LOG; nothing's wrong; HENDRIK + LINNÉA
Who; Hendrik and Linnéa.
Where; Her place.
What; Some batshittery, some talking, something else.
This was boring. Hendrik didn't want to say it, but he felt it almost too often. Without university during the summer, or any overwhelming desire to try to be around his mother or his sister very often (the former because she had a new boyfriend that she had her claws sunk into, the latter because he felt uneasy around her now, ever since he learned of her status), he worked, read, watched television, and generally lived a boring life. He could, in theory, do other things. He could start working to fix his mistake with his lab project so that when he retook the class, he wouldn't repeat the error, but his ambition was far more fleeting than usual. Why worry if the city might not be there in a few months? It irritated him a little, but he knew that if he died that he wouldn't feel that irritation anymore.
He paced around his apartment for a little before deciding to leave. Within a few minutes, he realized the direction he was walking in: it was toward Linnéa's place. He hadn't seen her since she received her alignment, if only because he didn't know how to react to that. Originally, he felt as if she was special, but the more he dwelled ...
Hendrik ignored the thoughts as he walked, focusing on the fat woman on the side of the road that didn't look like her legs had enough girth to hold her up. He knickered as he walked past her, muttering something in English as an insult, and when she didn't understand him, he only felt a little more prideful. This continued until he reached Linnéa's place and knocked on the door. It was hot, he noted, and he sincerely hoped she would be there because the Berlin summer wasn't exactly kind to those that moved on their feet for the most part.
Linnéa had spent almost all of July so far indoors. She didn't want to go outside-- the sights didn't matter to her anymore, and the people even less. She'd decided that she wouldn't know what to think about them, after becoming an Angel, when it had been so easy to judge when she'd lacked any another reason to. So apart from the occasional necessary task that required her to step outside into the heat (shopping, for the most part), she hadn't gone out at all.
Instead she spent most of her time staring at her own reflection. She'd surrounded herself with all the mirrors that she could find. Not many, decidedly, but she saw herself everywhere. It was vain. That's what someone would have said if she'd let anyone inside. And maybe it was, but she always had been.
A week into the month she'd realised that things were changing. She was changing, rather. It was subtle at first but it grew more and more apparent as the month went on. Her hair was longer one day, shorter the next, and after that it was her eyes, her nose, her hands, fluctuating with her mood. It was different, new, but it was a distraction. She didn't have to think about much else (things like how she couldn't go home now, like how it'd never be the same again, things like did she really want this city gone, did she really not care about these people--) focusing on controlling it after deciding that she didn't mind it, not at all. She had hardly bothered to touch the computer.
Linnéa was almost startled when there was a knock at her door, and thought for a second that she shouldn't answer it, but she pushed that aside and did anyway.
"... Hi~"
Hendrik shuffled his feet for a moment and considered stepping inside, but he was hit with that considerable rush of considerate behavior that left him standing in the hall with his arms crossed over his chest. "May I come in?" he asked. As he stared at her uneasily, he noticed that something was different. It didn't hit him yet, because he hadn't seen her in a while, but he imagined it would come to him soon enough.
"No, you can just stand out there~" She smiled. She could still do that easily enough, though it had been a less constant thing this month in particular. And some part of her was glad to see him, for whatever reason. "Come in."
It would be an improvement, he would think, because he always hated the fact that she felt the need to act on and off a stage.
Hendrik moved inside of the apartment and noticed the changes. He snorted as he took note of them, but didn't spend too much time on them as he ended up on the couch. "You aren't that attractive," he told her as he relaxed. "Hardly."
"No?" Linnéa closed the door with a nudge of her elbow and moved to inspect herself in one of the mirrors. Her eyes were green today. She hadn't noticed before, and decided he probably wouldn't either. She turned to look at him. "What would make me more attractive, then~?"
Hendrik stared at her, and decided that he wasn't certain. "Straightening your hair," he said in a tone that was vaguely decisive, hiding the fact that he didn't really know. "Maybe if you didn't try to smile so much." There was something different about her, but he decided it didn't matter. Probably the color of her shirt.
She sat down next to him. "My sisters have straight hair," she told him, like he cared, like it was an explanation all on its own. "I was thinking of another colour, maybe. Would darker work, do you think~?" She was saying stupid things for the lack of anything else to say, treating him like someone she'd go shopping for shoes with.
