#Maybe ill work up the courage to make a final post about the imaginary friends ideas i never got to and some art i never finished

[side-of-honey]

Are you gonna keep making content for imaginary friends?

Nope!

[prettywordsyouleft]

Too Good To Be Wrong - Part 9

Summary: No matter how much you tried, you couldn’t resist Park Chanyeol, even if you knew it would test everything that you thought family stood for.

Genre: childhood friends & “siblings” to lovers au / forbidden romance / older woman - younger man au

Characters: Park Chanyeol x female reader

A/N: This is a series about falling in love with your “brother” Chanyeol - your family took him in when you were younger. It will contain mature content in later parts, but for the majority of the story it’s about reconnecting as adults and discovering feelings for each other.

I am expecting Too Good to be Wrong to be around 10 parts long, but this could change depending on how the story progresses in further parts.

Too Good To Be Wrong will be posted every Tuesday at 10am NZST.

Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

You had tried of course. Once you were both calm enough to drive up to your parents’ home, you silently made the trip there, your hands wringing the strap of your bag repeatedly. You struggled to come up with the words you could say, the lines you could utter to make this seem right.

But you just couldn’t make sense of anything.

And when your father let you both inside, you could tell he didn’t have any idea as to why his wife had returned home so frazzled that she claimed to have a migraine and retired to her bed for the day.

“What happened?” he asked as he took you both into the study, sitting down across from you in his favourite armchair and gauging your solemn expressions as you and Chanyeol tried to find the courage to speak up. “Did you both do something to upset your mother?”

Chanyeol nodded and bit at his lip. You sighed heavily and looked up at the man you had first loved in your life. He was fair, rational and had helped you in your most dire situations. You took faith in his astute mannerisms and grabbed at Chanyeol’s hand. “Dad, we kept something from you both. For a long time actually. We wanted to tell you, well, Chanyeol wanted to but I quietened him down every time.”

Your father stared at your hand on Chanyeol’s silently, though you could see the information whizzing by in his mind. He had had his suspicions and your slight grasp on the man you now loved at your side was enough to unsettle him.

“We fell in lo-”

“You’re both sitting across from me about to tell me something that shouldn’t have happened. Chanyeol was only supposed to stay temporarily. Your loneliness must have been a factor that-”

“No,” Chanyeol cut in adamantly and shook his head for effect. “No, I’ve love Y/N since before we lived together.”

“That is a crush, son. You’re confused.”

“We’re not confused, Dad,” you confirmed. “We’ve been dating for almost a year now.”

He didn’t move, frozen by your confession. And then when you thought he was going to say something, anything, he got up swiftly from the chair in front of you both and left the room.

You tried to speak to your mother next but all she could do was sob and avoid you no matter what you attempted, claiming she had no children anymore. It was infuriating, but you knew she was struggling to cope with the sudden news of your relationship and by nightfall, you and Chanyeol were heading back to the city together, the atmosphere between you feeling desperate. You couldn’t tell what Chanyeol was thinking and when you arrived home again, there wasn’t enough time to discuss anything since you both needed to sleep for work the next day.

Or, at least, try to sleep.

The next morning was strained, and even though Chanyeol leaned over to kiss you and tell you to have a good day, it felt awkward. You were distracted at work all day long, staring at your phone and wondering how to make things right with your parents.

“I tried to call Mum today,” Chanyeol told you as he picked at his dinner that evening, a sad smile crossing his lips. “She told me that she couldn’t talk to me right now and to take care of myself.”

You sighed. “At least she took your call; she refused to answer any of mine.”

“With time, they will calm down and allow us to explain ourselves, right?”

“I don’t know,” you admitted quietly, biting at your lip to steady your emotions. You knew it wasn’t looking good. “We can only keep trying though.”

And you did just that. The next weekend you drove back home to attempt to make amends. Your mother refused to see you both, now having fallen ill. You tried to get her to eat some soup, but she wouldn’t even look at you.

“Mum, you’re being ridiculous. There are far worse things in this world than me loving Chanyeol!” you cried in frustration, climbing to your feet and storming out of the house as fast as you could.

The following weekend you tried again, this time approaching your Dad. He told you he was ashamed that you had both done such a thing and it was best to end it so your mother’s health could improve. Even though you had cited this behaviour as a reason not to tell your parents, it didn’t encourage you to have any faith in them either. They were being unreasonable about your happiness and you couldn’t agree.

