Evergreen
AN: the characters do not belong to me.
I am thinking about Harold as I await my future. We loved each other deeply, yet never in the same way that I loved Ethan. What I had with Ethan was a burning, smoldering love, destined to die out too soon because it was built on carelessness, too emotional to last. Yet when I saw him again, walking down our street in search of answers, I realized with a start that I still had feelings for him; deep, kindling feelings that would burn in me forever. It's not like I thought you'd mind because you still loved your fiancée. Although I never told you everything about Ethan, I knew you understood.
My mind goes back like a film on loop to the last day I saw you in the jail. I still can't bring myself to speak of what it was like to watch your execution. The strange combination of how we were slammed into the past by the vision Pilcher gad for the perfect town and the future into which we were thrust against our wills struck me as the shell casings fell onto the floor as Jason shot each of our friends. A highly irrational hope took flight in my heart as I thought that maybe he would stop before he came to you. Maybe Ethan would intervene, maybe someone else, I was not sure. Everything slowed to a crawl as you mouthed that you loved me. I wish I'd had time to tell you that I loved you too, but I think you knew. What we had was in a few ways more intimate than my affair with Ethan. We were pulling our conspiracy side by side, true partners in the heart.
I imagined myself joining you as soon as had on pointed his rifle at me. Meeting his eyes was an act of defiance. My final blow against the system that had overpowered us and stripped us of our lives. In the end, I wondered if you were free. Were you walking under the bluest sky you'd ever seen, wondering why I was not there to hold your hand and walk alongside you? Did you wonder why my former lover saved me if it meant more darkness, blood and terror? Why I had to wait in a lonely room asking, practically begging for him to kill me because I knew that someone would and I'd rather it be him? I knew I wasn't long for the world either way, no matter if I am devoured by an aberration or mowed down on Main Street by someone who hated us and our cause.
Sometimes I wish I was with you. I would like to think of you at peace in some version of Minnesota or Seattle. Your love was evergreen.