If Only

The first time I met Markus, he stopped at the house, without any money or any other kind of payment, and requested that I repair his automail. He a full mechanical limb coming from his left shoulder, and also from his right elbow. The machine was fascinating; when I asked him who designed it, he told me his father had. When I queried further, he clarified that his father was dead.

The first time I kissed Markus, we were in the field behind the house. There were a few sheep and a cow or two grazing around us. There was a hill in the distance where rosemary grew, and I was going to use it to cook supper that night. He stopped walking, caught my hand, pulled me back, put his arms around me and pressed his lips against mine.

I had never kissed anyone before him. I had thought about kissing someone, before, and I had wished I had, but Markus was the first one. He kissed me softly, and then we didn't move for a moment.

Then I said, "Come on," and we kept moving.

Markus and I were married on a bright, beautiful summer day. Everyone within a ten kilometer radius of the house came to the ceremony, as well as all of Markus's family, and his friends. It was a much larger wedding than I had ever planned.

I remember standing in front of the mirror, with three girls, friends of mine, who were dressed in simple green. My bridesmaids. I looked at myself, my reflection. The dress, white and plain, and the veil, hiding my face. The veil that Markus would lift to kiss me.

One of the bridesmaids placed a bouquet into my hands. I looked at the mirror again, and then away, and then back again. I thought I had seen another face at my shoulder, smiling at me, wishing me happiness.

But no. It was only a photograph, on the dresser behind me, reflected in the mirror. Edward was somewhere else, living a life of his own. Maybe he had already married someone else.

Next to that photograph, there was one of Markus and I, taken a year ago. The two men I loved.

I turned around and picked up the photo of Edward. Madelyn, one of my bridesmaids, looked over my shoulder.

"If only he were here," she said with a sigh, "to walk you down the aisle."

I looked at her, then back at the photograph. His smile, his silly, childish grin, wasn't that of a lover, or a husband. It was, I realized, that of a friend. A brother.

I would not have had to marry Edward. I would not have had to kissed him, or love him any more than a sister loves a brother. He was part of my family already. He had always been. I could not have married him.

As I stood behind the closed doors of the chapel, and as the music began, and I knew everyone was expecting me to walk through the doors and down the aisle, I was not sure if I could. I felt naked without my friend to hold my arm and lead me to my husband-to-be. I was afraid.

And yet, when the door opened, and I saw Markus standing there, his eyes on mine, smiling with love and devotion, something stirred inside me and I had the courage to lift one foot, and then the other, and glide gracefully into the arms of my true love.

And when Markus and I kissed, and the guests stood and applauded, I looked out among them, searching for the one face I knew was not there.

But, as my eyes reached the back of the hall, I could have sworn I saw someone standing there, looking more like a man than I had ever remembered, clapping along with all the others.

He smiled at me, with a shine in his eyes that seemed to say, You didn't need me, after all.

I blinked and he was gone.

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Trying to get over writer's block for Dead (and listening to "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" from Phantom of the Opera), and thus, "If Only" was born.

Tell me what you think, please.