Things you said with no space between us from this prompt list for Eden
~500 words
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The future seems as bleak as ever, the city’s haze of pollution and the perfectly astute drizzling rain doing nothing to appease your worry. The grey smog stretches for what seems like the entire galaxy, until it melts into the lighter greyscale of the clouds and sky, the very atmosphere tainted with the worst of humanity.
Though, maybe there’s still some good.
Like Eden, you think. Wherever they've ended up.
The thief disappeared two days ago, and although the Shooting Stars have assured you it’s far from abnormal, it still nags at your gut, snaps at the guilt in the back of your mind like a rabid dog.
December can tell you it’s not your fault a thousand times, and she probably has by now, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is.
You got too close. Too honest, too vulnerable. You placed your heart on a silver platter and begged Eden to accept it. You did the one thing you shouldn’t have - you promised.
You kick a can out of your way, frustration bubbling beneath your skin as it skitters across the soaked and cracked pavement. You huff, stuffing your hands in your pockets to fight the chill night air, and kick it again, letting the sounds of the cheap and forgotten metal fill your senses until nothing else can remain.
Over, and over, and over, and over again you kick the can down the street, past storefronts and windows that house far more than the inconspicuous goods they offer. You kick it past a desolate and decrepit alley, a shadowy gap between Icaron’s neon.
And it stops.
Halts right there, just a step away, caught beneath a heavy boot. Stops in time under a rain-slicked heel.
You glance up, apprehension and instincts each fighting to move, until you freeze altogether, paralysed in damp streets.
“Hey,” a gruff and tired voice mumbles, the greeting slipped through the curtain of shadow hiding their face.
“Hey,” you breathe back, careful not to blow away this dream, to snap back to reality.
Those moonlight eyes, the ones you could paint from memory, shift and glance about uneasily, the weight of the city’s secrets too much to bear. Agile fingers wrap around your sleeve, tugging you further into the alley.
Eden’s slim frame covers yours, melts against you and thrums with an energy you feel mirrored in your own heartbeat. From this close you can see past the chipped and worn-out armour they’ve thrown up, to the heart of Eden cast in decaying yellow lights.
For the first time you notice - really notice - the darker specks in their eyes, the obsidian in silver irises. The shadows that haunt behind them, and the light tucked away in the corners, as if for safekeeping.
You can see all of them, every crack in every stone that walls them off, every broken promise and every heartache, every hesitancy and fear. So much fear it shines, glints in the low lights from neighbouring buildings.
“I’m sorry,” they whisper, breath a promise on your skin.
