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You're flying like a fly In a sky blue sky
Topic Started: Dec 10 2011, 02:40:28 AM (155 Views)
Colin Beckett
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*Kara; s:t | w:d
Thursday, October 21, 2038. 3:15 pm

"I can't believe you're married," Sorry said without looking up from the stack of photos she was going through on the couch.

Colin rolled his eyes as the door shut behind him. "I must have asked you to marry me at least half a dozen times. Surely it's not surprising that I'm the marrying type." He sat on the couch next to one of her piles and picked it up to see what she was doing.

She glanced up at him. "You haven't even been with her for a year and you married her."

"Are you genuinely concerned that I rushed into this? I mean, you're a little late. It's been two months," he raised an eyebrow at her.

"We were together for over three years." She noticed he'd picked up a pile and tried to take them away from him. "Don't- those are awful."

"You're overly critical," he kept his grip on the photos and she relented, rolling her eyes. "It was nearly four years. And you still wouldn't marry me."

"I'm not the marrying type," she shrugged. She eyed him warily as he looked at the photos.

"I'm pretty sure that's why we broke up." He didn't look up. These were very personal photos.

"Because I wouldn't marry you?" Any other person would have sounded incredulous. Instead, she sounded mildly amused.

"Because we're fundamentally incompatible. We're different types." He held the first photo up to her. "What are you doing with these?"

"Organizing them," she thought that was obvious.

"I mean, what for?"

She rolled her eyes. "For you." She snatched the photo out of his hand and put it in a separate pile. "You love her?" she asked as she seriously considered the next photo.

"Obviously," he said as he held up another photo. It was of him and PJ at the surprise wedding reception their friends had thrown for them. It was a candid photo- they all were- and he and PJ were absolutely beaming at each other.

"I don't want your sass," she took that photo away from him, too. She decided she couldn't actually handle him looking at the pictures right now, so she grabbed the rest of them away as well. This time, he let her. "You love her like you loved me?" she clarified her question, her tone nothing but casual.

"Loving you was the hardest thing I ever did. Loving PJ is easy," his tone was equally casual.

"Because I'm a horrible person with a wretched fucking soul," she said as she held up a photo of herself with Napoleon in a headlock.

He shook his head gently. "No. Because you never loved me back." He took the photo out of her hand and smirked at it.

"I wanted to. Sometimes. You were too good to me."

"I always hated you saying that. I never understood why you felt that way."

She rolled her eyes. "Because I'm a horrible person with a wretched fucking soul," she repeated, sarcastically this time.

Colin picked up the top photo from a separate pile. It was a photo from inside the barn where the party had taken place. There were no people in this shot. It was the hay loft, glowing brightly as the sunset shone through the slats in the old wood. He held it up to Sorry. "I never understood how you could find beauty in anything through a camera lens but could never see it in yourself."

Sorry blinked at him. "I don't think it's appropriate for you, as a married man, to be having this kind of conversation with me," she deflected as she took the photo away from him.

"Since when do you care about what's appropriate?" he raised an eyebrow at her, but let her take the photo.

She shrugged. "I really don't. But I do care about you, Colin. And I respect you enough to want you to be happy with your new wife. If you keep calling me beautiful, I'm going to believe that you mean it."

"But I do mean it. I don't understand what you're getting at." Wasn't he allowed to tell another human being that she wasn't wretched?

He wasn't even that close, but she put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him away. "Let me spell it out for you: I never stopped being attracted to you. How do you not know that? I mean, fuck, the last time we had sex was last September. We'd been broken up for months."

He didn't like where this was going. "There were extenuating circumstances."

"We had a lot of post-break up sex," she said, giving him a look.

"And we had a lot of sex before we go together, too! So what! At least, that's what you told me: that it wasn't a big deal." Emphasis on the wasn't.

"I was wrong. It was a big deal. Isn't that why I finally agreed to be with you? Because I was wrong about us being able to just be friends that fuck."

"Well, the fucking stopped over a year ago, so I think we've mastered being just friends that don't fuck."

"Maybe you have."

"Why is this conversation happening now? You're right; I'm married. I'm happy. I don't need this." He started to get up off the couch.

She grabbed his arm. "Too bad. You started it, I'm finishing it. You got your closure: I want mine. Do you remember our first huge fight?"

He took his arm away from her and ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. "Yes, it really set the tone for the rest of our relationship. Nothing but fighting for years after that."

She shook her head and looked him in the eyes. "Don't be a dick right now. I'm telling you the only secret I ever kept from you."

He stood up all the way and turned to face Sorry. "You don't have to tell me your secrets. I'm not entitled to that privilege anymore."

"This was your secret, too," she told him evenly. "You just didn't know it."

Colin's heart stopped. He was pretty sure there was only one thing that could mean. "Sorry..."

"I miscarried. A week before the fight."

He collapsed completely into the couch, leaned his head against the back and stared at the ceiling. "Goddammit." He blinked back angry tears. She should have told him. He thought back on that night- the phone call that made him come after her, how insistent she was that she was fine despite acting otherwise, the image of her on the fire escape holding her stomach... Looking back, it made sense. She should have told him then. The entire rest of their relationship had been colored by that event, and he was only just now learning why it had even happened.

"I never wanted to be a mother." She told him quietly, then looked away from him.

"I know." His voice was just above a whisper.

"I was ten weeks along; nearly eleven."

He nodded, acknowledging what she said, but didn't look at her. He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Did you know you were...?" he couldn't finish the question.

But she knew the rest of it anyway. "I knew for three weeks. I'd only seen a Healer the week before, though."

Colin sat up a little and finally looked at Sorry. "You saw a Healer?"

"If it had been anyone else's I would have terminated it," she was matter-of-fact. "But I couldn't do that to you."

He looked away again and ran his hands back through his hair. "You did love me, you idiot. You were just too afraid I would hate you for this."

"You do." She said with certainty. She looked down at the photo she had left resting on her knee. It was beautiful in ways she could never even hope to be.

Colin shook his head. "I don't. I hate that you've only just now told me. I would have never hated you for that. There was nothing you could have done."

"I was relieved when it happened! And then I just felt guilty for feeling relieved. I wanted you to punish me." She turned the photo over and set it back on the couch.

Colin couldn't reply. This was all too much and much too late.

"It had a heartbeat," Sorry continued.

"Sorry..." he choked out.

"I heard it. The Healer amplified it for me." Her voice was strong and clear. She stared straight ahead.

"Why did you push me away?" Colin asked before he could stop himself. He didn't expect an answer.

Sorry gave him one anyway. "I didn't know how to tell you I was pregnant. I wanted to be miserable about it for as long as I could. I knew you'd be happy. You always wanted kids. You would have stayed with me forever for that baby and I wasn't sure I wanted that. My dad tried it when mum fell pregnant with me. It didn't go very well."

"It wouldn't have bee-" Colin started to say otherwise, but got cut off.

Sorry snapped her head to look at Colin. "I don't know what it would have been like. I just know what it was like. And I want to apologize for that. For everything."

Colin swallowed hard and nodded. "Okay." He scrubbed his hands over his face. "Okay."

"Go home, Colin."

He left without another word.
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