Another ending...
May. 27th, 2011 10:54 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
annwfyn.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
writing_shadowsSo. That was it.
It turned out that after living in a Winnebago for eighteen years, Rio didn't really own an awful lot. Her books had gone back to the lock up in East London, along with her motorbike and a box of Holly's old baby clothes. The saucepans she hadn't burnt, and cheap reproduction prints she'd bought for the flat had all gone to Oxfam. Burnt pans, old shoes, and cassette tapes worn through had all been thrown out.
Now it was all gone. Everything she needed had bee pushed into a single backpack. Clothes, wash bag, and a single small photoalbum with a few letters tucked between the pages as well. She had a small neat wallet, designed to be worn around her waist, tucked under her jeans, which contained her passport, her tickets, and £3000 in traveller's cheques. It was almost exactly the way she'd planned it all, twenty years ago.
It was odd, in some ways, that it had come down to this. Rio didn't regret the last twenty years - how could she? - but right now they felt strangely unreal. She could have been seventeen again, bright with all her plans for the future. She would see Constantinople, then Greece and Rome. She would climb over the ruins of Troy and then...
...who knew?
She'd written her goodbyes, as sincerely as she could, and gone to see Mal in person. He was still big and solid, and she still loved him. But love wasn't enough. Love had never been enough. She had learnt that when she was fifteen, and she realized she had accepted it now.
Fairytales aren't real. But that doesn't mean that real life can't offer you a whole lot more.
That, Rio thought, as she picked up her backpack and swung it onto her shoulders, was the lesson that she'd learnt. There were no fairytales. All the big loves had failed. Isabelle and Raph, Jonah and Rio, Mal and Karei, Helen and Ian. No one really got what they wanted. But Isabelle had found happiness with a scruffy detective and had found strength in the First Change. Jonah and Karei would be married, and their children would be smart and graceful and they would find warmth and contentment in each other. Mal would be a big damn hero, and Helen, it seemed was growing stronger and more alive with each passing day, under the protection of her other brother.
And Rio would see Constantinople.
The door to her flat closed behind her, and she felt the wind ruffle her hair. For the first time in her adult life, Rio realized that she had no idea what lay before her. She hadn't planned any further than that first ferry ride across the channel and the train on the other side. She had no premonitions; no images of a obstreperous son with clear blue eyes, or a granddaughter appearing on her doorstep. No visions of foreign stars, of the coolness of a science lab's air conditioning unit and the peace of her own little desk with her test tubes laid out in front of her. No dreams, no hopes, no fears. No idea of what might lie before her. Yet in that moment, all of those futures were real, as were none.
A thousand possibilities hung in the air.
Rio Anderson grinned, with the same sharp toothed grin that Jonah Wolfman had fallen in love with on a summer afternoon when they were young.
"Today," she said, with a mixture of trepidation and exultation. "Today, I begin again."
It turned out that after living in a Winnebago for eighteen years, Rio didn't really own an awful lot. Her books had gone back to the lock up in East London, along with her motorbike and a box of Holly's old baby clothes. The saucepans she hadn't burnt, and cheap reproduction prints she'd bought for the flat had all gone to Oxfam. Burnt pans, old shoes, and cassette tapes worn through had all been thrown out.
Now it was all gone. Everything she needed had bee pushed into a single backpack. Clothes, wash bag, and a single small photoalbum with a few letters tucked between the pages as well. She had a small neat wallet, designed to be worn around her waist, tucked under her jeans, which contained her passport, her tickets, and £3000 in traveller's cheques. It was almost exactly the way she'd planned it all, twenty years ago.
It was odd, in some ways, that it had come down to this. Rio didn't regret the last twenty years - how could she? - but right now they felt strangely unreal. She could have been seventeen again, bright with all her plans for the future. She would see Constantinople, then Greece and Rome. She would climb over the ruins of Troy and then...
...who knew?
She'd written her goodbyes, as sincerely as she could, and gone to see Mal in person. He was still big and solid, and she still loved him. But love wasn't enough. Love had never been enough. She had learnt that when she was fifteen, and she realized she had accepted it now.
Fairytales aren't real. But that doesn't mean that real life can't offer you a whole lot more.
That, Rio thought, as she picked up her backpack and swung it onto her shoulders, was the lesson that she'd learnt. There were no fairytales. All the big loves had failed. Isabelle and Raph, Jonah and Rio, Mal and Karei, Helen and Ian. No one really got what they wanted. But Isabelle had found happiness with a scruffy detective and had found strength in the First Change. Jonah and Karei would be married, and their children would be smart and graceful and they would find warmth and contentment in each other. Mal would be a big damn hero, and Helen, it seemed was growing stronger and more alive with each passing day, under the protection of her other brother.
And Rio would see Constantinople.
The door to her flat closed behind her, and she felt the wind ruffle her hair. For the first time in her adult life, Rio realized that she had no idea what lay before her. She hadn't planned any further than that first ferry ride across the channel and the train on the other side. She had no premonitions; no images of a obstreperous son with clear blue eyes, or a granddaughter appearing on her doorstep. No visions of foreign stars, of the coolness of a science lab's air conditioning unit and the peace of her own little desk with her test tubes laid out in front of her. No dreams, no hopes, no fears. No idea of what might lie before her. Yet in that moment, all of those futures were real, as were none.
A thousand possibilities hung in the air.
Rio Anderson grinned, with the same sharp toothed grin that Jonah Wolfman had fallen in love with on a summer afternoon when they were young.
"Today," she said, with a mixture of trepidation and exultation. "Today, I begin again."
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Date: 2011-05-27 09:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 10:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 11:06 am (UTC)Even if she is wrong about Mal.
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Date: 2011-05-27 10:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 11:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 12:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 07:38 pm (UTC)