I turned to see Ava, my blood launching off my face like a torrent of rain.

Her eyes widened slightly as she began to peel off her hoodie, even through the cold weather. "It's not at all. Nothing anyone ever does is pointless." Ava paused, suddenly thinking. "Well, outside of self-harm, I suppose."

Ava's black hoodie pressed against the wound that had been oozing blood insistently, unforgiving of the damage I had caused it. I could feel the warmth of her hand through the thick material as it picked up the blood like a sponge to water. Why had she shown up out of the blue? How had she known that I had been on the roof?

Without any response, the silence stung like the cold, windy air.

"My ex-boyfriend committed suicide." Ava spoke out, breaking the rift between us. "It was because of me."

Ava continued to wipe the quickly smearing blood, standing on the tips of her toes to reach my blood-stained blonde hair. It had taken a moment for her sudden, out of place words to sink into my head. Suicide? I never would have guessed that someone like her had been through something like that. It had been so heavy, yet not a word came through, or to, me.

"Jacky, that was his name." Ava pressed her hand against my chest to regain her balance. "He was sweet, and kind. He never hurt anyone, or anything. Football was his dream, but he had never been that stereotypical athlete, no matter how I looked at him.

Ava lowered her arm and dropped the sullied piece of clothing on the floor.

"He was on vacation with his family, and I was missing him a lot, you know? Then I got a text from him, asking me to send him a picture. He didn't ask for anything like you're thinking, he just wanted a regular, normal picture. But instead, I stupidly decided to surprise him with a little gift." Ava looked away, and then to the ground. "I sent him a video of me...you know, playing."

I had been shocked. While Ava hadn't seemed like a prude or anything of the sort, she also hadn't been someone I had expected to so openly do something of that nature. Rather than calling her a prude, it would have been more accurate to call her cautious, though that much had been irrelevant. It was what she had said afterwards that shocked me, and unbelievably, irked me.

"I mean, I had figured everything would have been fine - he would have done what he had liked with that video and then he would have deleted it. But no, I went to school the next day, and everyone had been looking at me. Laughing, head-shaking, and someone even shoved their hands in between my legs." Ava hissed out the last bit of her sentence. "I asked my friend, the only person who was still willing to talk to me, and she showed me. The video had been uploaded everywhere, YouTube, Facebook, porn sites, and even something called the Deepweb."

I remained silent, not wanting to interrupt Ava; even if I had felt truly angry. I had barely known her, yet there had been this odd connection with her - there yet not, transient, omnipresent. I, however, held back. It hadn't been that I didn't want to be around her, it was the fact that I couldn't have been around her - for myself, for her, and for everyone else around her. I wouldn't allow myself to destroy her, like I had done to everything else in my putrescent life.

"I immediately put the blame on Jacky, I hadn't even given him a chance to explain himself. Even though I had done that, everything only got worse. The harassment, the spreading of the video, and to top it all off, my butt had been getting smacked on a daily basis. They had even messed with the only friend I had left." Ava continued to tell her story. "It was during some class that I had went to the bathroom, and I hadn't realized that I had been followed inside. It was Jacky's best friend and teammate, Ryan."

Ava looked at me as though she had expected me to know what had happened next. In that regard, I had a pretty good idea of what had happened. However, I wasn't going to say anything. She had decided to tell me this, and that was what I was going to let her do; let her tell me, uninterrupted. If anything, that had been the least I could have done, even if she had practically been a stranger to me.

I had noticed it right away, her previously bright, optimistic crescent eyes had dulled, leaving only a single tear to fall down her beautiful cheek.

"Ryan raped me in that bathroom stall, and filmed all of it on his phone. I couldn't do anything...I..." Ava covered her mouth with her hand, now crying as her mascara fell with it. "He posted that video, too. Even after they were taken down, they still went back up everywhere, tenfold. It wasn't long after things had sort of settled down that I began to throw up every morning, and even during class."

By the way things had looked, Ava had been on her way to a nervous breakdown. I stepped forward, planning to stop her. That was, until she shook her head and stopped me in my tracks.

"I was pregnant, and was going to a heavily religious school, in a religious town. I no longer had any proof, and the videos had only shown my face and body. My parents were the only ones who ever believed me..." Ava wiped the tear that had fallen to her chin. "The school gave me and my parents a choice - abortion or expulsion. I couldn't let my parents, the only people I had left, see my like that. I mean, I had the baby of a rapist in me...How could I let the people who loved me the most, the people who would do anything for me, see me like that? It made me feel filthy. I was filthy...I had to get an abortion. I-I just had to get it done."

