Streetlights

He'll never forget how her eyes look with the streetlights reflected in them.

It's stupid, really, that they're standing out here on the Muggle street, because it's cold outside. But now that he thinks about it it's pretty cold inside too, so they might as well be outside. It's cold because all they do is talk in circles about things they can't change, about misplaced trust and broken bonds and how everything they did for each other wasn't enough to keep their best friend's body and soul together and no matter what they say it's always the same.

She yells, and he yells back and their breaths make ugly shapes between them like thunderclouds, and he can't tell if the haze is from their breath or from the anger clouding his eyes over. He'd really like to hit her at one point, and he can tell she'd really like to hit him too.

He wishes she would, because he knows he deserves it.

"Go on," he says, hating the sound of his voice. "Go on, hit me, if you think you're so clever."

Her jaw firms up and she glares and for a moment he thinks she'll do it - he can see the tension in her shoulders shift as if she's about to pull her hands from her cloak pockets. But she doesn't; she turns on her heel and stomps off, cloak tangling around her feet and threatening to trip her.

"So is that it, then?" he calls after her.

She takes a few more steps and then stops, and even from where he's standing he sees her shoulders slump, all the fight gone. It hurts to see her fight gone. It's one of the things he loves about her.

"I can't do it anymore," she says. Her voice catches and it makes his heart hurt. "It'll never be the same as it was."

He knows what she means, and though part of him is offended - why isn't he enough for her? - he knows what she means because she'll never be enough for him either. There's always the one piece that'll be missing, the edges of its place between them too sharp to touch. That buffer, the glue between them is gone, and it can't be filled.

He curls his hands in his pockets. "All right," he says. The fight has gone out of him as well and it leaves him with a sort of numbness that he isn't sure will ever go away.

She turns back to look at him, and he's surprised to find that there isn't even a small flicker of hope inside him that maybe, just maybe she's changed her mind. There's nothing in her eyes, either, except for the glimmer of the streetlight overhead.

Her mouth moves, and he thinks she's saying 'goodbye' but he can't hear it because the wind picks up then and carries the word away. He thinks maybe he'll hear it, wherever he is, but it's lost to them.

Then she turns and disappears into the shadows, leaving him looking at the glow from the streetlight until his toes are cold.