unforgotten

"It's not that I won't try being with someone else, it's just that it's never felt the same. It's never felt right. How can you settle for feeling half in love and half happy when you know there's more than that out there? I don't want to hurt someone by pretending to try, I've done that already... I already know how it ends."

&&lydia:

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𝐭𝐡𝐞  𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭  𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠  that  luca  expected  to  hear  was  someone  calling  out  his  name.  since  finding  himself  back  in  his  old  hometown,  he  was  doing  a  pretty  good  job  of  laying  low  and  keeping  to  himself.  though  upon  hearing  his  name  break  through  the  otherwise  quiet  of  the street,  luca  stopped  short.

he  truly  didn’t  know  what  to  expect  from  a  conversation  with  lydia,  but  the  words  she  spoke  to  him  definitely  weren’t  what  he  was  anticipating.  he  sat  with  them  for  a  few  moments,  unsure  of  how  to  reply.  it  wasn’t  a  good  feeling  to  have  people  finally  understand  where  he  was  coming  from  considering  the  circumstance  it  surrounded. there  was  no  ‘i  told  you  so’  moment  because  that  was  never  what  luca  was  trying  to  get  at.  instead  a  soft  sigh  fell  from  his  lips  and  his  shoulders  raised  in  a  half  shrug.  “i -  uhm …  yeah …  thanks  for  sayin’  that.  s’all  good …  i  get  it.”

.

There is a world, like August said, where the two of them are not perfect strangers. There is nothing perfect about her current life but she struggled under the weight of other people’s problems long before this. Now a physical injury contained her pain better than the small vessel which was her body ever had. “You get it?” she can’t help but repeat, the words floating in the air between them like an echo of another world entirely. How could he get it? The unwavering cruelty of the way they had all behaved, the way they had torn on each other and ripped words that meant nothing to shreds. Darkwood loved tradition. It was a shame tradition was turn on the person that said something different to the crowd. 

“I don’t. I just don’t,” she finally speaks again, the thoughts on her mind become one with the ones that left her lips. Lately she found herself understanding less and less about their apparently immortal world. It wasn’t like Lydia had ever outwardly said anything about Luca at all, she just hadn’t spoken up about everyone being entitled to their own opinion... their own faith and thoughts... “Everyone treated each other so badly and I can’t help but feel like in the end... nothing has really changed.”

Being back here had changed so much and there were only a few people she hadn’t seen much of, being thrown back in time had done a number on her head from the beginning but no more so than during the Holy Cannoli fire. A long time ago she had been dismayed with all the things Luca would say about how things were meant to be, that it all happened for a reason but now here she was knowing she would never dance again. All her dreams and things she had worked for were gone and she was bitter about it as hard as she tried not to be. She tried to find reasons to be happy, to make do with the cards she had been dealt and yet she came up empty and desperate time and time again. 

She saw him, the mop of hair recognisable, the face of a man who had been hated by most of Darkwood for saying all the wrong things. “Luca,” she calls, crutches on concrete as she tries to rush faster to catch up to him, two feet in boots barely hitting the ground. She winces as she comes to a stop, “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry this time. I’m sorry that everyone treated you like you were a bad person when they never really knew you at all. We should of been there for each other more. Things shouldn’t have been how they were.”

-

A shiver made its way up the length of Penny’s spine, pinching her nerves for a fleeting moment as she absorbed Lydia’s words and allowed their sentiment to settle in the pit of her stomach. To think that everything was so open ended made her feel untethered, as if she could drop into a free-fall at any given moment. “S’pose it doesn’t matter much if there’s nothing we can do to control the tide,” she suggested, though it sounded more like she was giving up than it did like she was accepting their fate; whatever it may be. 

She looked over at Lydia then, “ How can you be sure it did pick us? Who’s to say there isn’t a hundred and one towns all over the world, just like this one, going through exactly what we’re going through right now- or summat like it, anyway. For all we know, there could be people sat down having this exact conversation in Polish or Swahili right now- and we’d never know, would we?” again, the uncertainty left a bitter taste on the end of her tongue.

