A/N: For the Picture is Worth a Thousand Words challenge at (lj community) picfor1000.
You're never going to have that, are you?
You'll never be so lucky – to live behind a neat row of white pickets, holding the world at bay, allowing all that should and could to have free reign within.
Spring's the time of possibility, endless possibility, new life and joy and fresh starts and warm sunshine and boundless energy. You know that. You do.
You wonder why you don't feel that anymore.
You walk down this narrow lane in this tiny village many ages removed from all that you know or think you know and you remember. Laughter and those grins and ribbons of sunlight falling through the trees and you remember but it's faded, fading, graying like the hair on your head and on your chest.
You could have had it once. You could have had it forever, maybe.
There was a man-who-wasn't, a girl-who-was. There was a time and place where everything made sense and held together, where time and space didn't even exist. Where moments were bundled up like a bunch of bright flowers with a bit of twine and thrust into his waiting hands, into hers. When a smile could light up your entire world with the brilliance of a thousand suns. When you would have said that the fire of the most precious jewel paled in comparison to the beauty of her eyes, or his, with the weight of truth behind the words instead of the hollow ring of duplicity. When the feel of a strong arm slung across your shoulder was a benediction and not a betrayal.
You remember.
You hear a door creak open and a high-pitched giggle rolls across the lawn and your feet move faster.
Your heart takes a little longer to catch up. Useless thing that it is, it lingers there in that garden, in that time, trying to hold onto a day, an hour, a moment.
---
The city tumbles down around you as you put one foot in front of the other, your stride eating up the distance between here and somewhere. There's a tune in your head, something sweet and bright and slow.
You remember.
You remember the girl-who-was, the man-who-wasn't, the night when all was darkness and bright flashes and the cocked head of a child and danger at any turn. Danger at every turn.
You remember the night when you were the unmaking of a world, an entire world, and the enormity of it caught you in the chest and flung you toward nothing, into the end of one life in the place of millions, until a door opened and you gasped.
You remember the night when the world was the unmaking of you. The night when the finality of it caught you in the chest and flung you back into nothing, into the absence of darkness and light, and you gasped.
You've already had your springs, your chances at endless possibility and life begun anew.
Why should you get another?
---
You're alone, even in the midst of this sweaty, jostling press of bodies and noise.
You're always alone now, even in someone else's embrace, as your heart races, body twists, fingers grasp, mouth pleads.
They found you there. Not them, but nearly as good, nearly as kind. You were sitting in a pile of dust, staring at your hands as you pressed against the charred hole in your shirt.
Waiting.
They brought you back, the world rising up to meet you with broken arms. You almost didn't recognize it. The destruction was too much to absorb, bigger even than your own resurrection.
You closed your eyes against it and golden light filtered into your head and somehow, you remembered. Your eyes flew open; your fingers scrabbled against the thick panes of plastic and glass as the light burned through your mind.
She was spring eternal, new life sprung up where old had been. Infinite love and power tangled up in time and space and focused on that one tiny speck of life among the chaos. Galaxies burned and vast ships crumbled when she turned her gaze upon them, but her thoughts never left the one who stood before her.
You fell, knees cracking on the corroded floor panels below you, and you cried when you realized that you were an afterthought – or less – an action without intent as she struggled against the fire in her mind. A moment of kindness to counter the cruelty she hadn't known she was capable of meting out, forgotten in the blaze of time and love and lips.
They loved you; you know that.
You do.
You know that you loved them more.
You're alone, even in the middle of this sweaty, jostling press of bodies and noise. You hope it won't be forever.
---
You can't quite remember how you ended up back here, but you know it has to do with them. It usually does, doesn't it?
You drifted along for a while, trying to find your place in a universe where you shouldn't exist. You waited, always waiting, watching, hoping. One day, you woke from a dream of light and dust and darkness and realized you couldn't wait forever for a reunion that would never happen.
So. Here you are, three millennia before you will be born, in a city that looks so ordinary that you could cry. You have a job, a partner, lovers.
You have a life.
You laugh and drink and fuck and work and stop the unmaking of worlds a thousand times over.
Still, you remember.
---
It's spring again and you find yourself walking down a lane in a village and you pass a garden.
You linger for a while, smelling the rain in the air and feeling the breeze against your skin, until you raise your head and she is standing there before you.
That grin breaks across her face and the beauty of it catches you in the chest and flings you into chaos, until a hand slides into yours...
And you gasp.