Work Text:
Working on Christmas Eve was alright when one couldn't remember who they were. When they'd had to take tiny pieces of evidence and try to patch them up into a story, and a short story at that. Indeed not a history or a past.
She could do extraordinary things, though, somehow. Like waking up in a dense forest at the foot of a mountain range, clothes torn into rags, cuts and bruises everywhere, not knowing her damn name … and then just thinking about how nice it would be to wear a pair of worn and loved jeans … and then voila, there they were.
She didn't know much, but she knew that wasn't normal.
She was slow to close the shop she'd been working in, taking her time to clean up, in no hurry to return to her small flat upstairs. There was no family, no friends up there. She had no idea if she even had any.
The first people she'd run into in this place couldn't understand her; they spoke in Romanian, and she in Sokovian. They'd directed her to a small business run by her countrymen. They'd moved to the tiny town, perhaps better described as a village, after .
After what?
She'd gotten confused stares after she'd asked.
She then discovered there was no need for someone to tell her what they were thinking. Why were they looking at her that way? As if she'd just grown two heads.
All she needed to do was look past their brow and somehow into their mind, though she wasn't searching with her eyes. Or listening with her ears.
Of course, the battle of Sokovia. I'm sorry, there are so many global disasters these days; they all begin to run together.
Too true, too true, they'd nodded.
It was a strange world she was living in. She didn't know who she was, but she did know that life wasn't always like this. There was a time before … when people didn't walk around in an existential panic at all times. People used to plan … There were 5 and 10-year career goals and 30-year mortgages, bookings a year in advance for trips people worked for. They didn't wonder if the city they desperately wanted to visit would be blown off the map or if the family they wanted to go with would disappear into thin air. They used to trust that things would just be there.
The world was different now. Even she knew that, and she didn't even know her real name.
People now spent Christmas Eve, and every holiday, as if it were their last. As if everything could fade away without warning.
She wondered how someone with no memories should go about that when the jingle bells on the shop doorknob rang.
~~~~
The first person she ever recognized was a long-legged chimney sweep. It was a week before Christmas. She'd flipped through channels on her little television set and landed on an older film, Mary Poppins.
She learned two things that day. One was that she understood English, and the other was that she knew Bert, the chimney sweep.
But she didn't know him ... couldn't. He was an actor in a movie that was nearly 60 years old.
So why did she feel so connected? Why did it feel like seeing a ghost?
She had a strange urge to sit at a computer and search google, as people called it. She must have spent a lot of time this way at some point. Looking things up. But she had no internet connection, phone, or computer … she was very much off the grid in her little Romanian village.
It made her wonder if, at one point, she was very much on the grid … though she didn't know or remember enough to miss it.
Later she dreamed of dancing with him, Bert, the chimney sweep. He was in a suit, though, and they were in a pristine gray living room instead of color-saturated Edwardian London.
As he dipped her, features exaggerated by an actor's expressions changed into aristocratic and elegant angles, a man so beautiful it took her breath away. There was a space in her chest suddenly so vast and warm, and it made her want to wrap her arms around him tight, clinging to him, so he could never—
She woke up with a gasp, hand at her heart, wondering what this feeling was that poured into her from nowhere. The warmth and fullness made her realize how empty and cold that space had been.
The dream triggered a rushing river like a ghost pushed a thumb to her chest and turned on her heart. Her memories were like phantom limbs; she could feel them but couldn't see them or know them.
Throughout the week, she'd have phantom memories unceremoniously whirl around her. They would jump inside, possessing her like a spirit of the past. The emotions could bring her to her knees, but she couldn't hold onto the images, the context.
There was Christmas with her shadow, some happy, some miserable. They'd spent several missing someone, grieving someone. They'd had Christmas with plenty and Christmas with nothing, but they always had each other.
She'd look to her right and expect to see her shadow, but there was nothing. No one. A space in her chest would be carved out with darkness, but instead of the numbness she'd experienced since waking up, it was a crippling sadness and grief that had her unable to breathe, but she had no idea why.
It was discovered that moving seemed to help, going through motions. Things would inevitably change. Hours later, as she made coffee for co-workers, a sense of joy and belonging flooded her like light. As she handed them hot mugs, she could sense distant laughter, many together in a vast and modern space, taking time off to enjoy each other. She had been among people who loved to laugh even when there wasn't much to laugh about.
But who were they? Where were they? Just when she thought she could grasp at an image, a flash of shiny red hair, a wing against the blue sky, a golden fabric flowing in the wind, following its own laws of physics … the memory would escape her fingertips.
