Falling For Her (Tom Hiddleston Fanfiction)

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I watched the sun rise up from a window at the end of an empty hallway. The hallway not being the one with Lilly's room attached to it. The minute I left Lilly's room, I went to get coffee, like I told her I was doing. And as I was walking back, I just stopped.

I stopped, and I found the nearest seat at the end of a vacant hallway and I stayed there. Going through the conversation with Lilly in my head like a movie scene stuck in a loop.

Every now and then, a nurse would come over to me and ask if I was lost. Or if I was waiting for someone. But other than those few nurses, there was no one but me. A quiet hallway for me to think. So I stayed there all morning.

The reason I needed to be alone with my thoughts, was because I needed to find the words to make everything okay again.

That's what Lilly and I did. Over and over again. One of us would say these hopeless words out of pure anguish, and the other one would have to say something to fix it. I hadn't noticed it was a pattern until I sat in that hallway. My mind in autopilot as it sifted through every part of my brain, trying to find that solution to our problems. Like I was so accustomed to finding solutions.

Lilly said what she said, out of anguish. Now I'm supposed say something to repair the damage done from her words.

But I couldn't. So I sat there, all night, watching the sun rise and thinking about what Lilly was doing at that moment. What she was thinking, or feeling. And why couldn't I find the words I needed to say to make everything better.

The more time it took for me to come up with a solution, the more hope slipped from my grasp. And I slowly began coming to the conclusion that there was nothing I could do to stop Lilly for blaming herself. To stop her from having regrets. To fix the damage. This time was different. And I couldn't quite accept the fact that there was nothing I could say to her.

What good was I, for her? If I couldn't even make her happy. That's the thing that bothered me most. As I sat there in that hallway, thinking of Lilly, I knew she wasn't happy. I wasn't with her to make her happy. She was alone in her room. My job is to make her happy and I'm not doing it. I'm staying far away from her, running from confrontation rather than facing her.

I'm no different than Mary Reynolds.

Even that thought didn't give me the jolt I needed to move. If that thought didn't work, nothing was going to.

"So, we meet again." A vaguely familiar voice suddenly kicks me out of my thoughts. I turned my tired head from the window to see Susan. The nurse that I had met the day Lilly had her seizure. The one who gave me the advice about Lilly.

She hovered over me as I sat on the bench, a grin plastered on her face. She had the same purple scrubs on, like the last time I had seen her. And her short grey hair looked exactly like before. I don't know why I expected her to look differently. It had only been a few weeks since the last time I had seen her. Maybe it was because, everything in my life was changing so fast, so it was unusual to see something stay the same.

It was sort of relieving, to see her, and surprising. "Susan." I said as a small smile formed on my face. "It's good to see you."

She sat down on the bench beside me. "You too. How are things, Tom?"

I shook my head, disappointed. "It's funny, you always seem to catch me at a bad time." I muttered.

She laughed. "Well, you always seem to be in a hallway during a bad time."

I forced out a laugh of some sort. Although it sounded pathetic and tired. "That's true."

Susan tilted her head. "What's wrong?"