Love you Both, Love me Too

Thomas: A Modest Proposal

The ring felt heavy in my pocket as I drove home, and every single fear and doubt I had ever had played out in my head.

What if she said no?

What if she didn't say anything at all?

It was fast, and I knew that she would be hesitant, and yet my heart wanted nothing else in the world.

Sela was everything I had ever wanted, and even though she was hesitant and shy about our love, I knew that he shared a connection that could never be broken. I wanted to do this and yet, something about the way she looked at Dash made me worry.

I knew I could trust them, but what if...

I stopped myself from going down that road. It would do none of us any good for me to be imagining scenarios in which they broke my heart. Dash was my brother, and despite the fact that we had both met Sela at the same time, he had made the choice not to pursue her, and so I did instead.

But Sela and I had yet to be truly intimate, and our relationship had been growing serious for months.

Each night, despite me asking her to stay, Sela would instead ask me to take her home.

I worried that she didn't desire me, but she assured me each time that she very much did.

"Stay with me, Sela. Don't go home tonight. Just let me hold you a little while longer."

She always knew what I was asking...what I needed from her, but she would grow shy and claim weariness as she asked me to take her home.

She would kiss me in the car, her hands running down my chest and her tongue exploring my mouth as if I was everything she needed as well.

She never invited me up to her apartment on top of the library that sat next to the firehouse.

Dash's Firehouse.

An invasive thought took over then, and I imagined Dash climbing the staircase up to her apartment. I imagined Sela opening the door, her body draped in sheer lingerie. I imagined her hesitating for a moment and then allowing him inside.

I shook the vision from my head, startled at how real it felt, and at the anger that it brought out inside me.

Dash was reckless, but he wasn't heartless. The only thing I had to worry about was what he was going to do about The Director's death.

Uriel had saved us from death and life in an unforgiven system. He had not hesitated to take us in, one by one, as the boys were left on his doorstep.

I was five when I was left on his doorstep in the cold winter rain. He had taken me in quickly and placed me in a room with four other boys, one of them an infant he would later name Dashiel. The police were called, but they had nowhere to put the children in a town so small. The orphanage in the city was already overcrowded. We would have to be separated and shipped out where we could fit. Uriel refused to allow that to happen to us.

An investigation was launched as the director adjusted his home for the new arrivals, but by the next week, ten more had appeared out of nowhere. They were all well-loved and cared for, showing no signs of abuse nor neglect. Their images were circulated around the world for years on end. No one could recognize a single one of the fifteen Orphans of D'avoir.

The Director assured the world he would take care of us, and he did so to the best of his ability. I held no ill will towards the man who had saved us, but there were secrets in that home that left me wondering if I truly knew anything about the man at all.

Secret doorways, and shifting halls. Missing rooms and a staircase that seemed to exist in places it simply could not.

And the anger and cruelty in some of the boys that could never quite grasp.

As we grew up and left the home, and even as we returned time and time again, the house seemed much different than my younger mind remembered. Every now and then, however, I would catch a glimpse in the corners of that old house, and be reminded of the world I had lived in as a child.

We all remembered some things. Other things, we forgot.

I know Dash felt it too, and Conner had mentioned it once when he had been alive.

"Do you remember the Room That Time Forgot?"

And just like that, I knew exactly what he was referring to, despite the fact that it could not have existed.

I had roamed with dinosaurs in that room. I had flown on spacecraft across a thousand Galaxies. I had seen the ending and beginning of all life within those limited four walls.

Was it the imagination of a child, or had it been something more?

The house was closed off to us now, but I knew it wouldn't be long before Dash was there, sifting through things that were best left forgotten. I knew that I wasn't gonna let him do it alone.

Before I could intercept him, however, I needed to get ready for the festival and prepare a proper memorial for Uriel. He deserved no less from those of us who owed him our lives.

It would also be a memorial for Conner, who had died a year ago tonight. Dash and I had never talked about what happened that night, but I knew that it was for the best.

I drove down the quiet streets and through the wooded road to the Director's home in the forest. Dash's car was already parked outside, and I could see where the police tape had been broken at the front door.

Despite the inexplicable fear I suddenly felt, and the certainty that we should not enter, I left my car reluctantly and followed Dash inside.