brígh

It had been three years since I'd seen him. Squinting down the row of books surreptitiously at Barnes and Noble, I tried to figure out if it was really him, or if I was imagining things. Chestnut brown hair, falling gracefully straight over his features, flipping up at his collar where it was too long in the back; wire-rimmed glasses, hiding eyes that I knew to be deeply intelligent and so often filled with a beautiful mirth; fairly pale skin, a very straight nose and a thin mouth; a few inches north of six feet. All it would take was for him to turn this way, away from the shelf of books he was pursuing in such interest, one look into those hazel eyes and I would know. I silently willed him to look up and see me standing there, to start in surprise and then – my heart panged briefly in remembering – grab me up in a warm, long hug, laughing to see me again.

It was a few minutes coming, but I'd learned patience in the past few years. His head lifted and glanced down the row toward me, and he immediately blinked in a sort of shock, his features arranging themselves into the expression I recognized as surprise. "Brígh?" he asked in delight, already walking toward me briskly.

I let loose a maniac grin and leapt forward, saying his name just as his arms caught me up in the fierce hug that I remembered so clearly, and I began laughing into his jacket as he held me tight, enveloping me in the embrace. At 5'6" I barely came up to his shoulder, and I'd always loved how small I felt in his arms.

When finally we pulled apart, I reached up to touch his face, to feel some shard of warmth that came from his beautiful grin. "You grew your beard back," I said in delight. "About time."

"No, it's about time that I ran into you," he said, clapping my shoulder. "I've been in the city for a year, haven't managed to find you in all that time. Should've known you'd be at a bookstore."

I laughed, the first real laugh in well over two years. "Yeah, it's about time. What're you doing out here, anyway?"

His expression changed, became guarded, an emotion that I didn't recognize on his features. "Needed a change," he said shortly, before his smile came back. "But what've you been up to?" His eyes swept my features more closely and the smile fell again. Even the joy I felt as his presence was already vanishing, and I knew that no amount of laughter could hide the nuances that were warnings to him. His gaze lingered over the dark circles under my eyes, and slowly, almost disbelievingly, he lifted a hand and brushed his thumb over the tired skin, his eyes searching mine. "Christ, Brígh," he said softly. "What happened?"

---

His name is plain, at least, I've always thought that. Daniel Michael Verloren. Only his last name was at all unusual, and perhaps the normal first names were to make up for that strangeness. According to research, Daniel meant simply, "God is my judge." That would fit him, when it came down to it.

I've been fascinated with names from an early age. That was one of the things the two of us had in common when we met. A quick wit, sarcasm, and a deep fascination with names. Our ages separated us – he was a full decade my senior, though I never felt that much younger than him. Other things brought us close: books, and dry, sarcastic humor, fanfiction and puzzles.

I didn't like him at first. It was hard for me to adjust to another person with a lightning-fast wit, with a tongue as swift as my own and just as quick to speak. He grew on me, though, eventually, and we got closer as the years went on. He became a big brother to me – the one I called the first time my friends betrayed me and got me drunk at a party to bail me out. The one who rid me of a stalker who had no business obsessing over me. The last person I said goodbye to before I left the place that had not been home for four years.

I still remembered that night.

---

His eyes searched mine beneath the soothing lights of the bookstore and I had to fight the flashbacks, all the things that I would have to explain – if not now, soon. Automatically, it seemed, his gaze flicked from my eyes down to the empty ring finger on my left hand, the finger that had been occupied the last time he'd seen me. "Brígh," he said, his voice still soft, worrying his thumb over the dark circles and my pale skin. I let my eyes fall closed at his tender touch, enjoying the warmth of his presence and his concern. "You swore you'd never go back."

I wrenched back from his touch at those words, my eyes flying open again to glare at him, but seeing the concern in his hazel gaze, I couldn't keep the anger. "I tried so hard, Daniel, I really did," I said, running a shaking hand over my eyes. "But after..." I hesitated, cleared my throat. "After he left, I couldn't keep it up anymore."

His eyes burned suddenly, and I was almost afraid. "I told you to let me know if he ever did you wrong," he said quietly.

I laughed bitterly, a sound that made him cringe. He hadn't heard that laughter out of my mouth since I was fifteen, and had never wanted to hear it again. "You were two thousand miles away, Daniel, and I hadn't heard from you in months! What did you expect me to do? Call you the instant I found him in bed with another girl?"

He looked momentarily shocked, probably at this last declaration, and I bit my lip and looked away, fighting the old memories and the flashbacks as hard as I could. His gentle hand on my shoulder made me flinch, but I didn't pull away again, looked back up into his kind features instead. He brought his other hand up to my face to cup my cheek gently again, search the eyes that were jewel-bright with held-in tears. "You didn't deserve that," he said, and I shook my head, trying not to cry.