He knew her sisters had straight hair and he thought they were more attractive because of it. "If you want," he said after staring at her hair. "Why would you change your hair color?" His brother had done it on a whim when he was younger, and it was the only outrageous thing Oliver ever did. But then again, Oliver also looked ridiculous after he did it.
"Because I can." She touched her hair, took a few strands between her fingers, and frowned. Long, light, slightly curly, and boring. She hadn't tried to do much to it, but maybe she should. She'd talked about cutting it or dying it earlier in the year but she'd never gone through with it. I think you're fine as you are, Trygve had said, but she didn't, and he was him. People never meant things like that.
Hendrik frowned heavily. He didn't understand where this was going and didn't put in an extra amount of effort into figuring it out. She was acting unusual, to be sure. "I could change my hair. It's not something to brag about." He snorted, as if this was one big joke. When he stopped trying to contain his false laughter, he looked at her again curiously. Was it her eyes?
She shrugged a little. It wasn't bragging, not really. Why did anyone do anything? Because they could. It wasn't enough, though, not in books, not in plays, not in films. Only villains do what they do because they can. Linnéa decided she felt like a villain, though all she'd ever pretended to be were the opposite. She met his look. He'd noticed after all, then. "Is something wrong?"
His lips pursed as he stared at her eyes. They were normally blue. He knew that because he was different from the blond hair and blue eye norm, given the fact that he had hazel eyes. Very few other people fell outside of the norm, and he knew he would have remembered if she had.
"They're green," he said. "Why? It looks bad."
"Really? I thought they were alright~" She blinked a few times, quickly. It usually went away like that if she wanted it to, but she couldn't check without a mirror. "Now?"
This was unnecessary, but when he looked, he saw that her eyes were the right color again. "That's not your power," he snapped. "What did you do?" Her power was just mimicking, as far as he knew. Hendrik didn't want to imagine her with much else.
"I didn't do anything. It just ... happened~?"
He didn't attempt to stifle his irritation. "Things like that don't just happen. What's wrong with you?" Hendrik glanced toward the mirrors, and suddenly felt as if there were just too many. "And why the fuck do you have all these?"
"I like them." She shifted away from him so that she was sitting facing one, staring at herself. "You don't like them?"
He was a vain person, but he wasn't that vain. Hendrik looked at them and then looked back at her. "No." His hands twitched a little, and after feeling unsettled for too long, he reached out and grabbed her by her shirt to shake her a little. "What the fuck's wrong with you?"
"Nothing," she snapped, feeling a surge of anger (emotion, at least, emotion) come over her. Because she felt like nothing. Something that couldn't stay the same long enough to be something. "There's nothing wrong with me."
This wasn't her. It bothered him because the Linnéa that he fought with to stay in Berlin at least tried to be something. She teased him and mocked him and he was used to it, because it was the behavior he expected. This version of her was different. Did a month change so much?
It was probably one of the most observant moments of his life. But then again, it was only natural. Ever since Elias' death, he forced himself to look at people more. He didn't particularly enjoy it, and he still felt superior, as if some people had more of a right in the world than others, but he still tried. He knew his mother's favorite recipes and he knew that Oliver wasn't happy in his marriage, and normally, he didn't pay attention to these details because they were about other people. They were boring. They didn't matter.
"There is." Agitation led him to shaking her another time before letting go. He considered standing up, but it would make it easier for him to see his own reflection.
"Then tell me what it is!" She didn't want to think herself hysterical but there was something in her voice that she didn't recognise and didn't like.
A month alone with just herself and some mirrors had affected her more than she'd ever wanted to believe. She didn't fit into her own skin anymore (and it kept shifting and shifting as if to find the right one but it never found anything) when life had been so easy just a month before with the world as her stage. Not understanding herself seemed absurd to her right then. Why shouldn't she? Why didn't she? 'Angel' was as much a label as 'Linnéa' was so what right did it have to change her when she'd never tried to identify as one?
Putting his finger on one quality didn't appeal to him. There didn't seem to be one thing wrong. Hendrik didn't really know how to react to these situations. A more sympathetic, understanding person might have tried to work out her problem; he wasn't that way. He was on the other end of the spectrum. Insulting someone, telling them what they did wrong--it all added up in his head as the correct way of assessing a situation.
"Everything." That was a decisive answer. He still wanted her around, but there was a little too much wrong to make him comfortable with this situation.
