Alone

Alone

He had left her.
It was as simple as that.
It hurt, she couldn’t deny that. Still, she couldn’t exactly say she was surprised. After all, everyone she had come to love or simply care about had left her at some point.
He had said he would come back to her, and she wanted to believe him.

Her brother Daniel had been the first to leave her, thinking about him still hurt. She missed him and often wondered if things would have been different, had he still been around… that fatal night so many years ago.
He always protected her, though her father rarely raised more than just his voice at her. No, he protected her in a different way. He made sure she was never alone. At the hospital, he would sit with her, hold her hand. When they talked to the police, he would always do the talking, and she would simply nod. She remembered once, when she was younger, maybe seven or eight. A very bad argument between her parents had once again escalated into an even worse fight. It was physical, she could hear it. Daniel had come into her room with his walkman, put it on her and told her to close her eyes and listen to the music. She had done just as he said, she knew why he did it, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him that she could hear the fighting from the kitchen through the loud music.
Unlike her, Daniel hadn’t been smart though. His grades were bad even when he did the best he could. Her father didn’t see it like that.
One day when she returned from school, Daniel wasn’t there. He had left her a note in her book, telling her, he would be back. She believed him.
He had run away, left her.
He never came back.

Her father had been the second one to leave her.
Out of all the crime scenes she had seen, the one of her father had been the worst. She knew what he had been doing was wrong, but she was his girl. He had even once told her he was proud of her.
He had left her, abandoned her. It had broken up her family. She had been alone since then.
Apart from the time they had been together.

Because of her father, they had taken away her mother too.
For six months she lived with strangers, among children of drug addicts, prostitutes, unfit parents. She, herself had been known as ‘the girl who’s father was stabbed to death’.
After six months she had been reunited with her mother. Or what was left of her. Everything had been different after that. They had been more like roommates than mother and daughter. It was like her mother had returned, but leaving her soul behind. It had actually been relieving to get away for college. They had spoken a few times on the phone, they still did. It was more out of formality than anything else. By then she had gotten used to the loneliness, she even welcomed it.

He had been like her. She knew it, from the moment she had met him. It wasn’t that it had said ‘antisocial loner’ on his forehead, but something had given it away. She wondered it she gave away the same signal.
When they had gotten together, everything had made sense. She actually considered herself happy. They were both very private people, but she had come to love sharing things with him. All things, from little titbits of her past, to a meal or a bed. She had not only hoped, but honestly thought he felt the same way. Now she wasn’t so sure anymore.
It’s not that she hadn’t known about his issues with work lately. She wasn’t exactly blind, but she didn’t know how to approach it. Before she knew it, it had approached her with a big loud bang.
They had fought that night, a lot. She had said some things, she wasn’t sure she meant them. He had told her she was overreacting, but she couldn’t help it. It was frustrating, she couldn’t put into words why it was so hard for her, and he couldn’t figure it out on his own.
She had left his house that night, and returned to her apartment. She spent the night there for the first time in 3 months. The last time he had been with her.
He had left four days later, she hadn’t spoken to him since that night in the lab.
They would talk when he got back.
She had spoken the words, but she wasn’t sure she even believed herself.
He would come back next week.

-Tanny

A/N: I wanted to give it a happy ending, but it didn't seem possible in this story. However if it is received well I might write a sequel.