Fade To Grey

7

No matter who accompanies it, time continues its journey. It stretches on and on in the largest infinity ever created. For nothing escapes time and time eventually claims all.

Ashton didn't have enough time, or perhaps, Renee just had too much. Maybe time had made a mistake by leaving her alone. Maybe it would right itself by reuniting her with her love, wherever he may be. But until then, she had to try and continue alone.

The first step in Renee's new solo journey was to go back to work. She ended her leave of absence and was reunited with a new cubicle and some new coworkers, but largely faces she already knew.

She embraced the work, diving headfirst into her computer screen and an endless amount of emails, projects, and meetings that all fought for her attention. She took more pleasure in each passing task than the one before it because they occupied her mind and forced her to do something other than focus on the deep loneliness deep in her chest. Her little cubicle that was once a prison cell keeping her locked away from Ashton now served as a refuge from the longing and grief that his name now stirred. It was a bliss she sunk deep into.

Renee soon came to find she far preferred picking up some kind of takeout and eating quickly over going home and sitting across from her memories at a table. She tried to hide from him while awake by working, but Ashton still haunted her dreams.

Sometimes, they were as simple as her dreaming that he was laying there beside her, a strong warm body keeping her warm and safe, only to have him slip away like sand through her fingers when she woke up. Other times, it would be their happiest memories; their first dance at their wedding when Ashton wrapped his arms around her waist and she leaned her head into his shoulders as they swayed to the music; the way his smile spread like wildfire across his face when she told him she loved him; and the one that was the most bittersweet were when she'd relive the day edite they found out he was sick in vivid detail, the ignorant bliss that had them both feeling comfortable and excited for their future together. Oh how naive they were, thinking it would last forever. Thinking about it now made a bitter smile rest on Renee's face, because she missed it. She missed thinking it was going to all be okay.

She still dreamed in color, evidently what the eyes forgot the mind retained. So she could still dream the red paint of their room and the blue sky hovering above them. She just couldn't see them. And that too, made her bitter. Because it felt like she was so close. That he was right there along with their happiness.

And it was her bitterness that prevented any other real kind of hope from slipping through. She lost that, or perhaps, gave it up.

Whatever the reason, since she no longer believed it would get better, she soured any chance of it happening. Proverbially clipping away all the new growth to keep the stump dead, to try and make it rot away and disappear.

She killed green, stomping it down and out under her foot to make sure that she couldn't be happy. She'd just work and eat and dream and wake up to realize her happiness died with Ashton and that it wouldn't ever get better.

So one day she dreamed green. She dreamed about the trees stretching up to the heavens as they grew up higher and higher until they began to caress the sky. She dreamed of the soft green grass and the way it tickled her skin. Green was Ashton's unchecked grin as she walked toward him down the aisle, and it was the color that came bursting into her vision after saying I do. Green was the color of Renee's eyes that Ashton loved staring into. Green was his favorite color and the color of so much of the world around them.

And she woke up feeling almost excitement when she peeled open her eyes because she'd get to see the color that had meant so much to the both of them. But sometime in the night, green had left. It was gone. No matter how many times she blinked when she stared at the stem of the pressed daffodil she had kept from Ashton's funeral it was grey.

Green was gone, and Renee was even more numbed than before.

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- c8lin