AN: Short, bittersweet and inspired by the lovely Adele's 'Someone Like You'. Everyone, please, go and listen to that song!
Mayfly
"You know, Granger, you amaze me sometimes."
"Why?"
"It amazes me that you love someone like me."
Has it already been five years?
How time has flown. Or maybe it hasn't flown as much as it has taken a swift and sudden snap to the present. Like Apparition. From there to here in breathtaking milliseconds.
Five years. Time has shown its progress in everybody's lives, and yet it still feels like nothing has changed for her. All around her, milestones are being achieved, footsteps advancing ever forwards, but her gaze is forever turned over her shoulder.
Five years. By now she should forget. Has to forget.
Cannot forget.
"If you could only keep one of your senses, which would you keep?"
"Common sense."
"Don't be silly! I meant between touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste."
"Touch."
"Why?"
"Because it'll hurt the most not being able to enjoy the feel of you in my arms."
Maybe he's forgotten.
How can he not? He is married now. Has a daughter too.
Today doesn't hold any significance for him, and it shouldn't for her either. Today is just an ordinary day. The first day of autumn; an old season relinquishing the reins to a new one. And that's what she should do, shouldn't she? Let go of the past to welcome the future. Like he did.
But why is it so hard?
Why is it so damn hard?
It's so easy to gain love, but why is it seemingly insurmountable to lose it? Or maybe it is simple, but a subconscious part of her is afraid? To forcibly cease loving someone is like yanking on a limb that has been severed off halfway. The pain…the pain…so excruciating you'd rather die than bear it. You'd rather have suffered the half-severed injury than a complete amputation.
"Let's make love right now."
"Granger, are you insane? It's bloody cold and we're in an alley—"
"I don't care. I don't care. I need to feel you. I need to feel you and prove to myself that this is not a dream."
How can memories that were once so vivid, so sharp in its clarity that it was like if it were reoccurring right before your eyes become so hazy in so short a time? Or maybe time hasn't been all that short? Who is the ultimate measurer of time to conclude what is short and what is long? In half a day, a mayfly has already lived half of its life, and yet, five years is like a passing breeze to a giant tortoise.
Maybe it had been a dream after all. Because despite how real it had felt having him moving inside her, his warm breath ghosting on her neck, the hard chilliness of the wall against her back, despite the awe and the elation that had filled her entire being that what they had actually existed, the memory has begun to blur.
And yet, she still hasn't forgotten him. His face, unchanged in her mind's eye, looms large and bright and clear and unforgettable.
She'd like to see him again.
"Will you ever forget me?"
"No."
"I don't think I will, either."
"How so?"
"Because, one day, I'll find someone like you."
The world is Fate's playground and humans are her toys.
She should have known that there will never be anyone like him.
Thoughts?