25 Aug 2000
Category: songfic
Rating: none
Disclaimer: Don't own the characters (couldn't
draw 'em if I did, so the world's better off!)
Song: Peter Gabriel's "Secret World," from the 1992 album
Us. I've snipped some lines that seemed too specific to be
useful--there's a cryptic line about a railway siding that
seemed intrusive--but the song is worth listening to intact!
Warning: Shounen-ai/references to yaoi (1x2), introspection, sap.
Plays fast and loose with the series timeline (specifically, it
adds more time between Duo's rescue and Heero's departure for
the lunar base), so let's call it AU.
Spoilers: none; makes vague reference to eps later in the series.
Notes: This may grow up to be part of the mess that is
"Complicated"--if it does, it'll come between "Beauty" and the
main story.
Feedback: always welcome!
I've been talked into posting this (thanks, Q-sama!), but Heero
still sounds like Obi-Wan to me. ^_^ Augh. It's just that this
song (and the hair-washing image) grabbed me by the scruff of
my neck and wouldn't let me go till I wrote something--sorry!
*Puts ficlet down and stands waiting, hands meekly behind back*
//I stood in this unsheltered place
Till I could see the face behind the face
All that had gone before had left no trace. . .
In our secret world we were colliding
All the places we were hiding love--
What was it we were thinking of?//
You look at me as if you are helpless, but I know better. How many times have I seen you take on whole armies, watched you go into battle as if nothing could stop you, or even slow you down? Out of control, sometimes. Knocked flat, once or twice. But not helpless. Always, you get back up, pull it back together. So why are you looking at me like that? Your face--it's not defenceless, either, in spite of what your eyes would have me believe. It's too good at taking me apart.
I know some of it is supposed to be physiological, encoded along with the rest of my basic responses. Big eyes, wide forehead--the architecture of your face takes unfair advantage of the defensive strategies built into baby animals. Faces like that are supposed to make stronger creatures feel protective, keep the babies alive long enough to grow up. It's not having quite the effect nature intended; not on me, anyway. This protectiveness is all about possession: want, need, take. A clutching kind of desire that doesn't always seem all that interested in the welfare of its object. I know you don't need me to protect you, but I also know I shouldn't be the one killing you. There are enough other people trying to do that.
And I know there's something else behind those eyes, worse than anything that has ever stalked a baby gazelle--something dark and terrible that doesn't leave you alone any more than I do. How much of that darkness is there because of me, Duo?
Until I figure it out, don't stop looking at me like that. Please. Even if you're making me the helpless one.
//So I watch you wash your hair
Underwater, unaware. . .
Did you think you didn't have to choose it
That I alone could win or lose it?
In all the places we were hiding love--
What was it we were thinking of?//
I walked in on you, once, in that apartment on L1--about two days before I left to hit the lunar base. In the bathroom down the hall, with the cracked tile and the rust-marks in the sink.
I still think it was an accident; the water wasn't running when I came down the hall, so I probably thought the room was free. But you must have cranked it back on just as I turned the doorknob, because the shower was running again when I opened the door.
It made sense, I guess; it must be heavy, holding all that hair up to wash it. With most of your ribs taped, and one arm out of its splint, it must have been even harder--but you didn't want to ask for help, not after what I had said about your weakness, so you were managing.
That's probably why you were on your knees. Eyes closed, head back and turned slightly to the side, both hands full of soapy hair. And the water, pouring down. The curtain was partly open, but you didn't see me. You looked emptied out, as if the water were carrying away more than soap. So beautiful that it felt like falling, just to look at you.
I don't think I had ever seen you with all your masks down until then. Not even when we--especially not then. You were always too busy watching me watch you, too busy trying to be what you thought I wanted. Why did it take so long for me to see you?
//In this house of make-believe
Divided in two like Adam and Eve
You put out and I receive. . .
Oh, the wheel it is turning, spinning round and round
And the house, it is crumbling, but the stairways stand//
It's funny to think of that apartment as an Eden; it was just a cube in a stack of cubes, with worn carpet and a broken refrigerator. But it was a place apart, where I could stop time for a little while.
I wish I'd had more time outside of time to spend in that place, with you. I wanted the chance to explain what you do to me, what I want to be to you. I didn't know I wanted this until it was in front of me, and so I didn't have a place inside to keep everything you have given to me. I've been making room. And I need to find the words for all these things, because you don't seem to have heard me yet.
Sometimes I think the words don't matter so much, that the language I already know is enough. I know I'm getting better at giving you some of the things you need, anyway--your body doesn't know how to lie to me.
But I know better than to put all my trust in that. Your eyes are one-way mirrors too much of the time, and I know I'm still seeing only what you want me to see. I want to break the glass, to make you let me in--let me back there, where you are. But that would take time, and time isn't something we have, is it?
Eventually we always have to open that door and go back into all of it again. The war is patient, but it is never slow to find us if we don't go out to meet it. These two worlds of ours--the war, and this thing that is trying to happen between us--they may alternate, but we never get the chance to see if they could coexist. There's never enough time.
//Seeing things that were not there
On a wing on a prayer
In this state of disrepair
In our secret world we were colliding
In all the places we were hiding love--
What was it we were thinking of?//
But even when all the only things in front of me are Zero's instrument panel and the blackness of space, I can still see your eyes.
And it makes me think of flight--that moment when you leave the ground, not sure if the wings can take the weight you're asking them to raise. Feeling the wheels let go of the tarmac, one and then the other, forward motion finding its end in a speed so great that it almost feels motionless. And then the sudden realization, once the engines stop screaming and level out, of the miles of empty air between you and the ground. Equal parts exhilaration and terror--I'll never be safe again.
That space apart, that dizzying height--don't you see? I carry it all inside me, now. There seems to be room.
//With no guilt and no shame, no sorrow or blame
Whatever it is, we are all the same
Making it up, in our secret world//
The End
(:./lilias/secret)
