The Unimaginable

"Isn't about us?" Remi said, his voice full of a challenge, his gaze sparkling with something deep and dark. "Of course it is. Why else would you be here? You said yourself we were hardly friends before. We just sort of...accidentally fell together. Is that not right? So why are you here Sam, if not to be...to be..." His anger died immediately, for it was unresolved and alien to Remi. With a sigh, he looked back at Aoife smiling dutifully up at him as she finished the last of the milk. "Just...stop. Stop all of it. Stop with the words you think you should say, the love you think you should feel. Stop sitting like that, as if being just so will make things better. " His face was flushed, and despite how he might have wanted to pace or shout, with Aoife in his arms he could do neither. Finally the alchemist glanced up, as if just seeing Sam for the first time. He thought of how gentle the bookmaker had been in the Temple, how he'd pulled their lips together and how it had all been ruined immediately after. Remi thought of the spaces in his shattered heart, and how Aoife seemed to fill them all. There wasn't room for anyone else and whatever it was Remi might have needed, Sam wasn't providing it. Sam was trying, he could see that, but it was in all the wrong ways. And if you had to tell someone what you needed it lost something...something crucial. Something that said I do know you. Memories or no, just now without Ronin, the alchemist had never felt more alone. Less seen. "I do not love you Sam. I am sorry I lost what...what we had—" This he now said without certainty, as if perhaps doubting the sincerity of Sam's retelling given just how incompatible the two seemed in this moment. "—but I do not. And right now all I want is to be alone." R Ǝ M I Since you burned me at the stake, all of my feelings went away At least there’s no feelings in my way