Title: Dreaming of Yesterday
Rating: G
Warnings: N/A
Summary: She's trying to forget and trying to hold on to it all.
A/N: This is kind of a prequel to the story I've been planning for ages, set in the future after it. :P It's meant as a part of a much bigger plot, which is why it may give off this incomplete feeling(:

She remembers, vivid at times and blurred at the edges. They come to her slowly, like the steady trickle of rain down the windowpane, meandering off-course and at its own pace. She's stopped searching for them; it's as useless as catching smoke in her hands.

Sometimes she sees the school, towering and reaching toward the heavens, recalls that she once thought of it as her haven. Trees with leaves that danced in the spring breeze, branches licked with flames in the autumn. It had seemed so beautiful then, vibrant and alive as the students that walked its halls.

She thinks of it now, the monotonous routine she calls life, and the contrast should be painful, but it's not. She can't feel anything at all.

She remembers a group of friends who'd laughed and joked and trusted, and they had all been so radiant, glowing in the sheer joy of life, carefree and on top of the world, because nothing could touch them, not then.

There's emptiness in her heart now.

There had been a boy, too, a beautiful boy. Refined and graceful with each confident stride, and she remembers the smooth line of his jaw – how could she not? How many times had her finger traced it? – and the pride etched into every line of his body. Sunlight reflecting off of rimless glasses, the slope of his neck, and hair – tousled hair, like straw spun into gold – falling into the brightest, greenest eyes she had ever seen.

And such a perfect boy had been so unbelievably imperfect. Arrogant and jealous and temperamental, everything she'd learned to hate, and she'd loved him so much.

Loved.

She thinks of him now, thinks that she might still love him, but mostly she thinks of nothing.

That was five years ago.

Life moved on, and if she hadn't, she would have been left behind, left reminiscing while everyone else went to university, found jobs, made new memories.

She writes now, bestsellers that aren't quite romances so much as they are longing, the tone carrying through with every word. The story of a girl, simple with complex relations.

She's a girl who lived her entire life as a disappointment, second-best and daughter of the glamorous.

And just when she thought she'd found something to hold onto, cruel fate tears it away from her unwilling arms.

Life isn't so kind as to let her forget; it gives her a little and takes it away, leaving her wanting and aching even more.

***

Sometimes, she still wakes up and expects to find him laying next to her in bed, a solid reassurance, not just a vague presence. But he's not, and it's sheets wrapped around her and not arms, and the sheets are cold, not warm like a human would be.

It hurts, reaching out for a hand and grasping air. She's not sure if she's seeing things or if she's going crazy, but she thinks she wouldn't mind either if she can be with him again.

***

She hears of them occasionally, snippets in the newspaper and small news on TV. It's unavoidable; the school bred students who would never be anything other than the best.

He's a musician, and she didn't expect anything less. If she ever had any other woman to worry about, it would have been the siren that called to him time after time, never letting him go even when his arms were wrapped around her. His music.

He's well-known, very popular. The same girls who buy her novels swoon over him. In his band, he's the most famous. The vocalist with a voice like velvet and an uncaring look in his eyes. They giggled and watched him more than they listened to his music, but she couldn't blame them because she did it too, her eyes drawn to that tall, distant figure, always too far ahead.

***

She hasn't changed a thing, hasn't touched anything of his, even though she should. There's still a coat draped across the couch and shoes thrown haphazardly in the doorway everyday she comes home, and half the time she thinks he might be in the bedroom, pretending to sleep when she knows he's waiting for her before he lets himself drift away.

Every time she walks in and the bed's as cold and empty as it was in the morning, the ache in her heart just grows a little more.

But she still lays down, night after night, pretending the pillows still smell like him.

***

They ask her about her inspiration. Did she have a past love? Has she lost someone?

She smiles and acquits it all to simple fairytales, princesses with lips sealed shut by spells, singing perfidy from rose petal lips.

***

She practices her mannerisms, relearns her smile and her posture and her sarcastic comments, the same way she rehearses a character's lines. How real can she be? She's been so many people, she could be whoever she wanted.

She doesn't know if she could ever be someone who didn't need him, though, so there's really no point.

***

There's never going to be an end to her series, not really. She considers throwing her character into the arms of another man or even into Death's welcoming embrace, but it seems like running away. She knows her heroine will never find conclusion until she does, but she can't bring herself to do it.

If she's learned anything from school it's that people aren't characters in her novels. She can predict them and she can lead them into her own carefully constructed plans, but she'll never be able to control them. She can't write lines and plot actions as though they're chess pieces at her disposal. And she thinks that that's why she can't see him again.

She's afraid, afraid of seeing the accusation in his eyes, betrayal written in his stare.

She's a coward, she knows. She's not running away, because she's not brave enough for that, even. She only lets herself stay, drowning in memories of days like dreams she can't quite remember anymore.