Back to now:

*Dion*

Arms folded across my chest, encased in midnight shadows, I lean against a building across from the foundling home and watch, just as I have for three nights now, striving not to recall how familiar all this seems, the many hours I had waited for her when I was younger and in love.

I especially fight not to remember what it had felt like to be in love, to greet each day with hopeful optimism, to believe the world was filled with promises of good things waiting around the corner, to dream she would walk by my side, that together we would conquer the world.

I...