There were days of it, these faceless phantom memories plaguing her, following her down the street. The nod of a handsome passerby brought a feeling of surprise, thoughts of a teacher, a friend, someone showing her how to throw a punch, a gloved hand. But who's?
Postcards tacked on a board in the shop, pictures of European tourist sites not addressed to her, would conjure the taste of espresso in Rome, pastry in Paris, smiles in her direction as she ate, someone enjoying watching her try new things. It had been so simple once. Joy.
And then intense and overwhelming grief could knock her upside the head as she ate with her new Sokovian acquaintances, tasting the food they apparently grew up with. A taste conjured the smack of betrayal. A point of no return, as if her whole fate had once changed over a pot of paprikash.
And there was a feeling that she'd become an expert in hiding these emotional extremes when a flash of memory would surface in the company of others. She silently suggested they never saw such a thing; it was like it had never happened.
If she had google, she would have probably searched WebMD about it … how am I making people forget I'm probably crazy?
Is it normal now for people to be able to make their bed with their minds?
Has a recent world disaster rendered a portion of the population telekinetic?
In these moments, she missed having access to … something. As if all the knowledge in the world was once at her fingertips.
It was as if she'd only known extremes in her life. Feelings of lack and then overwhelming plenty. She'd once felt so secure and then, in a blink, wracked with fear. So surrounded by love and then alone in despair and nothingness. There'd been victories that made her feel invincible, proud, suitable, and capable … and then losses that knocked the wind out of her. She had crawled on the ground, unable to breathe, regrets so strong that she felt they were the only memories she could catch for a split second.
A spray of bullets, a wayward and uncontrollable cloud of destruction, the feeling of being pulled down deep into the ocean, blind seething wrath powerful enough to mow through an Earth's mightiest collective, kneeling in the grass and sunlight, feeling herself fade away and thinking … thank god. I won't have to be alive without him.
But there was never an actual image, a picture, or even something she could call a memory of him. Only a feeling. Blessed but complicated. An anchor but also a destructor. Love but also hurt. Curiosity but irritation, as if she'd once wanted to know so much more about him but then also wished she'd known less. She had so many feelings that she wondered how they could be about one person. But a golden warmth was attached to them, a signature, something so unique it couldn't possibly belong to more than one.
And she knew that he'd been as colorful as Edwardian London in Mary Poppins and not the shades of gray in the new living room of her dream, dancing with a ghost, beautiful but colorless.
~~~
The jingle bells rang just as she hung her apron up. She walked into the front to tell whoever had come in that they were closed.
"We are closed! I'm so sorry, but—"
She stopped in her tracks and blinked at a tall man dressed impeccably, aristocratic and elegant. She'd never seen him before.
"Wanda."
He said the name as if he'd said it a million times, with the way it so easily rolled off his tongue. His eyes were blue like the winter sky, pale and piercing.
She didn't recognize the man, but she realized a feeling. Meeting someone after months apart. Anticipation and pure joy when you finally see them at a train station.
She tilted her head, trying so hard to remember. She'd love to remember such a handsome man.
"You know me?"
"I have memories of you."
Oh.
Something about the way he said it sounded unattached. She had no clue as to why that hurt so much. She frowned in confusion and rubbed her chest like someone with heartburn.
Heartbreak.
He took a breath and held it for a moment before speaking. A gesture that evoked such warmth. Like she'd seen him do it a million times. It was as comfortable as a t-shirt you washed over and over. "You don't remember me, do you?"
She knew the feeling. The same warmth from the golden glow would flow over her like sunshine, washing out the darkness, the grief.
She shook her head. "No, but I … feel you."
He looked shocked for a split second as his features twitched in remembrance, and his face softened. It was all so subtle that only a person who knew him could pick up on it.
"Perhaps we can help one another then," he said, a strange inflection in his voice, as if he was acting human instead of being human, something barely perceptible. A practiced friendliness.
"How?"
"I have the memories; you have the feelings."
She wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but what the hell.
She'd been worried about someone recognizing her and things going bad. There was an instinct inside her to remain unidentified. She wanted to know who she was, but that didn't mean she wanted other people to know. Still, somehow she knew she was safe with him, as tensions she'd known since waking began to relax inside her. A feeling of security unwinding the labyrinth of her defenses.
"Alright." She thought of her recent holiday phantoms. "Have we spent Christmas together before?"
"I have spent all of my Christmases with you."
"All of them?"
"All of them."
"Should we stay here? Or go somewhere else?"
The corner of his mouth moved into barely a smile. It seemed to surprise him ... like he was shocked by having emotions, even one as benign as amusement.
"Stay," he said.
"Okay," she said without hesitation. "We'll stay."
~~~