Word Count: 765

It was happening again.

Paris couldn’t remember when he’d stopped the last time, but he was sure it’d had something to do with Chris. Finding something normal in a life that had become anything but, having someone to lean on and keep him anchored firmly on the ground, and discovering that he shared more with that person beyond a few casual dates, but a second life, was bound to have an impact on how he handled himself in a war he wanted absolutely nothing to do with. He could be confident; he could stand tall and fight his way through when life was too hard or too scary or too overwhelming to handle on his own, because he had someone to turn to, someone who believed in him.

He hadn’t needed to run anymore.

It was different this time. He wasn’t trying to escape his responsibilities as a senshi. He wasn’t trying to make himself forget about another side of himself, a side that was just as much a part of him as the boy that looked back at him in the mirror. He wasn’t trying to pretend as if the monsters and the tragedy of it all were just a figment of his imagination. He wasn’t trying to avoid accepting his place in the war. All that had passed. He’d come to terms with it. He was moving on and adapting and carving a place for himself among people he’d learned to rely on.

If he was trying to escape anything, it was the distinct absence of his father, and the harrowing vacancy left in a life that had never even revolved around the man in the first place, at least until he was no longer there to be a part of it.

Paris ran, and he ran, and he ran. He ran until his legs burned and ached and his feet felt numb. He ran until he was left gasping for breath, until each inhalation caused a searing pain in his lungs, like claws tearing at his insides. He ran until his heart felt fit to burst, pounding away in his chest as if fighting for a release from its cage of skin and muscle and bone. He ran until he could run no more, until all of his pent up energy had been expended and he felt drained of every thought, of every emotion.

Then he stopped, slowing steadily, and he stumbled to bend over the bushes in front of Chris’s apartment building, where he heaved into the foliage until his stomach had nothing left in it.

It felt good to move, to race away from the sadness and the misery and the memories that overtook him without warning. He could almost forget. He could almost distract himself from the reality of the situation and pretend as if nothing had changed. He could dash ahead and speed through life on fast-forward, outrun the pain and leave it behind him, far back where it couldn’t reach.

It even felt good to purge, to let the remnants of his exertion and distress surge up and find an escape. He could force the numbness out, and all the sorrow with it, until it was nothing more than a lingering bitterness in the back of his mouth.

When he was done, Paris staggered into the building on unsteady legs, wobbling passed the dapper doorman who looked at him in concern, but who Paris called off with a careless wave of his hand. He leaned heavily into the corner of the elevator as it ascended, still gasping for air as his heartbeat struggled to settle and his stomach gradually stopped rolling. Finally, he let himself back into the empty apartment, sore and tired but far from satisfied, because already he could feel reality rushing back to him.

His gasping became erratic as he wandered through the lower floor.

By the time he’d climbed the stairs into the loft, he was close to hyperventilating.

Paris tripped his way into the bathroom and practically fell into the shower, grasping at the handle to turn it on without removing any of his clothes. He kneeled first, then sat, lifting his face to the spray as he wheezed and panted. He let the water wash his sweat and his tears away, and he tried to pretend as if the things he told other people were true.

He wasn’t okay. He wasn’t anywhere close, but he wanted to be. He didn’t want to run. He didn’t want to live like this again.

The problem was he didn’t know what else to do.