“I won’t give up on you,” you confirmed with Chanyeol when you slammed your bag down on the table, your emotions flooding from your eyes as he held you close.

You both tried to ignore the guilt that had settled deep within your gut, attempting to pick up your relationship as if your parents still didn’t know about you being together at all. But it wasn’t easy. There was an inexplicable distance that came with continuing to disappoint them, and some nights you both preferred to sleep apart, just to feel like you could breathe properly.

In fact, as you reached your first anniversary of being together, it felt more bittersweet than anything. You had always imagined celebrating this day with excitement and adoration for each other. Instead, it felt like there was an imaginary third wheel tagging along, stemming any of your usual behaviours and stiffening your embraces. You felt awkward and you hated it.

You were both now dating each other just for argument’s sake. They hadn’t given in, and you weren’t prepared to either. But the pain was cutting too deep and the distance grew stronger.

You didn’t know what you were fighting for.

“You know I still love you, right?” Chanyeol told you one night, on a rare occasion where you shared his bed with him. You didn’t move to agree and he rolled onto his side, staring down at you intently. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I felt like there was a but about to follow that,” he said with a sigh and you nodded softly. “But love isn’t enough?”

“Love should be enough, right?”

“We’re not the same,” he admitted in a whisper and you could feel your emotions rising fast. “Why can’t we be the same as we used to?”

“It’s my fault. You were right; we should have told them right from the start.”

“No, I was wrong, they would have pulled us apart then too.”

You nodded sadly, reaching out to caress his damp cheek in your hand. “Mm, but then we wouldn’t have been in this deep and could fall apart more naturally than we are now.”

Chanyeol didn’t answer and you couldn’t bear the expression on his face any longer, rolling over and silently crying into your pillow until you fell asleep.

It was your mother’s birthday and you hadn’t seen her since you had stormed out. Today you had chosen to put your plan into action, one you hadn’t discussed with anyone. It was difficult on the ride to your parents’ home, and more than once you wanted to ask Chanyeol to stop the car so you could run away there and then. But you had to go through with it all, knowing this was the only way forward. You should’ve been this responsible from the get-go. Perhaps your father had been right; your loneliness had driven you to allow Chanyeol in. Yet you knew deep down you wouldn’t ever love someone else like you loved him.

And that was what was breaking you slowly on the inside. He wouldn’t let you go no matter how hard it was on him to keep fighting on.

“What did you just say?” your mother asked as you delivered your speech to everyone at the dinner party, her fork falling from her hand. “Where?”

“Japan. I’ve been asked to assist the company’s partnership over there for the next six months. Maybe longer.”

You could feel Chanyeol’s gaze burning a hole in the side of your head as you looked ahead at nothing in particular. Your father cleared his throat. “It sounds like it might be good for you, to find some clarity.”

You couldn’t avoid the sting his sentence held and gritted through it, nodding softly as you turned back to your meal.

“Is this because of us?” Chanyeol finally asked and ignored your mother’s hiss for him to be quiet. “Is this how you plan to solve the problem everyone has right now? By running away?!”

“It’s for the best,” you managed to say. Chanyeol threw his chair back and left the room, and you began to cry.

Looking up at your parents through your emotions, you attempted to smile. “I hope this is the answer you both wanted.”

_________________

Part 10

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[gldngrl7]

Karamel Fic: Permission to Flourish (5/11)

Title: Permission to Flourish

Author: gldngrl7

Date Started: February 12, 2017

Rating: T for Teen (I know!  I can’t believe it either!)

 Author’s Note: BRACE YOURSELF!

         Yeah, I wanted to play tough,

                  Thought I could do all this on my own

                        But even Superwoman sometimes needed

                                  Superman's soul

           Help me out of this hell

                      Your love lifts me up like helium

                                 Your love lifts me up when I'm down, down, down,

                                          When I've hit the ground

                You're all I need

                               --Sia – “Helium”

  Chapter 5/11

  Despite the dull pang spreading through her chest and extremities, Kara couldn’t bring herself to leave the hospital, not until she discovered the little girl’s ultimate fate.  She kept an ear trained to the operating room, concentrating on the brain surgeon’s calm, assertive voice.  The woman seemed confident and determined, allowing Kara to rest easy that the little girl was in good hands.

