Of all the people in my life I feel as if Xander needs me the most. It might just be a trick of my own mind or wishful thinking. People I think convince themselves that the things they want to be true. However, in this case I think it is based on the sadness I often see on his face. The fact that he truly is lost in this time line. Coming from another and having left his behind, his family, his home, and all of his friends to be thrust into ours and at such a cost. He told me that his timeline was destroyed all those lives gone in the blink of a eye. And to come to ours only to find the people are different and that the man you were here was hated by so many and to be judged by his sins. I can't imagine that would be easy for anyone to bare.
The day we met one might say we were both lost souls. I had lost my memories and was looking for any sign of who I was besides what I had been told by Bryce. It was during this search that I stumbled across him. He was a lost soul as well. Displaced from his own time and happy that someone had shown him kindness we hit it off. They say some people come into your lives and you re drawn to them. It felt like one of those moments. It might have been because we shared a past life but I Beverie even if we didn't I would have trusted him.
Pieces of that life had started to come filtering through my mind tangled in with this one. The trip to the vault had been the start opening things within my mind. The field of flowers that Ceri would spend hours in with him, staring up at the stars. Shifting to the two of racing across the stars my arms wrapped around his waist, stardust clinging to my hair. Ceri making the decision to trade her immortality for her sort of grandson, the look on her priest's face when he realized nothing would turn her from this course. The same look that I dreaded by my leaving him behind now.
Ceri had sworn she would never cause that look again. And when he returned it had felt like he forgive her for the choice. She never really thought he hayed her for it. She had believed in second chances and people that died didn't get them and that was why she went through great lengths to protect Deva despite everything. All the while knowing it was something her priest couldn't protect her from and she would give her life for it. So, when the truth came out about Xander it had felt like he had come home. And I was now breaking her heart by breaking his and leaving him as she put it alone in a world that was not his own.
I pushed open the door to the cabin that he had been staying at the sword in its sheath as I looked around. Everything reminded me of him as I remember the night he froze time so we could stay together how much I had wanted that moment to last forever. I wanted to stay frozen inside perhaps I should have. A part of me wondered if I called out to him now would he come. Would he give it all up and stay hidden within this place with me. I knew I could never ask that of him. He had other duties and I wouldn't keep him from those.
I placed the sword and sheath on the table, weaving a spell around the cabin to make sure none but Xander could get through. I hoped he would sense my magic and come to see what was going on despite the fact that I had cut the ties. If not it would stay here for all time and perhaps in some future life he would uncover the cabin and be amazed at what he found within. I might have felt worst if wasn't for the night of the party
I might have worried about leaving him alone in a world that judged him for the sins of his other self, or even asked him to come with me and exist in places where no one else could go. If it hadn't been for that night. I had often hoped he wasn't staying for me. He ensured me that there was no way to go home. Because I sometimes thought that people refused to try and do the impossible because they knew if they succeeded they would have to make a choice that would hurt someone. Whether, it was possible or not didn't matter. I would never come between him and his family if he found a way to return. I would tell him to go to them. Family first.
I had thought he had no one in this time line no place to belong. But, when he showed up playing Santa I was proven wrong. He had found a place with Amelie's family and he was happy. He even told me they were his family. He had found a place in this life and it was good. I would take him away from that. I had no idea who it came about that he stepped into that role. I just know now that he found it. I would never take it away from him. I owed him that. Ceri owed him that a life where she would never have to see that look on his face. The look where she had hurt him. The death of their child would never have to pain him. The lost of her would never pain him. He could be free to live a life with his new family. Perhaps, with them that look would never cross his face. And so when I decided to leave everyone behind she agreed to set him free. We agreed to give him a second chance with those that would love and hopefully except him as I walked out of the cabin and shut the door on yet another chapter of my life.