A/N: I know. I know. I'm a terrible procrastinator of sorts. In light of recent events, I thought I would share some of mine. And in all respect, some of them are as dark, if not darker, than what turmoil the world is experiencing now. Nevertheless, this drawn out segment of words is well deserved from a forgotten past. The people that leave our lives.. are never really gone forever. Sometimes, it takes a complete stranger before you end up remembering your accidental ones.

The Accidental Ones

Winds hath gusted an enormous strength of will. Idly, I awaited their endeavor to imprison me again. They subsided into a nothingness beyond my grasp. I did not will them to seize, but they reclaimed a state of reluctance bearable to my flesh. Had I cringed upon reaction of it being burnt to ash by every blow, certainly I would have consoled my strength towards mortal wounds. In this case, I found zero pain and suffering.

"You are one magnificent spark to follow, Sloane." The Gatekeeper to the boundless loss insinuated his further frustration. "I would have gotten to you sooner but your moods change so much faster than any soul I've seen tethered to the Earth. Remembrance is definitely not your hardship, or forte." An exasperated, false breath had befallen him. "But there is much you reject in terms of reconciliation. I feel it emanating off your soul -the burdens that seek acceptance. I cannot embrace you in this state, and it pains me to watch the realm of my kingdom ascertain your worst Hells as well as your memories. I will try to break the veil that consumes you before it instinctively tears you apart. That is something I do not bare to watch."

"Tell me what pains you, Alexander."

"Azazel," he corrected. "Alexander is my mortal flesh."

"So, your mortal flesh remains insignificant in this realm?" I questioned his shred of humanity imprinted on his mortal body.

His eyes narrowed respectively at my sight. He knew my impression of him, of his sacrifice. "It has much importance as the immortal soul that bares witness to external sufferings. Pain is no stranger to immortality. It's a bittersweet sting of infernal Hell." Gliding around my stature, his gaze stationed on the scars that visualized from the current past memory. He stopped, held his intensity, and sized my exposed flesh. "Make no mistake either, Sweetheart. I'm no angel. Nor, Have I been for eons since the dawn of mankind. Pain has a fondness for vulnerability. Much like the wounds you bore in youth-" Motioning his glance to the subtle raised skin on my arms, I cringed, trying to challenge his notion. "-and although the infliction may not have been by the owner, you know their resonance within the cells bound through their precise pains. You think refrain from my mortal flesh is unjustified by means of humble arrogance through higher rank? I was given ownership of my surname at the birth of my creation. It was said unto me upon my first breath into this existence. I do not think less of my mortal body or name attached during the centuries its title took claim. I do, however, wonder about your attraction to its Earth-bound remains to your psych. It makes me most curious, as do most things about souls. But yours-" Encircling closer, I watched as his irises solidified on a perfect shade of blue. "...It's definitely a page turner." Laughter consumed his vocals.

"Do you even feel? Does your mortal flesh reconcile its claims?" He became stiff, almost rigid at the interrogation. An all knowing being, he gilded himself for representing amongst tortured souls without enlightenment. Yet, his knowledge of being was not slighted by my insensitivity and bluntness. His offensiveness was worn through by a humorous conception.

"Do you mean through harm or passion, my dear?"

"Both," I requested calmly.

In silence, did he claim his thoughts. "It is very difficult to explain to human flesh rather than experiencing it. We are not programmed right away with emotion, or sense of feeling. We do not long, crave, or starve for things like mortals on Earth; however, we are influenced by many faults of character. Some, who have gained those flaws of humanity, my brothers and sisters brought down for battle, have ascertained those traits, either through being Fallen or Rogue." His eyes focused on mine, restraining the colors ready to erase their identity. "Have I loved? Have I expressed my deepest passions for a mortal through my journey of undetermined inheritance of such experiences? Do I refute passion or passions?" My swallow came and went as he leveled with me on the subject matter. "I am but a simple creation. Fairly, am I misunderstood. But, you forget the flames that flicker in my prescience -including yours. If I knew not of all the soul's twists, ties and binds, then forever lost I would be with them. Their memories forever seeking purpose in this existence. Forever, seeking the shades of light and dark to balance them."

