hiraeth

George felt a need to curl into himself to forget it all. What more was there for him when cheating death wasn’t a part of the plan. What if somehow his death sentence became somebody else’s if he tried? There was no way he could live life knowing all he did was take away somebody else’s life. He wondered why they had all been sent back in time but even though he understood it could mean something he wouldn’t risk it.

“Fawna,” he whispered, eyes watering. It’d be a lie if he said he’d thought of everything she’d said. Of course he hadn’t thought about how everyone else had felt going on in a world were he was no more. He’d been stuck on what would happen to him that he had forgotten about everything else. But would that change things? No, they couldn’t. They wouldn’t. Breathing was getting harder and harder with the passing of time, the pressure of tomorrow swallowing him whole. “I love you. I love you, but what can be done?”

“If it happened there was a reason to it. A cause.” Georgie said, shrugging. “An the fact that they are unsure as to why it happened is even worst. Because out there someone or something is preparing to happen. I am just collateral damage of a tragedy." 

Looking down at her hands grasping his he couldn’t help all the tears that began pouring out. "I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to die.”

“You have to get it, though. There isn’t more for me out there? I died for a reason. I had to have died for a reason.” And maybe that was the truth the hurt the most to swallow. That his death could be the catalyst to something bigger that he couldn’t understand, and would never find out. Because if his death was for nothing. No, he wouldn’t be able to stomach such a reality.

...

“You can work with me,” she insisted, “you can work with me and we can fix this.” She didn’t know if that was true. Just because Fawna desperately wanted it to be the truth didn’t mean that it was, but she couldn’t wrap her mind around any reason for George to die. Everyone’s lives changed when he died, but why would that matter? They all remembered it. His death was enough to shock her into the realization that she needed to be someone else, someone better, but that’s who she was now. His survival wouldn’t change that. And if it did, well, she’d rather be the girl she was seven years ago with him than the woman she was now without.

Hearing him say he didn’t want to die was enough. She knew that already, but hearing the words come out of his mouth --- she would do whatever it took. The last thing Fawna wanted was for him to cry, to hurt. She released his hands to scoot closer, wrap her arms around his shoulders. “Then you won’t.” It was spoken like a promise. It was a promise she didn’t know if she could keep, but surely, surely with all of them looking for a way to change it, surely with George being in on the truth now, surely they could find a better outcome.

“There was no reason for you to die.” She tightened her embrace, shaking her head. As life went on she tried to believe everything happened for a reason, she tried to believe the past couldn’t be altered because it was the only way to go forward, but she couldn’t. She’d had seven years to find a reason for the loss of him and Nina, and there wasn’t one. “It was an accident. Or it was a deranged person. Either way, there is more out there for you. There’s me. I’m out there, and I need you.”

“No,” he gasped pulling away. Touch felt too real. Too close. A part of him wanted to seperate himself from everything that had survived.

How could he taint those he loved with the death that seemed to plague him with every breath he took. There was something so surreal in the way the town continued to move around him, lived even with the knowledge of what could happen. People knew. People had lived through a series of events that weren’t a part of him or could of ever been shared with him. His loved ones would go on with their life without him in it one day, and that seemed strange. So, when he pulled away from her he hoped she didn’t take it as anything else but him trying to save her from himself. A part of him would always hold onto some sort of emotion for the way his people had acted around him. Wishing that they could of told him from the start instead of acting weird around him, and then choosing to act as normal as they could.

Or maybe he wished they hadn’t told him at all. George wished he could continue living in a world were he knew not of what was to come. Would of rather ended his life without knowing there was no other way of changing it. “But i am,” he whispered. “I will die. How can you think otherwise?” He grasped onto his own shirt, trying to hold himself steady offering some sort of comfort to himself. “Don’t you see, Fawna? It is coming for me and there is nothing we can do. Nothing we can say to change it.”

...

Fawna flineched when he pulled away, prepared herself for him to ask her to leave --- was he angry that she hadn’t been the one to tell him? He had every right to be, if the roles were reversed she couldn’t imagine how blindsided and probably betrayed she would feel. She had never kept any of it from him with ill intentions. She just didn’t know how to bring it up. She didn’t want to be the one to hurt him. “No. Stop it.” Her expression hardened, voice changing from a soft, fragile tone to something more stern. “No, you’re not. We wouldn’t be here if we couldn’t change it, we wouldn’t remember.” She had to believe that. If she didn’t believe that, if she allowed herself to imagine their group of friends had taken a slingshot to the past simply to rewatch their loved ones die... what would be the point of it all?

“I can’t do it again, George,” Fawna repeated herself, “I will lay down and die in front of you if that’s what it takes, because I can’t. I can’t renovate my whole life and not have you be a part of it. I can’t come to a gravestone to introduce my fiance to my best friend. I can’t stand in front empty chairs at my wedding searching the crowd for your face, knowing good and damn well you’re not going to be there.” She wasn’t trying to make this about her, she wasn’t trying to be the same self absorbed, selfish young girl he had known his whole life, but he had to understand. He had to understand that it wasn’t just him that needed a different outcome, the people who loved him did too. “I can’t land my dream job and have no one to tell about it, no one to come to New York to laugh at silly broadway plays with. Do you know how much I’ve missed you?” Her voice cracked near the end of her sentence, hands reaching out on their own. She couldn’t stop them from grabbing his hands in hers. “You have no idea. I had to keep living without you, George. It didn’t stop for me. I had to keep going. I had to wake up nearly every night screaming, watching you burn away to ashes in front of me, and hope I’d have the same dream when I managed to sleep again just so I could see your face.”