 And she couldn’t bring herself to leave without talking to him.  She needed him to know how his leaving had hurt her, needed him to know that she’d never meant the things she said in the alien bar that night, at least not in the cruel way they had come out.  She needed him to understand that she’d been driven by fear.  Fear of the things he could offer her and what that might mean—a future she couldn’t control.

 All the words she’d wanted to say as she cried herself to sleep those first few weeks, until she was all cried out.  Then…when she’d realized that he wasn’t throwing a temper tantrum, wasn’t waiting for her to beg him to come home and that he really was never coming back…how the tears had started anew.  Pouring her heart out in long emails that went unanswered as though they went into the ether and then down the rabbit hole.

 He had moved on, but she could not – trapped in this hellish limbo where she couldn’t step forward and couldn’t go back.  Not until it was ended, one way or another. If she could finally tell him the truth—if she could find the courage to do that—and he could still walk away from her, then she would find a way to accept it.  Just as he had accepted her rejection with dignity.  The dignity she callously ripped away from him in the bar on the fateful night that had changed both of their lives.

 His, for the better, apparently.

 She went down to the bustling cafeteria for a coffee and discovered a treasure trove of cuisine choices.  Like a food court at the mall, it had everything from Mexican food to Mediterranean.  Naturally, she gravitated towards the Asian food counter.

 “Can I get an order of pot stickers, please?” she asked the server.  She wasn’t that hungry, rather nauseous actually, but she had flown nearly three-thousand miles this morning and needed to refuel.  Besides, sometimes hungry or not, a little comfort food was in order and if ever there was a time for that, it was now. “Make that two orders,” she corrected.

 At the cash register, she paid for her coffee and comfort food and went in search of a table, preferably quiet and out of the way. Once seated, she mostly used the business end of her chopsticks to play with her food while she thumbed through a litany of unanswered text messages on her phone.  She flipped through the messages and considered responding to some of them, but kept returning to the text she had received that morning from a blocked number.

 ‘1150 Raucha Street, Philadelphia, PA.  Good luck.’

 Sometime during the night, Bruce Wayne had decided to take pity on her and inform her where Mon-El could be found in a manner unlikely to be traced back to him.  An action which befitted the Dark Knight to a tee.  Not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, she gathered a few of her things and left for Pennsylvania without bothering to even message her sister. She didn’t want her to know—any of them—if this adventure didn’t end well, she didn’t want any of them to be the wiser.

 She wasn’t sure what she had expected to find when she arrived at the address provided to her.  An apartment house?  A pub or restaurant where he might be tending bar, or maybe an office building?  She could have imagined a thousand scenarios, but standing in front of Fox Chase Elementary School would have been nowhere on that list.

 Confused, she’d decided to treat the situation like a story she was investigating—and proceeded to place the Fox Chase Elementary School under surveillance for the rest of the day.   She jumped to the roof of a three-story apartment complex across the street, where she could have a decent view, and made herself comfortable for the duration, however long that might be.

 Children spilled out of the building periodically to run and play and expend pent up energy, but it wasn’t until early afternoon that she saw him, at last.  He chased after them as they played, participated in a kickball game, with his hands behind his back and hopping on one foot.  To her astonishment the children called him ‘Mr. Matthews’ and from all appearances they worshiped the ground he walked upon.  And more importantly, he had seemed happy. Happier than she could remember ever having seen him.

 She’d recalled that Mr. Wayne had told her that Mon-El connected well with children because they didn’t judge him for his past. Kara also remembered how Bruce described Valor capturing criminals and handing them over to the police as though he were ‘sending them to the principal’s office’.  Those little clues made sense to her now.

 Kara’s breath had caught in her lungs when she focused her vision to get a better look at him.  She’d forgotten how handsome he was; how beautiful his smile beamed when nothing was holding him back.  When she wasn’t there to judge him or yell at him, or imply that he was a disappointment to her, or that he would never be anything other than a hedonistic Daxamite, or worse…that she couldn’t trust him.

 He wore khaki slacks and a plaid button-up shirt, along with a square, knit tie that was mostly just for show.  His hair looked unkempt, in the way that magazine hairstylists worked hard to make it appear that way.  As Valor, he needed only to slick it back to completely change the way bystanders viewed the shape of his face.

