What Was Lost
14 Nov 2023Danzra Le Clerc
How many years have I been universe hopping? How can one tell when they keep resetting? I spend five years in one and three in another and yet only months in the craziest of them while tracking down those artifacts. Is that how I count my own personal time, by adding up how many years I've spent in each?And why am I always reborn into a universe at roughly the same time? I never land in the far future, nor in the far past where the Earth might still be populated. Now that would be interesting. I could visit and be one of those aliens they spent so much time debating about and creating shows about. I could be their real life Dr. Who.
Thankfully, whoever has been behind all this, whoever or whatever created the Temples and the Artifacts to lead us to the Unity has been kind enough to give me worlds where I wouldn't see him, the center of my pain and broken heart.
He said we'd have forever. I wonder, had he lived in that first Universe, my Universe, would he really have given me forever or would he have jumped into the Unity? Would his thirst for exploring the other Universes and seeing what is out there outweigh the promise he made to me? Would he have turned back? I know I would have. I'd never be on the path I am on now. Perhaps ultimately, that's why he died. Perhaps the force behind the Unity wanted me to have that push so I could be out here fixing whatever it is they think I can fix.
But now I have that pain thrown right back at me. Now I have found myself in a universe with him, still alive, still...but he's not. He's not my husband. She is not my step-daughter. I keep him at a distance. I don't dare re-live that path where he dies again. Still, it's hard not staring when he's not looking. It's hard not taking him out on missions and hurting him, letting him think I'd always rather trust someone else to have my back in the hunt for those artifacts. Everything in this Universe is so damn hard because of him.
I know that once I'd found out what the Unity is, where it leads, to all those infinite universes but into them alone, I would have turned back. I would have turned back for him and his daughter.
So I spend this Universe aloof, quietly slipping books to his daughter but withholding the embraces of thanks. I continue to crack on the inside every time he makes eye contact with me. I continue to quietly curse his ex-wife for so callously throwing away the chance at a family life with him and her own daughter. Bleeding Freestar Colors is not more important than they are. How can she not see that?
They were everything to me.
