Beauty Says Goodbye

[comelyhonour]

The dreams had become more and more frequent over the past few weeks, until she was having them every night, and the memory of them interfered with her schoolwork. She'd even begun to avoid A.J., fearful of telling him what she'd begun to believe the dreams meant

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[by137]

A.J.'d been sitting on the floor at the center of the room, which, really, had quickly become his favorite spot of the room to work now that it wasn't filled up with the last arrangement of beds, tinkering away on his Inventronics project, when he heard the knock on his door. "Come in!" he called out, slightly muffled by the screwdriver in his mouth, which he'd put there to free up his hands to tweak a different part of the invention, and then forgot about.

[comelyhonour]

Relieved to discover that A.J. was in, Beauty pushed open the door and stepped inside. When a quick glance around told her that he was alone, she shut the door behind her and leaned back against it, clutching the books to her chest.

"I have to leave."

There was no point in beating around the bush. And Beauty had always had a habit of being blunt.

[by137]

There was a pause; A.J. glanced over toward the door where Beauty was standing and blinked. It was almost as if the words weren't quite processing in his head until the moment the screwdriver fell out of his mouth from his jaw hanging a bit made it clear that, no. It processed. It definitely processed. So did the bag and the puffy eyes and the crimson nose, and...

He looked away, for the span of another brief pause. Just because he told himself that he knew this was probably going to happen eventually didn't mean that he actually thought it would. He blinked, ending the pause, and immediately started scrambling up to his feet slowly. Once he stood up, though, he felt he could just stand there. "W..what?"

Maybe he'd heard wrong. Just maybe.

[comelyhonour]

"I have to leave," Beauty repeated, as if putting it in the fewest number of words would make it easier to deal with.

Except that the look on A.J.'s face broke down whatever control she had left, and the tears began to flow again. "I've been having dreams, and I know he's looking for me. Somehow he knows I'm stalling, and he's getting angry. I can't go, A.J.! I can't stand the idea of being locked up like a bird in a cage. So I'm running away."

It was the cowardly thing to do, and Beauty knew it. Was ashamed of herself for it.