Title: Forgotten

Rated: PG

Warning: Angst. Lots of angst from Aya's P.O.V.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Especially not the Weiss boys.. try and dream as I may..

Special Thanks: To my Beta reader Nix (pinkwhirlwind on FF ) and to Sky Rat. Because she inspired me to write something (anything) for the fandom. I haven't had the inspiration to write in a long time and reading her work just gave me a little extra spark. Crappy and short as said spark may be, here it is. Enjoy? Lol

I know I shouldn't be here. I know I should have stopped coming before I even began, but every day my feet bring me to this place where I linger long enough to catch a glimpse of something just out of my reach. The past always filters back, tricking down over the present - smothering it with these images that won't rid themselves from my mind.

I am pretending to be working, flowers clutched in one hand as I pause near the cafe where you always stop to get your morning coffee. You don't notice me. You never do and my heart clenches a little at the thought, the breath in my lungs becoming tight and painful even after I've exhaled.

This is your fault. This has always been your fault and you can't even be bothered to take the blame for it. You sit there obliviously drinking your coffee, reading a book without a care in the world. Your face is relaxed, your eyes are easy, careless fingers tripping over the pages and my world rocks with the memories of those same fingers tracing my spine. Ghosting over the edges of my barriers, teasing me with the hint of a caress that was always too short in lasting and never enough to satisfy.

I swear to the dying roses in my hands that I will never come here again. Even if I've sworn it before to several other pieces of wilting bouquets, I mean it this time. The contractions of my heart are making it difficult to get through the rest of the day, the slight sting at the corners of my eyes makes me feel week and I have never hated that feeling more than now. I should have known you'd bring me heartache some day, that's just so typically you.

You can hold something preciously fragile in your hands and for a moment, for an instant, it seems as if it is the most important thing in the world to you. And after that fleeting moment has passed and the gossamer veil has lifted, what remains crumbles in your hands and falls to the wayside where they lay forgotten in the shifting tides of your past. My past. Our past.

You turn another page and your eyes stare so intensely at the print like you're trying to reach for something that is eluding your mental grasp. I've seen that look so many times, that slightly lost expression tinted with a gentle sadness I've never wanted to see.

The playback in my head keeps staggering over the images of your hands, golden in complexion and laced with faint scars, callused and worked - working over my skin, through my hair. The feeling was comforting. Your hand in mine, matching rough spots from duties that leave unusual scars all over each of us, you'd squeeze it gently when no one was looking and that look would come back.

Why are you always haunting me like this? I can't wake up in the morning without seeing you there beside me, my imagined perfection sleeping soundly until I try to touch you and you vanish. Driving down the road I see you everywhere, your car on the corner, your face on every passerby -I don't want this anymore. I've watched you so long, memorized so much of your face and the details keep replaying, skipping and repeating like a broken record. Isn't this enough? Haven't I suffered enough?

One by one, the roses fall to the ground. The sound of your voice echoes in my ears, the lazy laughter and drifting lullaby of your sleeping breath. This is a hopeless dream. Again you turn another page, a sip of coffee and slight lick of your lips. Lips that I have memorize, impressions burned into my body just under the skin. Invisible engravings staining a nearly spotless surface.. I can still feel them there. On my hand, my neck, my chest.. my lips.

Was it really so easy for you to just walk away? So easy to just walk in and out of my life? These memories are gradually killing me, no matter how I try to repress them... how I try to forget them just like you did, oh lucky you. They're scar tissue now, treacherously daunting wounds with a permanent mark that will never heal properly and the phantom memories of them will keep me far from ever falling down the same path again. Trigger shy to any kind of emotion for whatever times remains in this life.

I turn away because this is it, this is the last time I will come here. I won't be hiding in the shadows just to see you anymore, and I'm sure the reverse will be true. After all, how can you find someone who you can't even remember? How can you trace a person whose name incessantly eludes you? Especially when you cannot even recall your own name?

I can almost feel you shifting in your chair, glancing up to look through the hue of your emerald green eyes at the back of my head. Perhaps the familiar shade of red hair will trigger something but then again... maybe not. It doesn't matter because I only came today to strengthen my resolve and release you from my life, from this drawn out affinity I dare not call by name. It took me months to make up my mind and even now I only do it because I recognized that if you had a choice, you wouldn't come back, would you? Not to Weiss, not to us, not to me. If you could pick between blissful ignorance and this... your choice certainly wouldn't be this and I know it. I know it because given the opportunity, I would do the same.

So this is good bye to my careless lover and even though I can hear the door to the cafe swinging on its rusted hinges and the barely audible static of your voice as you try to think on how you know me.. I don't turn around. I pretend I don't know that your fraught reach through the fog of your amnesia goes unnoticed because it's better this way.

You and your burden free life are better this way, no matter how the hollowing of heart screams otherwise. You deserve to be free and who am I to stop that?

The remains of love has a bittersweet afterglow.

La Fin

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I know I know.. I'm a terrible person for writing such short ficlets.