"I can't change everything." She stood up and picked up the mirror that she'd been facing and turned it around. She did the same to another close by, then looked back to him, thinking that he couldn't possibly still like her now. A stupid, girlish concern. Linnéa was stupid and girlish, she tried to think, but it wasn't convincing. "Everything's wrong with me?"
Hendrik stood up in an effort to stand in her way. If she couldn't see the mirrors, she would have to look at him. "Everything," he repeated. He decided right there and then that it bothered him because she wasn't his Linnéa. She wasn't the same one he deemed special. For all he knew, she probably still was, but it was forcing him to think outside of his constructed box and that agitated him.
Before she could turn toward another mirror, he stepped toward her and gripped her hands, leaning toward her so that she had a hard time seeing around him. "You're supposed to be the way I like you," he insisted. "This isn't you."
"You never told me why you liked me." She might have considered struggling but didn't see the point. And she felt dizzy. It was the air, wasn't it, her apartment was always stuffy and it was so hot with the windows closed. Yes, it was the air, it wasn't her, she was fine. "So what's a girl to do?" And she tried, she did, but her voice fell flat. She didn't feel like the person that it should come naturally to. She wanted to change. It (whatever it was) was so uncomfortable and stifling, like the air that she was trying to blame.
Why he liked her didn't seem to be important. Hendrik just accepted qualities in people, and he filed those qualities somewhere in the back of his mind. It eventually became a holistic picture because he could see everything that he wanted. He still wanted her, but he didn't want to say that, because he imagined it was a physical desire more than the other one. He was thinking too much about this. They were supposed to talk about importance or her plays or decide to have dinner and then not have it or some other insipid thing they tended to do--this was wrong.
But it was better to be wrong than to try to make things right when he had no idea how. He couldn't tell her what to fix, because he didn't know, and it always irritated him that she acted. For the first time, it didn't seem like she was trying. Hendrik figured he should have been pleased.
His mouth opened so that he could convey a response, but instead, he closed it and kissed her. It was a hard kiss, but he thought that if it wasn't too different from the past time (which he only vaguely remembered--he was drunk and it had been a couple months), then that would be enough for him. He let go of her hands as he kissed her.
He'd vomited in her toilet last time. But that was after. She'd kissed him back last time and she did again, wrapping her arms around his neck. Was this what he thought was right? Was this what he thought she was? She didn't know, but he couldn't be as wrong as she was. He'd always seemed convinced that he was right. A month ago she'd found it amusing. Three months ago she'd found it irritating. And now she couldn't hear herself think. Did she have to? Maybe not. Maybe. It always came back to maybe, and always found its way back to why.
And the why was: Why was this happening?
Because it could.
Maybe it was because he was obsessed with status. She had been chosen for her role. He needed to be close to those with status. Yet that didn't explain why he tried to avoid his sister, why he started to have issues with her status--but maybe it was because it justified all her actions over the years. The detachment and the joking and teasing and the fact tht Gemini was upset by it. It wasn't that Hendrik ignored these things, he simply excused them away. They were good enough to earn his excuses, weren't they?
But maybe not anymore. Because he had never mattered. Did he even matter to her right now? Even as she kissed him back and asked him what was wrong, as if she desired to please him?
Hendrik pulled away from her, and he looked relieved. That was enough for him. He pulled his hand through her hair (he liked her curls) and tugged at her shirt a little. "If you don't mind, we're going in there now." He nodded in the direction of her bedroom. Out of the living room with all the mirrors. From this angle, it looked as if there weren't so many in there. He slid his hand over hers and tugged her in that direction, keeping his head down until he reached the room. There was one mirror, but it wasn't as daunting as the multiple mirrors. He wrote it off quickly, turning to kiss her again. He liked her, and she stayed for him. That was good enough for now; he could fix everything later.
Linnéa hadn't stayed for him, though, not really. She'd stayed because 'fate' got the idea that she was somehow bound to the city (that she had a duty, as much as she hated the word, as much as she'd ignored it for the past twenty or so days), but maybe she'd still have stuck around even if it hadn't. It didn't matter, though, because things still happened the way that they did.
And he mattered at that moment because he was there when she'd been stuck with herself (and herself, and herself) for too long. She'd put all the mirrors outside and kept the one in her bedroom simply because it had always been there. Always was only a year, a year and a bit, but it felt like forever. And there were only one pair of eyes in there.
Some part of her told her that he could be anyone else at that moment and it would be the same. The part of her that laughed at everybody and laughed at him, laughed at the other boys she'd had in the room, on the bed. One of her hands slid under his shirt and she decided, finally, that none of it was worth thinking about.
