The Fault In Our Stars || Self-Para + Kaiden
I’m not scared, if that’s what you’re wondering. The moment of death is full of sound and warmth and light, so much light it fills me, absorbs me: a tunnel of light shooting away, arcing up and up and up, and if singing were a feeling it would be this, this light, this lifting, like laughing…The rest you have to find out for yourself.
-samantha kingston
Typically Arielle was all for sitting around, doing nothing and watching pointless tv shows; so when Kaiden texted her that he might not be around this weekend and he wanted to see her before he left, suggesting they watched a couple episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians she replied with an ‘Of course’ and ran downstairs to his office.
But after an episode and a half the girl was getting antsy. She’d had way too much energy today and knew there wasn’t really any way to get rid of it despite her efforts of pacing, and jumping up and down in her room. “I don’t want to watch this anymore,” she stated. Sitting still had made it worse, she wasn’t even paying attention to the screen anyways. Arielle stood up quickly before Kaiden could say anything and began twirling around in slow circles, watching her feet trying to concentrate on one thing and not everything else her mind was forcing her to think about.
"I wish I could be a ballerina," she spoke, grinning widely as she watched herself stand up on her toes, try to twirl and subsequently stumble to the side. Her gleeful attitude was a stark contrast to the last week she’d been stuck trying to force herself to smile and be happy, even with Kaiden when all she wanted to do was smile. “You say you want to be a penguin, a celebrity, a ballerina — what’s next?” Kaiden laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners with humour as he watched. “Me? Good luck.”
"Or an astronaut!" Arielle laughed as she grabbed for Kaiden’s hands, pulling him up out of the chair so she could lean up to kiss him. "I wanna buy a star, and then, I’ll name it something really cool or whatever, I don’t know, but so then one day when we have the technology to go to stars or planets, whatever I buy, I’m gonna go and I’m gonna build this really cool castle and I-…I wonder how paint works in other gravity-atmosphere things. Whatever I’m sure we’ll have the technology for that at that point too. And I’m gonna paint it cool colors and pictures, and then build a big bubble around it so it’s livable and live there. You can come too if you want." She hadn’t stopped smiling, by the time she finished talking she was slightly out of breath but she didn’t care. Arielle hadn’t had but two manic states, it was enough for her bipolar diagnosis but she couldn’t have noticed it, not right now, all the twenty-one year old knew was that she wasn’t stuck in her bed forcing smiles as she had been.
Kaiden grinned haughtily as he arched a brow. “Oh, I’m going. I’m not staying while humans tear each other apart.” Theatrically, he pointed at the door. “It’ll happen. I bet you —” Lowering his hand slowly, he furrowed his brows at the clock. “I’d better go.” Abruptly, Kaiden wrapping his arms around his girlfriend and lifted her off the ground as he kissed her, chuckling after. “Stay safe, babe.” He lowered her. “Be good.” He looked up at Arielle from under his lashes as he pointed at her, before smirking as he pecked her on the lips again. And then finally, Kaiden left. Half-expecting, yet not knowing, what was coming next.
"I’ll see you when you get back," she smiled before they parted way and Arielle wandered down the first floor hallways for a while before stopping in front of a window that looked out to the front of Thornewood, her attention being drawn to one of the bigger trees on the property. "Yep." she stated aloud to herself before running towards the front door. She knew no one was going to stop her from going outside unless a guard just happened to be walking by at the perfect moment.
She figured astronauts had to look at the stars a lot, find constellations and stuff so they didn’t fly into them. The sky was clear and it seemed like the perfect chance to pick out the star she was going to buy for her castle. So Arielle started up the tree.
She moved quickly, recovering just as fast every time her foot slipped, ignoring the small cut she was getting on her knees when they hit against the trunk of the tree. The girl was too determined to get as high as she could to let the slight stinging she felt bother her.
And finally she was as high as she comfortably could be to sit down on a branch. Her head finally started to clear, everything seemed to just stop as she looked up at the sky. Arielle sat there for a moment, eyes moving quickly from star to star as she judged them from what little she could see. She knew that the brighter ones were younger, so obviously she would want one of those. Like picking a kitten so you can love it longer than if you were to buy an older cat, that’s how she saw it.
Then one moved, causing Arielle to audibly gasp as jump slightly, grabbing another branch next to her to catch her balance. “Come back.” she whined as it disappeared. Maybe it was a plane, maybe she was just completely imagining it but that was her star, she knew it. That was the one that she was going to buy.
Frantically she began looking for it again, there were a few branches blocking her view and she decided she needed to climb up higher to make sure it wasn’t hiding. Standing up, she climbed up onto another smaller branch, and up again until it was barely wide enough for her to stand on, but at least she was over the top of the tree now, she could see everything.
Everything including when she spotted the star she’d seen early moving towards her, getting bigger as it did.
Instinct had her reach out, reach up and try and grab it. But she needed to be higher.
So she stepped up, but the branch wasn’t strong enough to hold her and Arielle fell too fast to stop herself and too fast to be scared before her head hit the ground and everything went black.
