyes for the first time without doubt. After seeing such a sight of flawed perfection he finds himself raising his voice out of urgency as he continues. “I’m not going to let you die Ty! No way in hell. Please, just think about what you’re saying!”

“We’re all she’s got Alec.” She sighs somewhat defeated. “If we don’t save her, who will?”

“We’re all that she's got? Are you sure that's what you’re worried about? Is that what you tell yourself when you want to avoid the actual problem we’ve found ourselves in?” His voice snaps like a reluctant whip, slicing through the air, cutting it somewhat more harshly than he had intended.

“What are you talking about?” The girl asks, taken aback by this uncharacteristically rigorous outburst. A brief flash of pain making a debut across her face at hearing such violence in his voice, a pain much more obtrusive that all of the casualties across her flesh.

“She’s all that we’ve got Ty!” He attempts to control his temper but his annoyance peaks through the facade, evident still in the notes of his voice. “Or that’s what you’ve been thinking at least. I can see it in your eyes. Whenever we joke about our future after she’s left you become clouded and grey as if a thunderstorm has descended upon your head. She isn’t real Ty!” The momentum of his speech advancing towards its pinnacle destination, accumulating more and more anger as it prepares for its climax. “I think deep down we both accepted that long ago.”  He admits to both himself and to the other girl, with a suddenly softening voice, filling itself with empathy, understanding and gentleness. He rests both of his hands on top of Ty’s shoulders with a featherlike graze and loving softness. “She’s nothing more than a manifestation of our thoughts, our dreams, our wishes. We made her into everything we wanted of ourselves but could never manage to become. All our hopes and visions of our future together, they were materialised by her, and that made them seem real.”

He places a trembling finger under her chin and carefully lifts her gaze upwards to meet his, saying farewell to the floor she had made peace with. He takes his thumb to her cheek slowly stroking her skin as he does most nights as she drifts asleep. A humble smile appears across her lips for a moment of two, embracing its rightful place, only to be wiped away guiltily like a child attempting to hide the evidence of eating a forbidden cookie. “I know you’re scared of letting go of her, I am too. We’re scared because we believe that we are going to disappear with her, our relationship will turn to dust, fade out like the last light.” The dark haired boy allows his voice to soften and settle, like a still ocean after a raucous storm. He takes both of the girls hands and sandwiches his own around them before continuing with his deliverance of spontaneous speech.  

“But when I look at you, I see everything I’ve ever wanted out of this world. Sure she may have brought us closer together and I guess we can never know for sure if she is real or not, but one thing I know with certainty is that nothing is as real as the way I feel about you, and that won’t ever fade away. So why does it matter if we let her go? I’m stood right here in front of you and I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you, because when we’re together, when I feel your chest rising and falling against mine, when I hear you laugh from across the room or when I lay awake at night counting your heartbeats whilst lonely people count sheep.  I could never wish to be anywhere else, or dream of anything better than just being with you, next to you, in love with you. I love you Ty, please. Stop. For me.” He heaves out a sigh of relief, letting go of the weights that have been sat on his chest for an eternity and watching them fall to the floor. Disintegrating into the atmosphere as they fall lower and lower, and with every dissolving sequin of sugar he feels his heart lighten and hears it beat lively than ever.

“I can’t.” The final weight descends with rapidity and crashes upon Alec’s foot, the pain incomparable to the sinking feeling in his stomach. If those weights became sugar, these would merely fragment into pebbles. ” I can’t carry on living knowing that we could’ve saved her and we didn’t even try.” She speaks quietly with her head down focused on the broken floor, releasing her hands from their captivity and balling them into fists like pendulums hanging from either side of her torso. “Her life could’ve been swapped for mine, or for yours and the world could’ve been a better place for it, who knows what she’s capable of? She has the potential to do great things, you saw what she did for Oli! How can we live, knowing what we left to die? Knowing that all the purity, the honesty, the hope that the world needs is dead because of us.”

“Face it Ty,” His determination now inspired by the hopeless exasperation provided from previously failed attempts at persuasion, he continues with a heavy heart and an aching head. “If we died and she lived, she wouldn't last without us. We created her and she relies on our words to keep her alive. Like all good stories she needs a narrator and without it she will fade away just like we did. So yeah, maybe it is selfish, but maybe we do deserve to live more than she does.” The shake in his voice contradicts the conviction in his words, but he continues with as much stubbornness as his partner. “Imagine our life Ty, once we move past all this. Imagine us, waking up in the same bed every morning and knowing in that moment that we must have done something right. Fate must have a reason for being on our side. And it’s because of our potential. Not hers. I’m sorry Ty but she isn’t real, any potential she has is because we gave it to her, which means that we have it too. The potential to bring more happiness into the world. To create more of those lights. But the only way we can do that is together.”

“But if creating all those lights means burning out the brightest one then it isn’t worth the sacrifice!” She retorts, her own frustration showing in every crack of her corporeal being. “In this one person we have found all the goodness in the world, and I’m not going to let her fade away. We're stood out here arguing about what’s real and what isn't, about what's right and what's wrong, but the answer is obvious, it’s right here in front of us! A girl is dying and we could save her, that's what's real and that's the wrong we can make right. I’m sorry too but if you won't help me I’m going on my own, and I’m bringing her back with me.”

The girl takes two obstinate steps towards the wreckage before finding herself pulled back towards the other boy. There are only few occasions where Ty finds herself resenting her friend’s towering build, this being one of them as she discovers helpless to his swift reflexes and unrelenting strength. Finding her arm caught in his grasp she has no choice but to listen to Alec’s attempts at reasoning, albeit with an expression of stubbornness which, she notes, is becoming more of a natural state with every day that passes.

“And then what?” Alec begins, aware that his grasp may be causing the other girl pain but also aware that it is the only way to ensure her safety in these moments. He meets her eyes with a look of such intensity you’d expect it to be possible to collect the lines of pleading and desperation tangled between the two of them in a glass jar. “We keep her alive forever? We don't know how any of this works Ty, maybe it's for the best.”

He feels the vigour of her attempts at escape slacken and so he abandons her grip on her whilst maintaining his equally as captivating gaze. A necessary precaution when dealing with so wild a tempest. “. We can’t keep meddling with mortality like this.” He begins to politely explain. “Maybe we should let her go now so we can remember her later, the way she was supposed to be known. The way we created her. With pen, paper thoughts and ink. Listen to me Ty, we can’t go back in there and if you try I won’t let you. I’ll hold you against the floor myself until someone comes for us if I have to. Please, don't end your life for a false reality, just because you’re scared of the one that's right in front of you. I’m right in front of you Ty. And she is in front of both of us in our hearts and in our heads, where a good story should stay.”

“But she’s not just a story.” The girl objects through torrents of silent tears.

“No, you’re right.” He begins, taking her hand once again. “She’s our story and I promise you this isn’t how it ends.”