"So, you know of love?"

His jaw clenched slightly. "I know of loss." A breeze swept up our opposing positions. "I know that void inside of yourself. A self-sacrifice for those who have earned that trust. You have a nature of being that resents its relevance of character. I, too, can feel it. You fear that acknowledgement; the judgment of it."

Embers swayed cyclonic in measure around us. Slowly at first, then picked up their strength as we assumed our stances. He moved closer, bracing a palm to my cheek. "My fears are what I regret to acknowledge. They make me feel weakened by my decisions."

Tilting his head to the side, he offered a small smirk and a wink to my sadness. "You're stronger because of your fears. Strength takes time to build inside. It's heavily influenced through truth, a justification. You need to accept your truths; that's where your strength lies." His hand dropped as the infernal flames grew larger. "Your soul's shattered. The pieces need time to mend the splices."

"How much time?" I pleaded for the answer.

The fires singed his skin eloquently as he smiled solemnly. "That's completely up to you." His body disintegrated into ashes from the winds. The surrounding darkness flooded around me once more.

Black encased the far corners of my sight. Was it enough to be blind of senses? Was it enough to submit to their will? I will never know. That emptiness in the center of my chest, a hollowed out, conservative, pit became the submissive wound inflicted without touch. I felt it submerge to the surface in a graceful, yet determined, waltz beneath my flesh. It starved for attention; a recognition of angst that longed a more intense, and kindred, sense of approval amongst all the rest. I willed it to subside. I fought to keep it at bay before it consumed me. But, I heard the disembodied voice of my Guardian telling me to reconcile our differences. So, I did. I let the feeling succumb over the fears I harbored.

I hated myself for doing so.

A mixture of colors took shape through small cracks of light. Once they solidified, I found myself situated in another classroom. Although, I was much younger than the age of fourteen; much shorter too. My mind melded with the current cell, distraught. Pain struck the wounds which grew an attachment to their bond of reality. I was drowning in this moment as the teacher wrote the assignment on the board. She paused, glanced in my direction, and then spoke to the rest of the class. My eyes lowered; my body slumped down in the hard, wooden chair. My fatigue had been getting increasingly worse for weeks now. Not that my appetite had been much better before the past few months as our new visitor arrived to my new family.

"Leila," passing by her desk was never a completed mission before escaping to freedom. "Would you mind meeting with a friend of mine this afternoon? She's most interested to meet with you, one on one."

"I don't know if I can-"

"It'll be quick. It won't interfere with your afternoon classes."

"What about my foster parents?" I questioned shakily.

"This involves you. Not them." Tapping her glasses to the desk, I noticed the hesitation in her voice. "You don't want to be late."

No, I sure didn't. I headed up the stairs to the office on the right, conveniently out of plain sight. I took a deep breath, turned the knob and sat in that dreaded chair, waiting for my personal interrogator to walk through the door. There were thoughts that screamed inside me during the first, initial silence. How I would excuse myself from the situation. How I would explain, in the less importance, to the family of my entrapment as to evade any further punishment. I shouldn't have been there. I shouldn't have been sitting in that seat. I went to get up as the door creaked open. I was terribly unlucky with timing, in general.

"Leila, it's so good to meet you." She had the most brilliant of smiles to calm any nerves. I stationed my post and waited for her tactics. Mentally, I was prepared. Emotionally, I wasn't. "I heard you're the smartest in the class. My colleague adores you. Very hard worker, she says." I remained quiet, looking for an exit sign. Instead, I found the clock on the wall, but the hands did not move. "So, how's your day going? Learn anything new?"

"Why am I here?" I asked.

The question caught her off-guard, but only for a second. "So we can know each other better. You are very reserved in your studies. Quiet. Not a lot of friends outside of school?"

"I don't talk with very many people. I keep to myself. My family doesn't have a problem with it." Her pen clicked to the pad of paper in her lap. Jotting down some notes, she probed deeper.

"What's your home life like?" My breath caught as I changed the direction of my vision to the window, where kids were playing out at recess. I refused to have this conversation in front of a complete stranger. "Leila?" She spoke more firmly, more direct. Instead, her voice was lost upon another.

