5 months ago
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Where do you think we'll be tomorrow
Where we are now? Or somewhere else
Would we be who we were, yesterday
Think how we thought and feel how we felt
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It takes six seconds to tear the seal off of a standard paper envelope, and only two to open a letter. Five seconds to digest every infliction of black ink and no more than ten for the brain to catch up with the eyes.
It only took twenty three seconds to break Florence.
She had been dropped carelessly and left in pieces the cold hard floor. Unrecognizable fragments of something that once held beauty. Fragment which would take far longer than twenty three seconds to pick up and piece back together.
She wasn't talking to him. He hadn't remembered and that was that. Florence woke up that morning and headed out to complete her chores, leaving a battered and busted boy sleeping on her floor. A boy who was no longer there when she returned.
She hadn't heard a word from him since. No casual greetings or professional requests, not even a friendly look in the hallways. It was as if he had disappeared. She knew where to find him, or at least she thought she did, knowing that he was most likely sitting by candlelight in a tree somewhere, but didn't want to seek him out.
Surely if he had wanted to talk to her, he would've done it by now. And she wanted to believe that if he had remembered what had taken place that night, he wouldn't just brush it off. It weighed on Florence in every sense of the word.
A rift had grown between the two unbeknownst to her. She was willing to put recent events behind her but maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was still harboring some deep feeling of guilt, even if she had assured him otherwise.
Nonetheless, she found herself sprinting to wherever he may be. All she knew was that she needed him now. No more worrying about whether or not he wanted to talk to her, whether she should approach him first. She needed him.
A sense of empty occupation rushed over her thoughts. Her mind blank, and yet somehow exhausted. She couldn't feel the tears themselves, rather the cold sting of air brushing against her face. Her movements were hasty, stumbling with each step as she pushed through the tall grass under moonlight.
A familiar distant glow presented itself, letting her know that he was there. That she could be with him in a matter of minutes. Her appearance was of no concern at the moment. Hair having been let down in preparation to sleep, running in a pale blue nightgown, the front of which had probably been darkened by the tears dripping from her chin.
Breath had escaped her, she was drowning above water. The air around her turned to void as it refused to enter her lungs. Climbing up the knotted rope hung to a sturdy branch had proved such a struggle, but Florence was far too engrossed to pay any attention to the burning sensation coming over her entire body.
She froze at the sight of him. The flickers of calm and relief in his eyes confusing her before realizing that he did not yet know what she herself did.
"I've been waiting for-" It's his turn to freeze. Whatever glimpse of peace that she had previously seen in his gaze had been swiftly replaced by worry and dread. "Flo?" He was being careful, quiet, as if raising his voice would topple her fragile self over the edge. But his efforts went to waste, for you can't break what had already been broken.
"I can't breathe." She manages. A weak cry escapes among her labored breaths as she rushes towards where he is sat, back against the trunk of the tree and one knee bent comfortable upwards. The book in his hands is tossed to the side to accommodate for the distressed girl.
Florence collapses against him, her hands scrunching up fistfuls of his shirt as she sobs into his shoulder. His voice echoes around her, incomprehensible hums and detached syllables creating symphonies of gibberish. Her eyes, open but hollow, see nothing other than the rushed scribbles of a worn down fountain pen. Frequently dipped in ink, writing different variations of the same letter every hour of the day.
In her recollection, it appears shredded. Stray pieces of a heavy letter, put together to destroy her. She doesn't remember all of it, but what she does has the ability to pierce her heart just the same.
It is my painful duty... a report has been received... the death of W. Clarke.
The rest is unnecessary. Ingenuous apologies and empty offers of consolidation. So many letters like this one existed, but the change of a name gives it meaning.
Learning of his passing was the knife in her gut, but knowing that is was in the past was the twist, slicing through every strand of light and hope in her being. She let out a strained, guttural cry at this realization. That her loving father had most likely passed weeks ago. That she had spent weeks living her life as normal. That she had worried and stressed over minor things. That she had no ability to acknowledge his passing.
