Author : Brigitte
Summary: Lily's POV on Duncan's death
Category: AU
Word Count: 1730
AN: Hey guys! I hardly ever post n I am soooo new to this whole thing but I figured it's be nice to have somebody else's perspective!
I heart Reviews - Pretty Please! x
-----
As children we played together, swapping Barbies and Action men and secrets with a perpetual glee, all chocolate covered hands, and hearts still whole. As teenagers, we grew more dangerous, as secrets turned to lies, and relationships became more complicated – 2 young boys and girls fumbling wildly in cramped cinema seats desperate for attention, for ardour, for approval. Hearts fractured, but beating all the same.
And at 17, we wept together, a quarter missing as our whole world fell apart. Three hands gripped together for the last time, as the current of tears washed away the wreckage of our hearts.
My memories of those tortured days are faint. Shrouded in the dense fog of tragedy, little escaped a dreamless lethargic sleep - an eerie, painful silence where once words flowed eternally. The crisp scent of freshly turned soil, the distant inconsolable wailing of an anguished mother, the putrid taste of bitter bile – all snippets of the horror that return in dark to haunt my restless form.
Sometimes, if shadows and shade permit, I swear I can make out the bruises on my shaking hands – a legacy of the grieving grip of three lost souls, holding on for dear life to the twisted wreckage of an enchanted era. Knowing that soon they will leave for college. Move to different towns.
Later still, move apart in the same town.
And while the preacher chanted gravely about past and present, we wept for a future that could have been, had the gods looked so kindly upon us to grant it. We wept for our friend. We wept for our partner. We wept for our brother.
Soon college called and we fled to different coasts, running desperately from the pain that we associated with home, with each other. In the beginning, I dreaded the arrival of the mail each day, as letters arrived sporadically with news of new friends, new experiences, new beginnings. Feared the bitter reminder of all that was lost. With each new letter, I would write a similar response, full of false hope and empty sentiments, wishing I could only look beyond my pain to search the rubble of the past for some salvageable bond.
But soon the frequency slowed and stopped, the final ties to a lost era severed amidst the dangerous game of avoidance, fallen by the way side for the sake of fear. And so all contact was lost, until a year to the day later, on the anniversary of the day our hearts were shattered, when we all returned home to the very spot where all was spoiled. This time not gripping each other as he would have wanted, but instead three bouquets of expensive flowers.
There was a time when we all would have picked the same kind, some deeper connection at work to showcase our unity, but those days were long gone, and while I clenched the stem of my lilies with a strength I knew not of, She held her daisies and He his roses. As twilight bruised the sky around us, we traded gentle pleasantries. A comment here, a question there, but little else transpired. There was no deep reflection, no mention of the reason we were all there, no hint of the bond that once defined us. Just a silent promise that we would be back. To lap once more at the sharp pain of remembrance, a refreshing respite from the dull ache of the year gone by. A reminder that although it might not seem like it, we were indeed alive.
A blur of parties and classes, friends and lovers wove a cloak of passing time under which we hid, and yet each year we found the time, the courage, the need to return. To mark his passing once more with pretty flowers and empty words – Flowers which would wilt and fall to earth as dust; Words which would tumble and fall from mind as soon as we crossed the town border. Sweeping presences which would soon return, with degrees in hand, to built a future on the rocky shattered ground of the past.
In hindsight, it should have been a time for reconciliation, for rebuilding a bond which need not have been broken, had we not needed to flee so quickly from the pain. And yet somehow it was harder to face them both at the grocery store or the bank than it had ever been to stand beside them, on the spot where my dearly departed brother lay beneath us. A
year or two went by, as we grew further and further removed; As meaningless conversations about the weather, descended into brief hellos and then grimacing smiles which held no warmth. And then one by one we left, in pursuit of happiness, and success and freedom. Fleeing the ghosts of tragedy that haunted our hometown, we left behind the legends of our friendship, the pitiful glances of the locals who remembered, the curiosity of the children who didn't.
