Title: A Hope and A Future
Pairing: Shane | Oliver
Summary: Shane finds a Hope and a Future.
Author's Note: I own nothing.
Words: 870
Shane gives up on hope shortly after the Christmas of her 10th year. She doesn't realize until much later that it's also the same time she gives up on her future, a future with friends, a future with family and a future with love.
Becky says she has a thing for unavailable guys, first Steve, then Oliver. "Go out and find yourself an available Oliver," Becky tells her. But unavailable guys are dependable in that they can't be relied on, and surely that's safer for her heart. Not to mention that Oliver is one of a kind.
When Shane finds out that Oliver not only waited for his wife to return from Paris but for his mother to return, she thinks she understands Oliver a little bit more. But what takes Shane longer to understand is that she too waited. Her father leaves her, and she waits for the sound of his car to return. Steve constantly leaves her, and she waits for the ring of his call on her cellphone to sound. Unlike Oliver though, Shane loses patience, faith, and hope that her father or Steve will ever return. Oliver is perhaps too patient, too faithful, and too hopeful and waits for his mother and Holly to return for too long, forfeiting his life and his future while he waits.
Somewhere between her father and Steve, Shane learns to be fiercely independent and while there's nothing wrong with being independent, she learns to stop relying on anyone other than herself, she learns to never ask for help and she learns to cry in the dark and smile in the light.
Shane loves her mother, she loves her sister, but she doesn't depend on either for anything, not for a laugh during a sad moment, not for a hug when she needs comfort, not to keep her company when she's alone, not even to just fill the silence that's her daily life.
She doesn't lie to Oliver when she says she didn't do a lot of stomping when she worked in DC. She doesn't lie to Oliver when she says that her only friend in DC is Becky because Shane is great at making small talk with everyone but isn't great at making lasting friendships with anyone.
She doesn't lie to Oliver when she says she's never had a friend like him because prior to Denver, prior to Rita and Norman and him, Shane has work friends she grabs lunch with once or twice a week, Shane has casual friends she brunches with a couple of times a year, but Shane doesn't have good friends who speak deep truths to each other. Shane hasn't had a best friend since high school, maybe longer.
Sometime around that 10th year of her life, she stops trusting that there is a God, she stops trusting that love lasts and she stops trusting that family will always be there. It takes Oliver to turn all of this around for her. She doesn't even realize she's changing. Little by little she believes that for everything there is a season, that God granted her the family she always wanted and that the love she has to give lasts forever, even if it takes her longer to believe that the love she receives will last forever as well.
She knows she's in love with Oliver when he goes missing on that hike and she can't imagine how she'll carry on without him. She knows he cares for her then, but she doesn't yet have enough faith and hope to believe he loves her. But for now, she has enough love for the both of them, so she'll be like Oliver, she'll be patient, have faith and hope that one day he'll love her in return.
She leaves for an undisclosed location and she misses him every day. She almost writes "love" in her letters to Oliver but she's afraid it's too much, too soon and will scare him away. But what if she doesn't survive this assignment and she never gets a chance to say it? Didn't Oliver once say that "the saddest words are those left unspoken?" So she writes one letter that he doesn't know about until the day they get married. It's not a long letter but it's dated during that period when she's out of the country. The envelope is a little battered from carrying it around for so long. There's a stamp because she has every intention of "mailing" it to him, but she's thought that love doesn't last and that family doesn't stay for so long, she's afraid of giving it to him until that day when she knows his heart is truly hers. She opens the envelope with the letter opener she stole from him that time she almost quit. He's confused because surely now, standing on the alter, waiting to recite their vows, isn't the time to open a dead letter.
Then she reads:
My dearest Oliver,
Today I love you completely, as I did yesterday and will tomorrow. I hope I never have to experience a future without you, and I hope that one day I have the courage to mail this letter to you.
Love always,
Shane