Pale Fragments

blame

"Do you blame Eve for not waking?" the Robot will say to Anders.

He strokes and twists his matted beard. He is angry, and he doesn't know it.

"No, no," he says. "I...

"I hate her. I do. I know it. I didn't love her. I never did. I felt like I had to be with her. I...I just...I didn't know how to say no when she asked me."

"Who was making you be with her?"

He pauses. He sniffs, agitated, scraping his lips roughly with his teeth.

"The Church," he said. "I was nineteen. What did I know to make the decisions I made? And all the things I believed...oh God, I was so...I wasn't certain, but I walked forward that way because, she...

"I..."

-

I said, "'Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?'" I tickled her side gently.

"Oh, no. Stop it. No, stop, haha, stop it. Silly Romeo. I love you. We'll be okay."

We'd just been "Sealed". They gave us two hours alone before the five hour meeting for the "Elect" just before we were given our instructions, the rituals carried out, expectations set in Heaven, and all were put to sleep.

...then she said, "We have eternity. Forever. There's no rush to say it all now. If you think of anything on the way there, you can tell me the moment you see me."

I slid my hand under her shirt. She moved it away, too quickly, but held on to it wistfully. We breathed together there, and it felt like forever.

 Then she said, "There's nothing to worry about. It's scary, I know, but we can always have faith."

"I know. But--"

"We can do this. We just need to have faith."

"I know."

"We're tied in Speed, right?"

"Right. Listen--"

"We'll have a rematch once we get there. Okay?"

"I know. But--Eve." 

She kissed me. "I love you. You're my best friend."

"I know. I love you. I'm so glad I know you."

"And you get to know me forever."

"I know."

"What's wrong?"

I was weeping then, without sound, harder than I knew I could. I wept as if there was a stallion deep within my chest who knew it was soon to be butchered, so it jumped over the fence which restricted its leaping passions and galloped through the grass and floated over the top of the previously untouchable sea. It knew how to be free, how to act naturally without perverting its impulse. It knew how to love, how to feel without trying to. I had forgotten that it lived there inside me. The water from its splashing hoof-beats leaked freely from my eyes as I squeezed her, hoping to hold on so as not to fall beneath the surface of the waves. I didn't know why. The tears seemed then to come from nowhere, or maybe from a place I didn't allow myself to see. We hugged more tightly than we ever had.

Over her shoulder I said- I could barely speak and my voice was deep and low- my soul calling up, exhausted- I said to her that she makes me feel Alive. Alive with an uppercase "A". And that I love her. She told me that it was okay. She held me. It was okay, it was okay! It was okay. We pulled apart and watched the eyes of one another. She cried too, but she was smiling in a way that didn't match her tears. Her face was too bright, too open; her eyes seemed to me trapped, dreadful, screaming, determined, angry, depthless but powerful- frighteningly beautiful. I've thought of the strong force of desperate- trueness I saw in those eyes a lot since I woke up. They stay closed now. She was free then too, I think. She was leading her own stallion someplace she truly believed was its home, though it struggled against her urgings.

She couldn't speak very well, but better than me, and she said we would meet again, when we got there. We just had to get there, then we could have joy, eternal joy, together, forever. And I didn't ask her to leave with me. I didn't even think about asking her then. Why did I forget? I only repeated obliviously to myself the sentiment of and then, and then, after we get there, and then we'll have joy...

The stallion inside me seemed to turn itself around and around, moving nowhere, surrounded by the emptiness in the middle of the sea as it became dizzy in its indecision. Seeing its lover run another way, it slipped into the waves.

-

"I don't know," he says, voice thick. "There have been moments over the last year where I felt certain I was better than her, than everyone else who hadn't woken up."

"You don't feel that way anymore," the Robot says.

"I don't think so..."

"Why is that?"

He doesn't know how to answer, or perhaps he doesn't want to reveal to himself the answer, yet; in any case, her question begins the next long bit of silence between them as they think, ponder, digest all the things they have thus far spoken about.