Work Text:
Alex,
Sorry I haven’t written in a while, or responded to your texts. I didn’t mean to ghost you, I’ve just been dealing with a lot these past couple weeks, and I feel like I owe it to you to explain, but I don’t know how to even begin.
There are stories that have been told over and over again, that will never die. There are stories that are told once, secret histories that might only ever live in the memory of a few people. But what happened last month… feels like a story nobody should tell. It’s been weeks and I’m still trying to explain myself to the people who need to know, and to the people who just think they need to know. Because what happened doesn’t feel like a story with heroes, and I’m worried that even the most well-meaning people will try to spin it into one. It’s not a story about a noble knight slaying an evil dragon. It’s a story where the dragon ate the knight and the knight’s friends had to stop the dragon from killing everyone.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m being dramatic. But even the people who tell me that I won, that I did good, that I’m the lucky one… every time I hear it, I just wish I wasn’t there.
I keep talking about my job without ever telling you what I do, and you’ve never pried much. To borrow your term, it’s one of those you-wouldn’t-believe-me-if-I-told-you deals. Like how you keep describing your job, and how you told me a couple years ago your family got a whole lot bigger, and you said it went fine and I could tell you were lying but I couldn’t tell about what but that’s besides the point. Well, here’s a story that isn’t the truth, but it’s close enough.
A dear friend of mine passed away a few days after I saw you. No warning sickness, no time to say goodbye, nothing. He was alive, and well, I just watched him die and then he was gone. And I thought I knew whose fault it was at first, but I was wrong, and a whole lot of other things went wrong before it was all over.
Here’s the lens through which to describe what happened. Let’s pretend that me, and this friend – P.B., let’s call him – and our coworkers June, and Molly, and Goldy, and Rod, we’re all spies. And we were working on an important investigative project we’d almost finished when P.B. died, and a leader in our division, Randy, took the opportunity to execute a power grab, and we… had to stop her from doing a major coup, basically. Or Goldy and Rod and I did. Because Randy framed Molly for P.B.’s death, so she wasn’t much help at first, and then she convinced June hers was the side to join.
I could not tell you how I survived those two weeks, because I’d never felt more alone in my life. It was like the sun was gone, and the crescent of the moon just smiled at all of my pain. I wish I could never look at the moon again.
But I did survive, and so did the rest of our friends.
If you really, truly want to know more, I’ll tell you the truth about it and about my life, which I promise is so much more wonderful than I’ve made it sound here. For now, this story is all I can tell you.
I’m really glad we got lunch back in April, it was nice to finally meet you. No clue when I’ll be back in Cleveland, but when I am, I hope to see you again. Let’s keep writing in the meantime – whatever you send will find its way to me, just like how this letter will to you.
Wishing you well,
Fern
P.S.: I hope you got to catch the solar eclipse. I did, and despite all that followed, I think I’m glad I did.