They said goodbye on a street corner.

They said goodbye on a street corner next to a chain link fence and a crooked stop sign.

Not the most cinematic of endings for two such people, but somehow it felt like the right place to stop and say 'so long'.

One was dark. Her hair black and her eyes the same shade. Her form sturdy, feminine and tall. She grew up cautious and was much wiser than her twenty year life-span should have permitted; wary of the world and all it held in it, learning anything she could about everything she could. She was solitary and introverted but opinionated and blunt to a fault. She was honest and held her morals and ideals in high regard, and whether they fell under a description of 'religion' or 'philosophy' she didn't care.

The other was light. Her hair a light, light blonde and her eyes a gray blue that was nondescript. She was slim to the point of being skeletal, boyish and short. She threw caution to the wind and did many foolish, foolish things because she was naive about the way the world worked. She learned what she needed to survive but disregarded everything else that didn't interest her. She was a social creature but without direction and fearful to speak her mind or get to the heart of a matter--preferring to talk around a topic rather than face it head on.

They were opposites in every conceivable way, tethered together only by blood.

Cousins.

But they didn't think of each other as cousins.

That seemed so...impersonal.

They weren't sisters either...nor were they friends...

They were something else entirely.

Something that had yet to be given a name by anyone anywhere.

They were parallels. Equals but not quite so and not quite not.

They were light and dark. Compliments to each other.

That is what they were.

Complimentary.

They shared an affinity that had no other word to describe it.

They stood here on the street corner in silence.

Their silences were never uncomfortable in the past--never pregnant with thoughts unvoiced--because even in the silence there was complete understanding of the other without words needing to be said.

Even this silence was thus.

Nothing needed to be said because the two were feeling the exact same thing.

Grief.

But words demanded to be said.

"I'm going to miss you," the dark one said quietly, her voice--normally a strong, deep sound--coming out sounding as small as she felt.

"I'm going to miss you too," the light one echoed just as quietly.

They stepped towards one another in the same instant and wrapped their arms around each other.

They'd never hugged before.

In the years they'd known each other--in the handful of months they'd been near enough to each other to actually touch--they'd never hugged before.

Not really.

One would wrap an arm around the other's shoulder as a gesture of comfort, but never did they hug each other.

But they did now. They hung on as though their continued existence depended on how tightly they bound themselves to the other with their arms.

They had been so different throughout their lives. Complete and polar opposites that should have repelled each other rather than be drawn together.

And yet they stood here, on this street corner, clutching each other as though the forces of magnetism held them together.

Before they'd known each other, they had been shattered, incomplete people.

But then they met and two broken down people merged into one complete, healthy one.

Every quality that one lacked, the other possessed; making them two sides to the same coin.

Two halves of the same whole.

They hadn't realized that until just now.

And that is why they held each other so tightly.

In minutes they'd be separated again and each wanted to soak up as much of the other as humanly possible before that happened.

To take a little of their opposite with them...so they'd never feel incomplete again.

Dark met light; caution met chaos; sturdy met frail; they mingled and clashed and melded into one in that second on the street corner as each girl clung to the other in equal desperation, neither wanting to ever let go.

In the same instant, everything in the world was both ugly and beautiful...perfect and skewed...right and wrong.

Beautiful, perfect, and right because the two girls finally knew just what they meant to each other...

Ugly, skewed and wrong because they were now being ripped apart at the moment of understanding.

Tears slipped from the eyes of one and onto the shoulder of the other and vice versa.

It wasn't fair.

It wasn't fair.

To find the other half of yourself only to have it torn away so brutally was cruel.

They each simultaneously whispered into the others' hair the word 'Goodbye' from equally strangled throats and held on a few seconds longer, hoping that somehow the world would stop long enough for this parting not to happen.

It couldn't happen.

It shouldn't happen.

It was an injustice that shouldn't have been allowed.

'Goodbye' was just so...final.

They knew it was.

Even if they met again in the future, things would never be the same as they were now. Now it was them against the world...down the road it would be different.

Once they released each other, they'd be saying goodbye to things as they were when they were teenagers. The next time they would meet, they would both be adults.

They weren't ready.

They hadn't been given enough time.

There would never be enough time.

And now the sun was starting to set.

They had to go.

They had to leave each other.

The parting had to happen.

The world didn't stop the way it should have to preserve that moment of perfect rightness and time moved forward despite how unfair it was that it was doing so.

They didn't sob. That would have ruined it. That would have tainted this moment of being absolutely united in their grief.

Their arms dropped from around each other in the same instant and they stepped away.

And there was silence, nothing needing to be said as they turned their backs.

It took every ounce of strength they had to continue walking away.

They were being separated.

But it was better this way.

Better to walk away.

Better to cry alone.

Better not to run to the other for comfort because they may have stayed on that street corner weeping for eternity.

Better to be ending their relationship as they had started it.

As opposite, incomplete individuals moving away from each other in opposite directions.

Because that's what they were to begin with.

Because that's the way the world works.

Because in real life, no matter how much we wish it so, there are no happy endings.

Fade to black...

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A/N: I'm feeling melancholy and lonesome and missing my beloved cousin so...I wrote the account of how we said goodbye oh so many months ago.

I just miss her...and probably shouldn't be listening to Viva Forever because it reminds me of that day and makes me miserable...

I remember shortly after we said goodbye thinking just how beautiful a scene it would have been if captured on film...

Since I couldn't do that, I decided to try and do it in words...they are my chosen medium these days, after all.

Rechel and I got to be together in person (we wrote to each other before but never met) for about six months before our parents decided they'd go at each other and never speak again.

Guess who got separated by five hundred miles because of it...

Isn't it great how the next generation always pays for the sins of the former?

-bitter laughter-