Late February, 2009
South Main Garage, Manchester

What ravages of spirit conjured
This temptuous rage
Created you a monster
Broken by the rules of love

Aliya cries out in a voice ravaged, raw and broken by sobs as she sweeps her arm across the workbench scattering tools, mechanical parts and trinkets to the floor with a not so satisfying clatter. The bulletin board, once mounted on the wall, flies across the garage away from usually so gentle hands and crashes into the door of the arrest me red limo parked in one of the bays.

In the silence afterwards, notes and work orders flutter to the oil stained cement floor like snowflakes falling from a clear cold sky. She watches them, frozen in place, violet eyes unbelieving of the violence that welled within her. Suddenly contrite she kneels to gather the scraps of paper and shattered peg board, not failing to notice the long scratch of metal now showing through the limo's paint.

The pieces are deposited on the cleared workbench and another piece of paper finds its way into her hands. The letter. A summoning. It should have been with joy that she read those words. Truly a miracle. And she felt it... for one all too short moment before fire lanced through her heart as its consequences struck her like lightening from a dream, only this time there was no one to reassure her, in her mind or otherwise.

And fate has led you through it
You do what you have to do
And fate has led you through it
You do what you have to do

She should have expected this, the scene was all too familiar. Fate. She had called it that and she would do so again. Always some pain had accompanied it, but never before had it hurt so thoroughly.

Only once more do her sobs echo eerily through the garage bays before she puts pen to paper, grimly determined to follow through with her duty. A promise made when her heart was still her own to give. Too bad it is not so any longer. Full lips press into a tight line that wavers not despite the storm of suffering raging within her eyes. Silent tears rain upon the pages beneath her hand. Kim, Beatrice, Julie, they must be told.

And I have the sense to recognize that I don't know how to let you go
Every moment marked with apparitions of your soul

Later, yet all too soon, Aliya stands in the doorway between the winnebago's main room and her bedroom, the night pressing softly against the tiny windows. She had waited an agonizing eternity until she was sure all was quiet; the shadows had been no comfort. There was but a moment to gaze at the woman tangled in the sheets on a bed she thought would never again be familiar to her. Kim's raven locks splayed against the down pillow even now seemed to reflect the heavens in the dim light left on so she could find her way to the woman's side. Aliya's fingers twitch, yearning to touch the silken tresses, but she knows she would never let them go.

If Kim were to awaken and gaze into her eyes, she would see the woman's heart there in her violet pools torn asunder and withering into a cold memory of the feeling she once touched her with. Thank the Spirit, Kim does not awaken.

A rustle of gauze as Aliya steps across the room, extending trembling fingers to touch a bronze statuette of her own figure standing with outstretched wings. But the angel has fallen. The soft whir of clockwork parts and the familiar angel is sitting, its knees pulled to its chest and cloaked with wings the model does not have. Another rustle of fabric, a last look filled with longing before the battle is lost and she slips through the doorway.

A letter lain next to a child, her familiar lips laid upon the young forehead barely causing the child to stir. Another letter left near the door where a sleepy woman seeking a late night snack may not notice right away. Then the click of the door closing behind her, a sound like the lid of a casket sealing without escape this time. The final letter finds its way into the Compton Building's mailbox before she is off, hurrying through the darkened streets.

I'm ever swiftly moving
Trying to escape this desire
The yearning to be near you
I do what I have to do
The yearning to be near you
I do what I have to do
But I have the sense to recognize that I don't know how to let you go
I don't know how to let you go

The ticket once wrapped within the fateful letter is redeemed at the Manchester bus station by fingers that quake. A broken woman held together only by the sense that there is no choice sits and waits to board. No luggage accompanies her, but the baggage carried by her spirit weighs down her every movement.

A glowing ember
Burning hot
Burning slow
Deep within I'm shaken by the violence of existing for only you

Aliya hugs herself, arms cold and uncaring. The roaring in her mind cannot be heard among the coughing of the homeless man warming himself before he is shooed out again, the rustle of the paper being read by a fellow waiter and the low din of the infomercial the ticket taker watches during the lack of customers here in the earliest hours of the morning.

She quivers, shivering uncontrollably. Perhaps she is chilled, unable to throw off winter's frost. It's true. It settles over her soul, a soul so recently warmed by a touch she had never imagined could exist. She murmurs something under her breath over and over again like a chant, rocking herself back and forth as though trying to console a child.

The man with the paper folds down a corner and glances at her. He hopes she doesn't sit beside him on the bus.

I know I can't be with you
I do what I have to do
I know I can't be with you
I do what I have to do
And I have the sense to recognize
But I don't know how to let you go
I don't know how to let you go

She does not. Instead she sits alone feeling the bus move beneath her; one tire is slightly flat and each slap it makes against the pavement echos within her. The night offers no solace as the lights of the city fade to blackness, her agony filled gaze seeing only a reflection in the glass that is not hers.

Still she rocks, the name of her lover whispered over and over again as she is carried further from her heart, left in a beat up old winnebago named Fate, lying beside a woman who yet sleeps and perhaps dreams that she can hear the heart that beats in time with hers. "Kim."

[Lyrics: "Do What You Have to Do" by Sarah McLachlan.]