Work Text:
It all ends when Five stands. He’s gone within a matter of minutes. He disappears. Never to be seen again. To reappear only in Vanya’s dream as this young man, who could’ve been here, who could’ve run away with her. Who could’ve shared his life with her.
But he left, and Vanya doesn’t have him anymore. Five chose to leave. To end things at the very beginning of their story. To end whatever could’ve been.
Whatever could’ve been was gone. Well and truly.
And Vanya could scream, and sob, and yell. Sometimes it’s so overwhelming that she can barely think straight. That she feels the need to destroy, to lash out, to bite and kick, and be angry with the world, with Five, with everyone around her.
Because nobody gets it . Nobody gets how unfair it is. That she has to live the rest of her life like this. Nobody even comes close to getting it. Because it was so close to the beginning .
They were almost fourteen, and there had been some tentative hand holding, and talking all the time, and looks behind their fathers back. There had been secret late night sessions on the roof. Meetings in the library. Quiet violin concerts, and book readings of texts Vanya didn’t understand.
There had been courtyard reading sessions, and laughing at their siblings, and plans for the future. Plans that included them both. Five and Vanya.
In an idyllic world, it’s the beginning of their love story.
In hindsight, all the story ended up as was an abandoned first draft. A manuscript not worth the time of the writer, forever stuck at the start. Forever trapped at the very start. With some version of Vanya at thirteen, locked to that tiny chair in their childhood home, because the writer didn’t want to continue. Didn’t want to give her any sort of happy end.
There would be no new chapters in this love story.
Because the other character was dead.
There will be no new chapters in Five's life , because he’s gone . No matter if Vanya begs. Pleads. Cries. Screams. Five was a stubborn bastard, but a stubborn bastard who had wanted to drag her along with him, whether that was up or down in the world didn’t matter to him.
So of course Vanya knows that he’s gone , gone. Dead.
And when did that idea become comforting than the idea Five simply left her.
————
He’s sitting in her chair, in her house, in the body of that thirteen year old who haunted her dreams and hopes. The love of her life, sitting, preserved now, as he had been in her mind for a decade. Still in that perfectly pressed uniform, with perfectly quaffed hair.
This is all Vanya had hoped for when she was younger. To see him again.
But she was…
Vanya was a different person now.
Their love story that should’ve begun when they were thirteen featured her as a very different character. Shy, and awkward, and lonely. But also optimistic. That Vanya hadn’t suffered through decades of things never changing, of people always treating her like trash.
Now Vanya was a whole different character. Repurposed for a different book. Aged and developed from that young teen she’d been when the writer had decided they didn't like that love story, that they didn’t like Vanya. When the author decided Vanya needed to play in an orchestra, and be anxious, and continue to be disliked by everyone she met. That she’d been miserable, and write her own book, and feel worse…
The thought suddenly occurs to her that Five must know that she felt that way if she read her book.
He had seen the raw, bitter, conflicting emotions. See how she really felt about him. Five had to know she loved him
And now Vanya doesn’t know what to say
There’s so much that needs to be said.
She wants to scream and tell him that she loves him. Because he can finally hear it in person.
She wants to punch him, and ask him how he could leave like that. Just walk out on her
She wants to ask if he feels the same way she does.
She wants to tell him to fuck off. To get out of her apartment.
Five being here feels like the start of a new page in their story, somehow.
Because how, this- it feels like something out of a movie. Her long lost love came back with a convenient excuse about why he was gone, why he didn’t come back to her.
Maybe that writer finally refound the manuscript, dusty, and raw, and full of emotion, and decided to finish it.
Maybe Vanya can get her happy ending.
Maybe this can be the real beginning of their love story.
It’s terribly optimistic.
Vanya shuts the door to her apartment and hopes this is that beginning.