Ava had been honest to her core, even to the center of that black hole inside of her. It had been clear that she was telling every bit of the unadulterated truth, and she still had yet to finish.

"Av--"

"I told Jacky about everything that happened in a text and how it was all his fault, however every little detail was his fault...I found out that he shot himself with his dad's gun a week later. It was at his funeral that I found out the truth from Jacky's brother. He was the one who texted it to his friends, and then his friends started putting it everywhere." Ava pulled up the sleeves on both of her arms, showing me a long, faded scar on each one. "I tried to kill myself three times, but I fai...was saved twice. I had almost died the third time after I took a bunch of pills...but it still hadn't worked. His brother had done all of it, and there was I again; all alone."

Ava pulled her sleeves down, stepping toward me with short, slow strides. "I thought it had been all my fault for the longest time." Ava reached me. "It wasn't any single person's fault, the fault should have went to everyone involved who did nothing...the people who made stupid mistakes...the people who lost everything all at once. Everyone."

"It was clearly his fault." my fists dropped to my side. "All of it started with him not protecting his own damn phone."

"Aiden, you're not understanding why I told you all of this." Ava looked into my eyes, the fingers of her right hand began to lightly scrape against my waist. "I want you to understand that If you're going through hell, then you need to keep going. I kept going, and going...and then I finally found what I needed...I found you."

I averted my eyes. "Stop it, Ava. I can't deal this shit again. I can't deal with loving someone when I know that I'll lose them, that I'll ruin them, just like I've always done to everything I've ever loved or touched."

"You need to stop running away from everything, Aiden." Ava's left palm collided with my chest, resulting in a deep thud. "If you keep hiding, everything will disappear, everything will pass you by in the blink of an eye - until you have nothing left. I don't...I don't want that for you...or for me."

I gave a drawn out pause, not wanting to answer. Unsurety had been the only thing that had existed in my mind, completely unknowing of what would have come out next. I had been unable to say anything to her, nothing but a single word. I had only been trying to protect her from myself, from my wake of absolute destruction.

"...Sorry." I hesitantly looked down to see her expression.

My eyes widened as Ava let go of my waist, her hands falling to her thighs. Her head shook softly as her body began to turn away, walking towards a doorway that led to warmth. It had been as though my body had instinctively moved on its own as my hand flew outwards, tightly gripping the wrist that had been so close to leaving my sight.

Like a swift punch to my gut, I could feel my heart in my throat. What was this feeling? Regret? The fear of loss? Why had I held her in place? As though it would have changed something, I hadn't let go of her. My brain wouldn't let go of her, nor would the body that I had so severely beaten. My body had defied common sense, and with it had deified the order of my brain. 

"Stop." I gasped.

I tightly squeezed her sylphlike wrist, entirely unsure of what my next move or word would have been. "Wait, Ava." I murmured again, reassuring myself that I had stopped her. I held her, silently, motionlessly - I had been able to feel and hear every sensation at that moment - the patterned beating of my heart, the thick sweat that had begun to coat my hands, our shared breathing, and even the faint smell of a feminine perfume. Everything had become soft, feathered like the blur of art in the distance.

It was then that I realized exactly why she had been so ready to leave, so expectant. I, myself, had been so sure that I was going to hurt her in some way, that I had completely disregarded how she had felt. I had disregarded her entire being, her entire soul, the depth of her feelings. I had placed so much focus on myself that I hadn't thought to listen to her, to hear her words. She had, put simply, read me like the back of a book. She had seen through just how selfish of person I truly was.

I grabbed Ava's left hand and pulled her closer, close enough feel her radiant warmth. "Will you give me a chance?"

As I continued to pull Ava inwards, I had come to a second realization; Humans search endlessly for the one thing that will make them happy. Through the fear, through the pain, through the heartache and grief, they continue to trudge forward, searching until they finally find it. I had been wrong, so very wrong.

It had been the grief and the pain that made finding that one loved thing, that one loved person feel so much more special. I had found her, and I had felt her. That feeling, that specialness - both had stood only inches away from me, in all of her glory.

Ava let her head fall, pressing ever so softly into my chest.

"I will."