One For Sorrow, Two For Joy

One For Sorrow, Two For Joy

Alice blows into the hot cup she's holding and shivers a little in her bed. It's cold. Her room-mates must have forgotten to turn the heating on, again. Alice looks down into her hot chocolate before taking a cautious sip. It's still too hot, but she can't resit.

The liquid burns her tongue, and she slows down, but only a little.

Alice is thinking about Maggie.

Alice always thinks about Maggie. Whether it's during lectures, when she's ordering Chinese, or late at night when she's lonely in bed, and she wants her favourite person beside her. She always thinks about Maggie. And yet, she knows that Maggie doesn't think about her even half as much. Despite the fact that they've been on and off for going a year now, she doesn't mean half as much to Maggie as Maggie means to her.

But she's kind of learnt to deal with that. To simply be okay. She doesn't have to be number one; she can deal with being second best. It's impossible to know what's on Maggie's mind, because Maggie is Maggie; a force in her own right. Maggie is everything, and Alice won't let go. No matter how horrible she feels thinking about it on her own, she needs to be with Maggie because, with Maggie, she is happy.

It makes sense to her.

Maggie is older, wiser, prettier than Alice. Maggie is taller and paler and more elegant than Alice, in such an alternative way, with her hair inky-black, and her piercings few but bold. Then her tattoo; only the one, of Saint Mary praying on her right bicep. Maggie always denies being religious, but Alice has seen her pray before, and she knows that Maggie feels there's something else out there.

Just then the front door bell rings. Without really being aware, Alice knows who it is. It's 11am on a Saturday morning and both of her room-mates are out. Maggie couldn't have chosen a better time.

Alice's long, tan legs slip out from under her duvet, and she hurries out of her room and down her stairs, careful not to spill her beverage. She's already a little excited at the prospect of seeing and holding her whatever-Maggie-is. Once at her door she runs a hand through her hair quickly and then shakes it out. There isn't much she can do, but what little, she does.

“Hey,” she breathes, when Maggie's tall frame is revealed.

“Hi, chick,” Maggie replies, and it draws a small smile from Alice.

Alice steps back and gestures with her head. “Come in.”

The dark haired girl does so, shutting the door after herself, but remains there. Alice frowns. Usually, her kitchen would be full of the girl by now, her fridge door opened, or her TV turned on. Instead, Maggie slips her hands into her skinny jeans' pockets, and Alice wants to take them out again. Alice loves Maggie's fingers. Her hands. They're so long and flawless, and her palms are so soft. She could hold them forever. She wants to hold them now, but Maggie's expression is cold and a little distant.

“I think we're over.” Maggie had seemed to take forever to end the sentence, and yet, Alice feels as though she's just received a sharp jab to the gut; quick, and dirty. Hidden in Maggie's metaphorical fist, there was surely a knife.

The wound bled.

“You what?”

“I don't think this is right anymore,” she repeats, sounding as sure as she did the first time. Alice looks up at her properly, the blonde girl's own meek blue eyes meeting Maggie's confident green ones, and everything is wrong. The world around her should be crashing down, gun shots and chaos should follow, but instead it's a deafening silence, and Alice has to interrupt it, or she may just blow.

“You don't think 'this' is right? Our relationship is a 'this' now?!” The words are incredulous, and she can't believe she's speaking them. She can't believe she's been provoked to. She can settle for second best, so why is she suddenly being thrown off the pedestal?

“Don't try and confuse me, Alice. It's over. I have to go now-” and Maggie steps back, turns around, and takes a hand out of her pocket to open Alice's front door. Alice places her hot chocolate down on a nearby end table with shaking hands.

“But I don't want you to go.”

“Alice-”

“No. I don't want you to go.” Alice grabs at one of Maggie's hands- her lovely hands- but the other girl only shakes her off as easily as she's shaking off their year-long relationship, no matter how like a cheap light bulb in it's unreliability, instability. It's constant on-and-off.

But this isn't the 'off' to an inevitable 'on' at all.

Maggie's spells never begin with a conversation. Most usually Maggie disappears for a while, or goes silent-- no messages get through to her from any medium. And each of these times terrified Alice, but whenever Maggie returns Alice hushes each and every I don't deserve you, and I think I'm better off alone, I think you're better off without me. Maggie didn't normally fight it anyway. No matter the abuse she received, Alice continued, because, simply, she loved Maggie. And the feeling of loss whenever Maggie disappeared was worse than anything she'd felt before. She doesn't want to feel it again.

“Please, Maggie.”

“Alice stop. Just stop it.” Maggie is frowning.

“You can't give me an explanation?!”

“There's really nothing to explain,” Maggie offers unhelpfully. “It's just not right anymore. I really have to go.”

“You can go if you come back. If you promise me you'll come back.”

Alice wonders if, maybe, it's all a joke, because Maggie laughs at that. She laughs as she turns around to look at Alice, mockingly. “You'd risk that? I could easily promise you and break it.” Despite her harsh words, an ounce of guilt has latched onto Maggie's ankle. She taps her foot impatiently to shake it off, but, like manacles, it remains.

“But you wouldn't!” She wouldn't! Because... why would she? Alice feels like she's tumbling, but the existence she's descending into is all but wonderful. She wants to cry but no tears spring forward to comfort her. Worse still, Maggie isn't backing down. She moves away from Alice, closer to the door.