 Her heart had raced inside of her chest, and her face had flooded with heat for the first time in six long years, as if she had lain dormant all this time.  A mere glimpse of his face had awakened her from this interminable walking stasis.   She could have sat there forever and just…looked at him.  But she’d wanted more, and so she’d tuned her ears to eavesdrop mode, smiling with each new tidbit her decision yielded.

 He had played with them, his fun-loving side on full display, and they loved him for it.  That was the part that had frustrated her the most all those years ago; his seeming inability to be serious for five minutes.  How irritated she’d become whenever he’d defaulted to humor at inappropriate times.  Kara now knew, after years of self-reflection, that her exasperation had been just as much about her inability to bend, as it had been about his need to cover discomfort and anxiety with jest and jibes.

 But with these kids, there was no need for him to cover, he could just be himself, and Kara could see that the Mon-El she’d known had been a mask all along.  He’d spent his time in National City changing his life in many ways to please her, instead of discovering who he was in this world so new to him.  He’d clung to her, believing her a life raft in a vast and deadly ocean, when in reality she’d been the undertow dragging him into the depths.

 On the jungle gym he had played pretend-pirate on the high seas, with some guidance from several of the imaginative children. Once the game was in full swing, he had passed his imaginary sword over to one of the children and headed for the blacktop.  At kickball he had urged the better coordinated kids to play nice with the children who weren’t, and for those who struggled, he had offered much needed encouragement.

 He had played as though recess was the best part of his day, as well as theirs.  But when another class poured out into the playground, he took a break from entertaining his students to chat with the other teacher.  He had called the woman Erica and had seemed quite comfortable with her, if his off-color jokes were any barometer to judge by.  She was older than him, in her mid to late forties, her skin the color of coffee mixed with cream, one hand shielding her eyes from the mid-afternoon sun as she kept an eye on the farthest afield of her students.

 They had chatted like old friends until their conversation came to an abrupt halt.  Mon-El seemed concerned about something, but indecisive in how to deal with whatever it was. And then she’d heard the scream.

 Her instinct was to fly to the defense of the injured child, but she held back, perhaps unwilling to step on Valor’s toes in his own back yard.  Perhaps unwilling to reveal her presence unless she absolutely had to.  Kara listened intently to the scene as it unfolded several hundred yards away.   The child had fallen from a height and hit her head on the way down.  Mon-El’s heart had been racing out of control, and she’d known—she’d just known—that he’d been about to make a foolhardy decision that would  have resulted in an ill-timed coming out party.

 She’d been in the air in the less time than it took for her to draw breath and landing in front of him mere seconds after that.

 When she landed in front of him, as he’d prepared to alight from the ground, the little girl’s waifish form wrapped in his arms, the emotion she saw in his eyes continued to haunt her, even now.

 She didn’t know this man, and she wondered if she ever had.   Over the last six years she’d had ample opportunity to question her choices and her perceptions of him, a voice inside always reminding her of the times she’d been wrong.  She’d been so hard on him—too hard—holding him to standards impossible to meet and moving the goal post so often he could never keep up.

 He had been the Crown Prince of Daxam once upon a time, but destruction and circumstances forced him to put away that time and title.  To fold it up like a blood-soaked garment witness to trauma and place it in the back of a closet—always there but best forgotten.  He could have told her at any time, but what would that have gained him?

 So early in their acquaintance she had called him ‘the worst of the worst’, not knowing his true self then.  She had denigrated the memory of a supposedly dead prince with no small amount of vitriol – and she’d done it using rumor and gossip as her weapons of choice.  Truthfully, she’d known nothing concrete about Daxam’s prince, nothing that hadn’t filtered through an untold number of mouths decades ago in the hazy silver of her childhood memories.  She hadn’t even cared about such things then.  But, to the face of the man himself, she’d spoken as though her knowledge had been sacrosanct.  

 Watching him with the little girl’s mother had shown Kara one thing; the man she saw now was far better than any bartending refugee he likely would have been molded into under her tutelage.  Clearly, it had taken escaping her for Mon-El to forge a path worthy of the hero he had eventually become, both in and out of the suit.

