"Don't take it."
He looked at me, soul-deep eyes, and it was the most crystalline clear thing I'd ever seen in anyone.
Was it fear, what he was feeling? That's what he wanted me to see. That's what he'd been hiding this whole time, not showing except for glimpses of tantalizing emotion I'd catch on accident. And now he was revealing it, all of it, in all its piercing dark-blue-eyed glory.
But he went too far. I knew he made mistakes sometimes, no matter how perfect he may have seemed to the rest of the world.
But now was not the time to celebrate in pride. That was shallow, and this was... I didn't know what this was. But there was something there that he would never have meant to show.
What was he really hiding, so deep he didn't let himself know?
There was that hint of something else, but the fear was still genuine. It was clear in his pleading expression. I should heed his warning.
"Tanta," He said my name, took a breath, and shook his head slowly, letting his bright eyes fall closed. "Don't."
He looked tired. It was strange. He always stood so straight and tall, aware and attentive. He'd wake in the morning at the simple sound of a whisper or footstep in the hallway outside his room, at midnight you'd find him helping in the kitchens or telling a bedtime story to a child with a nightmare or helping pin up the news posters for the next day on the billboard wall.
And once, as I was walking back to my dormitory from a midnight snack, I saw him in the doorway of one of the office rooms just standing and staring and breathing heavily, facing away from me, reading writing and graphs that I didn't understand on the whiteboard-covered walls surrounding the empty office seats. He didn't see me, but I stood there for a while, watching. It felt so... untouched. The moment. The tilt of his hands in the pocket, the blue and green and red of the Expo marker in swirls and dips of mystery meaning. The centimeter that his shoulders drooped in exhaustion that he immediately straightened, even when he thought no one was watching.
It seemed the bravest thing he ever did was be scared.
He was doing that for me. He knew something I didn't. I needed to heed his warning.
"Tanta?" His voice cut off, weak. "You're listening." He said, and opened his eyes to catch my gaze again. "Right?"
I looked back unflinchingly, but we both knew it wasn't out of courage or defiance. I nodded, slowly, not letting go of his sea-deep eyes. I wanted to say something, but what was there to say?
I hadn't said anything, the whole day, to anyone. They all did enough talking themselves. But this boy... I could have known it wasn't going to be the same. He had as much to say as I did, almost all of it unspeakable, so we both simply used few words.
We were in the edge courtyard of the Palace of No One, grass looking blue in the strange lighting of the place, surrounded by medium-tall buildings on three sides. The fourth side was an edge, a cliff with a sudden end, like a mountain split vertically down the middle.
I had so many memories here. The contests and races and Easter egg hunts, little blunt bits of color in the solemn icy shading of my whole world. The piano contest he'd beat me in - but by such a small margin, the hula hoops we all used to show off with that used to litter the ground when we'd forget to pick them up and drive the caretakers crazy.
As we grew, he and I and I'm sure many others learned the patterns and tricks that the adults used to prepare the competitions. All the mazes and puzzles and trials we had fun with. But it was from an early age we learned to guess, to infer, to read the signs and motions and movements and even to simply feel until we knew how each one would go. Until we knew everything. Until we thought we knew everything. Until we grew up and changed and worked and had to learn about things we never knew existed. But still, we could sense and observe and watch closely and figure things out... because we knew people. Their hearts and minds and souls. The weariness of the older ones that let slip their secrets, the cracks in their mental pavements that we knew how to reach through.
This was different, so it was clearly not going to be the same way, but it was still such a strange feeling that this time, I had no idea what was coming next.
Because we didn't know the world, not its heart or mind nor soul, and we didn't know each other, or ourselves.
"Tanta." He said my name once more, just to know he would get to say it one last time that I would hear. I knew he knew me then, despite everything. And I knew him enough too.
Was I crying? I wasn't sure. The fog made things seem blurry, the humidity made you feel moist, the coolness was the same temperature as the water. Here, the whole world was a tear.
We stood on that hill, eye to eye, my back to the cliff where I'd be going, him facing me.
Was he crying?
Yeah. Yes, he was.
Don't take it, he'd said. I knew what he meant, knew he was probably right, and knew that I didn't know what was coming. I knew that he meant it with all of his heart, knew that he'd hoped, and knew that we would stay here like this for a little while longer, just letting the moment and air sink into our skin, with no more words to say. I knew that I should heed his words. But now that he was looking at me, unveiled and afraid, I knew that he knew me, even before I did, and he knew what I'd chosen to choose.
I wasn't going to heed his warning.