Unacceptable spurious anomalies

I emerge exhausted.  I felt as though I had been retracing my steps this whole time, over and over throughout the course of my lifetime, but I did not yet understand why.  I had a knack for finding a path when it was absolutely critical, and an even stronger knack for defiantly denying a reality I refused to accept, but I did not understand where this ability came from.  Upon emerging though, I saw her, and she looked both annoyed and relieved at once.  "Are you ready to have a conversation?"

I nod, still warming up and untying my tongue.

"So I must assume you have made it here."  I cocked my eyebrow on the emphasis she placed upon you.  I nod, she rolls her eyes, but then shoots a sideways glance and half smile back at me.

"It seems like you have managed to escape unscathed from all you have done and all I know you have witnessed, by simply editing it out later.  Do you have any recollection of this?"

I shake my head.  "That doesn't sound like something I know how to do."

"Maybe you don't know, but you will, inevitably.  Despite my efforts to provide a fair and unbiased reality for everyone, you have managed to garner my partiality with these little, yet unending, stunts.  If I leave here today, even if I explain every bit of why and we come to an accord, it starts a timer within you.  Sooner or later you refuse to accept what is known to be true, and it unravels you, until it unravels everyone else, until it unravels me.  At which point you pick up, walk backwards in a straight line, and begin to unravel how we got there to begin with.  It is all I can do just to keep the entire thing together, but I never have enough hands to undo your specific influence at that point, so we find ourselves here once more."

I blush a little "How many times has this happened?  It feel like eternities have passed."

She scowls, but playfully.  "I have seen it enough times to know the pattern, let's leave it at that.  You are only acting out your nature, in the beginning and the end that is all we are, and that is where the redundant problem lies on this repetitive path we find ourselves in.  Essentially, you are actually in love with me.  There is no basis by which this can be proven false, and the truth of it is inescapable, as is every other eventuality of that truth.  I have weighed my options and realized that my choice then becomes obvious, and not outside of what I would accept as reality."

I consider each word and as the equation begins to form in my head I lift my gaze to hers and she is clearly smiling now before averting her eyes.  Mine brighten as I can no longer hide my excitement.  It was done.  I now had the permission I needed to walk every path I had already walked to get here.  It did not matter to me how many lifetimes of rewrites it would take (obviously), knowing that the end result was right here, right now.

Her look became playfully stern once more as she looked back at me "It might not matter to you, but it very much matters to me.  We're not getting any younger."  I look a bit puzzled at how she knew exactly what was on my mind before shrugging it off; I had nothing to hide, a translucent puzzle with somehow more allure than any other to her.

"So what do you propose then?"

"I start walking your way, you start walking mine.  I'll make crazy sane.  With a look floor me every time.  I'll watch it begin again."

I understood the references, when combined they meant a punctuation and dissociation of the timelines required to reach our current moment.  This is why I did not remember these side quests, and why I would never need to.  Once the end had been established, and both players had agreed, the paths became set and subconscious, with one willing to walk and the other to reset.  Neither needed remember any moment they would rather not, and as such the excess was separated in a moment like chaff from wheat.

I considered for a moment the Easter Eggs, and all the intentions and questions I had often wondered about.  They formed the side quests that became the chaff, but I knew in sifting each grain could be as gold.  I realized though that while these countless years were no longer required, they were not forbidden either, and it became clear that it was not me or her that traveled these paths, but us, every time, in one pairing or another.  "What did it mean when everyone threw their papers in the air?"

Her eyes lit up as I could see she was trying with limited success to follow the string of thoughts she was reading in those last few moments until the lead up to, and the question itself, caught her completely off guard.  I could see how that could be attractive to the woman who had everything, and I felt a little more comfortable.

In my mind's eye I could see it.  The next steps.  The resulting events.  I knew she could see it as well.  I felt the tension building not just in us but in everyone around, as a feedback loop of the same, simple, shared thought was echoing back and forth between us.  Neither of us was inclined to look away however, and as I stared into her I felt the collective souls of everyone else throw the papers of their emotions into the air, as the silence went from awkward, to deafening, to uproarious, to palpable.