Sorry for the slightly delayed and shorter chapter today, but I hope you like it.

We've almost come to the end of the story people! :( There is one letter left after this one though, can anyone guess who it might be for? :)


7: Claudia

My Claudia,

I don't know if there's any point in me writing this letter to you, after all, you don't exist. To some, you never existed, which makes the pain of losing you even more unbearable. But there are so many things I want to say to you but never will be able to, so I just had to write them down.

When I walked through the anomaly on that fateful day I assumed that everyone would be all right, everything would go to plan and that you'd be fine. I ignored all the warnings. And when I came back, you had disappeared, disappeared off the face of the Earth. No one even knew your name.

It's my fault, something went wrong and I changed history, but I don't know what and I don't know how to change it back. So I let another woman I loved slip through my fingers. Sometimes I even wonder if you were real, or just a figment of my imagination, as everyone else thinks.

But I swear I'm not mad. I remember you as clear as day, and if I think about it, I can still feel your lips on mine. You were real. But I tried to tell people and they refused to believe me, even when I'm so close to death I can't tell anyone the truth, so I write to you instead to say that I still believe in you, and that I don't care what anyone else thinks, because I love you.

Now I suddenly feel so close to my own death, I have started to think that maybe there's a chance that you're still out there, somewhere. Some say when people die they go somewhere else, does that apply for those who have never existed at all? Will you be there when I die? I hope so, because I so desperately want to see you again, even if it's just to say sorry.

I pretend that I don't think about such things though, I pretend that I've forgotten about you, so the people in the ARC continue with their lives, unaware that you ever existed. But once they did know you, and I still remember you. I think about you every night and I see you in my dreams.

You're not completely gone though, there's someone working at the ARC like you. Well, she is you, but she isn't. I thought at first that she was you, but she's very different. That doesn't mean I don't care for her, she's a great person. In fact sometimes I don't understand how I really feel about either of you, and it fills me with rage that I can't find happiness with a woman I truly love.

But perhaps, when I reach my end, it is with you that I will step into the unknown with, and perhaps for the first time I may find peace and happiness with the woman I love. But I suppose I'll just have to wait and see.

Forever yours,

Cutter.

The letter lay in Jenny's limp hand. She felt numb. Despite her letter, after reading this one she didn't know if Cutter ever loved her, he might have in the future, but now they would never know. What made things worse, was that he didn't just love another woman, he loved someone who was her...and yet wasn't. How was that possible?

But even Jenny had started to think that perhaps this Claudia Brown was real after all.

After what felt like hours of just staring at the letters, she managed to pull herself back onto her feet, and tried to think of what she should do with such letters from the heart.

In the end, Jenny chose a box, an antique one with carved patterns on the top and a gold-coloured clasp she'd had for years and once belonged to her grandmother. She kept it under her bed and it contained the things closest to her heart; her engagement ring, a locket her mother gave her, an old family photograph. She slipped Cutter's letter in the box as well, left to be forgotten, but they were still in her heart.

It wasn't easy forgetting about Cutter or the ARC. Jenny would often find herself sitting on her bed just staring at the letters, but over time she did so less and less. She thought it would be impossible to move on, yet somehow she did. She got another job, she got another boyfriend who soon became another fiancée, she built herself a new life.

However for the first time after reading the letter, Jenny felt like she knew Cutter, and even though she tried to lock the memories away in a box, some things are impossible to truly forget.