Author's Note: This story is a dedication to a writer with a great talent who inspired my greatly and gave me inspiration in a time when I had none. She, RaidersEcho and Numbuh Phenon have opened up a whole new world of characters, stories, ideas and questions for me that gave me the inspiration and the drive again to write. tmcala, this story is for you.

And to my dear readers I say: Enjoy the story.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened

- T.S. Eliot

Perpetual Motion of Memories

Where are memories collected? Where do they stay? In which part of the brain? He assumed that he learned about that in Biology, but he can't really remember what they told him. Something about the brain being divided in different parts and that every part hold the information for one specific part in your body. He isn't sure if that is true though. Because the memory that he has is so strong, so powerful and yet so dangerous, that it will never be able to fit in just a small part of his brain.

Because he knows her. Not her, but her. Who she was before she became the her he sees today.

She knows him. Or at least he hopes she does. And even if she only remembers, he would already be happy. But as it is now, it is obvious that she has forgotten. He thinks that the only thing she knows of him now is his name.

He knows her name too, of course. Everybody who arrives for the first time at the Moonbase is immediately introduced to her. Or more to her voice. Her feet shoved in her boots stamping down the hallway as she runs after a rogue agent with her team running behind her. ("Out of my way!") And if you didn't do that, it could happen that 5 seconds later you would almost be thrown off the bridge.

Numbuh 86 or Francine 'Fanny' Fulbright. Nice to meet you too.

Don't worry, you will get to meet him also. Although, at another place and time, but still every cadet will come face to face with him. At your very first training day already. And before that, you will already have heared a lot about him. He is the boy that is feared by all the cadets, admired and loved by the girls, respected by the higher ups and known to every operative.

Because he is the trainer. He is the teacher. He is the Drill Sergeant of the Arctic Base, and you will listen to him, cadet. You are going to do everything he tells you to do, how painful, how scary or how impossible it may seem to make sure you become a worthy operative. And if he hears one of you little shivering weak-tots complain, than that cadet will lie faster in a Yeti's hole than he can say 'Special Rainbow Monkey Dress-up Party Playset.'

"Is that clear, cadet?"

Every child that meets him gets trained until they don't have the power to hold their Yipper cards anymore. He is the one that wakes them up from their peaceful dreams to leave their safe and warm beds and teddy bears behind to walk 20 miles in thick layers of snow with icicles in their hair while being chased by a Yeti. That is who he is and with every painful mussel that they get, his name is etched into their minds.

And then she comes and wipes it out of them.

That's what she does. Every year, every week, every day. Wiping minds. Erasing minds. Killing minds. Because it's her job. It's her job and she's good at it. Hell, she's the best at it. She's the best at wiping out every bit of information that they have in their heads. At wiping out all the hard work that he has done. Done for the cadets themselves, done for the organisation, done for her: everything gone and erased, the information never to be remembered again (because she isn't one that does half work).

And long ago, in a past so distant that nowadays it seems like a vague dream, these two met each other.

They met each other and suddenly, after that moment (that one life split moment that made their worlds collide), they decided that they wanted to know the other. So they did. They got to know the other, they learned things from each other and eventually everything lead down to the point that they decided that they liked each other.

But then they stopped. And hesitated. And tried to decide if they wanted to step into the black unknown or remain forever clueless of what it held. They stopped. They hesitated. They balanced in the moment of doubt.

Then one of them made the decision - and started to scream.

(A scream of anger? Of notice? Of fear?) He will never know the truth.

And that's how they went on. Screaming and glaring at each other in an endless motion. He screaming while training children to get every bit of his training in their minds, she screaming at children to get it out of it. And since there hadn't been a moment of hesitation again in years,

- He had never such a moment again after he first met her, them both being cadet. She was making fun of his beanie and laughing at his useless attempts to yell louder than her, but secretly glanced at him behind her ginger hair. He was teasing her when she tried time after time to become stronger than him, but he failed to impress her like the other girls when he tells her of the medial that his grandpa won in the army, which left him wondering if she was really a girl at all -

they just keep on yelling and screaming, fighting and screaming, doing their jobs till their very best until they are so far away that the whole memory of their life split moment as cadets seems to be wiped out too (erased, faded away, killed: all the verbs). She has fought with it and lost. He is still battling with it and refuses to lose.

Because he is not going to lose her.

Still, he has become the sergeant, she has become the commander, and what they once were is gone. He is gone for her, and Fanny is gone for everyone. No more glances, no more wondering, only glares and loud voices and him desperately holding on to a memory of a girl than appears to have been erased too.

He knows he will not get a second chance. Life is not like training. When you mess up your training, you can always start over again. Life is not like that. Yet, he can't help but do what every child does in these kind of endless situations.

He hopes for another moment of hesitation. Another chance. A chance that he will not throw away this time, but use for the thing he wants to do since the day he met her.

- He wants to tell her that her hair reminds him of the fires that he makes when he's out camping in the snow and where that little fire is the only thing that keeps him warm and that her eyes burn with the intensity of a thousand suns but that her smile is a million times warmer and that her glare gives him the shivers but not the one she wants and that he wants to hold her and tell her every second that she is beautiful because she really is and she shouldn't listen to anyone who tells her otherwise and he wants to promise her that he will remember her and that even with the decommising he is not going to forget her -

But a chance like that will never happen.

Because she won't let it happen. She won't accept another chance from a boy. Not anymore. All boys are the same, and since she knows what boys think of her, he must be just like all the others who are nothing more than a bunch of cowards and backstabbers, smiling and agreeing in her face and whispering and complaining behind her back.

He is just a boy, ("A STUPID BOY!") and every boy is the same for her. So he is not any different. Not anymore.

Although - he maybe will get a second chance after all.

One day it will happen. The dreadful and frightening day that he will thirteen, and that he, just like any other boy-operative, has to meet that red haired girl with her blazing eyes, sit down in the chair, look into her face knowing that it will be the last face he will recognize,

- Then there would be another moment of hesitation. Another moment where they both (he still prayed with all his heart both) would be starring in the black unknown, hanging in the moment of doubt, deciding if they wanted to jump or not, and this time, this time he damn would and take her with him before the screaming started -

before hearing the sound of the switch and everything disappears into a deep black hole inside his head.

Because she will pull that switch. It's the job that she has to do, and that contains: an operative that she has to wipe out. Another mind that she has to erase. Another memory that she has to kill. It will not be a moment of hesitation for her.

And that black unknown will turn out to be the black hole in his head, that would not only suck Numbuh 60 up, but also take the memory of her, Fanny Fulbright, to the depths of forgotten and vague childhood memories, never to be remembered again. And she will be the one to push them in it.

He will not scream when it happens. Not cry. Not confess. He will flash a smile at her and laugh.

Because Patton would like to see her try.