I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He remembers.
He remembers the way his mouth had lilted in a smirk.
He remembers how he’d said, ‘what took you so long?’
Had he actually confessed out loud that he’d wasted his youth chasing a love he’d never find or had he simply thought it? He’d wanted something worth remembering and fate had delivered but he cannot remember if he’d actually said the words out loud. He must have but he has no way of knowing for sure. He could ask but the thought of asking after the things he’d confessed is perhaps worse than the not knowing.
“I remember,” he answers, just as quiet.
He knows that she does not mean funny in the traditional sense. It’s nothing to laugh at. Because she had meant it then and he’d believed it, too. Peculiar, maybe. He had never believed in fate. He’d never had any reason to. But he’d allowed himself to think, in that moment, that she’d been made for him and him for her. Until the thought became bitter bile at the base of his throat and he’d been forced to come to terms with the fact that he had not been crafted for her and the best they could do was make due until their time ran out. Until she found the man who really had been made for her.
“I wonder who planned it,” he muses as they move quick and low. He knows he should continue, try to keep her from losing herself to whatever history she and this land share. “And if there is someone, I wonder if there’s any rhyme or reason to their designs.” It’s nonsense. He’s never thought about any of it for any real amount of time, but the most he can offer her is a tether so that she might weather the storm of her memories.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