"I can't take back my past. I rebelled against my better judgment. I have to live with those choices. I have no regret." The somber eyes of my nineteen-year old step brother still resonated since our first meeting together. I thought him odd; a recluse. I didn't know his past though. The world his nightmares resided in solitude. "They haunt me. Their lives tagged to faces, indescribable to definition." He pulled a long drag from his cigarette, exhaling the cloud of grays over his distinctive attire of camouflage. "The remembrance pains me to the core. Makes me feel more human every day. But the blood... I can't gain acceptance from the red."

His eyes dropped their vacancy upon explanation. "Did you kill someone?"

"Essentially, yes." He admitted after the prolonged silence. I watched his gaze fall carefully. How my youth didn't effect his confession in all honesty.

I gulped, not thinking about the diminishing space between us. "Did you save them?" Taking another puff from his smoke, I found him chuckling at first. I met his eyes for the first time since he walked through the door.

"I'd like to think so." His lips pursed together reluctantly. "I'd like to think it was meant to go down like that. That the moments I grew to know didn't influence the worst of my fears. There's a depth to Death that even mortality can never fully comprehend towards the end. We're here and the next-" Snapping his fingers abruptly, I startled back alertly. "-lights out." The definitive clink of his dog tags resoluted their victory.

"That's it? Death and then nothing?" I was cynical of the belief.

"It's hard to capture meaning without actual evidence. I'm not asking you to believe anything. Just be cautious. Youth is impressionable to many myths Man hasn't discovered yet. I'm accidental, at best, in light of any such design process. For me, the disconnect should be less foreign to normalcy by now."

My teacher's colleague interrupted my thoughts from him. "Why am I really here?" Still, my gaze went down to those without boundaries or limitations. "I haven't done anything wrong to deserve this meeting. Why do you want to speak to me so badly?"

"Because," she released a stifled breath of air. "There are concerns about your development."

"You've been keeping an eye on me? Is that it?" I boldly confronted her, making her stammer the next phrase.

"That's one way to put it." Angry, I turned my focus outside the glass again. "What is it that you want?" She confided earnestly.

My gaze didn't break from the scenery. I didn't miss a beat either.

"I want to be normal." Aside from doing my Math homework in the confines of a closet with nothing but a flashlight alongside my assignments. At least, I was safe.

"You want to be like the others?" A nod confirmed the message. "You want to blend in and be like the rest; like nothing makes much difference?" I kept silent. She knew the further answers would be in acceptance to such claims. "It's hard to achieve that when you have bruises on your neck and a limp in your step."

"You don't know anything." I retaliated out of spite.

"You're right. I don't know anything about you, except what I see. I can't begin to help you find normal if that's not what you want for yourself. But there are many like you out there that are never noticed because people think they live a normal life. They don't pay attention to what they deserve from others to actually see. You know what happens to those who don't speak?"

"They remain silent?" I remarked.

"Yes," she replied remorsefully. "They do... through everything."

She didn't know me. The person I was or would become. But, she had her reasons for locking me in a room with her once, sometimes twice, a week. On a regular basis, we quarreled on different subject matter other than my current livelihood. I endured what mattered most to me. At times, she asked me a question I refused to answer. Stubborn; as though the more I became, I was happy to belong to a family again. No matter what trials and tribulations came with those unforeseen wounds beneath the surface. I kept myself guarded; my shield forever raised with purpose. She rejected the rebellion for months on end until the one day, I submitted to the full custody of severe helplessness.

"You look tired." She graced her compliment effortlessly. My eyes revolved inside my skull for a few moments before acknowledging her words.

"Huh?" I managed through internal mumblings. "No, I couldn't sleep last night."

"You haven't been having that dream again, have you?" Her concern softened as I yawned.

"Not so much a dream." I half-lied to her. "I mean, humans with wings don't make much sense."

"And the screams?" The surrogate therapist prodded.

"Just a figment of my delusion." I joked. "Brad has worse nightmares than me, I'm sure. He can never fully rest. He has trouble closing his eyes, if anything." Leaning backwards, my chair balanced on its back legs for support.

