----------------------------

Date: 15 February 2001
Disclaimers: All characters belong to them as made them...

Warnings: A vignette. Maybe not even that. No real plot.

Author's notes: Evidently my ambitions to write the next great novel or two will need a little practice. g In the meantime... Ever wonder why it is that Chris is so affected by the deaths of his wife and son?



------------
To Forget
by Sonnevi
------------

No one else knew of his clear, practically photographic memory.

It wasn't something he'd ever had to share with anyone. People knew, maybe, that he was sharp, he noticed things, but it was easy, really. He only had to look up the previous picture in his head and compare with what was in front of him, a before and after image.

Simple. Nothing to it.

He *couldn't* forget.

If he knew how to paint or draw, he would be able to put exactly _that_ expression she had when she was mad, or _that_ endearing quirk of her lips when she was trying hard not to laugh...

Whenever his thoughts turned to *her*, if he closed his eye, she *was* there. He could *see* her, just as if she were standing there, large as life. He could see her just as she looked when they first met. He could see her as she was that morning, at that last exact moment he ever saw her alive. She was planning next week's dinner...

And his boy, that hardly bore thinking about, all the pictures in his head when he was a tiny infant that hardly weighed anything to the days they would play, and again to that last moment he had ever seen him... it just hurt, each of it, and all of it...

Before, and after.

The comparisons were vivid, and horrible.

The loss, the waste, both of them so young, and how it had happened...

He just couldn't block out the pictures. Seeing the barest scrap of her dress in the ashes, compared to when he could remember when he first saw her in it...

He didn't want to forget them, never! But if only the pain would go away... perhaps if their memory was a little more faded and not as immediate, as he understood happened with most people. Short of a knock to the head, drugs, dying, or some other miracle, he was stuck with it.

Maybe the loss of a few more brain cells would finally help. It couldn't hurt to try...

Chris poured himself another glass.

--Fin--
----------------------------