Falling For Her (Tom Hiddleston Fanfiction)

I Won't Stick

"It's Lilly... Like the flower... Yes, although I prefer roses."

I stared at her name on that slab of stone just beside her casket. Her final resting place.

The turnout at her funeral was fairly large. I assumed the people hovered around me were distant family and relatives, and maybe a few friends from her college back in America, who probably had no idea of her disease.

But to be honest, I wasn't really paying attention to the people around me. I wasn't studying them. I was just looking at that grave stone. The cursive engraved letters spelling out her name so elegantly. Lilly Ann Reynolds.

I never knew her middle name. How sad was that? Four months seemed like so much time to get to know a person. I felt like I knew every single detail. I guess I didn't. I guess there is no time limit to how deeply you can get to know someone. There will always be something you missed.

I just didn't want to think about the things I was regretting right now. I didn't want to ask myself the questions I should have had time to ask her. I didn't want to think of the things I missed.

Lilly would kill me if I had one single regret. That much I did know.

Everything from the flowers upon her casket to the rain coming down from the sky, it was all what Lilly would have wanted. It was all what she planned. The event, despite it being Lilly's funeral, was beautiful.

The ceremony was long and sort of a blur. I never really payed attention to the things that were being said. Mainly because in my head, I was coming up with my own ceremony. My own words. There were three of them.
Lilly Ann Reynolds.

Like the flower.

I love you.
Okay maybe there were nine words. Nine words and a load of memories. And a million quotes from her mouth that kept playing back in my head.

Before I knew it, the real ceremony was over. And the black mass of family members and friends began dispersing into their black cars. And driving down the black pavement path, out of the cemetery.
But I didn't move. I stared straight faced at her gravestone. Tracing "Ann" over and over. The ceremony going on in my head, wasn't quite over yet.

I didn't think it ever would be. I didn't think i'd ever move.

I let every raindrop that fell onto me, run down my cheeks and linger in my drenched hair. And when I sensed that no one was around. My eyes finally began to water. Tears falling down my cheeks and joining the raindrops.

It was the first time I had cried. I don't really know why. When Lilly passed, I just shut down. I was quiet and blank. I let each moment until the funeral, play out and I hid inside of my thoughts.

And now, as I stand in front of her. Knowing she can't talk back, the feeling was real. And it hurt. It was all too real.

I was suddenly kicked out of my hiding place inside my thoughts and I was forced to face this reality, without shelter.

I took a few steps closer to her casket until I was in arm's reach. And I surveyed all of the flowers that lay over the wood. Most of them were roses. She would have loved that.

"Hey love." My voice, in the silence of the rain, seemed so loud. But I imagined it was just loud enough for her to hear. Where ever that soul of gold may be.

"You left something at the hospital. I thought you might want them." I lifted my heavy arm and placed her box of keychains upon her casket, right below the flowers. I watched the rain hit them and I swallowed the lump in my throat.

"Your souvenir." I said. Remembering her comparison of me to those keychains. Both being her souvenirs. Just one of the millions of things that I'll always remember.