And for the first time in her life, she was living in a world where he no longer existed.
It was numbing; knowing that death simply meant disappearance. Future exclusion. You're left to mourn a memory. And whatever feeling of pity or regret or longing is useless, as there is no-one left to reciprocate. So much energy, so much feeling devoted to a ghost.
He notices it now. The letter, fallen from her grasp as she fell to him. A signature sits on top, War Office. The red wax seal as professional and proper as ever. No hint of remorse or guilt. He knows now what's happened, and his heart breaks for the girl in his arms.
He knows how she feels. The loss of a father having tainted his life at a young age. But then again, it's different for her, worse. She hadn't seen him in months. She had more letters from him than she did memories, each one now bearing the reminder that they are the last of their kind. That no more will be arriving ever again.
A promise was made. A vow to watch over her in his absence. Something he had recently failed to fulfill. Was he watching over them now? Has he been watching over them? Long enough to see his failures, the awful positions and situations Tewkesbury had put her in.
Could he see how he'd been avoiding her? Cowering up in a tree, waiting for her to come to him rather than the opposite out of fear. In his last moments, he had been betrayed. Tewkesbury had disappointed a dead man.
He can feel his shoulder grow damp. His white dress shirt soaking up her sorrows. Arms tighten around her waist and pull her in closer. Her own, wrapped around his neck.
Words never went wasted among the two of them. Some things just didn't need to be said. There was a mutual understanding, an unspoken connection that ran between them.
"T." There was no reason to respond. No point in letting her know he was listening. He always was and she knew that.
"Don't go. I, I can't let you go." Her words sounded more like whimpers, feeble and pained. "Don't let them send you away T. You can't, You can't go." The sound surrounded him from behind, her chin resting on his shoulder. He could feel it moving as she spoke, whispering pleas between harsh breaths and soft sniffles beside his ear.
"Yeah, yeah alright." The gravity was lost on him. He didn't know what to do. The girl who brought him happiness was currently sobbing in his arms and there was nothing he could do to help her. The best he could manage was nodding along and agreeing to anything she'd ask of him. But even then, some things are just out of reach.
Her hand grasped the back of his head as she fell into him further. Looking down at him from above, his eye-line meeting her jaw as she kneels on either side of him. She looks a mess. Her face red and puffy, looking unlike herself.
The prospect itself scared him. He wasn't like this when his own father died. Maybe he should've been sadder at the time, having displayed nowhere near as much devastation as Florence.
He worried she wouldn't be the same. Never again would he see her without this weight, this new experience of loss. He felt even worse knowing that he hadn't cherished his last moments with pre Flo, having spent the past week avoiding her.
It wasn't as though he would love post Flo any less. She was still her. But if she did change, he would miss her. God he spoke of her like she was gone.
Her forehead leant down against his, his hands reaching up to gently cup her face. Her own hands wrapped themselves around his wrists as she sucked in a sharp breath.
Tewkesbury's eyes searched her features as she closed hers, a few tears seeping through his palms in the process. She shook her head frantically, his words weren't enough.
"No, no you can't just-" She looked tired. As if she had aged years in a a matter of minutes. "I need you to promise me." Her sobbing never ceased.
"Flo, I-" He didn't know what to say. Could he truthfully promise her such a thing? He didn't want to lie to her. As things were now, he couldn't see any way for him to escape it, to convince his family otherwise. Persuade them not to send him off to serve.
Her grip on his wrists tightened, grabbing his attention. Lifting her eyelids, she stared at him, watching his pupils dilate at the sight of her own.
"Please just, just promise me. Please." How could he say no. There wasn't a bone in his body he believed to be capable of denying her.
He would just have to do everything in his power to keep his promise. He'd already broken the one he'd made to her late father, he couldn't bear the thought of breaking another. Especially not to his daughter. To him, she was the most valuable thing in the world. She'd had him wrapped around her finger from day one and probably didn't even know it. He would do anything for her, make any promise, keep any promise. And maybe, one day, she would recognize this, and everything would be okay again.
"I promise."