chapter 27: beginning

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Rose

I had just finished class when I saw him first.

I was walking down the stairs when I spotted him standing outside the building, in the quad. He looked lost, out of place, with his hands shoved into his jean pockets and black hair falling to his shoulders.

My heart was beating too fast.

I couldn't breath.

This isn't real, I told myself. He can't be here.

But he was. And when I walked outside and our eyes locked, I was transported back to the summer we spent together. The campus and the students were gone, replaced by green. Everywhere. It was all green. Trees and sunlight, hidden ponds between bushes and early morning sun hitting my back as he laid in bed beside me.

Sebastian was here.

I didn't know if the realization should make me smile or run.

His eyes held mine as he closed the space between us. He was running now, towards me, grinning from ear-to-ear. He looked out of place in the city, with buildings as his backdrop instead of trees.

"Rose," he said, eyes frantically running over my body. I barely had time to respond before his arms were around me, pulling me tight to his chest, crushing my body against his like I used to love.

I still couldn't breathe.

"Sebastian." I pulled back and took a step away until I could look up into his eyes. Black as I remember, but shining with a new light. Hope, I realized. "What are you doing here?" I watched as his eyebrows pulled together. His hands pulled away from me quickly as he shoved them back into his pockets. It was written all over his face, that this reunion wasn't going as he planned.

He probably expected us to be kissing by now.

Did he expect me to run into his arms? To kiss him like it hasn't been five months since our paths last crossed? I hoped he hadn't spent the time missing me.

I hoped he hadn't spent the time thinking I missed him, too.

Although I did. I do miss him, still. But we were worlds apart. A forest couldn't survive in the middle of the city. There wasn't enough rain or light. Or love.

"I—" His words cut off. Sebastian ran a hand through his hair, then over the stubble dotting his jaw. "I wanted to see you, Rose. I had to see you. Dammit, I couldn't stop thinking about you or why I just stood there and let you leave."

"I had to leave," I said. "I couldn't stay in that cabin forever."

"I know that," he said with a chuckle. Sebastian shook his head, face falling. "I knew you wouldn't want this," he said after a minute, letting out a long breath.

"We said goodbye," I told him. I awkwardly adjusted the strap of my backpack, widely aware of the crowd of students shuffling around us. I sighed and grabbed Sebastian's hand, tugging him behind me into a hidden area behind a circle of trees.

"I never wanted that to be goodbye, Rose," he said. He was leaning against a tree, looking more at home against the green. It was easy to remember why I had fallen in love with him when he looked like that. Like the wild wasn't just around him, but in him, too.

"You— You could have called, Seb. I... I have class." His face recoiled at the words and I told myself it was for the best. The trees behind him reminded me too much of Caleb's eyes and my head began to spin until I couldn't tell them apart. Sebastian and Caleb. I loved them both, and each hurt in a new way.

"I'll wait for you." He said it so quickly, like the four words could magically patch up the time we lost. "What time are you done?"

I reached into my bag and pulled out a notebook, quickly jotting down the address to my apartment before I shoved it into Sebastian's palm. "Meet me there in two hours," I told him. His face broke into a grin as he nodded, his eyes shining with that hope again.

This is dangerous, I told myself. But as I walked away, I felt myself feel it too: hope.


I stared at my notebook for the entire class, scribbling mindlessly until the blank page was replaced with trees sprouting up from between the lines, the edges, the corners. They were everywhere and just between them, dotted into the middle, was a pair of eyes as dark as coal.

I ripped the page out and shoved it into my backpack as the professor spoke, dismissing us from lecture. I tried to find the familiar relief of leaving class deep within me, but it wasn't there today. Knowing I had to go home and face him made my stomach sit uneasy. I was nervous.

I was terrified.

Love had never worked out well for me. It lead to my heart shattering into a thousand pieces, then those shattering into a thousand more. It hurt like a glass-tipped sword or bones made of lead. It made me feel like I was drowning, and an eternity of drowning was not worth it for a month of floating.

I waved goodbye to the friends I made, and I use that term in the loosest sense, as I grabbed my things and walked out of class. Each step was harder than the next. The closer I got to home, the closer I got to him, sucked all the air from my lungs until I couldn't breath.

That was why, as I stood outside my apartment, imagining Sebastian waiting inside for me, I turned and I walked away. I can't do this. Not again. My feet lead me away before my mind could follow. It only took a minute before I was running, tracing the familiar steps to a path I knew all to well. The crammed streets opened up into a small clearing that stretched on between the buildings, looking uneasily out of place in the heart of the city.

