dedicated to SUFan

How I Met Your Mother:

Aelita

There was once a time when I felt alone. The dark and scary world would surround me and I would have no one to make me feel secure. I never knew my parents, and I never knew if I had siblings. But I told Sister Sophia that if I did have siblings I would want a sister.

I had a playmate at the Orphanage named Ita. Ita was two years younger than me, but she was my best friend. We would tell each other secrets and hope that we would end up in the same family. We would have a mom who would always bake pies and a dad who would build a birdhouse with us every summer. And we would have a Golden Retriever named Lucy and a black cat named Romeo. And we would have a baby sister with pretty gold hair named Julia. And we would never grow up- never, ever, ever!

But it was one of those stormy Saturdays that surrounded me and never let go. A tall man in a black coat was leading Ita out of the door. I called her name and she looked back. She tried to smile, but the man was shouting things at her.

I never saw Ita again.

But that doesn't mean I forgot about her.

I grew too old to stay in the Orphanage. I had a choice to either go out into the real world or to go to college. I chose the latter, figuring that school would prevent me from growing up too fast.

But college wasn't just about books. It was about friends that blended in with the woodwork. It was about the music of our destiny, but we were still trying to tune our instruments. It was about taking risks and not caring about effects. It was about making mistakes and forgetting about the past. It was about living and not dying, because we all might as well die tomorrow.

I struggled with my learning, but I found a passion with technology. The way the wires and the signal interconnected with each other, it was so fascinating! It was my way of solving a puzzle and controlling a world.

I moved to Sceaux, which is about forty-five minutes from were I went to school in Paris, and I lived by myself in a run-down apartment. It was nothing like the life I had imagined for myself when I was playing with Ita in the Orphanage. It was nothing like my then-friend Michel was living in. He was a doctor who lived by himself in a gigantic estate on the Eastern shore.

I was fortunate in other ways, though. I had a stable job, especially with the computer industry booming. I lived in a beautiful suburb, even though my apartment was the equivalent of a moldy refrigerator box. I spent my free time walking on the nearby nature trail or exploring the hidden treasures of Sceaux.

It was here were I met the most wonderful treasure of all. It all started when I decided to help a local neighborhood watch group clean up an abandoned factory in the center of our city. I admit it was a rather big mission, so I decided to help out. It was my way of giving back to the community.

I was thirty-two at the time, and many of the people of the group were forty-year-old women and their lackadaisical husbands and their hyperactive children. I personally thought that children shouldn't be near machinery, but I wasn't their father, so I decided not to say anything.

"Ma'am?" piped up a strong voice from behind me. The "captain" of the watch group had just finished handing out our cleaning assignments. I turned around to see the voice.

"Don't you think the children shouldn't be near such heavy machinery?" That was exactly what I was thinking! I tried to see past the heavyset women behind me to see the voice that I could converse with later on.

The captain shrugged her shoulders. "That's a good point. Why don't you babysit them all in one of the rooms while we get our work done? This way we can get done faster," she said back to the voice.

"I'll help out!" I volunteered, not knowing what I did until I raised my hand. The group cleared out and I was left alone with a bunch of midgets who shrieked until my head was sore.

Behind me was the body of the voice. She had long pink hair, some of it in braids with sea-green beads at the tips, stunning green eyes, and a mischievous smile. She was tall and lanky, the type one would see at a beach and not babysitting at a neighborhood watch clean-up.

She came up to me and introduced herself as Faye and I as Franz. We brought the kids outside- after all, it was a wonderful May day- and they frolicked for hours under our watchful eyes.

I admit I was watching hers. I had never felt such a way before. She was beautiful, like an angel. She was kind, like a mother I would've wanted. She was caring, like Ita. She was youthful, like I wanted to be.

On one of our future dates, when I was visiting her at her apartment, Faye told me the story of Peter Pan. It was a man who was forever a thirteen-year-old boy because he thought it would be most fun to stay young. He flew back and forth from England to Neverland, a magical place that had pirates and pixies and lost boys and mermaids…

Faye loaned me the book and I handed it back to her after I finished it. She looked at me sadly and put the book back on her shelf.

"What's wrong, my dear?" I put my hand on her shoulder to reassure her.

"Do you know what happened on the last page?"
I shook my head. "I didn't want to know what happened to Wendy or John or Michael or Peter or any of them."

"What happened to you?"

I was shocked. It was the most profound question I had ever heard. "Nothing happened to me in the book. But in the story, I can't be young forever. I have to grow up."

She laughed at my solemnity. "No! You didn't even read the last page!"

I snatched the novel off the bookshelf and flipped it to the last page. There was a half-piece of paper with her scribbling.

And Faye and Franz got married and lived happily ever after.

I laughed with her, so hard my eyes were crying. Even though I had grown up, Faye made me feel like a kid again.

We did get married in a quiet ceremony with her friend Georges as the minister over the wedding. It was so magical, but lest I bore you with details, I'll spare you the misery of listening to every single word uttered that evening.

Later that year, I got a job with the government, and that's when I began working on my LYOKO program. I chose the factory where your mother and I met as my office, and I made much progress when I was alone.

It was seven years later when the day when I finally and successfully completed LYOKO was also when I received a call from within my office. "Yes?" I answered distractedly.

"Oh, Franz! We're having a baby!" It was Faye, crying ecstatically to the point of nearly yelling into the phone.

I came home right away, forgetting entirely about turning off the super-computer. That was a tragic mistake as you know yourself.

You were born a month early, but not unexpected. We named you "Aelita," the "Ae" meaning "air," and the "lita" after my first best friend and only one until your mother came along. It was a unique name, just like you are.

The delivery went smoothly, but your mother was not feeling well, even after weeks of recovery. When you were one month old, your mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

I worked double duty to try and pay for the treatments. When you were just three and a half years old, she stopped her treatments. She said that the treatments weren't natural, and she would rather the money be spent on your college education.

And when four days before you turned five, she vanished from our lives. And I buried under the tree where we got married years before. That night when we left her under the tree, it was said that more comets streaked across the sky than any other night since mankind had recorded it.

You're probably wondering what her last words were. She said them to you, but also to me so I could tell you them when you were old enough. Well, here they are again:

"Aelita, promise me that you will be strong and brave. Promise that you won't forget where you came from. And promise that you will never grow up… never, ever, ever."