Work Text:
2024
March
Klay dreams of him sometimes
Tonight, he’s back as 21 years old and standing in front of a particular restaurant in San Diego. She knows this is a dream of a memory, that this was when she first arrived at the strange place of Noli Me Tangere. She looked around and saw him. There is Fidel goofing and laughing around with Crisostomo and his amigos. Looking so young.
“Nice seeing you again, Klay.” He smiles at her. It was a total different scenario when they originally met. She couldn’t remember his smile sometimes. It was as if it’s slowly leaving her memories. Maybe it was the payment of leaving him, all alone. Her dream self answers, without a second thought “It was nice seeing you again, Fidel.” Klay almost cried as he flashes the same warm smile he always wears.
It was the same feeling she remembered back then. Warm. Happy. Flustered.
“I missed you.” She added, avoiding eye contact.
His face breaks into a smile as he laughs his weird laugh, “Ah! I knew It!”
“Ah… She finds herself saying, flustered. “I just missed you… so much.”
***
Fidel’s easy smile turned into seriousness as he walks towards her… suddenly they’re back at Ibarra’s garden. He’s holding a familiar bouquet of roses she remembers so well. Little did she know that was going to be a symbol of his undying love. The memories haunts her sometimes.
There he was, leaning a little too close, sulking at the thought that she’s allergic to his love. She found him actually adorable (and loveable), she couldn’t help but give him a smile. If only she could turn back the time, maybe she’d done the same.
Klay always thinks of ways she could forget this certain core memory. When this was the first time Fidel started to ask for her hand in marriage… and every chance he can get.
He’s so silly…. I miss him.
Suddenly Klay found them inside that cold forest. That night when he’s killed someone. The night when they’re both so vulnerable. It was the night she regrets the most.
“Klay, can you please try?” His eyes longing, begging for an answer. She knows her reply at the back of her hand. Klay caresses his face and wipes his falling tears. And unlike what originally happened, she gave him the warmest embrace. It was as if she needed it more than him. She never wanted to let go
I will try, Fidel. I will try.
Feeling her heart wildly pounding in her ribcage. This is the distorted alternate reality that maybe she’s pondering about.
“So.” He hums against her neck. “Does that mean you love me too?”
***
And then suddenly they’re holding each other in a bright Sunday morning, lying side by side. Kissing her cheeks. He walked out of the simple house they made. She saw him building a fire. Fidel happily waves at her. A simple married life with this man is next to impossible.
This is a dream, Klay.
Fidel suddenly stretched funnily, exposing a bit of skin. He winked at her. “Don’t look too much.” He gave her an annoying laugh…. She missed.
“It’s a dream” She mutters to herself as Fidel went back to approach her. Looking at her just like that sunset when she left him. Except, he’s drowning in tears back then.
The look of love, he ran his hand along her shoulder, fingers skimming the exposed skin with a feather-light touch.
“You are everything to me, Klay. Thank you for staying. Thank you for accepting my love. Thank you for marrying me.”
He’s said the words so many times that she’s committed his voice into her memory, the sound becoming as instinctual to her as remembering how to breathe. She cups his face, admiring the jaw-line she’s kissed in corners when no one was looking and she whispers
“I love you, Fidel.”
He smiles at her with her favorite eye-smile, kissing her as if he’d done this a hundred times before
’’And I love you… so much”
But Klay’s subconscious knows that this Fidel had never said those words when they were together then. And that same familiar voice she knows so, so well becomes muffled, distorting and twisting in her mind’s ears because it doesn’t know how he would’ve said the words to her. When she was the one who left him all alone.
She had no choice.
***Wake up, Klay!***
So when he pulls away, she snapped back to reality. Only to find her phone buzzing the name of her fiancé. JOHN. Her John. Her soon to be husband who has told her a million times before how much he loves her. She blinked and felt the passionate youth dream fade away in the background until it becomes the plain room of their newly wed house they have purchased which she’s currently staying at.
She feels sick and heady and reminds herself again. “It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.”
She opened her phone and found John smiling on her wallpaper, a message came saying
“You love me so much right? :) “
(She hears a faint sound of glass breaking in the distance)
Klay wakes up at 2AM. In the darkness she could make out the bedside table and the faint and unmistakable glint of the golden engagement band she’d left on its surface.
She thinks of Fidel delos Reyes Y Maglipol and Maria Clara Infantes at 21 years of age. The annoying banters, the butterfly hugs and all the constant marriage proposals.
Klay buries herself into a hallow embrace, wondering, as she’d been doing often. If she’d made the right choice and if she’d ever really love someone as much as she loves that certain man from a fictional book.