from myself, part 3

November 2083 - Micah and Mariah Buchanan are 25. Chandler Price and Jane (Hudson) Price are 25.

* Soundtrack: "Songbird," by Fleetwood Mac *

In the beginning, Chandler and Jane had nothing but love.

No really, nothing but love.

And a used garage sale couch, folding card table, and two lawn chairs. They had some clothes, but they weren't very nice ones, so they didn't bother to wear them most of time, when they were just home alone.

For the first week of their life together, they spent their evenings in the dark. Chandler had forgotten to buy a lamp and they had to wait for his next paycheck to be able to have even light. But that was no big deal - they considered it an adventure. They loved each other in the dark, and when all else failed, Micah and Mariah lived just up the street a bit, with their hot meals and actual dinnerware to eat off of.

Over the months, they began to accumulate things. First, a lamp. Then they bought a bed, a radio, some books. They filled up their life from nothing, bit by bit.

They got promotions in their jobs, and so they filled up their lives a little faster. They bought more books. They bought a welcome mat for their front door. But they still have that first garage sale couch, the one they slept on before they had a bed, or even any light. But now it's surrounded with the beginnings of their life together.

And now they're getting married.

***

And as their ceremony begins, Jane walking down the aisle in a rustle of cream tulle and embroidered gold roses, Chandler says, "Score!"

***

Mariah finds her husband staring out at the season's first real snowfall, the bright white reflecting moonlight through the glass and onto their skin. "It snowed," Micah says.

"Yeah," she says. "They said it would. Wasn't that fun? The wedding, I mean, didn't you have fun?"

"Yeah, it was fun," he says. "Do you think we were ever that happy?"

"There was something wrong," he says.

"With what?" she says, the smile flushed from her face. She knows what he's talking about. In the space of days, she's felt set free. Of course he would notice the difference. She's tempted to protest - nothing was wrong. But she doesn't. Protesting it out loud won't make it any more true. She would beg him to just believe her, just let it go so they can move past it. Because this is one truth he never needs to know. The honest truth would only cause them more harm.

"I think I was bitter," she says. "Not at you, but at everything. At the way things happened. At how fast. For the chances we didn't get. That's not your fault, and it never was, and you couldn't have helped me with it either."

Please, please believe me, she says to him, in her mind. Can he feel it in the way she looks at him? She knows he always could before. So now, she tells him with her eyes, It's all okay now, I never need to look away.

"Okay," he says.

She takes his hand in hers. "Come on," she says. "You haven't danced with me yet."

They steal a quiet, empty corner, where other couples have cleared away and stopped dancing by now, to eat wedding cake, to drink the spiked punch. Three bottles of rum they poured into that punch, and it shows. Despite the fresh layer of frost outside, this reception hall is flushed with bright smiles and warmth.

"The night we met," he says. "Do you remember that night?"

"Of course I remember," she says. He and Chandler spiked the punch at that party too. "We were at a party. And after everyone went home, we went outside to lay out on the grass, under the stars. I had a leaf in my hair, and you leaned down over me and you said, You have a leaf in your hair. And when you got it out, your fingertips kind of accidentally brushed my cheek."

His smile is mischievous. "That wasn't an accident."

When they laugh, it's filled with hurt, and at the same time, filled with the promise of so much more. She wishes her heart to him. He can have all of it, over and over again. She always wanted that for him.

"I love you," she says.

"Do you?"

"I do," she says, whispering near his ear. "I would marry you all over again. Again and again and again."

He laughs. "And again?"

"And again," she says.

"And I wish you all the love in the world, but most of all, I wish it from myself."

- Fleetwood Mac, "Songbird"
(lyrics here)

*******

footnotes: (part 1 // part 2)

Notes: wedding outtakes here. And as this was the final story piece for the "from myself" storyline, so the final author's note is here... And a Buchanan family extras post of their own, since I took way too many pictures of them for these stories, lol! :)