Where; Her place.
What; Some batshittery, some talking, something else.
This was boring. Hendrik didn't want to say it, but he felt it almost too often. Without university during the summer, or any overwhelming desire to try to be around his mother or his sister very often (the former because she had a new boyfriend that she had her claws sunk into, the latter because he felt uneasy around her now, ever since he learned of her status), he worked, read, watched television, and generally lived a boring life. He could, in theory, do other things. He could start working to fix his mistake with his lab project so that when he retook the class, he wouldn't repeat the error, but his ambition was far more fleeting than usual. Why worry if the city might not be there in a few months? It irritated him a little, but he knew that if he died that he wouldn't feel that irritation anymore.
He paced around his apartment for a little before deciding to leave. Within a few minutes, he realized the direction he was walking in: it was toward Linnéa's place. He hadn't seen her since she received her alignment, if only because he didn't know how to react to that. Originally, he felt as if she was special, but the more he dwelled ...
Hendrik ignored the thoughts as he walked, focusing on the fat woman on the side of the road that didn't look like her legs had enough girth to hold her up. He knickered as he walked past her, muttering something in English as an insult, and when she didn't understand him, he only felt a little more prideful. This continued until he reached Linnéa's place and knocked on the door. It was hot, he noted, and he sincerely hoped she would be there because the Berlin summer wasn't exactly kind to those that moved on their feet for the most part.
Linnéa had spent almost all of July so far indoors. She didn't want to go outside-- the sights didn't matter to her anymore, and the people even less. She'd decided that she wouldn't know what to think about them, after becoming an Angel, when it had been so easy to judge when she'd lacked any another reason to. So apart from the occasional necessary task that required her to step outside into the heat (shopping, for the most part), she hadn't gone out at all.
Instead she spent most of her time staring at her own reflection. She'd surrounded herself with all the mirrors that she could find. Not many, decidedly, but she saw herself everywhere. It was vain. That's what someone would have said if she'd let anyone inside. And maybe it was, but she always had been.
A week into the month she'd realised that things were changing. She was changing, rather. It was subtle at first but it grew more and more apparent as the month went on. Her hair was longer one day, shorter the next, and after that it was her eyes, her nose, her hands, fluctuating with her mood. It was different, new, but it was a distraction. She didn't have to think about much else (things like how she couldn't go home now, like how it'd never be the same again, things like did she really want this city gone, did she really not care about these people--) focusing on controlling it after deciding that she didn't mind it, not at all. She had hardly bothered to touch the computer.
Linnéa was almost startled when there was a knock at her door, and thought for a second that she shouldn't answer it, but she pushed that aside and did anyway.
"... Hi~"
Hendrik shuffled his feet for a moment and considered stepping inside, but he was hit with that considerable rush of considerate behavior that left him standing in the hall with his arms crossed over his chest. "May I come in?" he asked. As he stared at her uneasily, he noticed that something was different. It didn't hit him yet, because he hadn't seen her in a while, but he imagined it would come to him soon enough.
"No, you can just stand out there~" She smiled. She could still do that easily enough, though it had been a less constant thing this month in particular. And some part of her was glad to see him, for whatever reason. "Come in."
It would be an improvement, he would think, because he always hated the fact that she felt the need to act on and off a stage.
Hendrik moved inside of the apartment and noticed the changes. He snorted as he took note of them, but didn't spend too much time on them as he ended up on the couch. "You aren't that attractive," he told her as he relaxed. "Hardly."
"No?" Linnéa closed the door with a nudge of her elbow and moved to inspect herself in one of the mirrors. Her eyes were green today. She hadn't noticed before, and decided he probably wouldn't either. She turned to look at him. "What would make me more attractive, then~?"
Hendrik stared at her, and decided that he wasn't certain. "Straightening your hair," he said in a tone that was vaguely decisive, hiding the fact that he didn't really know. "Maybe if you didn't try to smile so much." There was something different about her, but he decided it didn't matter. Probably the color of her shirt.
She sat down next to him. "My sisters have straight hair," she told him, like he cared, like it was an explanation all on its own. "I was thinking of another colour, maybe. Would darker work, do you think~?" She was saying stupid things for the lack of anything else to say, treating him like someone she'd go shopping for shoes with.
He knew her sisters had straight hair and he thought they were more attractive because of it. "If you want," he said after staring at her hair. "Why would you change your hair color?" His brother had done it on a whim when he was younger, and it was the only outrageous thing Oliver ever did. But then again, Oliver also looked ridiculous after he did it.
