she was a phantom to him. more of a mystery than anything certain or concrete. And he was obsessive with her incomprehensibility. He wandered through her consciousness, lost in the thickness of its layers, forging relentlessly through every glance and silent pause. She would never give him an easy way in. Her ego could only be distilled from constant admiration. It was her high, her addiction, her every being from the moment she decided that romance would be her chemical. Falling in love would end her. So she set traps as he got closer, picked fights, held her silence. This one was abnormally persistent, sweetly coy. A man still in his youth. Passionate. The same emotion she had never allowed the thought of love to gain sight of. But passion is a contagion, a silent buzz in the minds of the close, and she couldn't escape disease.

When he'd reached where she was, he approached her gently, whispering the few words he could find. They'd been playing it so long. they didn't realize that there was life beyond the goal line. They stood in front of each other, her eyes welling up at the ability to feel love again. But his were of no tenderness or warmth. Instead, she found eyes full of misery. A man worn thin by effort without definite end. She had expected the visage of a lover. But a lover would not be so miserable to find another. The game had broken her opponent. Once a man madly infatuated, had become an old soul, numb to anything she could give to him, well-meaning or not. And she realized that there was no prize at the bottom of the box. For either of them. It was a lifeless concentration of all the frustrations long past that left scars. Scars they would trace over and over to remember the particular heartache that sadists find momentary fulfillment in.

And when she tried to find the source of the heartache, she found the same traps she had laid. The same silences and arguments. Except that the bitterness of his spite filled her lungs whenever she walked near him. Their game of persistance had become a game of revenge. And so they parted ways as an attempt at peace, still hoping to one day find the good in each other. Trusting nothing but destiny itself to the reigns of their lives.