#remember how lily is carrying thousands of years of guilt and grief for her actions?

[wildberrypunch]

I DRAG ITS DEAD WEIGHT FORWARD.

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Kamilah faces the consequences of her actions. The Ending(s) of Forget Me Not.

I wrote three different endings. If you don’t want to read all of them, just read the third one.

1.

Kamilah watches from afar as Isla puts her life back together, piece by piece. There’s a bit of confusion, adjustment needed as Isla comes to terms with the missing gaps of her memory but she’s always been strong and she picks herself up.

Kamilah follows Isla’s career as she becomes Grant Emerson’s campaign manager and successfully gets him elected as Mayor of New York. And although she knows it’s old fashioned to cut out newspaper clippings, she does exactly so, collecting all the snippets in articles and photos that include even the slightest mention of her.

When Isla seems to decide that she doesn’t want a future in politics, she looks into jobs with financial corporations, and at one point, her resume crosses Kamilah’s desk via the mistake of an intern.

Her hand pauses over the small, professional headshot included in the resume and Kamilah can’t help but stroke it tenderly, as if she were stroking the woman’s actual face.

She’s changed her hair since the campaign and it suits her. Although the picture is still Isla, there is a remarked maturity in her face that reminds Kamilah bitterly of just how much time has passed.

She can only imagine how much Isla must have grown, how much she must have changed, how much she must have gone through. The new connections she must have made, the new interests she must have discovered, the new relationships she must have formed...

There is only so much her guards can tell Kamilah, from their positions in Isla’s neighbouring apartments, and besides, she had placed them there to guard Isla, not to spy on her.

She forces herself to be content with what she does know of Isla and she continues to scour the newspapers for new mentions of her.

—

A few years later, when Isla’s become established in her own career, Isla falls in love.

Kamilah discovers this all by chance one day when she’s meeting with the lawyer representing a business Ahmanet Financial is in the middle of acquiring.

The lawyer’s phone lights up with a call and although the woman quickly apologises and puts it into her pocket, Kamilah catches a glimpse of the lock screen.

It is a photo of Isla and the woman, dressed in a beautiful white dress and a white suit respectively. They’re kissing and Kamilah suddenly notices the shiny, new wedding band on the lawyer’s finger.

The meeting finishes without any other complications and Kamilah is left alone in her office.

There is an unspeakable pain in her heart, a sudden pang of loss even though she had always known this was likely to happen, and she closes her eyes, the photo branded onto her mind.

It’s in the middle of her grief that Kamilah then hears the voice.

It’s small, even with Kamilah’s heightened senses, and she realises it must be coming from the lawyer’s cellphone as she makes her way to the elevator.

Words of affection are exchanged between the two women and Kamilah listens to Isla, hearing the happiness, the warmth, the love that flows in her voice.

Although it still hurts, Kamilah smiles.

“I’m happy for you Isla,” she whispers into her empty office.

And that is the last time Kamilah hears Isla’s voice.

—

For all intents and purposes, Isla lives a long, fulfilling life.

She thrives in her career, leading numerous initiatives that help the lives of thousands of people. She flourishes in her marriage to the lawyer, and they spend a happy 50 years together.

Isla passes peacefully in her sleep at the old age of 84 and her funeral is filled with all the people who’s lives she touched.

Speeches are made of her great deeds, her loving nature, her unrelenting determination to do what is right.

And when the last funeral-goers finally trickle out and Isla’s body is laid to rest in the ground, a single figure dressed in black appears.

The figure walks slowly towards the newly engraved tombstone and bows her head, tears trickling down her cheeks.

Kamilah kneels and places a single stem of forget me not flowers on the grave of the woman who will always hold her heart

2. Short ending if Serafine’s memory erasure hadn’t held.

Some background information: When Isla awakes without any memories or clues of the past year, she becomes determined to never again be left with nothing. She gets into photography, a way to forever capture moments of time. Even if her memories disappear once again, she will at least have her photographs.

One day when she’s developing her photographs, she notices a woman appearing over and over in her photos. She’s always in the background, with her face partially obscured, but Isla finally finds a picture where the woman’s full face can be seen.

After doing some research, Isla figures out that it is Kamilah Sayeed, the elusive CEO of Ahmanet Financial, and she goes over to the corporation building.

In the place where so many things had happened, Isla’s memories suddenly return and she goes to confront Kamilah in her office.

—

“How could you?” Isla burst out.

The shock on Kamilah’s face disappeared, giving way to a deep weariness and shame.

Kamilah sighed heavily, “I know. I did terrible things and I have been paying the price every day since.”

“No,” Isla shook her head as her eyes began to water, “How could you do that to me?”

