Vasil and Luda; like two peas in a pod, and yet, so different.

Vasil, raised in the city, smart, but quiet and unassuming. Chocolate brown hair, dark brown eyes, freckles, and a thin stature.

Luda, who grew up in a villiage, with one friend (who was not her friend anymore), loud and confident, friendly and kind. Bleach-blonde hair and gray eyes, stocky and sporty.

Such differences, and how do they get along?

Vasil leads Luda to the subway, and they take the train to the museum.

The museum is a wonderful place, full of paintings and statues and other artifacts on display. They _ooh_ and _ahh_ and look around and laugh, and when the day is over, they stay at a motel, and talk long into the night.

As Vasil gets comfortable on the couch, he feels a now painful memory resurface. It was a few years ago, when he had first met Anya after taking the scholarship in the villiage. There had been a party, and Vasil had no one to talk to, until Anya came up to him and started a conversation. They had talked until long after the party was over. Vasil is still angry with Anya, but he can’t help but miss her. _She was my best friend, but it’s her fault that she chose to ruin that. _

Vasil drifts to sleep that night with a crying heart.

Anya spends the day after Vasil and Luda leave reading her favorite books. Books are like painkillers, only you can never overdose. But there are only so many hours you can read before your vision begins to blur, so Anya finally has to put down her book and think about what happened in the last few days.

_Luda took another friend away from me. _Anya suddenly drifts back to a memory a few years ago, when she was at a party. It was a party for the few new students coming to learn at the villiage’s school, (which was the only reason their town was on the map in the first place) and everyone was invited. Anya had come just to distract herself and eat some food. Sadly, the distracting bit wasn’t working. So Anya did the first thing she could think of: _Talk to the first person you see with brown hair. _She saw him sitting alone at the bench, and was so grateful to have an opportunity to take her mind off of things and avoid tears that she practically ran to sit next to him and start the conversation. In the beginning she kept it going just to do something, but soon she found that he was a nice person and she wanted to know him more. That was how Anya met Vasil.

Although he quickly became her best friend, Anya could never bring herself to tell him the painful memory of Luda, and how Anya and Luda had been like sisters before. She could never tell him about how they got into a fight, and hurt each other beyond repair. She could never tell him about how she had lost _all_ her friends after that day, because Luda was prettier and funnier and smarter and kinder and better with words, so who _wouldn’t_ side with Luda?

And yesterday, Luda had taken the last person who was special to her.

Now, Anya’s heart, which had never stopped sniffling after her fight with Luda, was sobbing very much indeed.

Luda can’t sleep. She can hear Vasil’s steady breaths. She can feel the rumble of the cars on the street, and they’re honking so _loudly_. For a second she wonders how Vasil is sleeping until she remembers that he grew up here. Luda tosses and turns, and tries to ignore the feeling that has haunted her for more years than she can remember.

_This is temporary. _

_ This will only last so long. _

_ He will leave or disappear or you will push him away, just like everyone else. _

_ _She remebers the night when this thought first came. She remembers the night when she was eleven, just a child, and her older brother had come into the house, angry and upset. She had at first done nothing. Then she remembered him _crying. _Her older brother never cried, so she came up to him, and she hugged him, and told him not to cry, because it was so sad to see him like that.

Luda hasn’t expected his reaction. He had shoved her off, yelling at her, screaming, his face red and unfamiliar. She still remembers the words that had stung so much. “_What is wrong with you?! You’re just so selfish! Can’t you see I’m angry? Can’t you see there’s more that matters than you?! No one will like you! They will all leave you!_” She had gone to bed that night wondering what had broken, what shattered, what had snapped. The next morning, her brother left home, with a note saying he moved away to the city, and Luda never saw him again.

Ever since then the same scary thought ran through her mind.

_How many people will leave me? How many others will I push away?_

It had turned out she would push away everyone. She had tried becoming prettier, nicer, smarter, she practiced being good with words, and at first she thought it had worked. People had wanted to be her friends, and pretty soon she became the person who had connections with everyone. Those connections all broke in less than a year. All but with Anya. Anya had been her friend for years, and they had been like sisters. Anya had begun to heal the gaping hole that Luda’s brother had left, until Luda messed that up too, and pushed Anya farther away than anyone ever before.

Luda went to bed that night like always; with an every-increasingly self-destructive heart.