agirllost

He's gone. She knew he had to leave. It wasn't a matter of not knowing. And she knew he had to get his memory wiped but that wasn't the same as actually watching it and seeing her boyfriend go from there to...not really there at all. She puts the papers in a drawer. It's hard to think, hard to breathe even, because he's gone and whatever's happening out there...no she knows how he'll return, if he returns, if...

She takes a painful breath. Chase had his memories erased. He stood there and let someone mess with his mind all because *she* couldn't stop telling him things and she'll spend the rest of her life making up for that moment. She feels like she failed him. She knows that he suffered for the mistakes she made. Everyone told her to stop telling him things, to avoid mentioning the future and she couldn't stop and now...oh God she didn't know.

She tries to tell herself that Chase isn't gone, not really. He's back home and right now probably entering her dad's office and trying to remember the details of a really strange dream he had the night before. And she's there, working, and having no clue how much things will change in about a week. Last night she held his hand, trying hard not to mourn its loss because the future is a place where many people die and plans are destroyed. She feels terrible that he will go through it, but there's nothing else to do. The time she spent in the world where he tried to stop it was enough evidence that even though she may feel guilty the rest of her life she would have still pushed him to get his memory altered.

The thought that maybe that's not what changed things at all is one she won't let herself dwell on for too long.

'Nita,' she thinks and feels guilty all over again. Nita put herself in danger to protect a world that wasn't even hers. Kim hadn't wanted to go upstairs. Part of her wanted to stay by the door all night, just in case time moved in a way they couldn't predict. But she knew he wasn't coming back tonight, and maybe not tomorrow either, and she doesn't want to consider that maybe he won't be coming back at all and she won't see him until she's unBound.

Nita saved her world. Kim realizes in an odd moment of clarity that she would do the same for her in an instant if it was necessary.

But now Chase is gone and a tiny part of her doesn't want to fulfill her promise to him. She glances at the drawer, it would be so easy to burn the note, to lie and tell him that he didn't want to know the memories that he...and she's horrified by that thought process. No, he told her he wants to know everything and after what she asked him to sacrifice, honoring his wishes is the least she can do.

'I'm so sorry, Chase,' she thinks - and she is, not just for the memory modification but for all the time she made him worry and then when she stupidly told her dad about them and didn't listen to him when he told her that was a bad idea. And everything that Chase has to live through...which isn't her fault but she knows the man she spent time with last night - that was the last time she'd see him for a while.

She lays down and looks at the pictures changing in the frame. When she sees Chase she grabs the frame and holds it against her chest, not even bothering to stop the tears.