A/N: This is a birthday present to the most amazing author LSgrimm91. After being a lurker for almost six years, and being a beta to her for more than two, (and after her permission, I wrote it for her after all) I decided that if I didn't publish now, I would never get over that debilitating fear. Please read and review, any feedback is greatly appreciated!
~The Room~
I had existed even before they mentioned me.
She put her hero-worship into me. Nobody needed to know how many times she had looked at his photograph.
He put his memories of P3X-595 into me. No need to constantly remember what her body looks like without the baggy BDUs.
The feelings from the Touched virus, jealousy of Kynthia, apprehension when Hathor took over.
The inappropriate thoughts evoked by the Shavadi dress, the need to comfort her after Jonas was killed, the thought of her dying with Cassandra.
I was getting pretty full, and that doesn't even cover the first six months!
It took them three whole years to admit to the feelings. To admit to me. The door was cracking open and I was ecstatic. Finally all the pressure from the secrets would be relieved. I thought I could finally go back to being myself, filled with air and whispers rather than heavy secrets.
But how wrong was I.
After the brief respite they had to say those horrible words, "None of this has to leave this room." With that statement, they shut me - and their feelings - up completely. The pressure was becoming unbearable. For years it continued. The secrets and desires, unresolved as they were, pushed at the seams. They clawed their way around my inside, and slipped out of the cracks at the most inopportune moments (Maybourne and the Prometheus incidents, just to name a few).
Then, after the imagined kiss with the hallucination, she decided to stop fighting for what she thought was unattainable. The feelings were still there - trust me, they continued - but now they were tinged with a dreary acceptance that belied her reach for the impossible every day.
He was not far behind. Seeing her acceptance, rather than the monotony it gave her spirit, created a rift within him. He gave up, tried to find solace in someone else.
And all I could do was keep their thoughts and feelings safe, and watch their relationship fall apart.
The sad thing about life is that the bad and good always come intertwined. What starts as the most horrible event turns into the chance of a lifetime. And that's what happened to them.
She started opening her side of the door, having second thoughts after seeing "their" house (it's not really theirs if only one of them had put the down payment, is it?) and tried talking to him.
But his girlfriend showed up. That was probably the worst case of Murphy's Law to happen to a relationship.
Dad. After the blending, she never thought that she'd outlive him. Seeing him laying on the bed, vulnerable, scared her. It showed her that no matter how much we think we know about our life, everything can change in an instant. And when he hugged her around the shoulder, and she took his hand, the walls started to come down.
"Always," he said, conveying the complete openness and honesty with his eyes. Without saying more than fifteen words, they broke the impasse they had been at for more than a year.
Finally, I could let it all out. Open my doors to the emotions and the thoughts that have plagued me for so long.
Although I was left with a feeling of loss - I'd kept everything for so long I had forgotten how it felt to be burdenless - it was empowering to know that I helped those two amazing people become who they are.