DISCLAIMER: Guiding Light and its characters are the property of Proctor & Gamble. No infringement intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Unbeta'd, so all errors mine. Natalia's POV, set sometime in mid-March, before she allows Olivia to pressure her into accepting Frank's proposal.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Unspoken Truths
By Fewthistle
She's never been good at talking about her feelings. To be honest, it isn't as if she ever had much of a chance. Not really. She may not have taken vows, but she's lived eighteen years of silence. Of poverty.
Of obedience.
Obedience to a million words in a book that's been written and re-written at least a hundred times, in a dozen different languages. Words of vengeance and judgment and fear.
Words that she's beginning to believe may just be the work of arrogant men who claim to speak for God.
Because in her heart she has always known that the only words that matter are the ones that speak of forgiveness. Of redemption. Of love.
She's not sure why she's obeyed. Except, that after a while, it seemed a small price to pay for the solace of those words--those words of love--for the comfort of a presence always there for her in the dark of her empty bedroom.
For the faith that someday things would be better. That someday, she'd be happy.
So she swallowed her needs, shoved all her dreams and desires down inside, hid them away and waited. Waited and prayed. Prayed for a better home for her son. For the strength to persevere. For guidance and comfort.
And every so often, in the longest and darkest of nights, for someone to share the burdens. For someone to help navigate a world littered with shards of broken glass, a world overflowing with uncertainty.
She prayed for someone to love.
Over the years, she had a perfect picture in her mind of who it would be, this love of hers.
Nicky. Her first love. The father of her son.
She imagined the life they would have. Imagined a home, a real home, and a family. Imagined dinners filled with laughter. Imagined mornings filled with banana pancakes and a child sent off to school.
Imagined evenings spent curled up on the couch together, limbs entangled, the warmth of another body, another heart wrapping around her, driving away the encroaching frosts that had always seemed just a paycheck away.
Just a faltering moment of faith away.
And now she has that. Has all of that.
Has someone to share the burdens. Someone to talk to late at night. Someone who makes her laugh and makes her cry. Someone who sees how hard she's struggled. Someone who's seen beyond the waitress uniform and the hands, chapped and sore from too many dishes and too much bleach.
Someone who sees her. Sees who she is and who she could be.
It's just that it isn't Nicky's face across the wide kitchen table from her. It isn't Nicky's voice that offers her humor and laughter and comfort. It isn't Nicky's arms that wrap around her, that smooth out all the rough places in her heart. That send shivers racing down her spine.
It isn't Nicky's eyes that hold her suspended, time and space nothing more than a vague theory of scientists and disbelievers. It isn't Nicky's face that slides across her consciousness as she slips into slumber, dancing silently through her dreams, only to reappear, no longer ethereal but solid and real, as her eyes greet the slanting morning light creeping into her room.
It isn't Nicky that she loves.
It's Olivia.
Exasperating. Loving.
Maddening. Generous.
Stubborn. Kind.
Willful. Vulnerable.
Olivia.
Because despite eighteen years of long winter nights, years of waiting, of allowing her fears to spread like kudzu, choking out her hopes; despite all that, the prayers she'd offered up have not gone unanswered.
God has someone for her. Someone for her to love.
What has taken her so long to accept is that it isn't who she had thought it would be. Not Nicky…Gus. Definitely not Frank.
Olivia.
Olivia, who challenges her and fights with her, who drives her to the brink of insanity and then pulls her back with a gentle touch and a glimpse at the woman tucked away behind the sarcasm and the biting wit.
Olivia, who sends a jolt of desire racing through her bloodstream with a heated glance from those hooded green eyes, who unnerves her and leaves her grasping for purchase as the world tilts precariously on its axis.
Olivia Spencer, force of nature.
"Dear God, I love her."
The thing is, she's always kept her own counsel. She's never had a confidant. She's never been good at sharing her feelings. Never been good at speaking the secrets of her heart.
"Dear God, please help me to find the words to tell her."
Except in silence, in the whispered words of prayer. Now she prays for courage. For strength. For truth.
"Dear God, please help me speak the truth."
The End