My feet knew the ground by heart at this point. They manoeuvred between the tombstones, stopping at Caleb's where the roses still lay from the last time I had visited. They were dead now, dried petals crumbling onto the grass. I tried not to laugh at the irony and sat down.

"Hey, Cal," I said. The words wrapped around me, a ghost of his hands and the warmth he once made me feel. "It's been a crazy day," I said with a laugh. "I really wish you were here. You were the best listener."

I don't know how long I sat there, staring at the tombstone and the ground that he was now laying under. I wanted to claw my fingers into the earth, to tear the ground apart for swallowing him whole and taking him from me. I wanted to dig Caleb up with my bare hands, to hold him in my arms one final time and whisper the goodbye I could never say.

It was too late.

I was crying. I was always fucking crying but now my tears could drown me. And I didn't know if I would fight them, or if I would let them take me, let them bury me here beside the boy I had once loved more than life itself.

Being back in the city reminded me of why I had left in the first place. It made me feel too close to Caleb, like his ghost was following me around everywhere I went. In the wild it was easier. I could pretend the rest of the world faded along the edge of the tree line and all that existed was myself, a yellow-roofed cabin and a man with black eyes.

But here? Here the memories could swallow me whole in one single gulp.

Here, it felt like all the progress, all the healing I had endured in the wild had been ripped away as soon as the first skyscraper came into view. Here, the memories pressed down on me so tightly that I thought they would soon become me until all I was was a walking reminder of the life I used to have.

Maybe Sebastian was right. Maybe I should have stayed in that cabin with him forever.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, stretched my legs into the sunlight when a shadow fell over me, replacing the sun. I heard his voice next, and I realized that I was waiting for him to find me.

"So this is it," Sebastian said, taking a seat on the ground beside me. "Caleb." I nodded, my eyes never leaving the tombstone. I felt the tears pool around my lips before dropping off my chin, one-by-one. Sebastian grabbed my hand in his and I turned to him. "Rose," he whispered, reaching out to wipe the tears off my face.

"You were right," I told him, staring into his eyes and wishing they'd swallow me whole. "I never should have left that cabin. I thought I was ready for this, Seb. I thought I could handle being back here but I— I can't."

"Yes, you can." His voice was stern, holding enough confidence in me for the both of us.

"I lied to my mom," I said, eyes shifting back to Caleb's grave. "She calls me everyday and I tell her that I'm okay. But I'm not." I turned back to Sebastian and his eyes were there, waiting. Always waiting. "I haven't been okay since the day he died. Or since the day I left you on that road."

"You don't have to be okay, Rose. You just need to survive. And us?" he said, placing our intertwined hands on his knee. "We're survivors."

"You make it sound so easy," I said with a laugh. I wish it were. I really did.

"It's not easy. Not by a long-shot. I mean," he let out a sigh, "dammit, Rose, everyday sucks more than the last. But it hurt a little less when you were there." I watched as his eyes dropped to my lips, as the lust shined in them before he blinked and it was gone. "I found your paintings, you know," he said, smiling now. "Behind the bed, the fridge. They're everywhere. You're everywhere."

I felt my cheeks begin to warm as I remembered the little flowers I had painted onto the walls of the cabin in an attempt to bring the wild inside.

"Sorry," I groaned, holding my knees to my chest. "I probably shouldn't have vandalized your property..."

"If anything, you made it better." Our eyes met and he smiled, the same way he had the day I painted him when we were sitting in that clearing for the first time. Our eyes had held secrets that day, but now they just held each other.

"Well." Sebastian cleared his throat, moving closer to me on the grass. His hand left mine as it gestured to Caleb's tombstone. "Are you going to introduce me?"

I felt my mouth fall open at the question. It only took a minute for his eyes to engulf me and his hand to find mine. I nodded, slowly, and turned to the stone sitting in front of us.

"Sebastian," I said, gazing at him from the corner of my eye, "this is Caleb."

Sebastian's arm wrapped around my shoulder as he smiled. He didn't question it. He didn't complain. He simply sat there, understanding, as he wove his way into my world.

"It's nice to meet you, Caleb," he said, eyes never leaving the tombstone. "You have an incredible girl here,"— his eyes met mine quickly before drifting back— "but you already know that."

We sat there until the sun dropped behind the trees. Until the air was cold and the moon was bright. Sebastian spoke to Caleb the entire night. He told him stories, our stories. And in return, I told Sebastian stories about Caleb and I and the way life used to be.

It was effortless.

It felt like home.

No, not home. Home was familiar, but this was new.

This felt like the beginning.

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this was my favourite scene in the Episode version of this story. the three of them finally together. thoughts? x

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