"Remember" will be updated soon. So, so sorry for the hiatus.
The first chapter is a bit slow. I promise things will pick up if you care to stick around ;)
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Part 1.
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Reclaimed imperfection – A dark figure lost in subconscious – A familiar blush – Personality mirrored by stereotype – A chuckling memory.
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Declan Coyne runs a hand through his disheveled curls of brown and dark bronze. He glances at his sister from across the room, his eyes struggling to balance themselves over the tall and majestic young woman that he barely recognizes anymore. Her own curls have become fuller, livelier, and they cascade down her neck, contrasting with her pale skin and the royal blue of her polo. Her lips are still thin, but they are no longer stained blood red; instead they are tinted with a lovely shade of a creamy pink. And they're curved upward at the edges. Her eyes, though – they catch Declan's for a moment, and he can see the surface of them, can stare deep inside of them and never find an end. Blue orbs no longer clouded by her solution to the pain, free of any red streaks or crystal tears.
Fiona looks so much more alive.
The figure beside her catches hold of Declan's now wandering attention, his dark clothing and guarded countenance smoldering Declan's gaze for a moment. His attire consists of a black t-shirt, clashed with colors of purple and maroon that etch the logo of a band Declan has never heard of and decides he probably wouldn't want to experience anyway. Ebony jeans hug his legs down to his ankles, stitched with the finest detail of golden streaks along the pocket seams. Declan cringes; it can't be a comfortable existence, suffocated by fabric of that prickly nature all day.
Eli Goldsworthy, Fiona said his name was, and it sounds oddly familiar to Declan as he plays it through his mind once again. It strains his memory, wringing it out with rather impatient force as he struggles to remember what brief place in his past holds the young man.
"Fi," he murmurs her name when he means to speak it a bit clearer, but she hears, nonetheless, and, once again, Declan is fascinated by the way her eyes light up at his voice, lips curving upward even more than they have naturally come to do so. He loves this new Fiona – no more than he did the old one, of course – but with much more ease. And, though he finds Eli to be a bit out of the ordinary when it comes to her tastes, he has a feeling that her new friend deserves at least partial credit for the transformation.
She spats out no "What, Declan?" or a distracted and quick, "Huh?" Instead, she just dances over to him, her creamy pink lips still curved and now emphasizing the blush that compliments her pure and healthy cheekbones. She answers him only with a genuine perk of the head and shoulders.
"Have I met Eli before today?" What he really means is where because, by now, the memory is so close to the verge of recognition, yet he has a strange feeling that he'll never be able to retrieve it with his own consciousness. Those are the worst kind of memories.
Fiona's dark and slender eyebrows pull together and a flash of white appears as she bites gently on her pink lips. Where along the line did this habit develop? At any rate, after a few dragging moments, Fiona's thoughtful expression falters and finally disappears all together as a sparkle of recognition ignites in her eyes. "You may have met him during the theater awards you came down for early this year . . . Of course, you were a tad distracted during that visit," she chuckles, and Declan barely has time to ponder the thought of his sister saying a tad because his thoughts are immediately blending into the memories of Holly J. Sinclair.
He notices HJ from time to time around campus, her once frazzled expression now dulled to a genuine contentedness. Her arms are still wrapped around stacks of textbooks that may as well be a physical feature of hers, and, the one time Declan caught a glimpse of her agenda, he saw that it was still decorated with black ink that filled every square inch of each calendar box, etched in only the neatest handwriting of Holly J.'s ability. But there's something about the way she goes about it all – managing with enthusiasm that is no longer forced but genuine.
Her blush is still the same, though – which is what he receives every time they are within close proximity. It lights up the adorable freckles that scatter her perfect cheek bones and blends into the smooth, amber strands of hair that flip this way and that over her shoulders. Sometimes, he finds himself wandering how he could have let a girl like that go, and then reality and the past stumbles in with a sharp jolt on his shoulders – she broke up with him.
Fiona, oblivious to his wandering thoughts, adds in to what she hopes to be another helpful detail. At the first sound of her voice, he's barely listening, almost already having decided that whatever she has to say can wait to be dealt with until after he finishes reminiscing of his first love. But, in the brief moment she speaks, Fiona sparks on a topic that brings chuckling memories back to Declan.
"He was Clare Edwards's boyfriend," she indicates, her voice dropping to just above a whisper, which Declan presumes links to the past tense she has just used and the presence of their topic within reasonable hearing distance. "You remember Clare, right?"
Does he remember Clare Edwards? If it isn't for Fiona's lack of knowledge on the memory, he might have laughed at the absurdity of the question. There are a lot of things that are quite easy to forget in this world, loads of memories that are shuffled around until they can't be distinguished from others. But the little ninth grader who developed a crush on him his senior year, going so far as to write vampire fanfiction centered around him and post it on the school's website – Well, that was a memory quite hard to shake, one that he never dismissed, retrieving every once in awhile when he needed a grin.
Clare was a driven and stubborn young girl. Pretty and innocent, he can admit, with her light brown curls and her pale skin contrasting with sparkling cerulean eyes – but driven and stubborn, nonetheless. She hated her feelings for him, fought them off with her past of studying on Friday nights and turning down most boys who looked her way. At the time, Declan had found it quite odd that the girl was so determined not to fall for him. He was, after all, the desire of most Degrassi girls back in high school, still is according to Fiona. And, though it was wrong to lead on a girl he knew he wouldn't give minutes to on a regular basis, he still found an odd sense of what he now relents to call pride every time he caught her marveling at him.