“Why are you doing this, Al? Holding on to something that's dead?”

“We're not dead, though, are we?” The blonde replies, grabbing Maggie's hand back in her own. “One good reason,” the girl insists. Her blue eyes are more determined than Alice usually has the heart to expose, and Maggie immediately regrets glancing in. It's hard, after all, to climb out of eyes so beautiful. Eyes so serene- commonly, though this second they are clouded with fear, and hurt, and confusion.

Maggie almost gives in, but her stubbornness swims to the surface, and she can't help dragging her eyes away, dragging her feet backwards.

“I'm just not in it anymore, it's time to let go.”

Alice says softly, “But you don't mean that.”

“I really do. You must have felt it, you must know-”

“That there's something wrong? Maybe, I don't know, but that our relationship is over? No way, Mags.” Maggie shakes her head, though what to Alice doesn't know. What could possibly be wrong with what she has said? They are fine. They are good. They are perfectly alright. “Maggie?”

Maggie is in trouble. She's so close to tears, and her throat is threatening to close. Why? Why is Alice being so, damn, persistent? She's never so... loud. She's timid. She should break underneath the words Maggie is laying upon her, and then she should retreat and lick her wounds. She should allow Maggie to fucking leave, and then do whatever the fuck she wants, but not alter Maggie's all-important decision.

Nevertheless, Maggie takes a shaky breath, head turned, so that Alice can't see. She closes her eyes in an attempt to regain strength, but when she turns back she somehow cannot help that her voice is softer when she speaks, her gaze less harsh. “Then you tell me. Give me one good reason.”

Alice is happy to obey. “I love you,” she says. “That's number one. I love you.”

“You don't know what love it,” the taller girl says, and it's bitter. She's ready to run again. Alice tenses and curls hands into fists.

“You make me happy. God knows why, but you fucking do, Maggie.”

“A number of things make you happy. I'm not the one and only.” Maggie pauses to allow her lips stop trembling, then she carries on. “So, that one can't count.” Is it immature that she's battling so hard? Suddenly Maggie feels that way.

The first tear finally drops as Alice smiles widely. “You make me feel new. You make me feel like nothing has ever. It's not just happy, because I can sit side by side with you at my most unhappy, and I'll still feel like my mistakes are all irrelevant, and I can do whatever-the-fuck because you're there.”

Maggie has nothing to say to this one, so she focuses on keeping dry eyes. Alice closes hers as the tears flow freely now.

“That was three, right?” she confirms. “So number four is the future. It doesn't look so blank with you around. My life has been so ferociously nothing, and when you arrived... That all changed. I told you that. I told you a million times.” And Maggie does recall.

“Number five?” Alice continues still, and Maggie doesn't know if she can take anymore. “I love you.”

“N-”

“And you love me.” Silence. “And I know that I make you happy.”

It's deafening. Until Maggie all but staggers back and runs her hands through the black veil of hair she has. When she looks up, it's past Alice. “One. For sorrow,” she says. Alice turns around. Through a window in the living room, a magpie is seen strutting across a lawn of grass, pausing every now and then to cock it's head from side to side.

Alice turns back to Maggie and lifts a finger, drawing across the taller girl's collar bone. “And you are my two. For joy.” And she spreads her palm slowly over Maggie's heart, feeling for the unstable beats.

Maggie wants to counter, to attack, to deny, but Alice's hand on her chest is doing wonders to settle her mind, though her heart seems to grow more erratic. She brings a hand on top of Alice's and keeps her darling's own trapped where it lies. Alice presses harder, moves her hand down a little- just an inch- and Maggie breathes unsteadily out. Slowly, Alice's free arm curves around Maggie's waist, and when Maggie doesn't complain, she rests her head on the taller girl's shoulder.

Maggie doesn't want to kiss Alice, nor does she want to give in to all this, but that's where the problem lies; it's all a need. So she pulls Alice even closer than they already are, and she lowers her head to kiss those softly curving lips. The connection is so great, so unbelievably great, that she feels as if, from that touch alone, they are above all the world's problems. Maggie need not leave, and Alice need not be alone. They can kiss in the corridor until they are no more.

Alice's small, yet daring hand on Maggie's breast teases the gasps from Maggie's throat, and Maggie's hands in Alice's hair tempt the girl to pull away from Maggie's lips just to roll her eyes and breathe.

It's a cycle they travel in so often, but they wouldn't mind continuing for eternity.

“I wish I could bring you with me,” Maggie murmurs softly. Her eyes shine with unshed tears as they pull apart slowly.

“Where to?”

“Wonderland.”

It's whispered into Alice's ear, and the running joke kidnaps her fear. But Maggie isn't finished.

“I'll come back,” she tells Alice, de-tangling herself and wiping her eyes. She preparing to go, and this time Alice allows her to leave. In fact, she answers with a smile.

“I know.” She knows; that Maggie is lying. There is nothing more that she can do. She supposes, after a year, the shine must have gone off.

When Maggie leaves, Alice searches for and then picks up her hot chocolate. It's cold. She blinks as a tear drops in, and takes a cautious sip.

End.