Summary: In the grand scheme of things, time heals all things. Sometimes the amount of time required is just longer than a lifetime.
A response, of sorts, to this wonderful piece by spadebabe.
The Navy would bring in a decent paycheque, and she could have that house on the hill, he’d said. She only gave him a raised-eyebrow look of inquiry, before he continued. Where else would he be able to put his skills to work? The Metro, of the underground sort, perhaps, but after so long, he didn’t think he’d be able to bear the crushing weight of earth around him.
Not when he still dreamed of the deep, the ocean dark and cold. Rapture had a way of getting into one’s head.
They went through the same routines day after day, week after week. A ‘how are you’, the neutral response back before falling into silence. Isaiah spoke less now, and listened more; funny how it took so long for that change to come about. Not that the one that criticised him for that was around to see the shift towards balance.
The setting sun filtered water-like across the porch, and for a moment, it was almost as if they were back in Arcadia with the artificial light on high above. It was enough to jar him from the well-worn routine.
“It’s been ‘bout a year, hasn’t it?” Isaiah replied to her usual query.
As if he didn’t know exactly how many days had passed between the first breath of salt-spray air he’d taken into his lungs, and as if he didn’t remember the thin set of Allegany’s lips when he’d told her just what he thought about them leaving Rapture behind.
"Yeah… sure has been,” she said in response, hooking her arm into the crook of his, just a touch of the present to ground the remembrance of the past. "…you have any regrets?"
Regrets. That was something he had no shortage of. But there was something to be said for letting go, he mused in the quiet before he leaned over. A kiss for luck, sealing a promise to do better in the future, as he brushed his lips against Allegany’s forehead.
"Of course. Don’t you?"
The answer lay in a chair rocking the rest of its momentum out alone, the creak of a door shutting before the lights flickered back on. The small, normal things as the rest of their lives went on.
