There is a memory.
Not a strong one, but it's definitely there. It's so hard to think back to where it all began because of how sorrowful that time and place seems when looking back, but it's one of the valuable ones nonetheless. It is a memory to put on a shelf behind glass, to be tucked away safely and (in secluded, intimate moments) plucked up with deft hands once in a while to truly feel the weight of it.
Time had a weird way of rewriting truths, of making fools of us all. Each remembrance diluting the pool more and more until it becomes difficult to tell where reality ended and reworkings began. Memories were supposed to be reliable things, but as alliances had surely changed and lessons were fatefully learned, so too did the past morph. They were a shifting and strange fluid, beholden to no one but oneself and the current narrative.
Though, perhaps, they were beholden to no one at all?
How very like him, how apt it was. The only person who'd ever given her a moment of freedom (a choice) in all the turbulence. A ripe moment for her only, sweet and fleeting as a summer peach.
It could be a truly loathsome thing, how these recollections sometimes began to fester, turning bitter with heartbreak, or hateful with betrayal. A joyful memory could so easily fracture under enough weight, becoming a warning instead. Thousands of tiny shards scratching and tearing into the mind as easily as freshly-sharpened shears to old parchment; a testament to time's apathy.
However, even mournful moments in time could too be colored over. These were things that one was not experienced enough yet to fully grasp, or maybe (more precisely) one was not willing enough to let it sink in too deep yet.
One had to be willing, in order to be taught.
This memory is one of many to keep; a memory for no one else but her to know. He is kept there as safely as he had tried to keep her. It is her turn to protect.
Aging could make a person realize that they are their own unreliable narrator, if they're wise enough to let themselves be wrong. Truly, some lessons take a while to accept when one is young and full of wishful thinking. It can be quite easy to deny the poison in your drink when you can't taste it.
Most will indulge the young and naive because it was something time had taken away from them too. The truth was that putting a veil over the eyes of innocence was an act of selfishness. It was an envy over the thing they so sorely missed, something many believed they'd been viscerally denied.
He has a cruel sort of kindness, something very few have likely ever witnessed. It's perhaps all he knows, and in this memory (many memories), he is everything that no one else had ever been.
Being confronted by the terribly real world kills a great deal of fantasy, but there is still hope left if you squint your eyes. There's more now than ever, hope that was rightfully won.
Reflection isn't always about looking to the past after all, sometimes it's to keep an eye on what may come to fruition, or to better spot the good things that could quickly pass by. To learn how to spot those sweet things that have rough edges, like pages of a book roughly perused by calloused, greedy hands.
She hopes for new memories now. Not pretty ones; she wants real ones.
Loyalty and agency had come to her in the form of a tattered, snarling dog. Soon he'll be back to scratch at her doorstep again, and she's ready to remember more.