by -=/\=- Zanh Liis
80722.0400
Following Catalyst: Three
Soundtrack: Love Remains the Same by Gavin Rossdale
-=/\=-
80722.0400
Following Catalyst: Three
Soundtrack: Love Remains the Same by Gavin Rossdale
-=/\=-
Keiran,
I've read your letter a hundred times by now, until my eyes were so blurred that the words were no longer truly visible to them.
Doesn't matter.
I could quote them to you by heart with my eyes closed now- I know each and every one.
I find that despite the fact that the Sylph have left us, the memories continue resurfacing, each more intense than the last and it's a sensation that is exhilarating, terrifying, and heartrending.
Oh, Keiran.
What am I supposed to do now.
I know what you told me to do, what you’ve asked of me.
I am finding though that the more I remember of you and the life that we lived together in years of working as partners but even more so during the year we were...that we were, that you take far too much blame onto yourself, and give me far too much credit.
You make me out to be the better person of the two of us, through all of this.
I will never accept that.
I am only beginning to understand how much of who I am is a direct result of time spent with you. You taught me, you cared for me, and in the end you have always loved me, as long as you were able.
With you watching over me, never once did I have to wonder when I closed my eyes at night if I was safe in your bed.
As I fell asleep beside you, I just knew that you would keep the worlds spinning when I grew too tired to do it. I could rest my head and heart knowing that you never chose anyone or anything else over me.
Not once, not ever.
It is a feeling that I am finding quite hard to forget, now that I’ve remembered it.
Does that sound strange to you?
Of course not.
You understand exactly what I mean when I write that.
If only I could find a way to exist in both times. To be in two places at once.
As much as you ask me to only remember with happiness the times we had, I would have to ask you honestly to tell me, is that how you feel when you wake up in the morning and I’m not there?
Is that how you feel as your last thoughts surrender to sleep at the end of the day?
Or is a part of you reaching out to me still- wanting, longing, wishing that things could only be different?
Tell me if you can that I feel that way, but you don’t.
I don’t believe you.
You say that it’s all right for me to love him, to want to be with him. Would he feel the same way if he knew that a part of me is now lost to everyone, and everything else that exists in this Universe but you?
How do I live with this, Keiran? How do I go on from here, as you asked me to?
You give me far too much credit for strength and bravery than I have ever deserved.
If only.
Would you think less of me if I confessed to you that I actually considered asking Vox if his people can do anything to take the memories away, and make me somehow whole again?
Because I did consider it, for a whole span of sixty seconds; after which I realized that even if it could be done, taking them away would not make me whole.
It would make me weak.
It would take from me the ability to keep the promise I made to you, that I will remember you and what we had, no matter how much it hurts.
It hurts.
If I could say anything to you now, to your face, it would be to repeat to you that you have got to take it off, Keiran. I know you’re still wearing it.
What? You didn’t take it back out of your pocket the moment I was gone and put it back on your hand?
I don’t believe that, either.
You have to build a life in the time that is now- it’s all we have.
Will I lie to you and tell you that I don’t wish just as you that in some other time, our stars would align and we could be together without Time swinging its ax over us?
I’d be lying to us both if I said that I wish for anything less.
Still I promise you I will try. I will try so hard, to do what you’ve asked of me.
I will try to forget that you’re the man who got me to drink my first cup of coffee. That you’re the one who taught me to turn to fencing when I’m frustrated.
That you’re the one who gave me his heart without reservation, built me a home, and cared for me exclusively as no one had in my life- for as long as you were able.
I’ll try to remember the happiness most, but there is one thing you can’t ask of me, not now.
Now that I know you, and I know what we have had and could be, you can never again ask me to forget how much I love you.
I once asked you how you did what you do. How you kept from going insane from the work that we were given.
You told me that I had to stop expecting to find a time when all was as I wished it to be, because you had never seen anyone find it.
If I asked you that very question again today, would your answer be the same?
Or would you tell me instead that all we can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other, hoping that next time will be the time when everything falls into place?
No matter what happens in this line or any other, when I think of you, it will always be as my steady hand.
Part of me will always be looking up, and hoping, wanting to see two lights.
~Liis
-=/\=-
She set her ink pen aside and folded the pages of paper together. Yet as she considered them, she sighed.
Yes, she might actually be able to find a way to get this to him, if she truly tried. To what end?
He had made it clear, and he was right. There were things that were meant to be, and the life that they remembered was just not one of those things.
He was wise, and she trusted him enough to know that she had to try, as hard as she could, to listen to him now.
This ordeal had to end here, and it had to end now.
It was time to put the past back into the past, to the best of her ability.
It was time to open her eyes to her blessings, which were many, and face the new day before her.
The journey would not be an easy one, but it was the right one; the path she knew she must take.
She looked up at the candle she'd lit to melt the wax for the letter's seal, but instead of completing that task, she grasped the edge of the pages and held them to the flame.
They caught, and she placed them down into the small metal wash basin in the corner, watching them burn.
As her words turned to ash before her eyes, she hoped with all her heart that they would take at least some of her pain along with them.
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-=/\=- Zanh Liis
USS Alchemy NX 53099
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
USS Alchemy NX 53099