 Had the woman in the waiting room played a role in making him into the man he now was?  Had she inspired him in a way that Kara had been incapable?  

 What a fool she was to come here believing, for even a single second that he might want to see her!  For years she had deluded herself into thinking that if he she could just see him, just talk to him, that they could put this nonsense behind them and start building something together.  They could be amazing together, she’d believed.

 But it hadn’t been nonsense, had it?  At least not to him.  She had hurt him so badly with her thoughtlessness and, yes, selfishness, that he had fled from her to the opposite side of the country.  Yet, for six years she had treated his decision like a children’s game, as though take-backs were an option on the table.

 Kara cringed, the pot sticker turning to sand in her mouth.  She chewed robotically and finally managed to swallow it down with a swig of equally tasteless coffee.  It would be best for all if she just left.  He didn’t need to see her—didn’t even want to—she finally understood.  

 Shoving her pot stickers to one side, Kara made a decision.  She would go. As soon as the little girl was out of surgery, she would forfeit the field and go back to National City, where she belonged.  For six years, she’d given them a hero with only half a heart, merely going through the motions as she wore her pain like a cilice, a garment of suffering for all to see. They deserved so much better from her, and maybe it was time she got back to giving them her best self.

She could find a way to put this long, slow heartbreak behind her.  She would throw herself into her work and reinvest herself in her calling, and put notions of love and partnership on the shelf for a while – which was probably where such things belonged.  She would work, first, on finding her smile again.

 Then, in time, maybe she’d find it within herself to open her heart up to love, to live a fearless life, in a way she never has been able to before.  Maybe that can be Mon-El’s legacy to her—a legacy worth remembering.

 Mind made up, Kara cradled her phone and opened a message to her sister and responded to the text Alex sent hours ago.  No doubt, by now her sister was frantic, perhaps concerned that Kara had been sucked through a portal into some netherworld.

 ‘Need some time alone.  I’m okay.  Be back soon. Text if there’s an emergency.’ Kisses emoji.

 Just as she hit the send button and heard the little accompanying ‘bloop’ sound, she heard a hard clunk on the table and saw a cell phone land in front of her.  Her cornflower blue eyes widened as Mon-El pulled out the chair opposite hers and dropped into the seat, coffee in hand, as though he had an open invitation.

 “Pot stickers in Philly not to your liking?” he asked, reaching over he grabbed a cold dumpling and popped it into his mouth.

 Her own mouth hung open for a moment, before her jaw began working frantically, as through trying to form words.  Except her lungs seemed to be all out of the requisite air needed to form spoken language.  Her lips instantly dry in the face of his sudden and unexpected presence, her tongue snaked out to provide them some lubrication in hopes that her action might facilitate the ability to talk.

 “Mon-El,” she managed to squeak.

 Her voice charged the air between them and he looked over her head, as though intentionally keeping his gaze from her. “I haven’t heard that name in six years,” he said, running a hand through his artfully messy hair.  “That guy is dead and buried.  It’s just Mike now.”  He resettled his glasses on the bridge of his nose to emphasize his point.

 “Mike,” she echoed, because it was all she was capable of at the moment.  He was so…vivid…sitting in front of her.  As though he were written in bold letters, capitalized for affect.  Had he always been so vibrant?

 Had he been a mere shade of himself then?  Like an outline in a coloring book without the hues applied?  Kara finally understood that Mon-El had been looking to her, counting on her, to help him color within his lines.  With each action he had sought her approval, sought clues on where to step and how to behave and the only hints she had provided him had been in her censure.  She had promised him he’d never feel alone, and then she’d abandoned him while still expecting his toe-the-line admiration every day, as though she were some sort of idol to be worshipped, instead of a barely out of college kid trying to fool herself into believing she knew exactly what she was doing.

 “Don’t get me wrong, Kara…I’m glad that you were there to rescue Amelia, and for that you have my gratitude but…why are you here?”

 Kara pulled her coffee close to her chest as if a medium roast could protect her from the onslaught of emotions the angry look on his face produced.  A series of deep, staccato crinkles lay between the straight severe lines of his eyebrows—an expression she’d never seen him wear to her memory—and it transformed his eyes from the soft, sensitive stormy-gray she once knew, to a harder and impenetrable Teflon.  

