Requested by Kay_Ke_2017  a long time ago on " 7 Minutes if Wondering". She wanted it to be a little sad, so here's something a little sad.

Be sure to comment and vote!

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Terms of Penitence

The trees were green and bright. The wind blew in my hair as the birds sang to each other in perfect harmony, communicating words of love, and creating an aura of tranquility.

(Record Scratch)

A girl in the near back of an English classroom groaned in frustration as she rested her head in her hands. Her desk was cold and hard, almost like the concrete floor of a prison. The classroom was dead silent, but if a meteor hit the building, she doubted the teacher would notice, as he was too focused on the Assistant Principal who had sauntered in, chatting away like two jabbering squirrels. Geez, get a room you two, Libra thought silently but desperately wanted to shout them across the hallways, or go back to your jobs. You know, your jobs? Your students? Me?

At this point, Libra was basically staring as them with such intensity that she probably looked like a crazy person. She shook her head and focused on other things that were actually her business, like this essay. Her gaze floated back to the white-board, with scribbles of dates and schedules, and in the center sat a prompt. What does love mean to you?

Pencils tapping paper accompanied the sound of Libra's scoff as she folded her elbows and rested her chin upon them. Love? She had never experienced love before. Sure, her family was great, and she has had men lining up outside her front door, but love? None of that came with love for her. Just love OF her. They loved her for what she did, how she looked, where she went, her status. Never for who she was. Her parents were proud of her, but only for the trophies on the shelf, not her moral compass.

Psychopaths. She was certain that she was born into a world of psychopaths.

Libra erased as much as she could off of her notebook paper, and looked around to every student. Muscle memory took over when her eyes landed on a boy sitting one row forward, and three seats to the right. She spotted that his messy handwriting had written Scorpio in the top left corner of his page. This didn't help her.

Another sigh escaped as she tilted her head so that one side of her face laid on her sleeves, and she faced herself to the left, as if trying to avoid the accidental gaze of the boy she admired. A sad light was ignited into her heart as memories rekindled in her mind.

Scorpio, she had come to find out, was not a psychopath.

He was cold, sure, but at least he was different. Different than the bubblegum popping, tube-top wearing, two-timing girls that walked the halls of this school. They would click past her, as their heels 'accidentally' stabbed the top of her navy converse without a thought or a word.

Surface level was the new normal, Libra had discovered. No one really got to know each other, only a select few. Apparently, Libra wasn't any of those few. Just a few quick hellos and then off they would go, completely forgetting that there was someone in this world other than themselves. How quaint. How impressive.

How inconsiderably convenient that with just one person in her life who cared about her, Libra managed to completely destroy it in two seconds.

How idiotic.

Her eyes lifted from the seemingly interesting poster on the wall and travelled back to the boy in front of her. His shoulders were tense, and he had been acting strangely during the chemistry class they shared as well. She guessed he was just as nervous about this essay as she was, and when his wandering eyes met her own in a matter of moments, he confirmed her suspicions with a teasing roll of the pupil and glanced at his own paper once more. She silently chuckled, then focused her thoughts back on the task at hand.

Love.

Such a simply complicated thing.

Love, love, love, love, love.

L-O-V-E.

Love.

lOvE.

Different sounds, same meaning. She repeated the word over in her head until the space behind her eyes pulsed and she sat up to put her head in her hands.

Of course she knew what love was like. It wasn't hard to realize that she had been in love at some point. Those eyes of humor once belonged to her, and she could have never been happier. The student never wanted to admit it, but when he was around she felt like she was floating on air. Her heart beat a million miles per minute and she could've sworn that she was on top of the world. She wasn't stupid, she knew that she was in trouble the first time she met him.

Libra's English class was lonely at first, for on the outside Libra was a wallflower, blending into the background without a second thought. A firework when you got to know her, truly, but it was hard for her to be the first one to reach out in a social setting. He was the same way. Scorpio waited for her to come to him, and make sure that it was safe to be able to communicate with the amazing woman he was finding her to be. It took a while for them both to come out of their shell, but each day there was a slight crack in the exterior. Soon enough, they were conjoined at the hip, laughing each day, stepping over people in the school auditorium just to be able to sit near each other, and getting to know the other in a great way. Both being freshman in a foreign building, it was refreshing to find someone to feel so connected to.

Freshman year was unknowingly hard for the girl, and her emotions really never caught up with her until that point. She had bottled them up to a point where there was nowhere else for them to go but up and out. Libra dealt with them alone, in her room, between the closet and the bedpost on the carpeted floor. She didn't mind, though. It was easier this way. Less inconvenient for the ones around her.

Scorpio became her best friend, and she became his. To the outside world, they were a couple already, spending constant time fueling the ship that had started around the halls. But it took them awhile to actually confess. Scorpio had tried but failed, as Libra didn't think he was serious, or just didn't hear him. Then Libra came to her senses and they were dating.

Libra didn't think that she could smile so much.

She had someone who cared for her, loved her, wanted to see her. Even if he was terrible at texting back, he was always sorry for it the next morning. She soon realized that she didn't have to deal with it all alone. Allowing the compressive, emotional soda bottle to fizzle out, she felt lighter. Confiding in Scorpio was reassuring, comforting, and relieving.

If only he felt the same way.

