#do you end up writing something you're super proud of and then hate urself immediately after

[imtinkerbell]

Five times kissed - nealonfire i am here for this meme every time

 On Monday she said she’d be going on a trip. She didn’t know where, she didn’t know when. But that evening she kissed him goodnight long after he’d gone to sleep. Without direction, the fairy got into her car, assumed a name and left. Storybrooke was the same day after day, sometimes even Neal was the same. Sometimes she felt like she was going crazy sitting here day after day and watching the world move on without her. So she decided to move on from it in turn. The road out of Storybrooke felt endless, but she reached a train station and bought a ticket, where she’d end up, who was really to say. It was wrong to leave, selfish probably. 

But as the train pulled away from the station in Boston, her fears were replaced with visions of what the world ahead of her could be. A dangerous world for a young woman riding alone, but a world that she longed to find the heart of. Neverland had been too small and like a mouse in a cage she was eager to enter a world that felt unending. That freedom embraced her like a friend from another lifetime. She cherished it and determined that she would never let it go.

On Tuesday a week had passed calls and texts had gone long ignored on a phone that had died two cities ago. This world was still new no matter how far she traveled, every inch unfamiliar, every face foreign to the fairy. Except the one in her wallet that she carried with her. As she sat on a bus in Louisville she could hear the sounds of someone else’s headphones, just distantly enough to feel far away, like a memory of a time when she hadn’t traveled alone. A song on the radio and a kiss shared between two people in love, deeply in love. It all felt so far away. 

Sometimes Tinkerbell didn’t even recognize herself in the mirror. Her curls had been brushed out, the fake identification she’d had created didn’t bear her own name. In the blazing Summer heat she dressed anything but fairylike. In a mirror she might have been a stranger, inside she might’ve felt the same. This place was too hot, the sticky air left her to dwell on her thoughts. Busses were a terrible way to travel. Next time, a train would be best, she decided. The thought was only of herself, the rest of the world no longer mattered. She’d eaten meat at a barbecue restaurant off the side of the road, the first time she ate meat since Neverland. She’d tried to avoid it but this place made her remember that change often came in the ways we least were to expect it. 

Wednesday in Bozeman, Montana, late Summer wildflowers had flooded a landscape unlike anything she’d seen. To live in a place like this forever would’ve been a dream. She laid in a field of tall grass watching clouds pass her by. Warm sun pounded down on her face but she didn’t even care anymore. This place was perfect, this feeling was perfect. For the first time in a long time, she felt as she should’ve been all along. Maybe if this land really had magic, her wings would’ve sprung from her back by now. but even she wasn’t fool enough to let a fantasy like that claim her. 

Yet in this perfect place, with this perfect feeling, she thought of Neal, of how much she’d missed him. Two months it’d been since she left. Sometimes she still got texts, maybe a call. But the fairy never answered. Faye Bellamy rarely answered calls or texts unless they were from the new people she’d met along the way. The name had grown on her. But something about it still felt separate from herself. She held Neal’s picture in her hand, they’d been in a bar in Boston and someone had snapped a picture of them together. They’d been kissing, red faced from alcohol and laughing too much. She kissed the picture and all at once felt like this place wasn’t as perfect as she initially thought. Perhaps it was time to move on, maybe in a week. Maybe a week more of this serene joy would do her mind some good.

That’s what she always said when she stuck around a place for too long. Most places she was never in for more than a week but this one? This one stuck. Maybe something that could stick to her heart was just what she needed.

Thursday brought rain, lots of rain, how did Seattle rain in one of the hottest months of the year? She’d run inside a store to get out of the sudden downpour. A bookstore not unlike one in Boston she’d gone to with Neal. Every day now it felt like she was missing him more and more. She’d stopped checking for his texts. Did he still miss her? Did he still think of her? Had he moved on? Assuming she’d left for good? Most of her things were still there, not that she had many. The jealous pang dissipated after only a moment. She sat in a corner with a book of poems. She flipped through them until fate intervened. 

“Pull My Daisy” by Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

Why did his name follow her? Perhaps it was time to turn back. But she couldn’t. How could one return after running away so selfishly? She’d decided on the train from Bozeman to Seattle a month ago that it was a selfish thing to do. But it was the first time she’d been selfish in over thirty years. How could you cage a bird that’d finally known freedom? She could see a couple by a window reading together in a perfect silence together. They’d glance at each other from time to time, smiling and sometimes telling one another about what was happening in their book. It pulled at the fairy’s heart. She hated them because she was envious that they had one another. 

Maybe it was wrong to leave but wasn’t it worse to tie a man down to someone who would never be happy where he would be happy? It wasn’t right. They didn’t want the same things. Yet when finally the reading man leaned over and kissed his girlfriend, Faye couldn’t help but imagine it was Neal and she was the young woman so eager to receive it. For months she’d wondered if she had been in love at all and yet, in that moment, she knew she had been. 

But was she still?

Curiosity turned to longing, longing to heartache. By Friday she was weeping in Wyoming in an airport with a single gate. She must’ve looked insane. By a large fireplace with the most picturesque mountains she’d ever seen just out the window, she had no idea what had set her off. Perhaps it was the realization that it was October finally dawned on her. Storybrooke felt too far away now, she couldn’t arrive there soon enough and the moment she realized that home was still hours out, something simply burst inside of her. A bubble that had been brewing all along, but she’d ignored it, run from it at all cost. 

Maybe it was the phone call she finally made.

Friday in San Francisco in a club not far from the ocean. She never went to clubs, but she needed to numb her mind. The heartache had been too much. A drink later, a few drinks later, laughing with virtual strangers later, dancing and grinding and oh god what had she done later? She stumbled back to the motel she’d managed to get a room at. She’d kissed him. He looked like Neal, maybe he didn’t but he looked just like him when she squinted, she’d burst into sobs and kissed him. She hadn’t stumbled away she ran. She’d been running for months and now – now she was sitting on the dirty carpet of a motel room fumbling with a cell phone she’d not charged in weeks. 

“Neal-i-its Tink-T-tinkerbell….I miss you. I-I’m coming home…I-i’m sorry.”

He was asleep probably she spoke to his answering machine like it was a lifeline she didn’t know she’d needed. Far out in the middle of a place she no longer wanted to be she had to get home. 

The next morning she was on a plane to Wyoming, the only flight she could get but the only one that would bring her closer to where she needed to be.

The train from Chicago to Boston took ages, the car she’d abandoned still sat in the lot but needed a charge, the battery had died from not being used. She drove as fast as the disgruntled car battery would allow. The border into Storybrooke was hard to see through the tears that streaked down her cheeks. Tink ran up the stairs, not Faye not a woman determined to run but Tinkerbell, the fairy who had taken too long to learn what she’d wanted. She struggled, fumbling with her keys in shaking hands at the door. 

The door practically burst open and yet, when she’d arrived, he was gone. This place had been theirs. Yet only the few pieces of her remained. She’d see him eventually, he’d never leave his son and Storybrooke was too small. Gracelessly she collapsed in a heap in the center of what had been their tiny living room for two. Had he given up on her? She couldn’t blame him, how many months had it been? 

But her heart was still broken. In two pieces on the floor of an apartment meant for two. Her backpack was thrown unceremoniously from her shoulders. The door was closed and locked. The picture she’d kissed so many times thinking of him was pulled from her pocket. It was as descheveled as she must’ve looked. 

“I’m sorry.” She murmured with no tears left to cry. Tinkerbell kissed the photo and placed it face down on the nightstand. She took a shower, washing away the past six months of her absence and laid down alone in her bed, six months of longing lingering on unkissed lips.