Aftermath: Fragments [Closed, Journal, OOC comments welcome]

[Musemi]

Sayuri let the water wash over her,Grey's words running through her head;

 

“If there's something to find, I'll find it. But I can't help if you're going pyschotic.”

 

What an insufferable man. And yet, at the very core of his words, - her greatest fear. What if she was going crazy?

 

Yes Doctor, I'm pretty sure I'm seeing visions of my dead husband. But I swear I'm not insane.

 

It had started with his smell. A familiar mixture of leather, sweat, and light cologne. She lovedthat smell. Had looked forward to it at the end of each day. When he'd hold her after a performance, murmur into her ear, whisper all the lovely things he used to say.

 

A few moons after that, it had amplified. Smell, mixed with sound. The monotone foundation of his baritone; smooth, steady, unwavering. As constant as the ocean, and comforting as rain. Every time it was him, saying her name, nothing more.

 

But when she looked, there was nothing there. A cruel echo; a memory of another world- the world before the empire took over in a flash of violence and power the likes of which her land had been unprepared.

 

And then...nothing. The headaches would pass, his memory would fade, take with it her determination, her resolve, her will to live.

 

Call it pathetic;she knew it was- lots of people had lost others, but saying she should get over it was like telling a blind man to watch where he was going... they lacked the essential part of them required to perform the requested task. In her case; her heart. Her mind and body had come to Eorzea; her spirit had not.

 

And then finally,the other day, at the edge of her vision... as things were going black; as the headache took hold- sunk it's teeth in her like some rabid jackal... there he had been. A ghost. An apparition. He reached out to her, called her name, the world had spun, and faded to black.

 

When she awoke, she was sure it had been a dream. Had to have been a dream. There's no way he could have joined her, in this far away place, where the people were welcoming, but only if you weren't a burden.

 

IfI could just get the memory of him out of my head...but did she want to move on? Is that what she really wanted? To let him fade, like the distant notes of a forgotten melody carried on the wind?

 

Be

adaptable; he used to say to her, because he knew she was not. She was set in her ways; liked what she liked... hated change. She frequented the same cafe's in the mornings. Went to the same tailor for her dresses... walked the same pathways going to and from rehearsals. She was not someone who liked... spontaneity.

 

And yet she was trying. To make him proud. To change her ways. To meet new people, explore different places... walk the paths she had never before had the courage to walk. But where this was all leading her was unknown, and that frightened her more than she cared to admit.

 

The worst part of all this... if this wasn't just some... hallucination; if his spirit really had crossed oceans just to be near her... then that meant that he really was dead.

 

“And I don't think I can handle that,” she said aloud, the water swirling into the drain at her feet. “I know for a fact I cannot. You can wound my heart... squeeze it dry- wrench the blood from it til all that remains is a twisted husk... but if you take my hope... if you take that from me; what have I left that is worth living for?”

 

 

She stared at the water, disappearing down the drain, but neither it nor the steam had any answers.