So it's been two years or something since I read the book series, so I decided to follow movie canon and that universe.

Challenges by the Dozen: Level Five [write five post-canon fics] #5

Dear Jonas;

Everything was different after you left. You went past the boundary and released the memories. Or at least that's how the Giver told me the Community changed. I've been hanging out with him lately.

Of course, there haven't been very many good things happening lately, either. It's rather hard to give up a whole intricate society and code that everybody still alive has lived by for their entire lives. They can't just start anew, I suppose. Though, I was never as smart as you were. I just covered up my stupidity with laughter like a coward.

They almost got the Giver, you know. He was going to be Released straight after Fiona but then the memories came back.

The world has color now. I finally see what you were talking about when you tried to show us what your training was like. I wish I hadn't been an idiot and followed you and Fiona when you slid down the solar panel on those trays. It looked like it would be a world of fun but I couldn't be sure and I needed to be sure. I was living a lie. We all were, except for you and the Giver.

But we've stayed in our dwellings. The majority of us still foolishly rely on the daily morning injections; scared of what true life is like.

I stopped taking the injections. Emotions are scary, but I don't want to be a coward again.

We still have the Ceremony every year. What would we be without it? The Chief Elder switched a few minor things so that Graduates have a say in what they do afterwards, but otherwise it's the same old thing.

Fiona… Fiona is still a little, ah, not right in the head nowadays. She got so close to being Released, and the needle was hovering above her skin, and even though it didn't go all the way in, she hasn't been the same. She barely ever decides to talk, and if she does, it's total nonsense. They've got her resting in a white bed somewhere. I don't know where, but I know it's a white bed and Fiona needs help. She needs you.

The thing about love, the Giver hypothesized, is that it's so hard to find it. Scared of the new changes as always, we pretended to have found true love with our partner in the family units. But really, we just don't want to branch out anymore. I think that the words of Elders still repeat themselves over and over again in some people's heads even if they don't realize it. "When there are differences, there is chaos."

I know I'm switching the topic now, but… Right before Fiona was going to be released, they forced the Elders, the Giver and I to watch captured scenes of you and Fiona conspiring together. And over and over again, they showed a video of you and Fiona—what's the word—kissing. Inside, it just felt so wrong, and I felt sick inside. I tried to find the precise language for it, but I just couldn't. The feeling soon passed because of the injections, but I couldn't just shake off the feeling a little bit afterwards.

I hope I made the right choice in trusting you, Jonas, and letting you go. I hope this was all for the better because I wouldn't want to lose my best friend for any reason less.

The emotions came back, too, once the memories were back. I started thinking about you more, and sometimes—no, all the time I wish I had been the one you kissed. I don't really understand why or what these thoughts are. It can't be right. A family unit consists of a boy and a girl, not two boys. It just wouldn't work out.

But still, I dream of it.

I went to the Giver, and he told me what was going on. It's almost too simple, really, and yet I don't think he's wrong.

I love you, Jonas.

—Asher