Pavement Cracks

[Louise_2983]

Story Title: Pavement Cracks

Type of story: One shot

Main Characters: Belle

Characters Mentioned: Aden although not by name

BTTB rating: G

Genre: Angst

Does story include spoilers: No.

Any warnings: None

Summary: When Belle walked away from Aden after the hostage situation she never looked back. Years later her decision still haunts her.

The clock has defiantly struck twelve and my once beautiful horse drawn carriage is now nothing more than an edible orange fruit you only ever see on Halloween. Yet in my wake I leave no glass slipper, not one which a handsome prince could slip effortlessly onto my delicate feet anyway. For my glass slipper shattered long ago: the day, the hour, the minute in which I lost you. Every single day I am reminded of my pain, not that I ever really need reminding for every single beat of my heart is punctuated by pure, unadulterated pain pulsating through every blood vessel in my body.

Yet in the briefest of moments when my gaze accidentally falls on a tiny shard of glass left in the setting of my life to taunt me with past regrets, to remind me that life is anything but a fairytale, I fall all over again. I fall in love, out of it and into it once again like some weird variation of the hokey cokey. Finally I descend down the long haunting drop I first encountered in that defining instant of my life when I released it was over. Period. There was no going back, I was living my life without you and that is how it was to stay.

A stray photograph, that film we both hated, a breeze carrying the familiar scent of your favourite aftershave…all tiny slithers of broken glass embedded in my heart and in my soul tearing me apart and yet simultaneously filling me with strength. In the beginning I couldn’t cope, I’d hide behind what ever disguise I could create, staring at the pavement cracks I’d let the world pass me by in a blur of footsteps never truly letting anyone else into my life. You were all I wanted and I was yet to accept that the day I walked away I chose to live my life without you. I’ve always been pro-choice but looking back I wish someone had tried to stop me. Why didn’t you stop me? I guess I’ll never know the answer to this question, the question that still occasionally keeps me awake at night, submerged in darkness as the rhythmic ticking of a distant clock sets the pace of my heart, ensuring that in my time of despair I don’t give up completely.

But these nights have over time become rarer and rarer. And instead of moving on and feeling content with my life as it is I feel like I’m losing you all over again. Like I’m shouting the last venomous accusation of our relationship and not waiting for your reply. I always was impatient, I always did have to have the last word. I’m turning my back on you once again and slowly heading towards the door, almost tip toeing in my apprehension. Uncertainty clouded my confused mind that day, growing stronger and stronger with every single footstep, and it has lingered in the depths of my soul ever since. I’ll probably never know if my psyche guided me in the right direction, all I’ll ever know is that my heart is of the very strong opinion that it didn’t and it isn’t afraid to voice it.

Now I’m closing the door, determined not to glance back yet years later here I am positively gazing into our past, reliving our so called best bits, the bits they’d include in our eviction montage if we’d played out our whole episode in the confines of the Big Brother house. I’m still falling, I always have been. Yet what bothers me the most is not the harsh and painful landing that inevitably awaits me when I eventually reach the bottom of this cold, dark tunnel in which I see an imaginary light waiting for me, calling me onwards, not allowing me to turn around and get on with my life. The aching reality which plays on my mind every minute of every day is that I’m falling and no one is even attempting to catch me, if I run away I won’t be followed, if I cry out no one will answer my call, in fact no one will even be around to hear.

You’re everywhere, you’re everything and yet at the same time you’re nothing. I live embraced by a cocoon of paradoxes, maybe one day I’ll emerge as a delicate, beautiful butterfly and flutter through life but until then I’ll drift aimlessly and wait for time to freeze my fall, to allow me a chance to scramble for freedom. But once I’m free from your grasp what will I have? Were we it or am I just unknowingly awaiting my white knight? The man who with his kiss, with his gentle touch will free me from the metaphorical chains you have wrapped tightly around my heart. I can’t ever imagine feeling for anyone else an emotion as strong as that which I felt, no that I feel, for you but the hope that I could keeps me alive. For although you are my first and my last I know that holding on like this is not good for me and one day I will have to loosen my grip, to let you fall away like the first of the golden autumn leaves descending .

You will always be there, a faded photograph in the scrapbook of my memory, but having passed the spring of my life, there should be no room left in my being for you to grow. I have to hold my head up high when I walk down the street, to let people love me and to eventually return the favour without being reminded of the pain which love has brought me in the past, in my past, in our past.

For our past love is the essence of my being and I doubt I could ever live without it. It is almost as essential to me as oxygen and if there is no new love awaiting me I know that I will always love you in the way I do now, in the way I did then. But, as hard as it is for me to accept, I need our love to change for as it is it is a dominant controlling force and for as long as it dictates my life I will be unhappy. And if you ever loved, or even cared for, me like I thought, hoped, you did then you wouldn’t want this for me, you would want me to be free. So I’ll continue to fight despite my repeated relapses into our past and I hope that one day I will be victorious in my fight, that I will be able to live a happy life and that I will accept us as a history I love to remember but am able to live without. And when that day comes I will love you in a way you will never know, for our history will make me strong and through this strength I will live.

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