Fragments of Stardust

Then, in one horrid instant, he remembered who he really was and the life that awaited him from behind the mask, and he pulled away.

She gasped suddenly, dropping her own mask behind him.

"I'm not looking, I swear," he promised as he threw his own mask back on clumsily.

"What the hell?" she demanded. He could feel her fall onto the bridge, feeling around for her mask.

"Uh, I can get that for you," he offered.

"No, no, I got it," she insisted. Shortly afterward, he could hear the clattering as she hit it, and then picked it up. A few seconds later, she said, "open your eyes."

He did, and she stood before him with a puzzled look in her eyes, mouth turned down. Suddenly he was overtaken by the gravity situation, and sighed deeply. "Look," he began slowly, not sure if he wanted to continue. He closed his eyes, trying to figure out how to break it to her. "I... can't do this to you, Luna. I like you too much to keep carrying on like this."

"Me too," she replied. "I, uh... yeah, we both have some explaining to do, don't we."

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Victor decided he had enough at 2:40pm.

Well, that wasn't true. He had decided he had enough a long time ago; he just hadn't let himself admit it yet.

He hadn't meant to give up so soon, honestly he didn't. Growing up with both a mother and father who were such passionate romantics, he had a childhood surrounded by love, compromise, and respect. He thought it was taken for granted that when you married someone, you loved them for the rest of your life, not lose them after awhile. How would he tell them this? The fear of their shame was more frightening than losing her could ever be.

They were done. It was little more than inevitable. Sure, she had said many times that she didn't care if he came back or not, even more she had said she was done with him. This time, though, she left too (with their only car, no less), as if to really say that she was done with him.

That was okay. He was done, too.

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They didn't look at each other, if only to hide the shame.

"Guess masquerades really are an escape," Luna mused humorlessly, staring down the river. "But you can only escape for so long, right?"

"I'm sorry," Robin apologized, his masked head in his hands. "This got so far out of my control. I didn't expect... all of this. I really didn't. I got swept away."

She sighed. "That's the thing, though. So did I. I feel like such an idiot for doing it... and such a monster for loving every moment of it." She squeezed his free hand. "I did, I really did, Robin. You're an amazing dance partner, and a marvelous person.."

"I just cheated on my wife," he moaned. "How can you say I'm marvelous anything? I mean... right now I'm just who I am behind the mask. But back at home I'm in a dead-end life. My wife already can't stand me; this is just going to make it worse. And I've got no one else, nowhere else to go to. I took a bad situation and did the one thing that made it ten times worse."

He could feel Luna running her thumb across his knuckles, in smooth, circular motions that comforted him. He realized someone cared, that at least someone forgave him. Someone understood where he was coming from because she was just like him.

She broke her silence. "We... I mean, we are who we are. Tonight, tomorrow, years down the road. And, true, all I know of you is what you wanted to show me. But, Robin, you're something special. With or without the mask. You kissed me better than I've ever been kissed before, better than he ever did in the years I've known him. I regret how it went down, but moments like that... I can't regret them. I'll never forget it. I'll never forget tonight, and it's already made my decision, you know..."

She swallowed, her voice cracking. "I can't keep living like this. I need this. I need this... feeling of being wanted, being desired. I should have had it all along, and it's driving me nuts to not have, especially from someone who claimed to love me. And I feel awful for what I did, but... I think it's going to lead to something better. Can you trust me on that?"

Robin nodded. "Tonight was wonderful. I really do mean that. You're wonderful. But..."

"You want me," she finished, sighing wearily. "And that's okay, because I want you too. But..."

The silence in the air was louder than the traffic behind them, because it contained everything they didn't dare say. The Hawthorne Bridge was the tightrope that made up the present, the goal was the future, the river beneath them the past.

Robin found the words. "We need to get our houses in order."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," she said with a nod. "And after that... will you come back for me? And accept that I'm not nearly as dynamic as I seem on the surface? That Luna's only a small part of my heart? That my voice isn't naturallythishigh? That I can be really ugly when I want to be? Would you still want me as much as you want Luna?"

"I want to at least try," he said. "I've learned that I'm not the romantic I thought I was. But I can be. I just have a lot of learning to do."

"We never do stop learning, do we?"

Masks still donned, they faced each other one last time. Luna offered a small smile. "Give it two months? Two months from today?"

He nodded slowly, deliberately. "I can do two months."

"Two months, we come here, the same bridge, with masks in hand. And then... come whatever may."

Once again, he nodded.

"I'll see you then," Luna confirmed. She pulled in towards him one last time, awkwardly stealing one last kiss from behind their masks. It lasted for the glimmer of a second, and then, like a time bomb, she disappeared. All Robin could see was the golden and red mist she left behind her as she walked away, with none of the grace and cheerful gait she had earlier.

He could only watch until she disappeared, another black form in the shadows.

Without her presence, he could only turn his attention to the river, the leftover negative energy from the confession stinging his gut with the horrid feeling of dread. Not only dread for what he'd done and the looming fallout, but the dread of the promise of two months afterward that already seemed more fictional than the fairytale of this night.

The anger and self-loathing in his gut cursed his ignorance, his selfishness, his insolence, and worst of all, his gullibility. All that he could think, all that he could feel, was that this was fake. None of it happened. None of it was real. None of it could last. This wasn't how romance worked. This wasn't love. And whatever love was, he couldn't quite say. He wasn't sure if he'd ever know.

With an angry growl, he took his mask off, giving it one last look before launching it into the river. It spun through the air like a frisbee before plopping unceremoniously into the waters, just another piece of waste in the bottom of the river. Immediately, he regretted his decision, as if he had just abandoned the only opportunity he had at happiness. At this point, he didn't know if he knew how to be happy anymore.

He decided to just head home. At the very least, his wife killing him would be more preferable to whatever he was going through at the moment. He walked to the bus stop at the end of the bridge, still in full suit and tie, trying not to think of the shameful trip back home, at least if he could figure out how to get to Fifteenth Avenue from here.

Yet, with every step he took, he could only think of the ring he gave his wife, abandoned on her nightstand, and the robin's egg blue mask lying at the bottom of the river.