Still stuck on post marionette land (damn sky and damn my principles of not buying on line!). As such this is good until post marionette although from what I have seen on line I sense I am still in cannon!
Not mine.
Every day could be the last. It sounds like a platitude; the kind of thing that other people say. Yet for her, having seen and felt all that the world(s) can offer it is real. Painstakingly real. Every day could be the end. Period. Full stop. She has seen it. Been there, in that moment one too many times. Knows that the odds are no longer on her side. Oscillates with the understanding that losing isn't just her failure but the snuffing out of everything she knows. Of everyone. The future hangs in her hands.
Increasingly for her the idea of 'An End' is almost cathartic. Implies a finale that could be satisfying; a warm, drifting, soothing ending. One of solitude. One that shouts out that she ended where she began. Alone...peaceful.. free of trouble...weightless. And yet she worries that this end for her means the same for everyone. That her escape might mean nothingness forever. For all.
She has never been the kind of girl who dreamed of forevers. No. Not the kind of girl (nay woman her inner voice proclaims) who believed in happily ever after. A practical sort who knew that the firestorm of kicks, of fists, of midnight visits, was all about surviving. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just making it until tomorrow. Yet here she is in that tomorrow and she feels curiously short changed. Detached. It all seems irrelevant. Like her surviving may not have been the prize it seemed. Might not have been the goal.
Despite it all, despite everything she knew; had seen, she Fell. So obvious. Too obvious. It wasn't fast. She didn't even fall hard. It happened slowly. It crept up on her. On him. Happened in the quiet moments. The down time. Started when he smirked at her; continued when he was there when she opened her eyes in a hospital bed. Happened when, without warning, he was the 'go to' number. Then before she'd realised it there was the certain knowledge that life without him wasn't really a life at all. So then she made her Grand Gesture...Here her self-loathing knows no bounds. Here, in the honest, silent moments after midnight, she acknowledges that as Grand Gestures go leaving your family, your life, home, is It. To leave your everything in favour of another universe has to be the ultimate statement. Says more really than hanging out banners and buying cakes. Says more than uncomfortable lingerie, than veined interest in anothers hobbies. More than rings on fingers (or in jewellery boxes). What kind of man turns that down? What kind of man turns down a woman who would do all that? For him?
No one would. No man. Not even the one she thought was hers. Sarcasm doesn't protect her from the truth. Cynicism doesn't work in a situation like this one. The rancour doesn't ease the pain. Despondency doesn't bring a damn thing. Doesn't help hide the the fact is she is as alone as she has ever been. She played her cards; took the gamble and it didn't work. Didn't pay out. The big bold gesture veiled everything. For her it was too little too late. For him it was everything. He had thought he had her. Thought he'd won the jackpot. She was his. For just a fraction of time.
She tortures herself now...imagines... remembers...dreams...She remembers with startlingly recall that night, in the Other Place. The night when she pushed forward. When her lips were on his. When she laid herself bare for him. Recalls how difficult it was to meet his eyes and confess. Confess what she had done wrong. Stuttering over trying to explain his relevance in her life. Feels again the echo of his mouth. Remembers the throbbing certainty that of the many things wrong in the scenario that this was right.
Reluctantly she acknowledges that the story doesn't end when her memory does. That she may have cracked open the door but it was another woman who stalked right in. And so she lets her mind wander. Allows the pain. The misery. Fills in the gaps of his words. Wonders how he felt to be with someone less broken. More aligned to him. In her apartment; in the silence uninterrupted by his calls, she is deafened by the reverberating echoes of this other woman. As ever he has been honest about the practicalities. She knows they were together. Knows they slept together. As ever he is slippery about the the parts that matter. Did he love her? Could he love her? How did he not know? Did he know and did it not matter?
She cannot cope with this idea the others have that this other woman - this woman who stole her life is an alternate her. Altliv – they have taken to calling her. A friendly, harmless name. One that sticks in her throat. The red headed beast was not friendly. Was not her. She was an assassin. A cold blooded killer sent to destroy everything. Sent to kill hope. Sent to kill the future. Sent to kill the world.
Even now the stain of the other woman is everywhere. She can see her, at first it was at the corner of her eye but now the image is now her almost constant companion. Thankfully unlike her memory of the 'not real Peter' she doesn't speak .At least not yet. But disconcertingly as the weeks, and then the months go by she appears to be becoming less translucent... more real. And as she solidifies, becomes less diaphanous, other things become clearer also. No longer is she simply a mirror image in 'have a go hero' clothes with a bad dye job. No, now she seems softer around the eyes, her hair and skin gleam like never before and her middle is thickening. As she observes this she feels the spike of jealously hit once more. She acknowledges that this is the toughest of times for humankind and yet the shimmering red headed vision forces her to reflect on herself. As she does so she feels this thing her friends from collage call a biological clock. And it is ticking. Loud. Unquaveringly.
The other Olivia is not there, yet there. Sitting on the other sofa, smug smile on her face, hand wrapped protectively around her belly. She had been usurped once more.