fallon : one
when the party’s over - billie eilish
Day 1. He’s gone. That was the first thought that Fallon had when she woke up this morning. Even before opening her eyes, she knew that he was gone. His side of the bed didn’t sink in from the weight of his body, she couldn’t hear his soft breathing as he slept next to her, and the extra warmth underneath the covers was gone. He was gone. Opening her eyes, she rolled over onto her side, facing the empty side of the bed. She saw the letter and his wedding band resting on top of the pillow right away, but she didn’t have to read it to know what it would say. The wedding band itself already spoke volumes and the more that she stared at it, the more she felt her chest tighten.
It wouldn’t be until later that night that Fallon finally worked up the courage to read his last words to her. Sitting up in bed, she hugged his pillow close to her chest as she breathed in the remnants of his scent, then reached over beside her for the letter. She knew that reading it would hurt, but she didn’t expect it to hit her like a tonne of bricks. She had managed to keep the tears at bay after breaking down earlier this morning, but now as she reread the letter for the fifth time, silent tears threatened to drip onto the paper. Yours always, Sian Yoon. He really was gone.
Day 3. Slipping on the oversized motorcycle jacket, Fallon took one last look at the apartment as she tucked the small box under her arm, then locked the door behind her. As she made her way out of the building, she couldn’t help but give a lingering look at the neighbour’s door and wonder ‘what if’. We have to let each other go. Sucking in a sharp breath, she pushed any what ifs out of her mind and left. She was going to do as he’d asked. She was letting him go. He had made it clear that he had no intentions of coming back or to be found, so she had to let him go. There was just one last thing that she needed to do before she could do that.
Maybe it would have been easier to just throw everything out, and to burn all the photos and documents, but Fallon couldn’t bring herself to do that. This was her way of letting go - by locking every important memory she had of Issac, of their relationship (or what was left of it), inside a safety deposit box registered under one of her fake aliases at a bank four hours away from New York City. She couldn’t part with these items, no matter how much she knew she had to in order to move on, so this was the alternative. It is time to say goodbye to what we had. Reading the letter one last time, she placed it into the box, then locked it shut. Pausing for a brief moment, her fingers brushed over the numbers on the door before she left to make the drive back to New York.
Day 24. Was it worth it, Fallon? Those were the words that got her through these past few weeks. That, and working herself to the bone. Because this was it, wasn’t it? The syndicate, the Dean’s, her desire and need for power... All of that was what she’d chosen over her relationship, over the person that she claimed to love with every bit of her being. So she had to make sure that everything that she did made destroying their relationship and losing him worth it. It had to be because otherwise... what was the point? She hated herself for everything that had happened, but she did what she did, and no amount of regret and guilt was going to change anything. She had made her choice and now she had to live with it. Was it worth it, Fallon? It will be when she made it to the top, one way or another.
Day 67. An overwhelming sense of numbness overcame her. Numbness and anger. It was yet another Council meeting that he had missed and somehow, it took this one in particular for it to finally sink in that he was truly gone. He had left this life behind, his family behind, her behind. It had been so easy for him to turn his back on her, to break it off as if they weren’t worth fighting for, to turn all his love for her into hatred. Just like that. He left her, just like that. All his talk about always loving her and never being able to feel any differently about her was just that - all talk.
Anger was easier to deal with than pain. And maybe that was why that was all Fallon felt these days. Anger and numbness. Though she looked the same on the outside, maybe a more worn down version of herself, she had changed. Colder, harsher, more cutthroat. Anger did that to a person. She was angry at him for not fighting for them and for leaving her, but even more than that, she was angry at herself. Because at the end of it all, she had no one to blame but herself. She hated every decision that she’d made that led up to this point in her life. She hated that she didn’t give him a chance when he’d asked for it. She hated how nothing seemed to fill the giant void that he’d left in her life. But anger was easier to deal with than pain.
Day 191. He was back. He… finally came back.