Hi y'all!

Just a little something to get me back in the saddle after a very long and unwanted hiatus. 'To Belong' is put on hold until I've edited the entire thang. I don't feel comfortable with it as is, but I still want to share my stories with you, so lo and behold here is the birth of another oneshot collection. (Ps. I'm still working on those requests, they are not forgotten and will be finished sometime this century.) Anyway, please enjoy!


Reunion

The cemetery is silent and forsaken, the land barren and overgrown with dead weeds. It's the dead of winter and the darkest of night. The path is lined by hedgerow of hawthorn, and ivy and overgrown trees form a natural canopy. His feet has trailed down this path before, more times than he can count. But this is the only time he's traversed this familiar, lonely place knowing who he is, knowing whom rest just beneath the stones that brought his frightened, ill-placed self such comfort during his darkest moments when even the desolate snow-scape of Antarctica refused to soothe his sorrow.

Light-footedly he steps over the constricting vines and trailing ivy blocking his path. As his bare feet takes him deeper into the cemetery he can't stop himself from casting a weary glance to the ever silent guardian above who has kept his life hidden from him for three hundred very long, very painful years, and he can't help but wonder, as so many times before, why.

An old ivy snakes around the long abandoned headstones, its grey-green deteriorating leaves moth-eaten and barely clinging to the eroding stones. It crumbles at his touch and he watches as the dusty remains is whisked away by the wintery breeze that follows him.

The silence that reigns supreme here among the dead, rings out like tolling bells, welcoming him back home, and he steps through the little derelict archway made of overgrown, untended vines, his soundless feet never falters as he crosses the threshold of the dead and enters a part of the cemetery that's as old and forgotten as him.

He gracefully weaves between the dilapidated tombstones, bare feet nimble and gentle. He is careful as he ghosts over the graves of his ancestors, of old friends and neighbors. He shows respect to his lost children and to those he never got to meet. His pale hand caresses each stone he passes and he decorates them in the most delicate of frost ferns; a greeting and a goodbye.

He stops in front of a row of weather-worn gravestones standing closely together. He crouches before them and very gently brushes away the collected dust and dirt, carefully he pulls away the clinging ivies and the dead weeds at their bases.

He hasn't been here since he reclaimed his memories from the empty void inside him, too ashamed of having forgotten them and too scared to face them, to face reality. Even if the only one he can remember vividly and vibrantly is his sister, even if his mother is actually more a smell than anything else and his father a sensation, he still misses them. Terribly. He remembers a floral scent that brings him comfort – the fragrance she must have liked. He remembers strong hands throwing him into the air and spinning him around when they caught him. He knows his father's laugh too, a deep, rich chuckle that used to warm him down to his toes and made him feel protected, safe.

They have waited for him, waited patiently for him to remember, for him to come home as Jackson Overland and not the lonely, scared and confused frost child that hadn't known it was his family that lay buried deep deep deep underneath his pale, bare feet, forever out of his reach.

His eyes prickle and burn, the feeling of warm tears is uncomfortable against his cold retinas. He blinks and hurries to wipe away a couple of stray tears before they can freeze on his cold skin.

A fond smile flickers briefly across his face as his eyes find his sister's stone a little ways away from his own. She's buried beside her husband, and by the looks of the barley legible engravings she lived a long, prosperous life.

His eyes seek out the gravestones of his parents, equally tall and equally wide. The hand that doesn't grip his beloved staff goes into the pocket of his sweater and slowly withdraws a bouquet of flowers carved of ice and decorated with a coating of shimmering frost crystals. It has taken hour upon endless hour to get the bouquet just right, to recall just the correct flowers his mother loved and smelled of. He is proud of the result. It's beautiful. His finest work of art.

He places the arrangement of ice flowers on his mother's stone and for a moment he allows himself to imagine what her smiling face would have looked like. Would she have the same dimples as him? The same lopsided smile? He can almost feel the gentle, loving touch of her warm hand caressing his cheek, cupping his face.

It's with great reluctance he forces his mind away from hazy, distant memories. His eyes glides over his family twice more, then finds another weathered stone. He faces the gravestone belonging to Jackson Overland at last. His headstone.

It's even more eroded than his family's, the epitaphs all but worn away by the many seasons passed. His fingers tremble as he traces the letters. He reads the words out loud and they leave his lips as a soft, shaken murmur.

"Jackson Overland, 1695-1712,

Our beloved brave son and brother,

A friend to all,

Once met, never forgotten."

His vision blurs again. This time he lets the tears fall, lets them roll gently down his pale cheeks, lets them freeze tracks that glisten silver in the scarce moonlight that makes its way through the thick canopy, and lets them tip from his quivering chin to fall silently to the frostbitten ground. His head is bowed, his shoulders hunched. He doesn't hide them. No one ever sees his tears.

He cries for what he's lost. He cries for what he's forgotten and what he remembers. He weeps for a mother's embrace he will never feel again, he wails for a laugh he will never again hear and he sobs for a sister's smile he will never again see.

And when the last tear falls and his voice is nothing but a gasping breath, he stands and wipes the clinging tears and ice from his face.

He gives the gravestones of his family a fragile smile as he reaches out a shaking hand and places it gently on his mother's stone. Frost swirls from his fingertips, blooming into delicate flowers. He does the same to his father's and his sister's, frost swirls dance elegantly across the weathered surfaces, creating intricate patterns and decorative designs.

As he works, he thinks.

He's always been drawn here, to this cluster of headstones, to this loving family, his family. His mind may have once been wiped clean, a blank slate for the world to mold and fashion, but even then, somewhere in the empty vault that should have held his memories, what little remained of Jackson Overland had always clung to this place, to this family.

He's spent many a night curled up or huddled against these gravestones, lost and alone and seeking comfort from strangers, one stone at first, then two, then three, then four and five. And he never understood why. Not until now.

It's the anniversary of his death. The anniversary of the day he saved his sister. A sacrifice he would do again and again without hesitation, without doubt. He saved his sister! Warmth fills his perpetual cold body and a small happy smile touches his lips and brightens his face.

For three hundred years he didn't know who he was or why he was here, stuck in some sort of painful, solitary limbo.

It was worth it, he thinks, as he lets his hand trail over the eroding, illegible letters of the little headstone belonging to his sister.

He didn't get to see her grow up, never walked her down the aisle, never gotten to know his nieces or nephews…

But he'd made it all possible. His sister lived because of him.

Looking behind him he sees his new family hovering at the tree line, guarding the entrance to the forgotten cemetery, waiting for him.

He's not alone anymore.

"Hi, mom, dad—" his voice catches, there's a lump in his throat and he swallows thickly before continuing, "Little miss." He tips his head the right, to his sister's headstone, a teasing, lopsided little smile dimples his cheek. "I have someone I'd like to introduce you to…"