 “Okay,” he sighed.  “I know that Clark would never break his promise to me.  So…how did you find out where I was?  Was it Winn?  Did he track me down for you?”

 Kara shook her head, still unable to process thought in any meaningful or usable manner.  If she could just have a moment to gather her defenses in the face of his ambush.

 “Bruce,” he realized.  “It was Bruce, wasn’t it?”  She thought about denying it, but something on her face gave her away.  “Figures,” Mon-El cursed, his fingers fisting together as though preparing for a punch.  “That guy’s always had it out for me.  I’m sure he must be laughing his head off right now.”

 “That’s not true,” she said, finally finding her voice, and shaking her head vehemently.  “He considers you a good friend.  Also…he doesn’t strike me as the type to spend much time laughing…about anything.”

 Mike flinched, the sound of her voice speaking more than a few syllables hitting him like a punch in the gut.  He’d heard her speak on the playground, but his adrenaline had been so peaked he’d barely taken notice.  Plus, she’d been Supergirl, and not Kara at the time. Here she was Kara; vulnerable, human…heartless.

 “You know what?” he said, pushing to his feet and shoving one hand in his pocket.  He was thoroughly unwilling to be taken in by her again—no matter how blue her eyes were. “I don’t know why you’re here and frankly…I don’t care.  Go home, Kara.”

 “I just wanted to—“

 “To what?  Have the last word?  Why am I not surprised?  Oh, I got that loud and clear with the…what was it?  Twenty-four emails you sent before you finally gave up?  What’s it going to take, Kara, to get you to understand that I’m not interested in what you have to say?”

 “I was going to go,” she declared.  Kara’s skin flushed with the embarrassment of having her foolish pursuit of him so boldly called out.  “I just wanted to stay until the little girl was out of the woods.”

 “And what is it exactly do you think you can do here? Did you get a medical degree since the last time I saw you?  Become a brain surgeon?” he jibed.  “And her name is Amelia by the way,” he corrected her, his tone dismissive and curt.  “And there’s no need for you to stay.  Her mother and I have got it from here.”

 He was lashing out at her; Kara could see that. Like a lion with a wounded paw, he was trying to protect himself.  The life of a child he cared for, a child he clearly loved, hung in the balance and he was, therefore, incapable of a calm discussion.

 This was why Mike hadn’t wanted to see her after the fight with the Dominators—because he’d been afraid to discover the injury he’d thought scabbed over was still, in fact, a gaping, pulsing wound.  In that moment, he was certain his heart was never going to heal.  Never going to be able to leave her completely behind, and he was angry as hell at her for it.  For so meticulously breaking him.

 “Of course,” she demurred, as though to soothe a skittish beast.  “Amelia. I can tell that she’s very special to you.”

 ‘She’s my student…my responsibility… of course she’s special to me.  They all are.”  He doesn’t tell her that Amelia was different, from the first moment he heard her laugh and saw her smile and the bright cornflower blue of her eyes.  He won’t tell her that Amelia was special because she reminded him so much of her—of her uncatchable incandescence.  Mike’s eyes, so carefully prevented from looking directly at her as if she were the yellow sun, darted towards her by will of their own.  He noticed something then that…brought him up short.

 She’s doesn’t burn as bright as he remembered. Mike knew that his memories, always so frustratingly resilient, weren’t wrong or overly romanticized, but her light has faded somehow in a way that he couldn’t quite quantify.  Her cheeks flush, but don’t glow.  Her eyes shine, but don’t sparkle.  He wanted to ask her what happened, what made her this way?  But he forced down the instinct and, digging in his heels, he steadfastly refused to care.  “Go home, Kara.  Please,” he added involuntarily, because it hurt so much to see her, even after all this time.  “Don’t come back here, unless you’re invited.”

 Mon-El turned his back on her to stalk away, each step feeling like it put a thousand miles of distance between them.  If she let him, he would walk right out of her life again and this time there would be no hope.  She stood at a crossroads; realizing that if she let this moment pass, she would spend the rest of her life regretting it.  But if she seized the moment and told him everything in her heart and he still walked away, then maybe she might be able to move on one day, knowing that she’d tried everything.  Or maybe it might shatter what was left of her.  He was so far away from her now, halfway across the bustling cafeteria, the moment for deciding slipping rapidly away.

