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He was seven, he was eight, he was four, he was full of rage.
He could feel the memories coming and slipping at the same time. He could feel everything and nothing. It wasn't fair- he was still so young. Not as young as the boy he held, the boy who was to be killed for needing something different. In a way Jonas thought he needed something different too, it was why he and Gabe connected so well. But now the connection was slipping.
It had been fading since leaving, as the memories left him. The dreams though, of his own memories, those stayed, terrible and cold and deep. He didn't know how to convey hope to the sleeping boy next to him, who didn't have a worry in the world, not yet, not when he was safe with Jonas.
Jonas wasn't sure he had any hope left.
He was three and Asher and Fiona played sticks while he watched. Jonas knew this feeling, this was pure joy. What happened next when the older boy fell on Fiona filled him with rage. Yes, rage. He hadn't known the feeling at three, but now, sleeping in the middle of nowhere with nowhere to go, the rage consumes him, in his dream. It fills his head with all the hate in the world, but just as fast as he grabs it, it slips away. Back to the community.
It is the rage he fights the hardest to keep, in his dreams. It is the silent rage, the rage he does not dare share with his conscious self, that keeps him and the little boy going.
He was six and had made food come back up again. Food poisoning. He knew the words for it now. Several others in the community had been sick as well. A fever. And not being able to go play with Fiona, who had come looking. There was that childish anger, the almost temper tantrum he had thrown. Again, rage.
He cried out in his sleep, tried to cling to it, but it slipped through his fingers and danced through the trees, daring him to follow. He could go back. The choice was his. The Giver would be so upset; Gabe would be sent to Elsewhere. He would be sent to Elsewhere. He could lie. He could say anything he wanted, and perhaps they would be so pleased to have their memory keeper back they would forgive him- they would let him take his rage and grow old and give rage to some other young one.
The rage danced through the trees, wrapping around the tree trunks, winding back home. Home. It wasn't really home anymore. His parents weren't really his parents. He didn't know who his grandparents were. There was nothing of love, nothing of what he felt for the little boy Gabe.
That was the one thing that never left him- his love for Gabe. He was the keeper of memories, and the memories and emotions all fled him, save this one. Had something gone wrong? Why could he keep this one, and not warmth and sunshine, hope, peace, silence? Rage?
Maybe it was wrong to want to keep them. Maybe it was selfish. Maybe that's all Givers were, selfish pieces of man, passed on from generation to generation to generation.
He was nine and in the kitchen playing with Lily, banging on pots to keep her happy. She grew upset when he banged them in the wrong order, and told their mother that Jonas had been breaking the rules, banging on the pots like that. When he tried to tell his family how he had felt, he couldn't come up with the right words. His mother told him it was frustration, and he had agreed, but secretly thought it was something else. The Giver had given him a memory of a man in a strange uniform, reading a letter. Jonas experienced the same feeling.
"Betrayal," the Giver said quietly, and Jonas had wished to never have a memory like that again.
Now, he was no longer nine and he clung to that jealousy, but in the morning, it was gone, replaced by a hungry toddler. He had enough of the emotion remaining to whisper softly to Gabe that he would never betray him, not even if it meant certain death. He would never let Gabe go to Elsewhere, that was betrayal. So would have been handing Gabe off to someone else- if they managed to find anyone else. So would be allowing the boy to die, through his own inaction. Such was his love for the boy that betrayal seemed out of the question.
The Giver would have called that loyalty, Jonas knew. Loyalty and love were a lot alike, Jonas had remarked to The Giver once, and The Giver had only laughed, nodding his head in agreement. Jonas had been confused, and asked if his parents were loyal to him. The Giver had never answered the question, and Jonas didn't know why.
The betrayal was gone by the next night- the next dream- but the loyalty was still fierce. Rage, he wanted. He wanted another of rage. He wished for it, hoped for it, and if he could have dreamt about feeling rage, he would have dreamt of it. Tonight's dream was an unusual one.
It was some of the same dreams, but without the colour. He was losing his colour. Fiona's hair no longer looked red, it looked ... like everyone else's. Red, he wanted red too. He wanted everything that it was to be human. He wanted to be selfish. He wanted Gabe to know colour, to know selfishness, to know love, to know betrayal, and rage, and happiness, and sunshine, and all the things that were slowly eking away.
He wasn't sure what would come of them- he and Gabe- next. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what came of them next. Maybe the whole world was a dream and one of these days he would fall asleep and really wake up, into something new and bold and beautiful and bright.
But for right now, there was a little boy whimpering from the cold, and Jonas knew he had to carry on. He didn't know what he was aiming for, but he had something. A word he did not know. A word the Giver had never given him. But it was this that kept him trudging on, kept him loyal to Gabe, kept his sanity intact.
It was of things hoped for, but not seen.
He was six, he was nine, he was thirteen and he was moving forward.
One step after the other.