Live
"Jem?"
"Yes, Faith?"
"Will you do me a favor?"
"Alright."
"Will you protect me forever?"
"I sure will. As best I can."
"But always, right?"
"Of course, silly girl."
O&O&O&
She's not surprised she can't sleep. It is muggy, and she has a sneaky suspicion that more than one family member is having trouble sleeping. It is more than humidity, however, and she knows this. It is the tension easing off in the air.
She knows she wants to see the world. London, Paris, Zurich, Amsterdam, Berlin. The sunrise over Istanbul. Or its noon reflection on canals in Venice.
She wanted to be one of those girls who gets everything right, who knows so much that nothing can befuddle them.
But then she thinks, No, it's better knowing him. And better loving him.
O&O&O&
If the old housewives of Glen St. Mary could see into Jem Blythe's head, he felt they would be very scandalized by the amount of emotion. Common people don't like emotion, he thought. They want drama, but not happiness.
Happiness never is drama anyway, he knows.
He knows he loves her in every form possible. His heart has an Earthquake when she's around, his palms become exothermic, his blood runs through his veins, and his heart is beaten hard like rug.
He knows he should want her to love him exactly as he loves her, for 2 2 to equal 4, for this to be a perfect match, but he doesn't. He wants her to love him as she loves him, and no other way. It wouldn't be her then. And he wants her, not anything else.
He knows she hates expectations. He knows that she is something untamable.
But who said anything about taming her?
O&O&O&
"Can't you sleep?"
"No."
"Why can't you?"
"Because I can't."
"That has already been established."
"I know."
Silence.
"Why are you going?"
"To save-"
"I know you feel that way, but all go for that reason. What's your reason?"
"It's not what is my reason, but who is my reason."
"Now, what under the sun do you mean by that, Jem Blythe?"
"Who. You can't have reasons without people behind them."
"Is that so?"
"I am afraid it is, my dear."
"Well, who, then?"
"You can't guess?"
"Oh, don't play guessing games with me, Jem Blythe."
"I can't very well, if I want to, Faith Meredith."
"Jem?"
A softer tone.
"What, Faith?"
"Who is it?"
"You really don't know?"
"No, I don't."
"It's you, silly little girl. You and Mother and Father and Walter and Nan and Di and Shirley and Rilla, but mostly you."
"And why is that?"
Barely a whisper.
"Because you laugh at me."
"What?"
"Just joking. Because you listen to me."
"And when have I done that?"
"Tonight, you listened to that story."
"I…er-it was an interesting story…"
""I'm sure."
A wink.
He looked straight into her eyes.
"I'm coming back to you, Faith."
"I know."
She took a rose from the bush.
"Here." She handed it to him.
"But, it's incomplete. It doesn't have anything of you in it."
Emboldened by some other power of which Faith knew not, she kissed the petals.
"There. Now it has something of mine."
"Well now, Miss Meredith, that's not fair. You kiss it, but you've never kissed me."
"That, Mr. Blythe, can be arranged."
She heard him give a small gasp.
She walked over closer to him, and brought his lips to hers.
"There," she said, their eyes very close together.
"Faith…I…"
"Shhh," she put her hand over his lips, "Just be quiet."
With that, she nestled into his arms.
They stayed there for a long time, until the sun went down and the world was blotted out.
O&O&O&
(Extract from letter to Lieutenant James Matthew Blythe to Miss Faith Meredith)
Dear darling Faith,
You know you come onto my mind too often. Even as I get my orders, I think "What would Faith say of this?", "Would she tell me I shouldn't risk it?"
I have to let you, and you alone know: I am going to be somewhere very dangerous for a while on a special mission. I will not tell Mother or Father, they have enough worry on their hands. I am risking much by even telling you this. If they censured our letters, I would be in much trouble for telling you it.
Please try to keep on knowing this. I am only telling you this because I know you will be strong, and because I want you to know something incase something happens to me.
I love you.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
That is all I can write without feeling overly emotional, and breaking down to tears that I can't tell you instead of write you it. Please, please, my dear darling girl, carry on. Please live on, love on, and know that if I am not there, I will be thinking of you always where I am.
Please, Faith, live. I want you to live, so I know that what I do, what we do, isn't it vain.
I feel put on the rack everyday, every hour, here. I do not know how to adjust to the confusion, the disorder, the noise, all the death. If it were not for your letters, that even smell of home, I would weep at the engulfing reality of this world around me.
I am not a man of words; you'd have to look to Walter for that. But I love you with all my heart, and I want you to be strong, to live, even if only for my sake.
Goodbye for now, my beauty (you know you are one, despite your freckles).
Yours,
Jem
O&O&O&
Wounded and missing.
Funny how two words can sting more than an arrow.
She wants to run away, and never stop, never think, never realize those words' implications. She wants the phone operator to have never placed the call to Ingleside, or to her in London. She wants the world to turn back to their enchanted night in Rainbow Valley.
The well of life is dried up.
She is on that rack now-the rack of uncertainty.
The rack of possible death, and not knowing if or when, or even what.
The rack he had been on.
O&O&O&
He told her to live.
Live. Life. Live.
What was left of it, without him? Where was it in this deathland? This world of corruption, of hate, of killing, and endless, senseless, death. The flowerland world of before this war is gone; the flowers have died with the frost of blood in trenches.
Yet, he told her to live.
The birds still chirp, and she wonders how they can.
How can they still live, still survive, and she can't?
O&O&O&
Relief flashes like a lamp: He's here, he's here, he's here…
She takes out his last letter and thinks, Jem, I have lived for you. I lived through it, just for you.
When he steps quietly into her house, when she hears Una's scream of surprise, and Rosemary's gasp, she hopes Carl is finally home. She dashes down, only to find an infinitely dearer red haired man instead of a blue eyed one.
She hears the story of Little Dog Monday, and knows that Monday was not the only faithful watcher of this vigil.
And suddenly, in the midst of it all, live is no longer so hard.
O&O&O&
Dénouements are relative.
Endings can't always be linear. They can't always sum up every subplot, like a well ordered book. Those that say happy endings are unrealistic are also those who are unhappy.
She knows that every time she gets angry, or every time she curses the children for bringing in mud, or every time she as low as a minnow in the bottom of the pond, that life could have been much crueler.
She knows now that living will always be hard. Even with him there.
But, life is more worth living now that he is.
O&O&O&
Ok, just be dolls, review, and make me happy for slaving away on this fic to the wee sma's.
Have a wonderfully glorious day!!
marzoog