What About Yesterday? - anne with an e

Chapter 11, Part 1- Apocalypse

I can skip the library tonight, she thought.

——

-a/n: play song-

Anne felt as though she was moving through water. An immense heaviness, like the pressure of a hand wrapped around every inch of her body, each movement- even a tilt of her head- required her entire focus of being. She swore she could feel it in her ears- the wash of water too close to her throat, too loud in her head, lips trembling with the sensation.
Abhorrently, ironically, her mouth was utterly dry. It made Anne want to scream.
But she doesn't. She just sat, statue still- like the surface of a pool, undisturbed- as Diana spoke gently, cooing as if she might to a child, from the very bottom of that pool. They were close- existing in the same state, same body of water- but each of her words were carried away, by a current unfelt to Anne, muffled reassurances melted into the surrounding unknown.
Because everything was unknown.
Funny, how a single thread of new knowledge could unravel the entire cloth of clarity until everything was detached, lost. And the intricate pattern, the net you've made yourself is suddenly dismantled. The fall at the end of the world.

"He just didn't mention a word of the letter and- well if you saw his face after I told him you weren't there you'd understand-" Diana broke off, realising the implications of her words.

If you saw his face.
If you had just been there.
You weren't there.
You didn't tell me about the study group.
You don't tell me things.
You didn't tell me.
You didn't.

"Anne. If there's another conclusion tell me, but I can only assume he can't have read your letter, and.."

"Doesn't know how I loved him." 

A beat.                                                                                                

Anne's voice was scratching, like it can become after crying. Her eyes a flickering slightly, her chin trembled. Like pane of glass, with scar running along its edge. On the edge of breaking.

"Do.. do you know what that means?" Diana asked, her voice lifting with the possibility.

"It could mean anything Diana. It could mean nothing." She inhaled hastily, pressing her lips into a line. 

Diana looked her straight in  the eye, holding her there. "Anne," She said breathily, and a smile caresses her lips.

"It could mean everything." 

The Rose Room seemed to spin like a coin around Anne, turning over under the force of her friend's words. Heads and tales. Win or loose. Luck.

Hope.

It ran shivers down her spine, easily finding its way back to her like a old habit. Sweet, terrifying, familiar uncertainty. She thought, she'd let it overwhelm her. The possibilities. 

"I, I'm going to get some air. Thank you, truly Di." She moved suddenly, to escape the sunset room, leaving Diana sitting alone on the thin carpet behind her.

It's cold- winter had finally settled, the air smelled so teasingly like snow. Anne stumbled out of the entrance hall, steering towards to graveyard with an almost giddy step. But she was not smiling, no she will not allow that yet. Instead her brow was furrowed, lips clamped closed in a straight line as she determinedly opened the gate and surrendered, melting into the nest of bare branches, leaning stones and brittle, sky-bound trees. The momentum of her gate tossed her previously pinned curls to fall in ribbons of cherry-red against the grey horizon in her vision.