Title: Memories
Author: Elandae
Pairing: Craig Parker/???
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don’t know anyone in this fic, make no claims whatsoever of any nature. Don’t know them, wouldn’t be sitting here writing this if I did ;)
Author’s Notes: This is something that has been bumbling around in my brain for awhile, but wasn’t ready until now to come out until now.
For the first few days, he clung onto the anger. The righteousness was the only thing that got him through. To let go of the anger would mean to accept what had happened, and Craig couldn’t do that, couldn’t let things be real. Wouldn’t accept it, let him justify it. It wasn’t right. No matter how you looked at it, it just wasn’t right.
Just before he got into his truck, he had turned and faced Craig. Had said that he knew that Craig might not ever forgive him, but please…..don’t be sorry. His voice desperate, sincere, cracking on the last word, the warm familiarity of the voice suddenly foreign, freezing Craig, hardening something within. Please don’t be sorry for what we had, and with those words, he was gone. Pulling the door closed behind him, and driving off until a tiny speck on the horizon is all that remains. The distance somehow less then it had been when he was standing in front of Craig. But soon there wasn’t even a small spot, nothing to say that he had been here but a faint memory in Craig’s mind, like a picture of long ago, its edges yellowed and discolored. Reflecting another time, but fuzzy, remote. Something eternally out of reach.
Craig had gone back into the house then, eerily silent, empty without his belongings thrown about, only more memories of what had been there, what had once filled this space and now left it empty. His words echoed through Craig’s mind, played over and over on an endless reel. Don’t be sorry. Don’t be sorry.
The anger was still there, and pain. The pervading sense of not being enough, never having been enough for him. The betrayal hurt, it hurt then, and thinking of it now still left a dull ache in the center of his chest. Some day Craig would forgive him, he could never forget, but he would forgive him his mistake, his stupidity. But Craig wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t sorry for anything.
He would do it all over again, even with things ending the same way. He would go through the pain that overwhelmed him, the tears, the emptiness inside himself, he would go through it all over again, because he wasn’t sorry. The pain still lingered, had colored everything with its despair, but somehow the brightness shone through eventually. Soft little moments polished the tarnished memories, the warmth peering through the haze, slowly, but always there, until one day the faded images would no longer be fuzzy, but clear, their reflection bittersweet, but right, because he wasn’t sorry.
The End.