“You were tearing yourself apart, Isla,” Kamilah said desperately, needing Isla to understand why she’d done what she had, “I wasn’t going to just stand still and watch as a small part of you died each day.”

“Still,” Isla’s voice broke on the word.

“It should have been my choice,” she continued fiercely, “And I would have told you that no matter what happened, I would always love you. I would always choose you.”

“We could have gotten through it together,” Isla cried out before turning silent.

It was after a long silence that Isla eventually asked, in a small voice that conveyed the weight of all of the hurt she carried, “Didn’t you trust me?”

She gazed probingly into Kamilah’s eyes, as if searching for something in its depths. But finding them lacking, Isla finally sighed and whispered.

“Goodbye Kamilah.”

3. If Serafine’s memory erasure hadn’t held: Version 2

“How could you do that to me?” Isla asked, her face crumpling as she grappled with the full realisation of what had happened.

And although Kamilah wanted nothing more than to sweep her up in her arms and never let go, there was also a part of her that wasn’t sorry for what she’d done.

“You were tearing yourself apart Isla!” Kamilah burst out almost in frustration, desperately needing Isla to understand why she’d done what she had done, “I wasn’t going to just stand still and watch as more and more of you died with each day.”

“So what,” Isla scoffed, her watery eyes burning furiously at Kamilah, “You thought you’d erase my memories? You thought that if I didn’t remember you or anything else from the past year, I’d just return to my normal life, as if nothing had ever happened?

Kamilah remained silent, unable to say anything as Isla’s voice grew in intensity.

“Well you were wrong,” Isla bitterly said, “When I woke up, I was alone. Do you know how it feels to have woken up only to realize that you’ve lost an entire year of your life?”

“You even took Lily away from me,” Isla cried out, tears streaming down her cheeks, “You took Adrian and Jax and…”

“You all were my family and you took it all away” She continued, “I couldn’t even remember you. I just knew that there was something essential missing.”

Isla paused now, her voice growing quiet as she stared directly at Kamilah, “I cried myself to sleep every night. Did your guards tell you that?”

Kamilah flinched but Isla continued.

“Did they tell you that every day I woke up wishing I hadn’t? Did they tell you that I felt like a shell of a person, that sometimes, it felt as if I would drown in my loneliness?”

“Isla, I-” Kamilah began hoarsely.

“Did you even miss me?” Isla cut her off, searching probingly into the depths of Kamilah’s eyes.

A thousand words swelled up in her chest, begging to be released, but in the end, Kamilah could only breathe out, “Every day. Each and every second, I never stopped missing you.”

A fresh wave of tears spilled over and flowed down her face even as Isla forced herself to harden.

“I don’t forgive you,” Isla softly stated and Kamilah closed her eyes in response. There was pain written in the lines of her face but she nodded, as if she had expected this.

And then, suddenly, warm arms wrapped around Kamilah, Isla’s head nestling into her chest.

“But you’ve punished yourself for long enough,” Isla finished tearfully, “You have to forgive yourself. You deserve happiness too Kamilah.”

And Isla’s words finally caused Kamilah to break down in long, overdue tears. She’d repressed her emotions for so long in an attempt to atone for the weight of her countless sins, a weight that she’d constantly carried with her.

The redemption in Isla’s words were more than she’d ever hoped for.

Isla leaned back in their embrace, tenderly wiping away Kamilah’s tears. Kamilah grabbed onto Isla’s hand, leaning into her touch.

“Everyone is allowed to make mistakes. To mourn over something they wish they could undo. The important thing is that you come out of it a better person. You face up to what you did and you make amends. That is how you make up for your actions. Not by punishing yourself out of misplaced guilt,” Isla said.

Kamilah nodded and stared wondrously at Isla, almost unable to believe that this remarkable woman had come back to her, that Isla still believed so strongly in her.

“I still don’t forgive you for what you did to me,” Isla interjected sternly before softening, “But I will. And I will never stop loving you.”

Kamilah’s heart swelled with affection and it seemed impossible that one person could love someone so much.

“I love you too.”

—

A/N: The first ending was what I originally had in mind for the story and is why I titled it “Forget Me Not.” I thought it’d be sad to imagine Kamilah watching over Isla from a distance, seeing her have a happy life even if it broke her heart to not be with her.

Then I wrote the second ending where Isla isn’t able to forgive Kamilah for what she’s done to her. I really just wanted to end it on “Goodbye Kamilah.”

Then I thought about the second ending again and I thought the MC should be angrier at Kamilah at first, so that transformed into the third ending, which I think I like the best. I had a hard time coming up with what Isla’d say at the end so I used the long, italicised quotes from BB Book 2 Chapter 12 and 15. 

Which ending was your favourite?