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She sits at the platform, staring down at her bag on the floor. Her train should be here soon, and there’s no doubt in her mind that she will get on. She has already come this far, after all, has already left everything else behind. There’s nothing left to hold her back, and she has the ticket he gave her, right there in the pocket of her jacket.
There’s no one either side of her, and she’s selfishly claimed the seat right in the middle of this section of chairs. This is the first time that she’s allowed herself to be selfish in a long time, so she supposes that she might as well go all out. Not that there’s anyone else around for her to inconvenience with this, but it’s the thought that counts. The thoughtlessness.
~X~
She’s not necessarily a selfish kid, or at least, she doesn’t try to be. It’s just that she likes to have fun, to pursue whatever it is that has her attention at the moment. Swimming or art or dancing or boys, whatever it may be, she always throws herself into it entirely. Life should be fun, and it’s not that she’s trying not to consider those around her.
In fact, she can be quite considerate, when that’s a part of what she is throwing herself into. There’s so much love in her heart that she’s positively overflowing with it; that’s what gives her the energy to pursue her passions with such devotion. When she loves, she loves with all of her heart.
~X~
When he’d come to her, she’d already committed herself to leaving her husband. Their children are grown now, able to take care of themselves and, more than that, able to look after each other. After years of enduring the cheating and the drinking, the debts and intimidation, all for the sake of her girls, she thought she’d finally earned the right to be a little bit selfish again.
And then he’d come back into her life.
It’d been years since she’d left him behind, and now he’s one of the men with her husband’s life in his hands, and he’d offered her an out. The out she’d already been looking for, the out she’d been planning on taking, and he’d come back into her life to offer it to her, no strings attached.
No strings attached.
~X~
She sometimes wishes that he would assert himself more, but she can’t say that she minds having someone more interested in what she has to say, and in doing what she wants to do. Lately, it feels like all of her boyfriends expect that fierce, loving devotion in return for nothing at all, expecting their presence to be enough to keep her clinging.
It usually is, but only for a short time. When she meets him, she doesn’t even bother breaking up with her boyfriend. She was dumped in a booth, and into the arms of someone new, and that felt enough like destiny, and enough like being dumped, in general. Or maybe she’s still looking for excuses for how easy it is for her to jump from one guy to the next, depending on what she likes.
He doesn’t ever assert himself, but he does enjoy having fun with her, really having fun. She’s able to get back into art, into films, because he wants to go see things with her, and he takes her to parks- both nature and amusement- and even though she’s not a child anymore, she can play. She still loves to play, still loves all the things that she always has, and he willingly follows along with her, except when he can’t, and then he’ll watch from the sidelines.
If it were easier for him to object, if it were easier for him to do more than just watch, she still might have gone home with him tonight, but all he does is watch as she leaves with someone else, and that’s the end of that.
~X~
It’s partially to protect her from what’s coming, from what she has helped her husband to run from for too many years now. The longer she stays attached to him, the more tangled up she will be in the fallout, but if she were to be offered an easy out…
He doesn’t say much, didn’t say much when he’d called her and asked to meet. After all these years, he looks different, but still the same in the look in his eyes, and the perpetual worry in his frown. She hadn’t known what to expect in the envelope he’d handed her. Maybe some compromising photo of her husband, another drop of blackmail in the bucket.
Now, the ticket is in her jacket pocket, and the money is in her purse. Her bag is packed at her feet, and her daughters have already read the letter by now. It’s been a while since she left them, but she knows her girls. They’ll look out for each other.
~X~
When she goes home with him, she isn’t planning on this man being her last boyfriend. Even with her last boyfriend, even in moments when things felt like they were truly getting serious, she hadn’t thought about him as a potential last boyfriend. But she messes something up somewhere, and he has to marry her, just in time for Yan to be born. It feels a little less like destiny than it does obligation, but she’s excited to be a mother, to put her all into that.
Her husband is always busy, but she makes a lot of time for Yan, instead. She has someone to follow along with her again, and by the time she can start to teach Yan about art and fun, Myon is on the way. Everything she loves, she tries to introduce them to, and for a while, she can put her all into loving them. There’s no room for her to be selfish anymore.
When she goes home with him, he isn’t planning on her being his last girlfriend, and she doesn’t know why she expects marriage or two children to change that.
~X~
He never did what he really wanted, and he still seems so miserable to her. When she looks at herself in the mirror nowadays, she looks pretty miserable too. If only he’d been selfish back then, if only she’d been more selfish over the years, or a little less selfish when it mattered, but neither of them has ever managed the right balance. Neither was ever able to meet the other where it counted, not even during the flash of time they spent right beside each other.
So, she’s doing what she wants, and what he wants for her. She’s sitting in the middle of the row of chairs, waiting for her train, and she knows it’s almost time now. It’s only been a few minutes since she last checked the clock, so she stairs down at the bag on the floor, at her feet. Her train pulls into the station, and the doors hiss open.
He never did what he really wanted back then, but when he picks up her bag and she meets his eyes, and there’s still a bit of worry in his smile, but the way he looks at her has never changed. His hand is in hers before she’s even gotten to her feet, and she lets him lead her on board.
If this is what they both want