.

It feels wrong of her to want someone to give her the answer or say something that feels like it’s the right thing. All those years of stroking Penny’s hair, of dragging Dean to the bathroom, watching them all light themselves on fire because they couldn’t cope with the pain... they had broken her in some ways that she kept hidden. All their pain had became her own and she had tried so hard to make it go away but instead even now, so many fragments of it remained imbedded in her skin. She wanted Penny to feel that too, that all her hurt and pain was a part of them both. It should be. “We never really knew anything, did we?”

She thinks of all the people in Darkwood and the lives they had led, a dark haired individual that she had always vehemently disagreed with in the past, “I’m thinking about Luca right now, all that spiritual stuff about endings being peaceful and purposeful...” she thinks of how they hated hearing it, how even Lydia who convinced herself that there was some greater plan in life had been horrified at the prospect that death could be an unspoken ending, a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. “If everything happens how it should of then maybe this is how. it should of happened. That’s it. It’s you. It’s me. It’s all of us. Who lives, who dies... it’s what was always meant to be.”

-

Penny swallowed but the lump in her throat refused to shift. Maybe. It wasn’t an acceptance of her words but it wasn’t a complete denial either and anyway, it was better than Lydia telling her to fuck off, she supposed. She found her breath caught in her lungs again then, anxiety creeping up her throat as if it was wound tight in barbed wire. The price.  This was not something she’d considered before. Nothing in life was free, after all. That wasn’t another one of her grandmother’s sentiments but it was something she’d learned to be true along the way, more than once or twice before.

“I don’t know,” she spoke feebly and it was true. She didn’t know. She felt like she didn’t know anything anymore. Truth be told, she hadn’t sacrificed anything yet and all things considered, she’d probably benefited the most from everything, aside from Rachel Flynn, perhaps.  Was her payment overdue, in that case? “It could be a case of better the devil you know,” she suggested, though the thought made her stomach twist in knots. “I thought this was the best thing that could happen to any of us, for a time I did,” and to some extent, every time she saw her brother’s face, she still believed it, “-but maybe the cards are already on the table, they’re just being dealt in a different order now,” she considered, uncharacteristically philosophical for the blonde who usually left that sort of thinking to others. “Like there’s only so much good and so much bad, that doesn’t change, the only thing that changes is the way it all plays out,” she couldn’t help but steal another glance at Lydia’s legs then. It wasn’t fair but then again, nothing was, was it?

.

Lydia understood above everything that for some this was the best case scenario, the best thing that could of happened at all. Not many people got the chance to rise from the dead and have another chance at life. They didn’t often have the opportunity to change the fates of those they loved either. Lydia would have been the first person to step forwards to celebrate their new chances, the ultimate optimism of being the only one holding onto to the shreds of good left in the world. The truth was that now she was just drained, struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel because it dimmed more and more every day. 

“Or maybe it’s just unlimited,” she says with a raggedy breath, a thought about the truths that she knew for sure. There didn’t seem to be any restriction on how much pain or happiness you could feel; sometimes both at once. That was the experience she was having now every time her gaze was on George or Nina’s faces. “Maybe there’s no real guarantees. We’re just here and this is our life and one way or another, things happen however they want to. I just don’t understand how the universe decided on us. This doesn’t happen. This isn’t how life works.”

-

She silently thanked the deities for the sound of the kettle whistling aloud, piercing the silence and relieving the room of at least a fraction of the tension between the two girls that occupied it. She loved Lydia, she had always loved her. Envied her. Had curiosities about her that would never be sated but she had never given Lydia the time nor attention she deserved. No, Penny’s mind and heart had always been elsewhere, whether she was aware of it or not.

