Exiled

Story By StormDancer

---

Mia giggled shrilly, tossing back her dark hair proudly. She pointedly look at her friend, turning her back on the couple in the corner with her green eyes shining with a brightness that was a very small part humour.

“Oh, no, Ash,” she cried a touch louder than was necessary, though she resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder, “You shouldn’t be sorry to be single. It’s ever so much more fun!”

Her friend rolled her eyes, knowing where the comment was really directed, and cast a weary eye past Mia to the couple. The boy averted his gaze quickly back to the girl beside him when he noted Ash’s all too knowing gaze.

Darren flushed as her accusing eyes fixed on him. He returned his attention to Katie, who was leaning against him, chattering on about something or other. IT was inconsequential, though. She never talked about anything important, not like Mia- he cut off that train of thought. Mia was ancient history now, water under the bridge. He was finished with that part of his life. Even if her gentle voice never grated on his nerves like Katie’s did now.

Unwillingly, his eyes drifted back to the girls and landed on the sleek black head. It tilted back at an angle Darren knew meant she was amused, and he strained to hear what had made her laugh. Then he realized what he was doing, and yanked his unruly thoughts back into submission. He had broken up with her. He had no right to her laughter anymore.

Abruptly, she shifted slightly s her profile was facing him and he could feel her eyes on him. Guiltily- he shouldn’t even be looking at her, let alone staring- he turned back to Katie and moved so that she was nearly sitting on his lap. He sensed Mia turn away.

“He’s s disgusting,” she muttered to Ash, turning aside her eyes both frm her ex-boyfriend and her best friend so neither could see the hurt she was not able to completely conceal, “Doing stuff like that in public.”

Ash, despite her exasperation at the scene that had been played out in many different forms in the weeks since the infamous break-up, had sympathy enough not to point out that Mia and Darren had been much more explicit in much more public places.

“Just don’t look,” Ash advised Mia, whose hands were clenching with ill-hidden anger and jealousy and whose eyes would have sparked, had they been able.

“I can’t!” Mia exclaimed, slamming her hand into the floor with an exclamation of pain as the floor proved harder than her hand. Behind her, Darren’s head jerked up in alarm and concern. Ash, who saw this and had seen many other similar demonstrations, smirked at both of their cluelessness- though it was getting old.

“I don’t know why you still like him, anyway,” Ash observed in a voice calculated to carry across the room, wondering with idle curiosity how wide Darren’s eyes could go, “He dumped you. Because of a stupid rumour.”

Darren winced as Mia’s face froze. It hadn’t been because of that rumor, he insisted to himself. Well, not exactly. He had just been having issues. Issues with school, with family, and on top of that those stupid, subtle rumors; he hadn’t had the energy not to believe them, though he knew, now, of course too late to correct his fatal blunder, that they were lies, all of them. But it couldn’t be rectified. He was exiled from the lands of Mia’s affections forever, and no other world would be as sweet.

“I don’t like him!” Mia yelled, with a flick of her eyes back at Darren that went unseen, the continued in a whisper meant only for her friend’s ear, “It’s just… I don’t expect you to understand this, but he’s... Darren. He’s my everything.”

Darren’s face had fallen at Mia’s emphatic shout. Of course. He should have known- he had known. He had no chance. No chance at all to reinsinuate himself into her goodwill. He would be stuck with girls like Katie for the rest of his life, empty headed and not caring that he was obviously in perturbed state of mind. HE woud never agai have Mia, whose very resence was his panacea.

Darren didn’t know he was staring wistfully at Mia’s back. She, however, felt eyes upon her, and had a suspicion about whose they were. She had always had a preternatural awareness of him. She turned, preparing to look through hi haughtily. But just as her eyes swept past him, he glanced up, and their eyes met for the first time in weeks, and she was as caught in their shifting depths as she had ever been.

Darren knew he had no right to be hazing into her verdant eyes like that. Another girl was basically on his lap, and Mia had made it painfllty clear tat she no longer held any attachement to him. But there was something in her eyes, surprised into openness, that made him forget all that; there might be a chance after all.

HE shot to his feet, ignoring Katie’s surprised squeak, drawn in as he always was by the siren call of Mia’s gaze. He strode over to her and, without apology or a glance at Ash, jerked Mia way by her wrist.

“Darren,” she acknowledged coldly, refusing to pay attention to the butterflies his presence, his touch, still evoked. He was in no way justified in having an claim on her notice, let alone her emotions.

“I know I’ve smashed any second chances I might have had to bits, Mi,” he began without preamble, ignoring her glare at the nickname, “But I can’t fucking live like this you despise me, I get it. Hell, I desrve it. But I’ve got to say this. Mi, I need you. I’m one of the wrost boyfriends in the world, and I know I put you through a hell of a lot more shit than you deserve, but I need fucking need you in the ‘if you aren’t there than I don’t know what to do with myself’ sort of way. And I’ve got to know this,” he cut her off before she could protest, “Can you find it in the heart I know I’ve messed around with to take me back?”

Mia looked at him blankly, not showing any emotion at the sight of the proud boy baring his soul. Take him back? After what he did to her! She’d be a fool to. Darren was not good news for her, he had the power to destroy her, had destroyed her with only a few words. And yet… there could be no question as to her answer.

“You’re right,” she finally said, breaking the silence w coldly, “You are a bad boyfriend, and you don’t deserve me. But…” she trailed off as his face fell almost comically fast, “ But I can’t. I need you too. So damn much.”

“What?” he managed to stutter as her last words filtered though his dejected consciousness with the force of a shooting star. Mia’s face lit up as it hadn’t done in weeks.

“Of course, you idiot,” she laughed, throwing her arms around him in one of the embraces they had both missed so much, an embrace that enveloped both of them in comfort and something still more that neither dared to yet name. “Of course,” Mia murmured into his ear, “I have to take you back.”