"How's he been?"

I took a moment for myself. Before I decided to speak, I let out a belated laugh, in one, small syllable of a huff. "Since he came back from overseas -I don't know how to explain it. Just different from a half a year ago. He doesn't talk much. Nothing about what happened. It's strange." The legs of the chair tilted forward as a thud sounded against the tiled floor. Solid as it was, it echoed around me.

"He was discharged for medical reasons, wasn't he?" She questioned out of confirmation.

"From what we were told... after being shot at." He complained on his weekly visits to the doctor how the ringing sensation filled his head right before he went to sleep. The prognosis, since him and his fellow fleet were attacked during the cover of darkness, his memory recollected the trauma before he closed his eyes at night. Yet, the ringing being a common sensory attachment from the firearm discharged at an unsafe distance, proved to be a natural symptom for lingering effects of non-harmonious ringings.

"He's been home for two, three months now?" I nodded slightly. "Have you witnessed anything out of the ordinary?" Other than him waking up in a cold sweat, screaming in agony for the sounds to stop? Here was this young, bright and bold, twenty-year old, trying to figure out his past, present and future. Believing that the stars held more truth than the wars fought under them. He was an introvert. Intelligibly so. Ever failing to grasp his roots of character. Sublime, I might add. That he, as articulately capable of communication, did not seek out social engagements willingly. Awkward, his dark side was. His reclusive mannerisms were justified by means of which his hidden past exposed.

To see his face before his independence through an absolution of servitude, I would have given anything for those moments relived. There was this constant hunger for pride. One, which consumed his whimsical nature beyond a single spout of laughter. It was slowly erased over time. He always felt he was falling short from his accomplishments based upon the slurred sentiments of our drunken father. Brad had been away for over a year when I became apart of their family. Watching him struggle to appease his father, was difficult to witness. In short, those who bared arms were expected to have their offspring inherit the Death of their acceptance. I could only assume he drank to keep the memories at bay. Surely, not to refine them. After watching his son crumble because of chance, he wavered the insult for a shot glass. And because so, his anger rose with the allotted failure created by his own blood. No one stood in his path. No one disobeyed him. No one talked down to him. And the one time someone did, I couldn't just turn my back and run like he told me to.

"No. He has bad dreams, but I tell him they're not real anymore."

"But they were."

"They're past memories. You live that moment, and it's gone after. The present is reality." Even her stare broke at my philosophy for moments in time. She shook her head.

"Maybe he feels alone. Going through something the average person, normally, wouldn't experience can cause isolation, indifference." My eyes adverted a reaction to the claim. Sensing this, she changed the subject. "What do you want to do when you're older?" Not get the crap kicked out of me while my eldest, adopted brother defends me. I should want more, I thought. I did feel alone in this instance.

"I want to teach." I stated earnestly.

"What do you want to teach?"

A spark lit up in my eyes. "Everything. Anything."

"How do you expect to do that?" She inquired.

"Maybe writing. I could be a writer."

"Teach people through your writings? Ambitious, I must say."

"Why's that?" My defense rose.

"From what I understand, you're terrible at communication." A smile and a wink conveyed her teasing.

"I'll manage."

Several months later, I was able to open up to her. Let her inside what secrets my insecurities had. I still held a resistance to my personal memories, ones of my mother, that began to resurface the few previous nights. Brad had another episode within his sleep. I had woken up right before his vocals reached me. I tried to calm him down, but nothing seemed to work.

"They're there." He voiced shakily. "I can see their faces. I can hear them. I can hear their screams." The moonlight shone his distanced regret within a single drop of liquid. I heard his breathing intensify at the forlorn memory.

"Listen to me." I gauged his awareness from my tone. "There's nothing you can do."

He shook his head in disagreement. "I can't quit hearing them." A stillness came about him as I moved closer. His demeanor lessened to the defeat it felt. Looking up at me, his eyes softened. "Except when you're here."

Upon acknowledgment, my gaze hesitated in sorrow. "Do you want to talk about it?" My, now, therapist cooed across from me. The light had begun to dim in front of me at the remembrance he offered with a look of gratitude.

"I couldn't even if I wanted to."

