A/N: This is the first in a series of three One-shots spanning the gap between Duty to the Dead and its sequel, From Failing Hands. I aim to show how Alex and Amethyst adjust to their new lives in Germany. If you haven't read Duty to the Dead, this probably won't make much sense, sorry. This is from Amethyst's POV.
DISLCAMER: Not mine, sorry. I couldn't really get away with all of this if I did own Alex, could I?
***
For those first few weeks, I thought I was dying. I couldn't comprehend how someone could live with this amount of pain and live. I forced myself to keep going for David, but every minute was like trying to force myself through a solid brick wall.
Everything I had known had been ripped away. I was, in a very real sense, grieving for the life I had lost. Nothing of it remained. My love, my friends, even my name had changed. My past was wiped away to be replaced with a strangers.
David was the only link. Such a beautiful link...
He has his father's hair and eyes, but all the other features echoed mine. He was the perfect blend of the two of us, tying us together inexplicably, inescapably. Or at least that was what I had thought. But he's dead. And I'm alone.
Even with Alex here, I still can't shift this weight from my shoulders. My lover was an international assassin. He killed people for money. He lied to me. To David!
And he abandoned me. I'm alone here with Alex. But only for a given definition of here.
How can I be here when I gave him my heart and he took it with him to the grave? How can I reclaim it when I don't know who he is anymore? I hate him so much. How could he do this to me? How could he?
I'm lost amid a labyrinth of lives. The lies that used to me my life. How am I supposed to find the truth when I am not even supposed to have lived this? It's the past, history. But not my history. How am I supposed to be these two people at once? How can I move on and regain myself in this new life, this second chance, when I can't even grieve for him? How can I grieve for someone I didn't know? He's tied me to him, and I can't escape.
There is only one thing I'm certain of right now: the only thing that would be worse than him being dead, would be him being alive.