The memory might have been two years in the past, but it still stung so much more than it should have.

"How'd you get here?" he asked me.

"Took a bus," I muttered, swiping the back of my hand across my eyes.

"I'll give you a ride," he said, placing his arm around my shoulders and steering me toward the escalator. "We can catch up. I'll make dinner."

I sighed and nodded, suddenly so tired, resting my head back against his shoulder as we walked through the door. "Sounds good to me."

daniel

Her name fascinated me from the beginning. It's of Irish origin, and it means "power" or "high." It fit her so well. Spelled strangely, so few people managed to say it right on the first time; it was really pronounced simply "Bree." It was actually her middle name, but she never went by her first name, so ordinary as it was – Hannah, it might have been, though none of us really remembered – and she truly grew into it. Her intensity always drew me, even at the very beginning. That was the word to describe her: intense, and powerful. That was why the name fit her.

It was a long time before I saw the vulnerable side of her: the side that she wanted no one to see. I don't remember the first time I saw it, because I must have seen minute flickers before that moment, but the clearest has stood out forever in my mind: the first night I saw her cry and she crumpled into me for comfort, and I hardly knew what to do as it seemed that the storm inside her broke loose and she sobbed into my shoulder. It was a frightening moment, first seeing that dam of intensity break her like I knew it must have when she was alone a thousand times before. That was, I was glad that she wasn't alone.

Her life was hard. I knew the details but didn't dwell on them. What I dwelled on was the dark, shadowed nature of her eyes, the lackluster look in them, the look that said she'd seen far too much for the youth that she was.

I hated the people who had done that to her.

Then she found him, and he changed everything. I might have been there for her through the hard times but our relationship was limited – I scarcely saw her but once a week, if that. When he walked into her life, the dead look in her eyes simply died. She was alive again. I couldn't believe the change that he worked on her, the beautiful person she became when they fell in love.

I hated him later for it. For how dependent I knew she'd become on him, and how he promised her a forever but didn't work for it. That day seeing her again at the bookstore, with the light vanished from her eyes and the marks of a relapse into the intensity and the darkness she was once all over her, I hated him more passionately than I'd hated anyone in my life. What he did to her made me shake with anger as I drove her to my apartment in the city, trying to keep my hands steady so that she wouldn't see.

She was power, and she was intensity. None of that changed when they ended, but the intensity was being used for something else, now: to fuel a life devoid of love and devoid of hope.

I hated him for that, for what he'd done to the girl I'd always thought of as mine.

I shook myself from my thoughts as we drove into the parking structure and I slid my car into its usual spot. "C'mon, I'll find some tea," I said, making it sound as though it would take an effort.

She smiled slightly, glancing past the hand I offered out to her to help her from the car. I let it drop uselessly at my side. I should have known that she wouldn't be able to bear being touched after the first few moments of our meeting. She had never been that type of person except for around him, and every flashback that reminded me made me more angry.

The last time I'd really seen her was a little over three years before, when she dropped by my apartment to say goodbye. She was leaving for college – young, powerful, eighteen and ready to take on the world – and when she appeared at my door that night I almost thought she was a dream. I'd thought I wouldn't see her before she left. She never was good at saying goodbye.

"Why did you leave, Brígh?" I asked her abruptly, as I unlocked the door to my apartment and let her inside, turning on the lights.

She looked at me quizzically at the question. "What?"

"Why did you leave?" I repeated, shutting the door behind me, sure that I'd made the question quite clear. "That night, when you came by to say goodbye, it was obvious that you didn't want to go. You felt like you should have stayed, even though your way out was paved for you." I searched her eyes – perfect, rainy gray, like the shimmer on a windowpane left from a long day's downpour. They were masked, betraying no emotion except a flicker of uneasiness. "Why did you leave?"

She turned slowly to take in my apartment. I walked ahead into the kitchen to find the little tea that I had and she followed me. "I...had to," she said in a confused sort of voice. "I'd been dreaming of getting out all that time. I wanted to go away to college, live in the big city, be closer to..." She swallowed, then said his name as though it shoved a shard of broken glass through her heart to voice it aloud: "...Shane." She glanced at me, as I heated up water over the stove. "I had all the reason in the world to go."

"Except that you didn't really want to," I contradicted, turning to face her. She leaned back against the counter, frowning. "When you came by my place that night, you looked uncertain. Like you weren't sure what you were doing, if it was right or even what you wanted."

By the look in her rain-gray eyes, she remembered that night, too.