Title: Shades of Gray
Author: Elandae
Rating: PG
Summary: When gray is all that’s left….
Archive: Working Blue, my site:
Feedback: always appreciated!
Author’s Notes: There really is not set pairing here. It can be whoever you imagine it to be.
Dedication: This one is for Cat and Daea. *mwah* because they rock.
When he left it was as if he took all the color with him. A slow, steady bleeding of the vibrant hues, all draining away into mindless shades of gray. I remembered him leaving, that would always be crystal clear in my mind, his footsteps echoing loudly in the silence of the house we had once called ours and in my mind, fading away until all that was left of him was the echo. And then silence. An unending silence, the only other contributor to my gray world.
I don’t remember when I slid to the floor, my legs simply unable to hold me any longer, any more than I remembered getting back up. The days blurred, time moving too slow, too fast, but mostly, not at all. It was funny, I would come to, every once in a while, find myself somewhere I had no desire to be, doing something I had no memory of beginning. I went through my life, running on automatic, unable to stop, yet somehow not moving. It was like those dreams when you are falling, always falling, the inexorable push of air hard against your body, a desperate scramble for that familiar firmness beneath your feet, anything to hold onto, but there was never anything there. My hands scrambled through the air searching, clinging, still feeling his shirt beneath the calloused skin of my fingers, but never could I find anything substantial to anchor me. And never did I land, but somehow the fall continued, on and on, a breathless, dizzying fall that never ceased in my mind.
I’d wake up in the night, sweating, my heart pounding, reaching over to the other side of the bed that had long since gone cold. And the thing I remember most from that time, the only thing I clearly remember, was the confusion. Why had he left me here alone, why had he abandoned me, forsaken me? The torment of these questions for which I would never find answers kept me awake, staring at the gray shades of the room around me. Then the gray was okay, nothing had color in the darkness of the night, I did not fear the nights. It was the day, blazingly bright, that left me exposed and bare, unable to conceal the shreds of my life lying tattered at my feet. It was the day that mocked me, that teasingly reminded me of moments, of the color that I had once known, but now, somehow I could not remember. It had been taken from me, but now I did not want it back, I did not long for anything but him, simply him.
The thought of him in my arms again, his warmth beneath my fingertips, the smell of him surrounding me, that thought consumed me, devoured me. And I welcomed it. I yearned for it to destroy me. To take me away the way it had taken him from me, to allow me to disappear like mist dissipating in the heat of the morning, but it never did. It tore through me, leaving me hollow, empty, inconsolable, but never did it do me the courtesy of destruction. Always after I would be left, ravaged, but somehow, for some reason I could not understand, did not wish to understand, I was always left standing there, whole. More alone than ever, but intact in a way I no longer wished to be. I did not want to be whole without him. The only thing that hurt me more than knowing I could never have him again, was the thought that I could go on after him. That I could continue on, could learn how to see the colors again. I now wished only for the gray.
The End.