Kori Stone (thoughshebends) wrote in immune_ic, @ 2013-03-26 18:48:00 |
|
|||
The keepsake box that Brandon had built was perfect for the pictures and little things that Kori couldn’t bring herself to part with. She wondered what had given Brandon the idea too, if maybe he had noticed that she’d been keeping most of it in a shoe box, or if it had been a ‘just because’ kind of gift. She could have asked, but it hadn’t seemed that important to know at the time. She’d been more caught up in the thoughtfulness of it. Her brother was a lot more perceptive than he was given credit for, and it was nice to be thought of. Especially since against her best efforts it seemed like she’d been more down lately than she wanted to be. The worst of it was she couldn’t put her finger on what was bringing her down precisely. It could have been her ability and her lack of control, or any other number of factors. But if she had to put her money on anything she would put it on the guess that she missed Mike. It hit her sometimes, that ache of missing a piece of her that had seemed like it was going to be there forever, once she’d found it again. As she went through the shoebox she was struck with how many little things she had actually kept, and how many of them had actually been passed along to her from Mike. There were the photo booth pictures that she’d been sure hadn’t made it out of New York City. They’d been taken only months into their relationship, and she’d had to beg just a little to get him to do more than one set of them. But it had been a good day. And now it was a hard memory as she sifted the pictures from the shoebox to the box Brandon built. It was a little cathartic too, sniffling over the pictures and small trinkets, remembering things like the different smiles that Mike had had for her, or the way he’d indulged her whims every so often, because it made her smile. She missed that. She missed having someone in her life like that, but more than anything, more than missing the feeling, she missed him. There were hard things in the box too. Worse than the pictures even, because they had more connected to them. Her engagement ring for one. For years she’d worn it on a necklace, but it had been put away after Mike’s death. A symbol of something she wouldn’t have. She brushed a finger over the metal and stones of the ring and remembered how happy she had been when Mike had asked. She’d felt like she was walking on air for a long time after. And now it was just another ‘could have been’ put away in a box. But she wasn’t going to let herself be drawn back into that pit of perpetual sadness. Even if it would be easier. Brandon hadn’t given her the box so that she could shut herself up with her grief again. He’d been trying to do a good thing, a considerate thing, and she loved him for it. But once the shoebox was empty and the keepsake box full, she couldn’t do anything else with it but put it on a shelf. Her ring had been the last thing put in the box and it was nestled amongst all the other memories; a Pandora’s Box of emotion for Kori, and something she couldn’t revisit for a while. Not if she wanted to be better. In some ways, it felt like another step that needed to be taken in her grief, but in a lot of ways it poked at wounds that she was trying so hard to heal. Maybe, if she was lucky, there wouldn’t be too many more times where she’d cry in her cell all alone. |