As I was rising from the wooden chair, thinking that the ordeal was all but over, a door opened in eery silence, and from it came them both, Sofia and our daughter. I gasped at the sight of them, knowing not whether to cry or to laugh or to run to them. I stood where I was, unable to move. It was as if an invisible cage had been raised around me, closed tight about me, and I could not begin to move. I looked at them as they crossed the courtroom, right to the middle of it, where they stood ever so near to me, ever so distant from me. I saw them standing atop some sort of platform, an obvious mechanical construction, and in surmounting horror I started recognizing some of the work there - far surpassing my own, but still clearly mine. I couldn't understand what was happening.
We stood all of us, accuser and accused, my wife and my daughter, in that room where punishment was meted out. The judge carried out the sentence, intoning gravely my charges and the measure of my condemnation. I gazed intently at Sofia and Forever. The words stopped, the machines whirred into a silent frenzy, I saw chronal energy being channeled into the flux capacitor that harnesses the sands of time themselves, and just like that, they had never been. Sofia had never been mine, Forever had never been mine, we had never been us, and I had to live with the memories of them, years of laughter and joy and memories and moments that never and always were. I have forever now to remember Forever. I have an eternity of longing for Sofia. I have never as the one constant in my life now.
It's important you know this, it's important you understand this. I had a wife, and I had a daughter. They were named Sofia and Forever. Sometimes I think that if I say or write their names often enough, if I remember as vividly as I possibly can, then I can make them real again. But I know I can't. I can't . I've learned now that the past can't be easily tampered with. Not unless you're with them, and I am branded a chrono-criminal, moreso after attempting to go back again just to keep all this from happening, to keep me from going back and writing you in the first place, to keep me from experimenting, to keep me from being me. But it never worked, never ever. I was caught time and time again and again, and whatever pity the Time Authority took on me, readily waned. I was ordered with a cease and desist notice from all chronal activities, threatened with excision from reality should I attempt any further incursions in time.
I was broken, broken beyond repair, broken beyond measure, after all this. Alas, I did not yet know what broken meant. I saw them again, you see? I saw Sofia first, one day as I was ambling aimlessly through these streets, and I mindlessly walked into someone. She was drinking some beverage - something of the coffee variety - and my bumping into her caused it to spill over her perfect white blouse. Her eyes moved from the growing coffee stain on her shirt, and met mine, mine who were fixed upon her. She smiled that smile I had seen so many times before, a smile that at once absolved of any guilt regarding the incident, and swiftly moved on, happy to go on her way, walking forever away from me. And yet, there came a calling, a softly calling issued from my lips, a calling filled with such sorrowful longing, 'Sofia...', it whispered. But she did not hear it, so soft that it was, and she did not know me in the slightest; in her eyes I saw no hint of recognition, I was just another no-one, and no more than that. And then, some time later, I saw Forever. Returning home one early afternoon, I noticed that just across the street a rental unit was unloading its contents, and a family was moving in. Taking in the scene, I noticed the very young parents - in their mid-twenties, or so it seemed to me, being talked out of helping with the moving, and then, just as the mother turned to face my side of the road, I saw her, my Forever that never was, running towards her, and with one swift move, she scooped the child up, and held her close to her. A slight drizzle fell from the sky, it was like the very city cried in time with my soul. Cursed, for bringing about all this, twice so for always remembering and never forgetting, and thrice yet for destiny to remind me of this immense loss so.
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