The day she has been dreading has arrived with a brutal awakening.
The day where she can no longer shy away from the pain and numb her mind, and make it as although it almost never happened. There will be no hiding from it today, no way of cowering away from the truth that will be all anyone is talking about.
April 15th, 1913.
The memory hits her like a thousand knives stabbing her all over her body. The pain, the desperation. And the cold. The ever present cold that has replaced her heart since that day.
Everyday she wakes up next to a man she does not love. She hears herself addressed to as "Mrs. Calvert" but it always takes her a few seconds to respond. She puts a smile on her face and no one doubts its validity. And it's all for him.
Because it was the last thing she promised him, his dying wish for her. She had promised and she could not bear to disappoint him, even in death.
She has not allowed herself to cry since that day, because if she begins she's afraid she will never stop. She's afraid the tears, and the pain, and the cold will become her whole world. That she'll spiral into an even darker despair, and she may never come out.
But mostly, she has not cried, because if she cries then its real. And if its real, then he's never coming back. Somewhere inside her she's still waiting for him to save her again, like so many times before.
She needs him to save her from this nightmare, because no matter how many times she opens and closes her eyes it's not going away. He isn't waiting there for her to wake, smiling at her with his eyes shining like the stars.
Instead she is left with her memories, which seem to be slipping from her as each day passes, growing less sharp every minute. But the pain has grown stronger, ebbing more each day she spends without him.
She looks in the mirror and sees tired, lifeless eyes staring back at her. She thinks back to his words, "That fire that I love about you, Rose...that fire is gonna burn out." All the passion that had fueled her had died out. She was merely walking through the motions of life now, not truly living.
And when she thinks about his words, she can almost hear his voice. Could almost reach out and touch his warm face, only inches from hers.
And on this day, when she could almost hear his voice, almost grace her fingers across her skin, is when she breaks. The tears come barreling down her face, breaking the dam she had built over the last year. The cold takes over her body and her soul and she can't think about anything but the pain.
Because he told her to fight it, he told her not to let them take it away from her.
But he never told her what to do when the fire burnt out.