"Because I can." She touched her hair, took a few strands between her fingers, and frowned. Long, light, slightly curly, and boring. She hadn't tried to do much to it, but maybe she should. She'd talked about cutting it or dying it earlier in the year but she'd never gone through with it. I think you're fine as you are, Trygve had said, but she didn't, and he was him. People never meant things like that.
Hendrik frowned heavily. He didn't understand where this was going and didn't put in an extra amount of effort into figuring it out. She was acting unusual, to be sure. "I could change my hair. It's not something to brag about." He snorted, as if this was one big joke. When he stopped trying to contain his false laughter, he looked at her again curiously. Was it her eyes?
She shrugged a little. It wasn't bragging, not really. Why did anyone do anything? Because they could. It wasn't enough, though, not in books, not in plays, not in films. Only villains do what they do because they can. Linnéa decided she felt like a villain, though all she'd ever pretended to be were the opposite. She met his look. He'd noticed after all, then. "Is something wrong?"
His lips pursed as he stared at her eyes. They were normally blue. He knew that because he was different from the blond hair and blue eye norm, given the fact that he had hazel eyes. Very few other people fell outside of the norm, and he knew he would have remembered if she had.
"They're green," he said. "Why? It looks bad."
"Really? I thought they were alright~" She blinked a few times, quickly. It usually went away like that if she wanted it to, but she couldn't check without a mirror. "Now?"
This was unnecessary, but when he looked, he saw that her eyes were the right color again. "That's not your power," he snapped. "What did you do?" Her power was just mimicking, as far as he knew. Hendrik didn't want to imagine her with much else.
"I didn't do anything. It just ... happened~?"
He didn't attempt to stifle his irritation. "Things like that don't just happen. What's wrong with you?" Hendrik glanced toward the mirrors, and suddenly felt as if there were just too many. "And why the fuck do you have all these?"
"I like them." She shifted away from him so that she was sitting facing one, staring at herself. "You don't like them?"
He was a vain person, but he wasn't that vain. Hendrik looked at them and then looked back at her. "No." His hands twitched a little, and after feeling unsettled for too long, he reached out and grabbed her by her shirt to shake her a little. "What the fuck's wrong with you?"
"Nothing," she snapped, feeling a surge of anger (emotion, at least, emotion) come over her. Because she felt like nothing. Something that couldn't stay the same long enough to be something. "There's nothing wrong with me."
This wasn't her. It bothered him because the Linnéa that he fought with to stay in Berlin at least tried to be something. She teased him and mocked him and he was used to it, because it was the behavior he expected. This version of her was different. Did a month change so much?
It was probably one of the most observant moments of his life. But then again, it was only natural. Ever since Elias' death, he forced himself to look at people more. He didn't particularly enjoy it, and he still felt superior, as if some people had more of a right in the world than others, but he still tried. He knew his mother's favorite recipes and he knew that Oliver wasn't happy in his marriage, and normally, he didn't pay attention to these details because they were about other people. They were boring. They didn't matter.
"There is." Agitation led him to shaking her another time before letting go. He considered standing up, but it would make it easier for him to see his own reflection.
"Then tell me what it is!" She didn't want to think herself hysterical but there was something in her voice that she didn't recognise and didn't like.
A month alone with just herself and some mirrors had affected her more than she'd ever wanted to believe. She didn't fit into her own skin anymore (and it kept shifting and shifting as if to find the right one but it never found anything) when life had been so easy just a month before with the world as her stage. Not understanding herself seemed absurd to her right then. Why shouldn't she? Why didn't she? 'Angel' was as much a label as 'Linnéa' was so what right did it have to change her when she'd never tried to identify as one?
Putting his finger on one quality didn't appeal to him. There didn't seem to be one thing wrong. Hendrik didn't really know how to react to these situations. A more sympathetic, understanding person might have tried to work out her problem; he wasn't that way. He was on the other end of the spectrum. Insulting someone, telling them what they did wrong--it all added up in his head as the correct way of assessing a situation.
"Everything." That was a decisive answer. He still wanted her around, but there was a little too much wrong to make him comfortable with this situation.
"I can't change everything." She stood up and picked up the mirror that she'd been facing and turned it around. She did the same to another close by, then looked back to him, thinking that he couldn't possibly still like her now. A stupid, girlish concern. Linnéa was stupid and girlish, she tried to think, but it wasn't convincing. "Everything's wrong with me?"