"Why'd you leave?" I inquired a numerous amount of times around his first week back home. He didn't have much knowledge of me either. An opportunity for first engagements offset his dependency of dire distractedness. His fortune compliantly dependent on my unfailing evasiveness. It took a couple seconds of hesitation before I retrieved a response.

He breathed out a small laugh. "I thought I could do some good. I lived a good part of my life trying to protect myself. I reached a point where I saw things differently. Realized how selfish I was. My purpose in protection became my ultimate responsibility."

"Why protection then?" Instigating the question, I watched him smirk.

"-Because you can't save everyone." Snorting at the infliction it brought to his senses, Brad remained calm. "And even if you could, what's to say the morality is fated in its righteousness of thus actions? Without loss, there's no gain. What's left to learn?"

I witnessed his strength wither in slight moments after our conversations. How his opinion of the woman I talked to was kept secret from the rest. He respected my intentional quiet. He knew the bruises I hid before the bell rang for school. The way I shifted my strap on my book bag to compensate for the tender pain of scars beneath the skin. All those moments when you feel no one realizes who you are aside from flesh and bone, that tend to sink upon waves around a hopeless worth. What's to say a soul such as mine even mattered in relevance to others? It wasn't until the first time I heard his voice that I accepted his existence along with my own. The night I first hid in the shadows.

I didn't understand. My thoughts hindered in their typical repetition to elude a more terrible threat. What did I do? I didn't understand what strength I had apart from will. Is it even possible to count a voice as something more? My eyes closed in that dark corner, silently seeking an alternate refuge. This moment will pass like the rest. It wasn't a prayer, or even a plead. And yet, here I was curled up in a ball with my knees to my chest, just wondering how loud my heart thumped during the seconds that passed. Time slowed in wake of my fear. I felt helpless and alone. There were nightmares I dreaded would come true and when they did suddenly become a reality, I found them absolutely horrifying.

How shapes took their resemblances in the darkness. How the darkness had a depth to it beyond comprehension. This was where my fear thrived in exactness. To have something lurking in the shadows, calculating the premeditated movement of their prey. All resolution of means became void of confrontation. A minor setback that hath guided ignorance as a faithful follower. I was young; scared. I thought I was entirely alone.

Remember, that I'm with you. I'm here. You're not alone.

That small light that beckoned from my chest rose slightly upon his voice and then, fell as a grasp came to my arm. An infinitive twirling of sorts flailed about my limbs as though gravity lost its grip upon me. And me, letting go of the roots that tied me to its severed snares. Please leave me alone. The screams flooded my consciousness. The light fading to ashes into the billowing black abyss. A chill withered around my bones, un-nerving the flesh.

He spat in my face, controlled in my resistance against him. It angered me. Made me restless to his demands. That I not speak unless spoken to. And that if I were to talk back, my flesh would bruise more horrible than the last. If I decided to speak, I would no longer be considered family. So, silent was how I remained. Through the thrashings, through the bruises and cuts, through the blood earned from them, through the abuse. I couldn't do anything except for keep it hidden. And I was very good at that. Or, so I thought. Every time I flinched from what my mind perceived as a threatening motion. Every time the teacher's eyes lingered a little longer on my desk as the notes for the next assignment were scribbled on the chalkboard. Every time I sat and waited for my adopted brother to pick me up after school. How terrified I had become with people in general. How my trust for them was almost non-existent. How my brother observed my furthering reclusiveness. And it began to anger him, opposite of his father's ascertained emotions. Some things, some instances, we did not speak of. Both for different reasons I could only assume. What matches make of fires without a spark to ignite? Some flames combust after being suffocated for so long and being forced to realize the worst.

He glared at my resistance, my father he was suppose to represent, and a poor one at that. It had taken me a couple of tries to steady my stance. A drop pelted my cheek as I went to wipe it astray. My forehead had been sliced from the shove against the coffee table, and the blood took its course as I braced my arms in front of my face. His arm raised to harm. Eyes closed, I readied myself for impact.

But it never came...

