Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String

[fredless]

With heels dangling from one hand, and a briefcase full of files hanging off the opposite arm, Fred emerged from her car and tentatively made her way across the minefield of a yard that sat between her, and the door to her apartment. Rocks, uneven pavement, and plants that Fred didn't have the energy to identify all together, all seperated her from home. But Fred still couldn't bring herself to put back on her shoes. Once you got past all the rocks and sharp corners, the grass felt wonderfully warm and free underneath her toes. It was more than caution that made Fred take her time.

She alternated between looking down, and plotting each step after the next, to staring straight ahead, eyes even and unblinking as she followed a certain determination to feel her way through it all. Parts of her insides seemed to be in argument over which was better. Gaze locked to the forward, Fred kicked the small box before she ever saw it. Readjusting her bag, she knelt down to study the plain, brown-papered package, a neatly tied string and local postmark the only thing that broke it's uniform surfaces. Fred worked to control her curiosty, the part of her that wanted to sit on the stoop, tug the paper away, and open it right then and there. She made a face at herself, and lifted the box to carry it upstairs, locking the door behind her.

Fred made a point to resume what little routine she had developed...briefcase by the door, shoes tucked in the hallway closet, and hair pulled back Fred collected the anomaly to her day and headed for the bedroom. She sat down on the bed, cross-legged, and untied the string first, fingers quietly delayed by a very solid knot. Once it was unworked Fred tossed the entire piece to the floor for Pi, before she remembered that he wasn't even there. That he hadn't even ever really been there at all.

She'd pick it up later.

The paper, torn one corner at a time, a ninety degree turn at a time, was warm in Fred's hands, something of the afternoon sun still left in it. This time she didn't toss the remenants away. A shoebox had peeked its way through. Fred lifted the lid, pushed soft pink tissue away, and tried not to...

"Fiegenbaum."

Cry.

He wasn't gone? He'd been here all along...and he...he wasn't gone? So why had she accepted that as the what was? Gently she lifted him from the tissue to hold him close. And he was still the same. He still smelled like home, and tasted like childhood ... a stange mixture of hot dogs blacked on the grill, smores, and craker jacks. The smoke...she looked for smoke mixed with her own doubt, sure that they would have taken all the familiar parts away, but Fred couldn't find any. Almost anything that had ever mattered to her, it was still there, just waiting to be touched.

So was did she suddenly have to put him down?

"...master of chaos."

With only the faith a child could give, Fiegenbaum had mastered the entire universe, and the chaos that controled it. Every theory, and every dream, he'd been there for them. So what had Fred mastered? What did...what did she control? What did she dream? Especially since everything that had become her now.

What did she want?

So much, sitting just next to so little. For the first time in the whole of her life, Fred looked down at her oldest friend...and felt frighteningly alone. And somehow fightengly all right too. She had gone on for three months thinking he was lost, believing the truth of it, and resigned to that. It couldn't last forever really, it'd just finally caught up with her, the part where it all had to be tucked away.

Put...in boxes.

And that had been something close to ok.


There was a space now, a time that they hadn't know each other in her memory. Fred would never hold that against Fiegenbaum, not ever. And it certainly didn't...but it was still there. And he was still part of an unbroken line that she couldn't claim, a past that shouldn't be hurt or meddled with. A life that Fred didn't think she would ever fully know.

There was a space.

In a study of herself, Fred slowly removed a single pillow from its case, setting the insert aside. The soft linen was folded evenly, then folded on itself again. More lines...places that touched. She lifted Fiegenbaum once more from the box, held him close and dried tears were now added to old layers and scents from before. The smores, the smell still sticky, seemed to linger especially. The pillow case was nestled neatly into the box, and with slightly less ease than before Fred returned him to the place he had arrived in. Only now there was another part of her too.

They both fit inside neatly.

Fred crawled from the bed, knelt on the floor, and with a single, deep breath she pushed box and bunny under the bedskirt, and just out of sight. Just past where she could see him. But not so far away that the light from her window couldn't be seen.

And not so far that she'd ever forget he was there.

She could never forget he was there.

Comments

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

"I explained, so she's sorted. She wanted to know how you were doing, just to check in."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"And what did you tell her?"

Sometimes other peoples opinions could be just as telling as your own.

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

"That you seemed to be adjusting far better than I could have hoped and that you were carving out a life for yourself and seemed happy."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"All of those really good things," Fred agreed happily.

"You didn't think I'd adjust?"

She'd never really considered it quite like that before, just how far the worry might go.

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

"I knew you would eventually. You're incredibly strong. But I was afraid that the time shift would bring back memories of Pylea and that it would...take longer for you to feel at home here. Or that you'd keep trying to find a way back."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"I won't lie and say it didn't...Pylea I mean. I wasn't ready, which that sounds silly because when are you ever ready for that kind of thing, but I really wasn't Everything was starting to feel right again, and then it was just...gone. And there was this empty apartment with empty walls, and I wanted...so badly I wanted to write on them. To fill them up with anything familiar, because it was all so different, no matter how much I tried to tell myself it was the same. I kept trying to get back too, more than I ever really told anyone. I've got pages and pages of notes. And it wasn't like I expected to be rescued, you just can't plan on that kind of thing...but maybe?" Fred got that much more quiet. "Maybe I expected...I mean, from where I disapeared from. Maybe I expected themt to try?"

Fred brushed most if it away.

"Your mom is wonderfully sweet."

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps they did try," he said softly. "I wouldn't have stopped. I know that."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"I know," Fred said softly. "I'm sure...I guess...I know. I'm sure they did," she went back to her first word choice. "It's just that, for sometone...for me, not believing in fate and..." Fred wasn't sure what she was trying to say. "Only I ended up here, and now I'm more than willing to stay. How did I end up believing in the putcome, and not in the process...not at all?

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

"Without a belief in fate, without a feeling that it was supposed to happen, I don't know."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"Things happen for a reason." That Fred was willing to agree to. "But is isn't some invisible force that just shoved me along on a whim, I just refuse to believe that. People make things happen, machines and hopes, and hatred and regret makes things happen. So that made it my choice to stay too. I'm not stuck, or floundering. This is where I want to stay, where I want to be."

It was the speach from her head. The one that had repeated for weeks and weeks.

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

"I'm glad it's where you want to be." And he is. He's not as sure as she about people being the only thing behind everything. Especially since Jasmine. But he's glad she made tht choice.

"And I'm even more glad that it's your choice. That you want to be here and choose to be here." With me. But he doesn't say that.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"I do," Fred said somewhat defiantly, though she really wasn't sure of what.

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

He blinked at her tone. "..Good."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"It's just..."

She only wanted him to see.

"This isn't like Pylea anymore. It isn't...at all."

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

"I'm glad that's true," he said softly. "That this is...this is good? To be here?"

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"Yes," Fred's voice was warm. "Yes and yes."

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

"Good." He was being redundant, but that's the main thing that kept coming up into his head.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"I might even go so far to suggest better than that..."

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

"Really?" A flare of hope in his voice.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"Wesley," Fred teased. "Why wouldn't it be."

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

"Back there it's less...complicated."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"And if I ever found a way back Wesley...what's waiting for me there, truthfully? I know I saw things, the feeds, but you were there. Even with what I know, or even what I don't, what's waiting for me there? If it's waited at all?"

Fred's voice grew softer.

"I trust you."

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

He smiled again, relaxing. "It waited, but I. I would rather have you here than there. There...Here is better."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

"Then if you say here's better, then here is where it should be. Me...I mean."

For once Fred was content to not have to go searching for the answer for herself.

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

"I think so."