Work Text:
This was the part they always hated. As the ones they loved and liked aged, as they did not, as the discrepancies grew too wide to conceal, they had to begin to withdraw from those lives.
Make them forget - about them, about the fact that they even existed - never mind that they had loved and lived and known each other so deeply.
And yet not deeply enough.
Never deeply enough.
They longed to find one that they felt that they did not, would not, have to hide from.
That they could reveal all of who they were and are to.
That they didn’t have to say good-bye to, while breath still filled their lover’s]bodies.
That they didn’t have to steal all the memories of what they’d been to each other.
That they could dare to stay with until the last breath.
But… that was not how the world worked.
It was not what it was.
The way the world worked involved them being able to stay only so long.
Going into their relationships knowing that.
Never having the courage to say it out loud.
Choosing instead the coward’s way of slowly backing out of the lives they gone into, taking the memories with them, curled around like some kind of sacred blanket.
It made for safety, of a sort. Safety for them and for the ones they loved.
But oh! what a cost for that safety.
As they prepared to say good-bye once more, as they prepared to wrap the memories of another life, another love, around them as they stole off into the night, they sent up a fervent prayer that this would be the last time they would ever have to do this.
That they would have the luck to find someone they didn’t have to hide from.
That they would have the courage to dare to take the chance of allowing themselves to be known, completely and fully.
That they could survive another day after another day until that time came.
When memories did not have to fade, but could remain, bright and shining, for a lifetime.