Our Infinite Fates

by Laura Steven

“I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.” The groom pressed his warm forehead to hers. “I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.”

It cast their stoicism in a new light, made me think that perhaps they hated the way they had become, so closed off and unfeeling, but that it was less painful than the alternative: letting themselves love, with the knowledge it could only end one way.

Almost everyone I had ever loved was dead, and the hurt never went away; I just learned to exist alongside it. Yet, for better or worse, I always let myself love anyway.

And so, in the absence of any abiding religious convictions, this was the one blind faith I had: that love was a physical force, and it was never wasted. Once it was called out into the universe, it would echo back to us forever.

“The Evelyn I know … they love over and over and over again, even though it can only ever end in tragedy. Even though they’ve lost everyone they’ve ever loved, and they miss them in the next life, and the next, and the next. Never have they developed hard edges like I have. Never have they tried to protect themselves from that pain. They love softly, and fiercely, and openly, and it’s the bravest thing I know. The most human thing I know.”

“I hope you never lose that bottomless capacity for love. I hope you hold on to what makes you human.”

“Do you know how powerful that is? Do you know how rare you are, in a world where the sky rains fire?”

“Though, without you, there would be no poetry. I would have only the harsh lens of my own worldview. I wouldn’t be able to see the beauty of life, because I only see it through your eyes. Muse is too simple a word for what you are to me.”

“You have faith in all of humanity. You have faith in love. Please, have faith in me. I do this to protect you. Do you understand that? That I would lay my body over yours, war after war after war, life after life after life?”

When he spoke again, it was so softly into my ear that I shivered. “I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.”

When things didn’t work out the way you hoped, the way you believed they would, there was also the genuine shock to contend with.

“Sometimes it feels like my heart breaks when yours does,” he murmured in my ear. “I knew the moment your mother rejected you, even before I rounded the corner and saw it for myself.” A sigh, as his hand went from my head to the small of my back, warmth spreading through me. “You deserved better. You have always deserved better.”

“Suffering is in itself a pyramid scheme. Hurt people hurt people. One soul feels pain, so they inflict the same upon three more, in a bid to rid themselves of it. Those three pass it on to more still, and it spirals beyond all control. The human condition, so it seems.”

To love was to live, and to live was to die.

“I want you to know that wherever we are next, my heart will be with you.” A shuddering sob. “It might not know it’s with you, but hearts have their ways. Every atrium, every ventricle, every vein and artery will beat for you. Even if my mind has lost you. Because you are in the very fabric of me, all right? You are me, and I am you. And our love is stronger than anything.”