"Don't," His son opposed him. His voice shook upon the severity of the threat. "-Don't you ever touch her again." Pushing his father back, I saw the rage simmer before he leapt towards me. He pulled him back, choking him with an arm wedged beneath his neck.

"Why?" I heard him choke out within the restraint as he held him at bay.

"Because she's my sister."

"You know you can tell me." My gaze watered down to repetitious screams of self-preservation. The look Brad exchanged at the sight of the blood that night he went after me. The night he protected me. "What happened?" Her silhouette faded amongst my thoughts. She was a mere figment of hope to me.

I remembered, one day, how Brad picked me up from school. One of the many times, and I thought about what prison had laid before us heading home. The torturous embodiment of terrifying dreams and fears of stepping a foot too far out of line. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in the car.

"That bad, huh?" I hear him laugh. "Things have certainly changed since I got back. I went through my phase of silence. I guess we're taking turns now?" My smile waned slowly as I caught the end of his cigarette burn bright and then solidify to ash afterwards.

He revved the engine when we came to the next stop. At the third roar, I turned to show my annoyance in his juvenile behavior. We just stared at one another. Him, acknowledging the tiredness around my eyes, the scar concealed beneath my hair that presented itself within the lightness of the spring air. His smirk began to hinder in realization. My gaze fell to the mark on his arm. A small piece of raised skin, fresh from the inflicted wound. And in just one motion, one flick of the wrist, the sleeve of his jacket made it disappear. The engine roars again as we stayed put at the intersection, a crossroads of such. Me, trying desperately not to cry during class, surrounded by a roomful of my peers. Their lives shrouded in secrecy, even from one another. But our Hell, awaited a decision between us. A second of silence. A long awaited silence as we turned the corner, taking the long way home.

"What are you doing?" I choked out, terrified of the repercussions of being home late.

"I'm thinking." Was all he said before pressing the gas petal harder. Even with my seat belt strapped in, I gripped the seat that held me. "About walking away from this fight.." His foot lets up and the speed decreases. "..and taking you with me. Away from all this."

"Look, my counselor said she'd intervene-" I began.

"And do what exactly? Leave us to be home to nothing?"

"Nothing, would be better than this." An argument arose from my pain.

He paused at my sincerity. "Nothing is exactly what I don't want to be in the end. Tortured by my memories. Ignorant of my pain. Drowned in debt I owed to protect my troop, my family, you. It's all too heavy sometimes. I look at you and I think, I'm not gone yet. I can still do some good."

"You don't have to." An incessant anger escaped through my veins. "I'm asking you to. I don't expect you to."

"Because you don't want to fight anymore?"

"What good comes from it?" His gaze shied away from me.

"Some, but it matters. And later on down the road, even though it may not seem like it now, it does make all the difference to your future. No matter how set in stone you think it is."

"What future?" I proclaimed rhetorically, sarcastically.

Shrugging, he contemplated a plan of action. Preferably, one where bright circumstances outweighed the actual outcome of events. "One where we exist elsewhere, away from the grip of the Reaper, himself. One we decide ourselves."

The hum of laughter and muffled screams echoed through the panes of glass as I admired the separation between our two worlds at that interval in time. The first time the counselor sat to speak with me, unaware of likeness within a confined space. She treaded carefully around the surmounting silence kept throughout my thoughts, my past. They were mine to keep. They had always been mine.

"You should have made a right at the last turn." I teased after the last five towns. "Now, we're lost." He had two distinct looks that followed next.

The first was a smug smirk alongside a break of laughter. The second was a mask of tension from being bold amongst freedom. "Not all who wander are lost. You know who said that?"

"No," I commented.

His mask brightened just a little. "J.R.R. Tolkien."

"Hmm.." Stating this first. "-but we are lost."

"For the moment." He reconciled amongst his thoughts.

We thought we were free. That we had beaten the expectations of being bound by chains of entrapment. The second the red and blue lights flashed, was when we were proved wrong. They took us home. Told us how we were missing instead of free. Sitting in the parked car in front of the house again, I found my solitude to be almost, completely, unbearable. It's odd to think freedom cost so much at that age. That to voice what was wrong would have done anything. That watching these men who protect people would relieve us from their custody to suffer more silences of pain unspoken from our lips. How could we? We're just kids, right? But it felt like more. A greater purpose to withstand the battles we already fought and survived. I witnessed them drive off without another word after our father hugged us. The tension remained as he gripped his fingers around my brother's shoulder, embedding his claws within his prey.

