Tabula Rasa

By S. Faith, © 2009

Total words: 128,281 (Prologue, Chapters 1-24, Epilogue)
This part: ~480
Rating: M / R
Summary: There's a whole history you never would have guessed was there.
Disclaimer: Would I ever be able to express to you how much these characters, this universe, are not mine?
Notes: I literally could not have done this without my lovely C.
Author's request: If you have speculations about where you think this might be going, I ask that you refrain from making said speculations in the comments, so as not to spoil it, as it were. I will delete comments of that nature. Thanks in advance—much appreciated.

No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole;
Rise Alps between us! and whole oceans roll!
Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me,
Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee.

—Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Abelard"

Prologue

It all began with a thud.

Cleaning and unpacking were not usually tasks to look forward to, but in this case, he had been looking forward to both very much indeed. His task for the moment was to sort the incoming boxes into separate piles destined to go to specific rooms, and had just hoisted a heavier box into a stack for the master bedroom when he heard a substantial thud hit the floor directly above where he had been standing. He stopped what he was doing and turned to shout up the stairs, "Everything okay?"

"Fine," she called back. Her voice did not sound quite itself. "A… a box fell."

He furrowed his brow. "Are you sure?"

There was no response.

Curiosity and concern now piqued, he scaled the stairs two at a time and went to the room he knew her to be in. "Are you sure everything—"

He stopped short. As she came into his view, precisely which box had fallen registered with him.

It was a rather ordinary box, plain brown cardboard, battered at the edges from years of transfer from one location to another, nestled deep in the recesses of the top shelf in this bedroom's closet. It was nondescript in every aspect, unlabelled and otherwise not worthy of notice, but it had apparently been in the way of another box's fitting in perfectly on the top of the closet. She must have pulled forward in an effort to make it all fit nicely, and upon impact the contents had fanned out on the floor.

His blood went cold when he realised what was in that box. From her position seated on the floor, he could see she was quite scrupulously studying the letters, photographs, notebooks and journals, the scattered scraps of memories from another time, practically another life.

She looked from the papers in one hand to photos in another. Her skin had gone devoid of all colour; her eyes were wide as saucers in her desperation to make sense of what she was seeing. Her voice trembled uncontrollably when she spoke, her breath shallow and rapid as she turned her disbelieving eyes to him. "Mark," she began. "What the hell is this?"

He felt as if he could not move. He did not know where to begin, or if he could ever adequately explain; after all, it was not something he thought he would ever have to do.

"I didn't know this was here," he managed at last.

She said nothing more, only bore into him with an intensely troubled gaze.

He realised it was best to just begin at the beginning. He took in a lungful of air, exhaled it through his lips, and pressed a finger and a thumb into the corners of his eyes as he started to piece the story together for her. He would at least try.