He was arrogant in high school, Declan realizes now with a strange feeling of sheepishness, guilt, and even the verge of shame. He's happy to have changed now if he couldn't have done it then. Perhaps, it's Yale and the adjusting that must come with blending into a sea of perfection most of the times superior to his own. But there's more to the transformation that seemed to grow even more when Fiona began to pull herself away from the things that weighed on what could have been her own imperfect perfection. She began to smooth out all her faults, and Declan had felt it necessary to take a step back and glance for any mistakes on his part as well – just to say he, too, was attempting to better himself.
Still drowning in his shallow pool of pride that teetered over haughtiness, he hadn't expected to see a great deal of flaws if any at all. And the truth had just about horrified him. In fact, he had overreacted in quite the epic manner following the realization, had painted himself to be a self-conceited and ignorant fool.
That wasn't the case, of course. After all, in theory, he had right to be satisfied with himself – and everyone does, of course. But Declan was the obvious kind of person to create that image for his self – wealthy, charming, and the general description of handsome. That's why most people overlooked his slight sense of smugness, shrugging it off if they even noticed it at all.
There were the occasional eye rolls and cough-hidden scoffs resulting of his presence from time to time, and, though looking back he blamed his hauteur for this, he came to realize that his personality might not have made a difference in situations like that. When you have access to the wealth that Declan Coyne does, people tend to form assumptions whether they're fitting or not.
Eventually the scare of what he thought to be eighteen years of ignorance wore off as he realized that his stereotype had hidden his true personality, and, though that didn't change the image most people had of him – rich and stuck up – it did give him an odd sense of relief that, at least, they hadn't formed their opinions off of his true self – whom he was trying to transform into a more modest man nowadays.
But back to Clare Edwards – the girl who may or may not have formed her opinion on him based off of his true self. Recall that, at the time, it would have made no difference. Yes, she was an odd creature to him. She accepted her attraction to him among her peers, yet she seemed to deny it to herself alone. Perhaps, she found it easier to allow her friends to believe she had a crush on Declan simply because denial to them was useless – it was the struggle she seemed to be having with her own mind that proved confusing to Declan. Anyone who allowed it to become established news around school had to have it settled in their own mind.
Unless, of course, Clare cared little about the rumors that floated around school. At the time, that was a foreign concept to Declan – no one could simply ignore those type of things.
No one except the fascinating and somewhat mind-boggling girl he was soon to find Clare Edwards was.
Don't get him wrong; he wasn't the least bit attracted to the young girl, at least not in the way she was to him. She was pretty, sure, maybe even beautiful – but she would be someone else's beauty someday. A lucky guy, most definitely – but also a guy quite different from Declan. Arrogant as he was back then, even his high school self could see that Clare Edwards would make someone very happy – it just wasn't him.
He left before she found that guy, and, glancing over Eli now, he can see why Fiona spoke in past tense. He is not the kind of guy Clare Edwards would fall for; it must have been a short-lived relationship with little common ground and even some sort of bet or dare involved.
Still, he must admit he's surprised that Clare would take on such an . . . experimental relationship. He always saw her as the type of girl who would hold out for the perfect man before falling into a long-lasting if not everlasting relationship. It puzzles him that she dated a boy that was quite obviously not her soul mate – and he's sure Clare wouldn't be so naïve as to think that maybe Eli was just that.
"Has Clare dated a lot of guys?" Declan asks, turning to his sister who has either been oblivious to his long trains of thought or has simply decided to let him explore his mind for the time being.
He starts to believe it is the latter when Fiona perks her head up with a gentle, "Hmm?" as if she wasn't expecting him to speak again, despite the fact that they were practically in the middle of a conversation when his mind began to wander.
Either that or she, too, was trapped in her mind during these past minutes.
"Clare," he repeats, "Does she date a lot of guys?"
"Clare Edwards?" Fiona sighs, "Well, not really. Her relationship with Eli lasted quite a while, but now she's with" – Fiona turns to make sure Eli can't hear as if this name is painful for him, and, even though he seems to be fully engulfed in the book he's reading, she still lowers her voice – "Jake Martins."
"New?" Declan guesses, not recognizing the name, and Fiona nods, her chocolate curls bouncing on her shoulders.
"He's from some rural, woodsy area." Fiona's gaze directs to the corners of her eyes in thought, and she cringes just a bit, a distasteful expression flashing over her face for a moment. Declan sees a glimpse of the old Fiona, and he chuckles.
"Let me guess," he chortles, "A saw-bearing, plaid-wearing lumber jack?"
Fiona smiles but just shrugs. "He seems nice enough, and he's smart, pretty funny, too . . ." But she seems rather reluctant.
"Well, he sounds good for Clare," Declan murmurs.
Fiona's blue eyes grow strangely distant for a moment, almost sad. "Yeah, I think so, too," she sighs, and Declan can't understand why her voice is layered with tiredness and pity. Not until he witnesses his sister offer a quick concern and sympathy filled glance back at her dark friend in the corner. For some reason, the glance of compassion from his sister makes Declan reconsider his initial presumption concerning Eli Goldsworthy.
What has Clare Edwards been up to in this past year?
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Well, what can I say? Clare Edwards nowadays makes me feel frazzled. And, judging by tonight's episode, I have a feeling she will be making a startling revelation about who she's become very soon. But I, being the Declan-missing, Terra Nova-scorning person I am, decided to play around with this pairing.
I will say this once. There is no romance between them. So, if you're looking for a crackship, search elsewhere. I'm merely trying to tell the story of two people who have changed immensely in a year of separation that are reuniting to help each other find their path again.
I'm sorry for this ridiculously long note. Favorite it, alert it, or if you're feeling especially generous, maybe even review it :)