 Kara clasped her hands nervously together, took a few steps as though to follow and then shouted, “I look for your face in every crowd!”

 Everyone in the cafeteria came to a dead stop, including Mon-El.  The chattering in the common hall ceased, the only sounds remaining were the light scrape of silverware on plates, and the sound of an oblivious, noisy kitchen in the distance.  Heads turned to look at her as though they were set to swivel.

 ‘In for a penny….’ She decided.  “Every time I go to the bar, I still expect to see you there. And when you’re not…it’s like a bullet to the chest.  Every single time.”  She hoped he would understand her metaphor, even though what she wanted to tell him was that not seeing his face every day was like drowning in Kryptonite.

 He doesn’t turn around, but neither does he walk away; he just stood there, his back to her.  Kara took the opportunity to move a few steps closer to him.

 “Those things I said that night…those horrible things…you have to know I didn’t mean them. You should know that, because I don’t want you hearing those words in your head anymore, if you still do.  I was afraid. I was afraid of all the things I felt for you; the confusing, terrifying things, and so I let my fear do the talking. I’m not saying this excuses the pain I caused you, but…I was a stupid little girl dressed in a woman’s skin, who didn’t have the first clue how to tell a cute boy that she liked him.  More than liked him, as it turned out.”

 Mike rounded on her, heedless of the captive audience sitting at rapt attention.  “But you didn’t,” he shouted back.  “You didn’t like me that way.  You were very clear about that. I walked away, Kara—ready to let you go—to just be friends…partners.  But that wasn’t good enough for you.”

 Kara’s eyes filled with tears as his angry eyebrows and tight mouth focused upon her.  “I know,” she rushed, nodding.  “I know. I should have just let it be. Given myself more time to sort out my feelings.  I know that now.”

 “I wasn’t good enough for you.  That’s what you said.”

 “It was just an excuse,” she confessed.  “I was so scared to get close to you.  To let you get close.”  She held her hand up to her chest, pointing to her heart.  “You were already closer than anyone had ever gotten…in here.  And we were so different, I just didn’t see….”

 “I never would have hurt you, Kara.  I would have died first.”

 The tears spilled down her cheeks, and she hastily wiped them away, even though they kept coming.  She angled her eyes down to his feet, unable to bear the intensity of his gaze, even from the other side of the room.  It might as well have been heat vision he was focusing on her.  “I know that,” she nodded, feeling chastened.

 In a way, it felt appropriate to be reprimanded this way, in front of so many people, the way she had humiliated him at his place of employment in front of his customers.  It was no less than she deserved, and despite the mortification, she felt lightheaded and floaty, as though relieved of a terrible burden she’d long since grown accustomed to carrying.

 “You loved me for me,” she said, her voice hoarse with emotion.  “You knew…all the sides of me, even the bad parts and you loved them anyway—maybe the first one who ever did and certainly the last,” she whispered, her throat working over the ball of emotion lodged there.  “Not because you wanted anything, but just because of who I was.  You saw behind the masks, and I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t know what to do with that.”

 “What’s this?” he jeered mockingly, his voice honed to a painful edge.  “The Great Kara Danvers didn’t know what to do?  Stop the presses!  I think we have our headline.  That must have been a first!”

 Kara bowed her head, pressed her glasses more tightly to the bridge of her nose and crossed her arms over her chest.  “I deserved that,” she acknowledged.  “You were right all along, Mo-Mike, from the first moment we met, you had me pegged.  Arrogant and snobby and uptight and full of myself; I thought I was untouchable and that I could do no wrong.  You were the only one who was brave enough to say that to my face.”

 “When it came to you, Kara, all that courage ever did was bite me in the ass.”

 “I’m sorry,” she said, biting nervously on her lower lip.  “I’m sorry for making you feel like you weren’t good enough.  I’m sorry for not listening when you had important things to say; for not respecting your opinion.  I’m so, so sorry for being so self-absorbed I didn’t see how hard you were working to change…until it was too late.”

 Silence descended over the cafeteria, as though the spectators had become frozen in time, their eyes glued to the scene unfolding before them.  A sense of unease climbed her spine until her scalp tingled with it.  He wasn’t going to say anything, she realized.  He was just going to leave her hanging on the rotting limb of her apology.  Kara drew a deep breath to check the butterflies in her stomach and clasped her hands to curtail the shaking.  She willed her feet to move, to leave this spotlight she had created.  The spotlight was no longer a comfortable place for her, and hadn’t been for a very long time.

