Hi all!
I hope you enjoy this new story:-) This was written for the Fete Des Mousquetaires Challenge for June - Regret. If you wish to know more about it, please look at the forum page.
Thanks goes to the amazing Celticgal1041 who proofed and critiqued this for me!
All mistakes are my own.
Happy Summer everyone!
xXx
"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been." - Kurt Vonnegut
xXx
There were many things in life that stick with you no matter the years; loyalty, love, hurt. Regret.
Regret was something that haunted even the most joyful and sanest of people. Like a specter of past actions and wrongdoings, just drifting in and out of your life, popping up when you least expect it. You can see the specter in everything, making you double guess everything around you and everything you do.
He was no exception to that rule. He'd never been one to dwell on the past or to see that specter in every action before, but now he did. That time when he was a child who wouldn't listen to his parents about climbing that huge tree, and he fell and broke his arm and leg, never haunted him. Or that time when he and his friends went and got drunk in another city so they wouldn't get caught.
There were others, worse things than those by far, but they didn't haunt him either. Whenever he thought back on those moments in quiet times, or when something would suddenly remind him of that time, the only thing he felt was a minute feel of past emotions and then it was gone, and he forgot about it once again.
But this regret he had now, was not like those other times. There was no brushing off or forgetting. Not just a glimpse. It was full-blown, all out haunting of his mind. What if he'd done this, or what if he'd done that. How would it have affected the end game; how would it have affected him? Would it have changed anything, or would everything be just as it is now?
He shook his head, before turning back to the paper lying on his desk. His vision blurred as his focus on the inked words drifted away and back to the past. He laid his pen down and scrubbed his hands over his face, the old callouses scraping the sensitive skin lightly. A sigh escaped unbidden from his lips.
How he wished he could go back, change something to make the outcome different. Maybe then this feeling of discontent would leave him be and allow him to live his life with no regrets. But alas...that was not to be, and he knew it.
He shook his head and forced the maudlin thoughts from his mind. He had things to look over and sign, and a speech to give in an hour. There was no time for hindsight.
Minister Treville went back to reading over the paper in front of him, signing where his signature was requested.
But, in the back of his mind, the specter of regret lurked with the face of his Captaincy with the Musketeers drifted in his subconscious, just waiting for the right moment to bring it back to the forefront of his thoughts.