"Let's talk." He swung him around to lead my brother onward. I opened my mouth to speechless words. My voice dissolved in fear.

The forgone silence captured my counselor no longer.

"I have something I'd like to try if you don't mind?" I didn't nod in rejection or agreement, so she continued. "Close your eyes." I found myself in so much pain, I obeyed. "Clear your thoughts. All of them. Good and bad. Now focus on my voice." My mind was open. My mind was blank spaces unfilled by any memory -for that moment. I saw his eyes. Saw how they reached out to me. Told me to run. Told me to hide. Told me to survive. Go. Run. I saw his eyes. Saw how they went out. How I screamed. How I cried. How I couldn't breathe if he no longer could. She saw the struggle my mind induced in erasing this. "Pause. Feel the pain. Absorb it. Pause once more. This is not you." My screams were silent in my skull as he stopped in front of me.

"What?" The memory of him standing there, knowing the ending.

"Just go. Run."

"You are walking down a long deserted hallway encased with doors. Each one is a memory from the past, present and future." Stopping in front of one that had a small crack sever the opening, I observed its contents.

A younger version of me trying to turn away as he continued to holler. Before grabbing my wrist, embedding his mark of control. "I told you to look at me when I talk to you." My foster father's drunken breath spat back in my face as I resisted the command, his demand. Finally, the pressure began to become too much to bare while I withered within the restraint to turn around. In failure, I appeased his orders. "Now, was that so hard?" The temper of enraged anger slithered down my throat and settled collectively in my chest. So much, it burned.

I hate you. I thought shamelessly in that second as the sliver of the door enclosed upon itself.

"Now... close the doors." Her order reverberated around the hallway. A sudden, forlorn panic hit my nerves. No. But every door I passed, began to shut upon my reach. Each one, having the handle turned to lock simultaneously as it closed. No. No. No. I finally reached the last open one, shoved my foot in between the shrinking space, and stumbled in.

Once my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I saw the Sun setting in the distance. A magnificent array of colors deteriorating every second, every hour. It was peaceful, beautiful, significant.

"She's strong. I've never met anyone like her." His voice boomed through the sounds emanating from the pier. Sounds of seagulls sqwaking and waves washing upon the shoreline had become almost mute in comparison. "You're wrong." I heard him detest against this person. His hands became more active in reclamation. "You know how I know that?" Silence overcame the symphony of nature upon response. "Because of how she looks at the world. How she interprets good." He paused, his head down. "She has hope. You'll never experience that kind of innocence without having fought for it. Every single day-" Shaking his head, I could make out his suppressed smile underneath his half-enclosed hand alongside his jawline. "-to have eyes like that?" His laughter resonated through my chest. "It's something you don't see anymore. Of course, she's a fighter. Without a doubt."

I got to witness his stance as he turned around. His tattered Converses complimented his distressed jeans and worn shirt as he nodded a smile. The click of film on the tape faded. The last of his voice to actually have been recorded from his recruiter jolted my reconciliation. One of the last of them left behind those doors.

Before I knew it, I was abandoned to the confines of the hallway again. A tear shed from that room as the door clicked shut. I felt I could never open it again. I could never access that emotion no matter how hard I tried. The restraint in knowing what I left and lost burdened me. She spoke more firmly as I regained my senses.

"-All of them." I drowned in temptation of the further hindrance of clarity. "Each door will have a lock but no key. Those keys will remain hidden throughout your past memories. Only you can open them. Only you can remember. Every new emotion that becomes too much, will have have its own space to be locked. And locked, that door will remain until the right key is uncovered. Keep your eyes closed. The fear of your past locked." Clicking echoed throughout the hall as each knob turned its rotation. When the last one completed its turn, I felt a spark emit from this memory. The stranger with the defeated gaze staring back. Reaching to capture the features about his face, he dissolved in small fragments of light. "Open your eyes."