Now, they were sat alone with no more than a pot of tea to divide their attention. She inhaled sharply but deeply as the brunette spoke, digesting her words and thinking carefully before she offered a response. This was the first time Penny had actually considered the fact that while she had been given a second chance, a fresh start, others had had their success stripped away from them and whether or not they would ever get it back remained uncertain. She couldn’t imagine it, she hadn’t given it the time.

“Our grandmother always used to say that everything happens for a reason,” she suggested, finding it difficult to know where to start, “I don’t know if it’s true but I do like to think that it is,” she confessed, “I cant say I know what’s going to happen- honestly, I can’t even say I know what’s happening right now but God, I just hope there’s a reason for all this, I have to believe there is,” she spoke in a tone peppered with desperation. 

She found her eyeline drifting to Lydia’s leg then, whether it was subconscious or not. Time to be honest. She took another breath in and straightened her spine, “You’re so much more than dance, you know that?” she offered, though it pained her to admit because she couldn’t say the same of herself. Penny didn’t have the personality, the brains, the ambition, the anything else to leave a mark on the world without a pair of pointe shoes on but for Lydia, kind, generous, loyal, forgiving, dance was just a fraction of the rich tapestry that made her who she was.

.

Lydia’s Grandmother would probably say something very similar, the innate belief that all the bad things in the world must have happened for some greater reason. Not so long ago, before her life had been stripped back to bitter foundations once again, she had wholeheartedly agreed with this sentiment. Of course everything happened for a reason... it had to. If it didn’t then life was just never-ending chaos and there was nobody to blame or thank for any of the terrible or wonderful things that had happened. She listens to Penny and wonders if honestly, she had the chance to go back in time and alter the way things had gone, she would never have made the mistakes she did. Lydia is beginning to think that maybe people always do the same things, they don’t really want a different life.

It wasn’t Penny’s fault, it wasn’t Cyrelle’s fault, it wasn’t Dean’s fault. It was the universe, wasn’t it? All the things that could have been left in the dust thrown back into the air, her throat closing from all the poisonous spores that infected her lungs. 

“Maybe,” it was a simple word, no loading, no venom behind it. Anything was possible, wasn’t it? Even in her sadness, disappointment and complete dismay, she knew that the reason they were back here was probably because of Nina and George... the others too. Things were not meant to end the way they had before. It was the only explanation that could be fathomable. Despite that, Lydia thought about the jealousy she had felt towards those who had died before they could taste betrayal and wondered again if her life would not have been better had it come to a more sudden end before all this heartbreak. Was that a selfish thought or a selfless one? She wanted them to live and she also wanted to be spared from the pain she had suffered after they did so. “I’m just starting to wonder how high the toll we paid to get back to 2014 was and if we could really afford the passage.”

It felt like a lifetime or two since they had truly seen each other face to face, another life entirely spread out ahead of them that she would never be able to revisit. They were all littered with the same actions, Lydia’s arms a comfort, her voice a steady guiding light for a girl who was wrapped in her own chaos. Lydia had loved Penny as much as she had loved every sweet gentle thing in the world and had always been over zealous in seeing the best in her. In a way, she had been what she always thought Rachel was for Cyrelle; the person that always saw the best in you despite the way you hurt others, despite everything that you did to try and make it impossible to be close to you. Penny had been Lydia’s very best friend but Lydia quietly knew that she had never been hers. She stood in Fawna’s vacancy like a seasonal temp that could be released from their contract at any time. At least that’s how it always felt.

Spiralling... that was one way to explain how Lydia felt right now. She had held onto the edges of her reality and reason for her entire life to make it all make sense. Now she was living in a new reality that was rather unkind and her eyes were pinned open, forced to watch the carnage of what was to come. The tea pot in the sitting room whistled, “I don’t know what I’m meant to do with my life. Everything has changed, all the things that I knew and all the things that I loved are gone and now I have to go back to the beginning. I have to start all over in this world that we’ve been left with.”