Scorpio was beginning to feel bad, dragged down, and heavy with the weight his oblivious girlfriend had put on his shoulders. Every problem he took upon himself, absorbing her sadness, and while she was healing with every sentence she spoke, he was falling into more uncertainty and guilt. Libra only realized this a couple months after he broke up with her, but she had slowly ruined the utopia she had made up for herself, destroying the walls of her tranquility with every confession. She realized that it would've been better for her to keep herself quiet then make the love of her life feel guilty about her hardships. Better safe than sorry. Better late than never.

But he was always there for her when she needed him. When she was having a panic attack, or when she was being a slightly crazy ex-girlfriend. When she was standoffish or rude, his grip remained on their friendship. He didn't seem to judge her, and she almost wished he had, because then he would have at least one negative quality that she could cling on to for dear life, instead of continuing to hold him in this ray of golden sunlight. She wanted one reason why that break-up wasn't her fault, how she wasn't the villain in that chapter in his life which equated to the entire story of hers. Libra had searched for something to tell her that somehow, she was the good guy, and that it wasn't her being that drove him away.

But she always came up empty.

An empty heart, empty mind, empty life.

Finally she got help, driving herself to therapy with her new found drivers license. Libra could admit now that she had changed. She became healthier and happier, but she knew that there was something missing in her life, that she couldn't quite put her finger on. The girl wanted to find out what it was, but she never really strived for the answer, because deep down she knew that it was him who was missing, like a necessary gear missing from a well oiled machine. Even though everything else in her life had improved, her heart was left yearning.

Libra shook her head slightly to clear the blurriness that seeped into her vision as she caught his glance for the second time that morning, him looking at her with worry in his eyes, as she had been staring at him for about two minutes straight. After realizing that she had zoned out, she shook her head, blushed lightly, and gave him a small, joking smile, then rested her head in her hands, staring down at the piece of paper sitting in front of her, and silently groaned.

Thinking about him wasn't helping her either.

Because all of her ideas were connected to two years ago, and she didn't want to write about that. She couldn't write about that.

She couldn't write about the movie dates, the hand holding, the jokes, the smiles, the hugs, the board games, the dinners, and the heartbreak. She couldn't write about the butterflies that erupted whenever she saw him or the pace that her heart beats when he was near, and don't even get her started on the way that she wanted to see him everyday, or the times she yearned to have him hold her.

Because that's not love.

That's heartbreak.

It's heartbreak for him to be with somebody else. It's heartbreak to be best friends with the guy she saw herself with in five years. Love is an illusion of hope and tranquility, and heartbreak is the reality. It's the time spent crying, sobbing her way through the days, which turn into months, which morph into years, and with a snap of God knows who's fingers she's left in the future that she never wanted to be in.

No, she couldn't write about that. She couldn't write about then. She couldn't write about him. She was supposed to be over him by now.

She was supposed to over his smile, his laugh, his quick wit, and his kindness and talent. She wasn't supposed to be jealous over that girl, or cringe at the sight of couples kissing in the stairwell.

It wasn't supposed to be heartbreak anymore. That's what everyone told her.

Yet here she was.

There obviously wasn't a review for this essay. Or else Libra would've been smart enough to skip school today. The question continued to nab at her as the hands on the clock ticked away.

What is love?

Her attention fluttered over to Scorpio sitting there, scribbling away, like the scholar that he was. She didn't know what else to do. She was stressed, angry, and now digging herself into a hole that no one could really get her out of. Abruptly, she stood up, pushing her chair out from under her into the table behind.

"Mrs. Libra? Was there something you needed?"

Libra snapped out of her daze, locking eyes with her English teacher.

"Uh, yes, sorry. Would you mind if I used the restroom for a minute?"

The teacher gestured to the restroom pass, and silently sat back down across a stack of papers ready for grading. Libra, thoroughly embarrassed, quickly made her way out the door and into the feminine room around the corner, oblivious to the set of eyes that followed her.

She leaned her head against the mirror as tears came from her eyes. God, not again, don't cry about this again. Why can't you just be normal? Be like every other girl here and live your best life or whatever.

Images replayed in her head. Scorpio stuffing cheese fries down his throat, laying her head on his shoulder, beating him at Forbidden Island. Playing tag at the park, reading in the library, cheating off his homework, meeting him for the first time in a theatre, watching him perform on stage, it was all too much. Her heart was beating a million miles a minute and she didn't know which way was right, which way was down, black from white, or who turned down the lights.

She just didn't know.

Her vision was blurry and she was stuck in the street where it happened, the talk she had never thought she'd hear, the awkwardness, the excitement before when he texted her, and the utter disbelief after words. Almost like an out of body experience, looking at her younger self and wanting to scream at how oblivious she was. Back then she didn't understand, but now she knew it was because of her. Because of her life, her emotions, because she had opened up to him and he didn't want to have to deal with it. Which she understood eventually. Really, she did. She's had two years to think it over, and if she didn't come to a point of understanding, then there would be no end to the torment that was in her mind.

Or maybe there was no end?

What was love?

There was that stupid question again, jabbing at her skull with a sewing needle.

Libra cleaned her face with a rough paper towel and stalked back to the classroom. What was a biological emotion that somehow changed the course of our future?

She cleared her throat and avoided a pair of brown concerned orbs.

What was the light before the darkness? The calm before the storm?

The chair creaked as Libra plopped down once more, and she gripped her pencil with a new determination and goal.

What was the red herring to a life of loneliness, self-hatred, and night?

Still aware of her red eyes, tear stained cheekbones and puffy lips, she wrote her first sentence. This was certainly not going to be the essay they were expecting.