Squeezing his hands, she let her tears fall freely now. There was no use in trying to stop them. She only hoped he didn’t pull away from her grip again. She didn’t have an excuse to hold on for too long before, now he knew what caused the sudden clinginess. “When everyone else left me, I still had you. You were never supposed to leave me, and I will not let you again.”

There was only one place she could think to start; where change had happened. If a fire had spread that didn’t before, she still clung to the thought that everything was going to turn out differently. And if they caught who burned that building down, wasn’t it possible it would be the same arsonist, therefore stopping them in their tracks? It had taken awhile to find Ash, as she knew very little about her. She was mainly walking through town keeping her eyes peeled in hopes she’d be around. So the moment she spotted her, she made a beeline for the other girl; if she let her get away, there was a chance she wouldn’t even see her again. “Hey! Did you ever figure out what happened to Holy Cannoli’s?”

George tried to hold onto whatever strength he had left. Seeing her right there standing in front of him every single action from the moment she threw herself at him whispering his name began to flash before his eyes. He had wondered why she had seemed so emotional that moment. He remembered the tears in her eyes when she spoke to him and suddenly his eyes widened. Breath caught in his throat as he took a stumbled step back into his house, falling onto the floor in his knees on the foyer. Tears beginning to well on his eyes in anger and desperation knowing that if Fawna knew, then so did everybody else. How had fallen on that fire but him? Who else had died at the hands of flames other than himself?

“You. You knew? You knew didn’t you? You knew that i died,” he sobbed out. Every tear. Every emotion he had held onto when Mx had told him what had happened suddenly began rolling off of him in waves. Tears just flowing down his face in anger, sadness and impotency for what tomorrow will bring him. “Why did nobody say something? Why would you let me live like this when you knew I’m dying soon. I’m dying. I’m going to die.”

...

Her heart dropped at his reaction to seeing her; as he fell back, she took a step forward, but she didn’t need him to speak what was on his mind. The moment he’d uttered ‘you’, she knew. He knew. Somehow, he’d found out. She had been foolish to think he could go on forever not knowing. She had been foolish to think she could spare him of that pain. How could she explain why she had kept it from him? The only thing over their lifetime together she had ever kept from him. How could she make him understand how hard it had been to not let it slip out, to deal with the guilt and the fear without being able to turn to him? She didn’t want to burst the bubble. She didn’t want to mess it all up somehow. She didn’t want him to hurt the way he was hurting now.

“George,” she whispered, falling to her knees in front of him. Her vision blurred with her own tears as he cried. Fawna was supposed to make it better. He always made everything better for her and now, here it was, the one time he needed her, and there was nothing he could do. She tried to say she was sorry, but the words got caught in her throat --- what was she sorry for? There were too many things. “You’re not. You’re not going to die.” She was trying to convince herself just as much as him as she put her hands on his face, thumbed away his tears and gently turned his head to look at her. “I will do whatever it takes to make sure of that, I promise Georgie. I won’t live without you again. I can’t.”

𝐥𝐮𝐜𝐚  𝐭𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝  𝐡𝐢𝐬  𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝  on  his  thigh  absently  to the  beat  of  the  music  that  was  playing through  his  headphones  as  he  waited  for  his  order  to  be  ready.  the  music  was  a  little  too  loud  for  him  to  hear  the  name  that  was  called  out  with  the  order,  which  was  why  he  didn’t  realize  that  the  drink  he  grabbed  wasn’t  his  until  he  felt  someone  tap  on  his  shoulder.  he  turned  around,  pulling  one  headphone  out  so  he  could  hear  the  other  person  better.  “oh …  sorry!”  luca  quickly  replied,  holding  the  drink  out  for  them  to  take.  “i  didn’t  drink  any  of  it  yet  so  you’re  all  good!”  // open  starter !

...

Seven years ago Fawna would’ve never approached Luca in public. She would have pretended she didn’t see him, walked past with a group of friends and acted like she didn’t recognize him at all, even if he were to speak. But she wasn’t the same girl that she was back then. She hadn’t ran into him visiting her dad since the time jump like she’d hoped she would, so in this coffee shop she decided to seize the opportunity to try to put the past behind them. Or at least offer him a much needed apology. “Oh, actually, I think that might be his,” she motioned to the other man that was approaching the counter, offering him a small smile. She didn’t know if Luca remembered the future or not, his reaction to her behavior would probably be answer enough. “I was just coming up to say hi.”

“I think it’s more the artificial cherry flavouring, to be fair. Reminds too many people of cough syrup and other horrible medicines our parents made us take when we were small,” the redhead attempts to explain, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. She lets out a small laugh at Fawna’s comment, shaking her head. “Don’t worry, I was thinking of someone else, Fawna. And besides, Nina would get a pass even if she was painfuly wrong about cherries.” Her comment is open-ended, not giving away just where her girlfriend actually stands on the flavour, but a slight grin is on her lips either way.

...

“Artificial cherry is definitely a whole different story. Whoever came up with fruit flavors and said ‘yeah, this tastes accurate’ must have had some messed up taste buds.” She smiled at Rachel; she’d been too absorbed with herself and her own relationship when she was younger to even pay attention to Rachel and Nina, but she could see now, how much the two of them loved each other. They were just meant to be. “I guess if that’s the only complaint,” Fawna agreed, pretending to be reluctant. “Don’t get me wrong, I think I've threatened my fiancé’s life a few times too many for leaving his socks in the living room floor, but it could’ve been worse.”

“You know the sound it makes when your fork scrapes a glass plate? I don’t know if it’s bizarre, but I could choke someone out for that.”

“I think I like my drive the most. My selfishness is the worst thing about me.”

“George. Nina too. They never should've lost their first.”

fawna murray moodboard.