He would sell his soul for a memory, he thinks. He is terribly aware of emptiness, a sense of missing – like staring at the ruins of a great cathedral, a monument crumbled to dust.
There was something here, once, you’d think, something wonderful and grand.
But he reaches and he reaches and again and again he comes up with nothing. Only that hazy, underwater glimpse of sky and something soaring above it, so faint it may not have existed at all. Nothing like what she seems to expect, or want – need? – from him.
Rather than acknowledging any kind of mistake, she presses on. Begs, almost. He considers, for a moment, lying. Going oh, yes, of course, of course, I was mistaken, because then maybe she would smile
(then maybe she would touch him again)
but even without his memories, he thinks that he is not a very good liar. He doesn’t know how he knows this, but like his name, it feels like a fact. Something concrete. And he will take whatever concrete things he can.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, “I don’t. You’re nothing to me.”
He doesn’t mean it like that, of course. He means to say I have no memories of you, I have nothing of you. But he is not eloquent. This, too, is concrete. So instead his words stumble and out and even he, dense as he is, realizes how that could be taken, how cruel.
“Not like that, I just mean…I don’t know you. I don’t think I know anyone. Not myself, even. I’m so sorry.”
@[Agetta]