The Invisible fic: I Remember You
Title: “I Remember You”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG for implied character death
Summary: Nick remembers the girl who has changed his life. Please R&R!
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘The Invisible’.
A/N: It’s a random drabble that I wrote at night just after watching the thriller ‘The Invisible’.
I REMEMBER YOU
He remembers her sometimes, the girl with flowing red hair and the saddest eyes he has ever seen. She danced in the club; vibrant, razor-sharp lights streamed down her body, forming meaningless patterns upon her pallid skin. He remembers cradling her in his arms when they lay on the mat after school was out; she felt warm and vulnerable; and hers are still the cruelest eyes he has ever seen. He remembers her rummaging through his things, sharing her memories with him out loud in a room that seemed to be empty. He remembers her giving promises to her little brother she knew she couldn’t keep. He remembers waking up to the smell of blood and sweat and the salt of her tears and the coolness of the metal chain, laced through his fingers.
Sometimes he wonders if they ever had a chance. Probably not. Such people as Annie - social outcasts, imbalanced, bruised, broken people - either die aimlessly or take martyrdom in the end. Always.
Annie had been the one to kill him. She had also been the one to save him.
Sometimes he remembers the touch of her hair against his skin. There was nothing romantic about Annie (and he tries to convince himself that with her flaming hair, her beautiful eyes and her bloodied hands she didn’t look like a fairy princess with a gun). That’s why even though he writes countless poems about her, he always tears the paper up in the end. No words can describe her, because even though Nick remembers her so well - and always will - he doesn’t know her.
He knows the colour of her eyes, the rippling rainstorm grey. He knows the earthy smell of her hair. He knows the soft, very human sound of her last breath. That is all of Annie for him. She is woven of the barest sensations which are so hard to put together.
Nick doesn’t visit her grave. What good is to say never-ending ‘thank-yous’ to a slab of rock? Nick befriends her brother instead. The boy doesn’t look a thing like Annie; Nick likes him even more for that. He wonders what she would say if she knew.
He keeps writing, squeezing words one by one, filling out numerous notebooks, re-writing and destroying his works. The tongue itself suddenly seems too poor to describe Annie.
Nick finds solace, after all. Of course he does. People are designed to move on. But sometimes he puts on that small trinket she left in his hand - a metallic angel, - and he remembers her, and he feels her presence, and he hears the hasty thudding of her footsteps and the nervous, ragged sound of her breathing.
He writes a poem that he doesn’t destroy:
There is no Annie.
Only memory…
April 26, 2008