Work Text:
Step one: Forget everything.
Feel the tears dry off your cheeks
as the universe tears itself asunder.
Feel the feeling of his lips against yours fade.
In that brief moment, your final moment together,
pray that you would remember it all one day.
Step two: Wake up like you would
any other day. Ignore the nagging feeling
in the back of your mind that you're
forgetting something important.
Step three: Life goes on as it has for
thirteen years now.
You are a not normal, but you are human.
This phrase both comforts and terrifies you.
Don't think about which is more concerning.
Step four: Wake up with tears in your eyes and
pleas that die in your throat before you can utter them.
Taste the tears on your lips and know that they aren't all your's.
Tell your parents you don't know what you were dreaming about.
You aren't lying.
Step five: Wake up like that a few more times.
Remember more each time you jolt awake
at two, three, four in the morning.
He is angry and afraid and you can't blame him.
Don't remember his name, but know the minute that
you remember him,
you're fucked.
Step six: Remember his name.
Recognize him everywhere you look.
Love him with all of your heart.
Step seven: Search endlessly. Search obsessively.
Refuse to believe This will take long.
Step eight: Give up after three long years
of nightmares and endless, fruitless searches
and teasing and humans in general.
Stop talking. Dread going to sleep
And when you finally sleep,
Dread waking up.
Step nine: Almost wish that you could
Go back
Step ten: Learn the ways of humans.
You’re stuck here, so you figure
you should probably get used to it.
Find solace in lines of code.
Understand some things
will never change.
Step eleven: Drop everything without
a second thought the minute you find him.
Rehearse what your first words to him
will be over and over until the
English language is foreign to you.
in the end, the best way you can say it
is the simplest:
“I missed you”
Step eleven: Try not to take it personally
when he doesn't remember you.
Step twelve: Take it personally anyway.
But still don’t give up. Work your way
Into his life like he has done to you all over again
over the last thirteen years.
Be there for him like no one ever was
for you. Drop everything once again
the minute you know he needs you.
Step thirteen: Hold onto him for dear life
when he clings to you.
He is the embodiment of the remains of
your past lives, of everything you had lost
when you were kids that you were so scared
of forgetting. Kiss him as if any wrong move,
just too much force, could shatter reality as you
have to come to know it. When he pulls away,
Take a minute to internally rejoice when you realize
you can see him this time. As kids, that kiss meant
The end of everything, but this.
This is only the beginning.
Step fourteen: Whisper his name like a prayer.
You don’t believe in a god, but the forces that
brought you here definitely deserve some credit.
Continue to love him to the ends of this universe
and the last.
He doesn't understand it all sometimes and that’s okay.
It’s not perfect but that’s what makes it everything you
wished it would be.