Living out of Memories (I Can't Break It to My Heart)
Title: Living out of Memories (I Can’t Break It to My Heart)
Author: longerthanwedo
Beta: melody_so_sweet <3
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Past Gabe/William
Warnings: Character death prior to the time of the story.
Disclaimer: Don’t own anyone; title and cut belong to Delta Goodrem.
Summary: There was a kind of comfort in memories, William decided. A kind of painful comfort that clung to his heart and both cushioned and intensified the grief. These memories, he didn’t know if he should hang on to them or let them go.
Author’s Note: This was just something I wrote quickly at night when the inspiration struck me as I was reading Harry Potter.
There was a kind of comfort in memories, William decided. A kind of painful comfort that clung to his heart and both cushioned and intensified the grief. These memories, he didn’t know if he should hang on to them or let them go.
He knew that by remembering he was lying to himself. He knew that by filling his mind with these happy moments, bright spots in a long, dark past, he was choosing to believe something that wasn’t the truth. He was choosing to believe this, to take this lie with him for the rest of his life.
But William was used to lying to himself.
He’d lied to himself even before it happened. Before it happened, before Gabe died, before William was forced to part with the situation he knew he should have left long ago. Even then, he had persisted in believing the lie.
The only memories he let surface in his mind were the good ones. The happy memories, memories of first dates, of friendship, or first kisses and last smiles. Those were the ones he hung onto. The others, the dark memories, the lonely nights, the tears, the wishing and wanting and hurting. Those were the memories that William pushed far into the depths of his mind, shuddered away from them every time they tried to surface.
He’d grown so used to living those memories that he began to believe that that was all it had been. He began to tell himself that every moment with Gabe had been like that. Like those first, golden memories.
Gabe not being there only solidified William’s illusions.
It seemed that once Gabe was gone, gone forever, somewhere where he would no longer be able to touch William, where William wouldn’t see him every day, wouldn’t see the darkness that was reality, that the lie grew stronger.
Once Gabe was gone William began to forget those memories which made his heart clench and his eyes sting. Once Gabe was gone, William began to lose himself and his past.
He spent his days locked up inside his own head. He spent hours in the dark of his room, letting the memories fill his brain. There were only so many of those memories, the ones that would light up the shadows, and William began to lose track of which were real.
Sometimes he found himself reliving a moment that he wasn’t sure had actually existed. He found himself fabricating happy moments out of the depths of his imagination. Moments where he imagined Gabe’s eyes were shining, full and bright. William had never once seen Gabe’s eyes shine; from the moment they met till the moment Gabe died. His eyes had always held a kind of darkness, something sinister and ever-present. Something that William sometimes thought Gabe didn’t even notice.
Gabe had never been innocent.
But now that he was no longer living, the character in William’s mind, the character of Gabe, was growing slowly into an ideal person. The Gabe that existed in William’s dreams and memories was changing, morphing into something that wasn’t the real Gabe. This wasn’t the real Gabe at all.
And yet William let this fictional character take over his mind. When he cried, it was for this man that smiled in his head. When he lay awake at night, it was this man that swam behind his eyelids. When he dreamt it was the same thing.
For so long this was how William lived. He lived in these memories, he lived in the past, and he couldn’t seem to tell his heart that his head was lying. He lived like this until he cleared his mind.
That didn’t happen for months, maybe years, he wasn’t sure. He just knew that eventually he began to think, and his thoughts overpowered his memories.
He began to think over those darker parts hidden in the back of his head. He dusted off the suppressed memories and tugged them to the surface where they pushed the fantasies down. He polished them until he was sure they were real, until he realized that what he’d been thinking all this time was false.
William pondered the idea of the truth.
He began to realize that Gabe, the real Gabe, the man who had died, was a completely different person than the one he’d been grieving over. Maybe, at some point, they had been one in the same. Maybe, long before he’d come into William’s life, Gabe had been that innocent and shining person William had cried for.
William asked people about this. He went around to all his friends, old friends, friends who had known him before he’d met Gabe. He asked them. He asked them about Gabe, he asked whether he was right, whether or not Gabe had really been this amazing person William had thought he was. He asked them for the truth.
The answer was always similar.
They averted their eyes and shuffled their feet. They asked him with their eyes if he really wanted to know.
They said, “Don’t tarnish your memories.”
Don’t let the truth dull the bright lies.
But now he realized. Gabe, the one who William had spent so many years with, the man who had hurt William countless times, wasn’t who he missed. William wasn’t sure who he missed, who he loved. When Gabe was alive he’d been convinced he loved him, that he’d do anything for him, that the way he made William hurt was a small price to pay for love.
Now William began to think that maybe he hadn’t loved Gabe. Maybe he had at the beginning, but when Gabe changed, when he started hanging out with people William didn’t trust, when he started doing things William didn’t like, William had fallen out of love.
He’d stayed because he’d thought he could change Gabe.
William had believed that maybe his presence would change Gabe into a different person, that his affections would drag Gabe out of this shadow he’d fallen into.
But now, he realized, the only thing that could change Gabe was death. Gabe died and with him died the pain he’d caused William. With him died most of the lies that had lodged themselves in William’s heart. With him died the piece of William that had believed in their love.
Now, now William knew the truth. He knew he’d been lying to himself when Gabe was alive, and he knew he’d lied to himself after Gabe died.
But now, he hoped; now he wouldn’t have to lie anymore.
Now he embraced both sets of memories. He cherished the happy moments, the few that were true, and he thought of them whenever the tears threatened to fall. He reveled in the light, but he didn’t suppress the rest. He let the many dark memories float around his mind, mingling with the light, creating a twilight of his past that was painful and refreshing at the same time.
It was comforting for William to know that he wasn’t lying. It was painful to know the truth.
But the memories merged, dark and light, and William knew that it was alright. It was his past, this was his present.
His present was painful, but his present was real.