She’d felt the pull from across the room and it had been strange in its way, like an echo shouting from another world. It’s somewhere else, somewhere she doesn’t quite know of, inside a vacuum or a tunnel. It’s a Parisian restaurant-- her voice had colored mirthfully as she spoke to her server, smooth, elegant French that rolled easily off her tongue. And then she’d looked over, and once she’d looked over right there she had felt it--
It was a pull, and it still is, a call from a thousand miles away and yet right beside her. Something feels right in a way she was not sure could be right before and she finds herself afraid that it FEELS THIS WAY.
(He told her that he was hers. He had insisted on it, and she had been sure-- over and over and over she had been sure-- he was hers and there was nothing she could do about it. HE WAS HERS, HE INSISTED ON IT. And she believed him because it was easier-- because it is easier to just believe him. It is easier to just swallow the fact and hide beneath the shame, the humiliation, to bear it like a scarlet letter and to move on.)
It’s never been that way before.
She can see that little glint of a shade in those eyes-- hazel, she thinks, pays attention-- and she can feel something. It’s stirring in her gut, and the feeling is a plea in the dark, a small, still voice shouting up and up and up.
She takes that hand and holds it in a glove, black and sleek, and she clutches it a little tighter. Covers the hand still in the young woman’s with her own, keeps that shake closed between soft palms, and she keeps eye contact. Doesn’t move it.
It isn’t harsh, but it calls back, like a shout in the dark yet again, a plea.
She doesn’t know why she’s saying it.