 Mike stood paralyzed as she approached, her words rolling recklessly around his head, like the loose baseballs in the trunk of his car when he drives over the speed limit.  Her face was splotched with tears, her posture slumped slightly as though she were protecting a wound in her chest, and it killed him to see her that way.  It killed him, and at the same time it angered him that she could still so easily affect him.

 After all the years of staying away from her, she could still rip his heart out and tear it to shreds with barely an effort.

 When Kara stood before him, she reached a hand out to touch him, but thought better of it, snatching her hand back as though he were a live wire.  Some sick part of him inside, the part that didn’t understand all the hurt she caused him, the part that found a way to rationalize it because he loved her, felt a wave of disappointment as he watched her hand slip away.

 “I’ve said what I came to say,” she affirmed, her voice raspy from the salt of her tears.  “I’ll go now.  But I just wanted you to know that…I’m so happy for you.” She attempted a smile through blurring tears, but failed spectacularly.  “I am,” she insisted.  “I’m happy that you found yourself…and a place to belong.  And I’m just sorry that you had to escape me to find it.  It seems like I was just a millstone around your neck anyway,” Kara bit her lip, wondering if she should continue, and tentatively decided to press onward. “And I’m glad that you found someone to love and who’ll love you the way you deserve.” Kara swallowed, sucking down the lion’s share of her pride.  “She’s really lovely and I hope that her daughter has a quick recovery.  I’m sure you’ll make a happy family.”  

 Satisfied with her speech, she nodded and took one last look at his handsome, but angry face.   She wished she could have seen him smile again, just once.  Wished she could have seen those Teflon eyes soften back to a stormy-gray when he looked at her.  But sometimes hope…isn’t enough.  “Good-bye, Mon-El,” she whispered, low enough so that only he could hear.  Her farewell ringing with certain finality in her ears, she squared her shoulders, gathering what little dignity she had left, and walked away.

 As he stood frozen, a murmur arose in the lunch room as people returned to their meals, the only evidence that anything unusual happened were whispered comments about the scene they had just witnessed. The volume of the gossip rose so quickly in his sensitive ears, that he couldn’t think, couldn’t take in everything Kara had said.  

 She’d said she was happy for him, happy that he’d found his place this world.  But a millstone around his neck?  She didn’t know how much of inspiration she’d been to him?  Why he’d fallen for her in the first place? None of that had changed simply because he’d struck out on his own.  He may be angry with the pain she’d caused him, angry at himself for falling so deeply and irrevocably in love with her, angry that she wouldn’t let him let her go, but not for a single moment of the last six years had he ever stopped being inspired by her.

 Escape her?  She’d made it sound like he’d been a fox chewing off his own leg to get out of her trap and that hadn’t been one iota close to the truth.  He had never, not for a heartbeat, stopped loving her or wanting the best for her.  That’s what leaving her had been all about, from start to finish; giving her back the life she longed for, the life she’d had before he fell from the sky and ruined it all.

 Sure, part of him wanted to separate himself from the pain of her rejection, but his decision to cut off contact had been all about giving back the months she’d been forced to waste on him.  Helping her to forget about him.  Why couldn’t she just forget about him?  What good had he ever done for her?

 She’d also said she was glad he found someone to love and who would love him as he deserved.

 “Wait…what?” Mike asked flummoxed, as he woke from his trance.

 Kara had spoken of this love with tears trickling down her face, as if he could ever give his heart to someone else when she already held it.  He couldn’t give away what no longer belonged to him.  Kara thought he and Belinda were…?  She must have seen them together in the surgical waiting room and gotten confused by what she witnessed.  He had just been comforting the distraught mother of an injured child.  A child they both loved.  But it was nothing more than that.

 Mike felt the obstinate need to disabuse her of some of the notions she’d invented in that beautiful but imaginative head of hers. Maybe it was because he just couldn’t let her have the last word, or maybe it was because he couldn’t have her believing he was in love with someone else.

 Mike turned to go after her, but by the time he made it to the hallway she was already gone, leaving behind no hint of the direction in which she had fled.

TBC