Chapter4
1573 Words
Ivan’s POV
The moment I shut the door behind me, a great weight pressed against my chest.
I leaned on the nearest wall to steady myself.
I didn’t believe it. She was here.
For a long moment, I simply stood there, staring at the closed door in disbelief, like whoever was behind the door was the only person that could save me from despair.
I wasn’t wrong. She was my escapism, my safe place, my everything. Yet, she was taken away from me.
It only took 500 years. Years of longing and self destruction. Years of silence. Years of watching the world forget about her. Years of trying to forget the sound of her voice to ease my heart.
Yet, she was finally here. And I didn’t understand how. I didn’t understand how she looked so much like her.
The weight pressed harder.
Her eyes flashed in my head.
Those big brown things that looked at me and yearned for my touch now looked at me with fear and confusion.
The thought twisted something deep inside me.
She had never looked at me like that before, not even once.
A bitter laugh slipped out of me.
“Of course,” I muttered under my breath.
Why would she recognize me?
Five centuries had passed. Five hundred years since the night the world ripped her away from me. Five hundred years since the last time I heard her voice.
Her last words were my name. She said it with exhaustion, but her eyes told me all she hadn’t when she could.
“Ivan,” I tried to say it the way she did.
I pushed myself off the wall slowly.
The image of her laying in the snow while crimson dripped from her stomach.
Anger burst through my veins.
My legs felt heavy as I walked down the quiet hallway.
The house was silent as always. And for years I had grown used to that silence. It had become my companion. It was safer than the outside world, so I drowned in it.
Now it felt unbearable.
Because she was here. Alive and breathing.
Sleeping just a few steps away from me.
My hand dragged across my face as I walked into the living room.
This couldn’t be real.
I didn’t understand how it was possible.
Was I having a mild concussion too? Or have I stayed in the darkness so long I’m starting to imagine her presence?
I walked my way to my basement door. My chest tightened as I twisted the door knob.
I took a few steps into the room, fully able to see the wall covered with a large blanket.
I stripped the cover cloth of the wall. I looked up slowly.
And there she was. My wife, Carissa.
Her mural hung there, as beautiful as ever.
That was the only thing I had left of Carissa. The only thing that gave me a little bit of hope, that she still thought about me even though she was ten feet in the ground.
Her silver hair cascaded down her shoulders. Soft lips curved in a smile that once belonged only to me.
And… those eyes.
For a moment, I simply stared at the painting.
Centuries passed and it still hurt the same.
My chest tightened as I stepped closer.
“You would laugh at me if you saw me now,” I murmured quietly.
My voice sounded rough.
I lifted a hand and brushed my fingers over the painted outline of her cheek.
A sharp ache settled in my chest.
“I searched for you,” I whispered.
The words fell into the quiet room like a confession.
“I searched everywhere.”
Cities rose and fell. Kingdoms burned to dust. Generations lived and died.
And I remained.
Looking… waiting… hoping.
My jaw tightened.
I remembered the early years the most.
Those were the worst.
Back when hope was still alive inside me. Back when I believed I was dreaming. Back when I believed your end came too soon, too sudden, that you were alive somewhere else.
I traveled across continents.
Every time someone said they had seen a woman with silver hair and strange eyes.
Every time someone mentioned a face that resembled hers.
I went.
Every single time.
And every single time…
It wasn’t her.
The disappointment never got easier.
Eventually, the hope I held on to started to rot inside me.
Years turned into decades. And decades turned into centuries.
And the world kept moving forward while I remained stuck in the past.
I slowly lowered my hand from the mural.
My gaze dropped to the floor.
“I tried to forget you,” I admitted.
The words felt heavy in my throat.
“I really did.”
I tried drowning your memory in war…in blood.
I believed if I couldn’t have peace, then the world didn’t deserve it either.
I became something darker.
Something cruel.
Something I knew you would have hated.
The thought made my chest tighten.
“I told myself you were gone.”
That it was over.
That loving you had been a mistake.
But even after all these years…
I still couldn’t erase you.
You were everywhere.
A tired breath left my lips.
“I hated you for that,” I whispered.
For refusing to leave my heart. For haunting every moment of my existence. For making eternity feel like a punishment.
I tried to kill myself. I jumped off a cliff, I hung myself, I laid on the railway cold metal - waited to be crushed.
But each time, I woke up in my bed without a single scratch.
I got jealous of you. You were granted death easily, while I was denied because of my origin. It was easier in my head; if I couldn’t stay alive with you, I could enjoy the after life with you.
But it wasn’t so.
My gaze slowly lifted back to the mural.
“And now…”
My voice faltered slightly.
“She’s here.”
The words felt unreal.
Even saying them out loud didn’t make them sound believable.
I turned my head toward the room where she slept.
“She looks like you,” I murmured.
The resemblance was impossible to ignore.
The same face. The same eyes. Even the way she frowned earlier felt painfully familiar.
But it couldn’t be that simple.
Fate wasn’t that kind.
Life had taught me that lesson many times.
And yet…
The moment I saw her on the ground while I was hunting in the forest, something inside me shifted.
Something I thought had died centuries ago.
Hope.
My fingers curled into a fist.
“No,” I muttered quietly.
I shook my head.
I had lived too long to be fooled by illusions.
“She isn’t you.”
The words felt forced.
Like I was trying to convince myself more than anyone else.
Because deep down… a voice whispered something else.
What if she was?
My chest tightened again.
What if after all these years… after all the pain and emptiness…
Fate had finally returned her to me?
The thought terrified me more than anything.
Because hope meant one thing. I could lose her again.
I dragged a hand through my hair.
“I won’t survive that,” I said quietly.
Not again. Not a second time.
The first time had shattered me. A second time would destroy whatever remained.
Silence filled the room again.
My eyes drifted back to the mural.
***
Five hundred years ago, she had stood in front of me with the same stubborn look she always had when she disagreed with me.
“You worry too much,” she had teased.
“I worry because I love you,” I had replied.
She laughed then.
The sound echoed in my memory so clearly that my chest ached.
“If something ever happens to me,” she said playfully, “I’ll just find my way back to you.”
I remembered scoffing at her.
“Don’t joke about things like that.”
“I’m serious,” she insisted, poking my chest. “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”
My throat tightened.
The memory faded.
And the silence returned.
Slowly, I looked toward the hallway again.
“She said she would come back,” I whispered.
The words barely left my lips.
My heart pounded harder in my chest.
Was this her way back?
Was this what she meant?
Was this… reincarnation?
Or was I simply a broken man clinging to impossible fantasies?
I didn’t know.
And that uncertainty felt like torture.
I exhaled slowly.
For a moment, I considered opening the door to the room where she slept again.
Just to look at her, to make sure she was real.
But I stopped myself.
If I saw fear in her eyes again…
I wasn’t sure what that would do to me.
So I stayed where I was.
“I waited for you,” I murmured.
It dawned on me that fate had placed someone who looked exactly like her in my home.
Just a few steps away.
My gaze lingered on the hallway for a long moment.
Then I finally whispered the words I had been afraid to say.
“If you really found your way back to me…”
My voice broke slightly.
“…then please.”
I closed my eyes.
“Please remember me.”
- Writer
