Hannah

Written by Anakin McFly

but every cell of his familiar body is a stranger's moving with the breath of a foreign soul gazing out from eyes she knows, half-hooded, awkwardly shy, drunken with awestruck love. the longer she's with him the harder it becomes to convince herself that this is the same man she once fell in love with from a distance far behind a screen. it feels wrong, like tricking a child, the innocent trust on his face bordering almost on worship, unable to comprehend his luck, half-terrified of doing or saying anything that might end it, somehow; knowing and yet not knowing she's the one who feels so lucky, so scared of losing him, and perhaps his nervousness would be adorable if not for how it makes him so much less like him, and further drives in her guilt.

the fact of his existence is impossible but perhaps such miracles are not to be questioned, yet Hannah reflexively pulls away when he goes in for a kiss and she doesn't quite know why she did that, or how it feels like something she had to do; for his sake. but then his face flushes in hurt embarrassment, fumbling hasty apologies, stumbling over the words like a professional actor never would-

"Jjaks," she says, touching his arm, trying to stop his stream of backpedalling. "Jjaks, it's okay."

he wasn't even pretending to be him. she gets the impression he was lost, stranded confused in another world with a face too young to belong here, too young to be him. she doesn't know how he got here. she doesn't know if he knows who he is in this world, or what it meant to her to see the way his face lit up when she met his eyes. she doesn't know how to explain that she wants him more than anything but can't, because it wouldn't be fair, and she'd never be able to get over the sense that this is cheating.

and this, already, feels like cheating, getting to touch that arm, that hair, to feel the shape of those hips beneath his jeans when she wraps her arms around his waist. it shouldn't be this easy, nor that body so willing, so eager for her touch. his eyes are wrong, the wrong person behind them, too pleading, too nervous, too desperate to please, and she knows it's not Jjaks she actually wants, and wonders at the curious way that body starts to become just another body when she acknowledges that he isn't in there. Jjaks can no more emulate him than any other man could. the lie might be more convincing; still, she would only be loving a facade. Jjaks' body - even that - is not his.

yet there's that whiff of magic around him, a different magic, wilder than attraction, tense with the promise of other worlds, of the impossibility of him and them and this supported on a fragile web of unreality that could break at any moment-

but they are still strangers at a bar. this need not go any further.

it is still the hardest breakup she will ever do.

#