quixotic. ↣ d.h.

xxxv: dreaming

no one spoke. wide, bewildered eyes gaped at zoe from faces of shock. worried hands began to reach out before thinking better of the action and recoiling. the fires of terror blazed in zoe's eyes, and dan noticed that her irises had taken on the color of burnt ash.

    "zoe," mr. levine spoke, voice as soft as early morning snow.

    "i'm sorry," she blurted before surging forward, leaping out of her seat and running out the door.

    "zoe, wait!" dan yelled as he jumped up to follow her.

    "both of you, sit, please, i-" mr. levine's voice fell on deaf ears as zoe tore down the school hall and dan chased after her, just like he knew he always would.

    he tried not to hear her sobs; they sliced through his chest like a dull blade, cutting him deeper than he had ever been cut before.

    "zoe, please! stop!" he begged as she rounded the corner a few feet ahead, shoving the doors open and racing out into the freezing air. his heart pounded in his ears as he followed after her.

    when he stopped on the sidewalk in front of the school, she was nowhere in sight. everything froze for a moment as he thought that he had lost her. then, a soft cry caused him to turn and see zoe, sat in the dead grass with her knees tucked  under her chin. snowflakes were settling into her honey-colored hair, slipping down her cheeks and mingling with the salty wet of her tears.

    "hey, hey, it's fine! everything's fine," dan insisted as he slid down to sit beside her, his breath fogging in front of his face.

    zoe sat with her head pressed back against the brick wall of their school, lips barely parted, eyes simultaneously screaming and looking so, so empty. she was as frozen as the air around them, existing only in the warm tears that were slipping down her cheeks.

    "please say something," dan pleaded. he pulled one of her cold hands into his, intertwining their fingers and squeezing hard.

    "i should have listened to you," she said finally.

    "huh?"

    "i should have just skipped, and never said anything, and never put those words into existence," she said, voice growing angry as it fought around the sobs she was caging in her throat.

    "you did the right thing."

    "did you see their faces?" she demanded, whirling to face him with eyes of dying flames. "now they know just how much of a freak i really am."

    dan didn't know what to say. he had never before witnessed this side of her; she was shaking with belligerence, with the irritability that only someone who felt ignored and misunderstood could wield.

    "i'm not going back in there," she said emphatically. her numb fingers swiped mindlessly at the pools of tears beneath her eyes.

    it was as if she had always been nothing more than a million pieces of existence held together with poorly-made glue, and now she was shattering and exploding and shooting off in every direction like the frenzied sparks of a firework.

    she was so horribly broken.

    "zoe," dan said softly. he waited until she turned to face him, then squeezed her hand again. "tell me a story."

    "what?"

    "anything you can think of. absolutely anything."

    "i-i don't see what that has to do with a-anything," she stuttered. she was shaking so hard, both from the cold and the voices in her head. everything was too bright, too loud, too sharp and jarring.

    "close your eyes," dan instructed. "you will see another sky. tell me about that sky. tell me about the people that live beneath it." dan knew her well enough by this point; the only way to help her was to distract her; she needed an anecdote for every dose of reality.

    zoe's eyes flashed at him one last time before she closed them, taking a deep, shuddering breath.

    "there once was a girl enamored with the melancholy," she began. "she loved cloudy days and thunderstorms and books with unhappy endings. her favorite songs were the ones that made her cry. her eyes were grey but her soul was even more so devoid of color. she wrote sad poems and left everyone that ever loved her. she felt terribly misunderstood and trapped. everything scared her. she wasted all of her time dreaming of a life in which she would no longer feel the need to dream."

    "what happened to her?" dan dared to ask.

    zoe parted her dry lips and sighed, shoulders sagging in a lifeless shrug. "i don't know. i think she will always live just on the cusp of fantasticality. she's a little too scared to ever really make it to greatness. if life doesn't hold her back, she'll hold herself back."

    "what's her name?" dan breathed.

    zoe turned to him with melancholy eyes, skin paled by despondency. she wouldn't say it, dan knew. but the girl's name was weighing in both of their minds: zoe.

    it was cold, and she was so sad, and everything felt so terribly hopeless; dan was filled with a positively uncontainable longing to lean just a little closer, hold her just a little tighter. would it be such an awful thing? he wondered. then, in one last desperate attempt to evade the strangling vines of reality, dan brushed his other hand against zoe's cheek.

    "what are you doing?" she asked, voice barely more than a whisper.

    "dreaming," he answered before leaning forward and capturing her lips with his.

and i am afraid of what will happen when we wake up.

a/n: pls vote/comment/share