Fleeing who we used to be, and who we feared we'd become.
Each year, on the same day, with the same flowers we returned. Each year we stood in the same spot, talking softly about things for which we had no curiosity. Boyfriends, girlfriends, pastimes and professions. Some answers changed, some didn't, but the questions remained eternally standard passing from the same pursed lips into the same tense air – Trite sentences stabbing the airwaves like shards of glass. And then difference disturbed our annual gathering.
After 10 years of absolute consistency, something changed. They arrived together, hands gripped tightly as they approached the holy grail of our youth, the end of a road paved with hope, virtue and utter innocence. As realisation dawned, as their matching gold bands glistened in the twilight glow, my laboured breath struggled to escape the confines of my body, the prison of my mind. Perhaps I should have felt bitterness, or anger or anguish. Perhaps I should have felt betrayal.
In truth, I felt jealous.
The puppy love of youth had long since passed, my feelings for Him swallowed in the whirlwind of grief. I was not jealous because I resented their love, for a thin silver ring encircled my own finger. Rather, I resented their ability to cross the cavern my brothers passing created between us; To bridge pain and anguish and heartbreak, and make it to the other side whole. - without the scars I bore, the wounds which would never fully heal, the sores which would always define a little part of who I was. I envied their ability to stir the ashes of the past and ignite a fire worth burning in the present. Still, we passed the same niceties and went on our way. Heaven and earth may have shifted, the parts we played in our fleeting moments on the stage forever changed, but all else was constant.
Though their progress ignited in me some strange desire to dig at the past, clamouring for relics of love long lost, I had locked that part of my life in a forbidden crevice of my soul. I had hidden it away behind bolted doors. I had I had buried it with my brother. And as I went on my way, the tear that each year escaped beyond the impermeable, seemed to me far weightier – as I cried for a freedom I would never know.
Each year I watched them as they presented their united front, looking for changes in their decidedly normal lives; Observed the gentle swell of her stomach as the pitter patter of tiny feet echoed in the silence between us. Noticed as hairs greyed and furrows deepened. Watched and watched and watched, letting my eyes answer questions I could not bring myself to ask and wondering if they were as happy as I imagined them to be - If living with the past was as satisfying as ignoring it.
And then 3 quarters became a half, and the daisies bloomed no more on my brother's granite tomb.
Her passing was a blow I had not expected. Her presence had long since left my lesser little world, but still somewhere in my mind, she would forever remain my best friend – the best best friend in the whole wide world, as once our matching bracelets had proclaimed. A silly childish token, more true than we would ever have dared to imagine. The empty space where she once stood seemed to me more tangible than her presence ever was, the ache in my soul more real than the lifetime of avoidance I had endorsed.
Though my questions stood at the edge of my tongue, longing to leap boldly, there were no words to bridge a lifetime of silence - only He and I side by side, facing all that was wrong with the world. Though we had travelled different roads to the same place, there me met at a cross roads, both gone astray. Both lonely, and in pain, and full of regret. And so I did the only thing I could. I reached for His hand and gripped as tightly as I had half a century ago - when pain was new, and wounds were fresh, and hope was a presence that still loomed behind us, looking for some cracks through which to filter. Created new bruises, bandaged old wounds and built a path to bridge the deepest of losses – each other.
And so as the Earth turns it brings us back to the beginning - to lay once more beside each other free from the burden that life lies upon its subscribers. As rain falls and thunder roars aloud, we will be washed from the face of the Earth, forgotten in the eternal march forward, the endless journey into the unknown. Two eyes to the future and none to the past – the very triumph that eluded us in life, becoming the mantra of those that follow.
As a man and a woman far older than we dared admit, we clung for dear life; mismatched, jumbled pieces of ourselves, haphazardly glued back together. As two figures approaching death's door with a speed we would not speak of, we found some solace in the annual embrace we conceded to one another. And much later, as four pieces of a puzzle, we returned to each other - knowing that once again we were whole.