Hendrik stood up in an effort to stand in her way. If she couldn't see the mirrors, she would have to look at him. "Everything," he repeated. He decided right there and then that it bothered him because she wasn't his Linnéa. She wasn't the same one he deemed special. For all he knew, she probably still was, but it was forcing him to think outside of his constructed box and that agitated him.
Before she could turn toward another mirror, he stepped toward her and gripped her hands, leaning toward her so that she had a hard time seeing around him. "You're supposed to be the way I like you," he insisted. "This isn't you."
"You never told me why you liked me." She might have considered struggling but didn't see the point. And she felt dizzy. It was the air, wasn't it, her apartment was always stuffy and it was so hot with the windows closed. Yes, it was the air, it wasn't her, she was fine. "So what's a girl to do?" And she tried, she did, but her voice fell flat. She didn't feel like the person that it should come naturally to. She wanted to change. It (whatever it was) was so uncomfortable and stifling, like the air that she was trying to blame.
Why he liked her didn't seem to be important. Hendrik just accepted qualities in people, and he filed those qualities somewhere in the back of his mind. It eventually became a holistic picture because he could see everything that he wanted. He still wanted her, but he didn't want to say that, because he imagined it was a physical desire more than the other one. He was thinking too much about this. They were supposed to talk about importance or her plays or decide to have dinner and then not have it or some other insipid thing they tended to do--this was wrong.
But it was better to be wrong than to try to make things right when he had no idea how. He couldn't tell her what to fix, because he didn't know, and it always irritated him that she acted. For the first time, it didn't seem like she was trying. Hendrik figured he should have been pleased.
His mouth opened so that he could convey a response, but instead, he closed it and kissed her. It was a hard kiss, but he thought that if it wasn't too different from the past time (which he only vaguely remembered--he was drunk and it had been a couple months), then that would be enough for him. He let go of her hands as he kissed her.
He'd vomited in her toilet last time. But that was after. She'd kissed him back last time and she did again, wrapping her arms around his neck. Was this what he thought was right? Was this what he thought she was? She didn't know, but he couldn't be as wrong as she was. He'd always seemed convinced that he was right. A month ago she'd found it amusing. Three months ago she'd found it irritating. And now she couldn't hear herself think. Did she have to? Maybe not. Maybe. It always came back to maybe, and always found its way back to why.
And the why was: Why was this happening?
Because it could.
Maybe it was because he was obsessed with status. She had been chosen for her role. He needed to be close to those with status. Yet that didn't explain why he tried to avoid his sister, why he started to have issues with her status--but maybe it was because it justified all her actions over the years. The detachment and the joking and teasing and the fact tht Gemini was upset by it. It wasn't that Hendrik ignored these things, he simply excused them away. They were good enough to earn his excuses, weren't they?
But maybe not anymore. Because he had never mattered. Did he even matter to her right now? Even as she kissed him back and asked him what was wrong, as if she desired to please him?
Hendrik pulled away from her, and he looked relieved. That was enough for him. He pulled his hand through her hair (he liked her curls) and tugged at her shirt a little. "If you don't mind, we're going in there now." He nodded in the direction of her bedroom. Out of the living room with all the mirrors. From this angle, it looked as if there weren't so many in there. He slid his hand over hers and tugged her in that direction, keeping his head down until he reached the room. There was one mirror, but it wasn't as daunting as the multiple mirrors. He wrote it off quickly, turning to kiss her again. He liked her, and she stayed for him. That was good enough for now; he could fix everything later.
Linnéa hadn't stayed for him, though, not really. She'd stayed because 'fate' got the idea that she was somehow bound to the city (that she had a duty, as much as she hated the word, as much as she'd ignored it for the past twenty or so days), but maybe she'd still have stuck around even if it hadn't. It didn't matter, though, because things still happened the way that they did.
And he mattered at that moment because he was there when she'd been stuck with herself (and herself, and herself) for too long. She'd put all the mirrors outside and kept the one in her bedroom simply because it had always been there. Always was only a year, a year and a bit, but it felt like forever. And there were only one pair of eyes in there.
Some part of her told her that he could be anyone else at that moment and it would be the same. The part of her that laughed at everybody and laughed at him, laughed at the other boys she'd had in the room, on the bed. One of her hands slid under his shirt and she decided, finally, that none of it was worth thinking about.