Begun: Jul. 04 2005
Completed: Jul. 13 2005
Notes: Literary experiment; title derived from the concept it was based upon, which was looking at a scene from several different ways and perspectives--facets. Was a long-planned DeaYza drabble, now expanded ('bout time I got off my lazy ass.) Finally, birthday fic: tanjoubi omedetou to Akuma-chan (EffEffNet penname: somnambulism...go read her lovely shiny ficcu, folks, read read read! I pimp them for a reason!); hope this makes up for the week-long absence. And I know it's late and weird and possibly boring, but hush, damn you, or you can hike, babysit and avoid rampaging elk in the Rockies for me (and pass me the caffeine) while I write next time.
Facetae
This is space.
This is infinite and boundless, where stars are but grains of dust in cosmic perspective, and the loss of a million lives is but another thread in the endless tapestry that links everything in existence.
This is a ship, giving perspective to the vastness. This is a tiny haven, enclosed against the bleak crushing cold; a self-contained capsule in which life thrives, or sickens and passes as it will. This is deadly potentiality in the hum of banked engines (though the airlessness of space ensures that such a concept exposed is obsolete); in the sleek pointed blade-in-motion it embodies. This is an emerald sword borne by invisible hands. This is a weapon, in designation name and purpose alike. This is its purpose. This is wartime efficiency given physical form.
This is a beehive. This is not a beehive. These are bees of a different species. These are men working the ship-hive like bees, many parts to act as one for a single inexorable purpose.
-
This is an exception.
This is a room, one cell in the honeycomb-that-is-not. This is sparsity, scarcity, with everything a human being needs to live, but with nothing a human being needs to live. This is the away from home, but this is not in any sense a home of its own, merely a place in which to recuperate, to find some small respite from tasks upon tasks neverending.
These are two uniforms lying discarded on the ground; puddled cloth the color of life. This is red-on-red, indistinguishable but for twin insignias, twin lapels, and an alien number of limp unfilled limbs. This is a sign of a moment of carelessness when something was found more important than duty. And because these uniforms belong to the ones meant for the greatest devotion to duty, such a thing must be precious indeed.
These are shards reflecting fractured blank smoothness like a dead man's eyes. This is the shattered corpse of the mirror that used to hang on the wall by the bed, telling subtle narcissism that it was fairest in the land (land, in space? biased, rose-tinted glasses broken by rose-tinted smoke and sparks and jagged ruinous cutting edges). Until the image was ruined, and the truth that was shown in the silvered glass was not the one desired any longer and was made to match. This is an innocent inanimate victim of enraged vanity.
These are bandages spilled careless, old blood staining loops and loops of dirtied white that mark a curl on the floor without apparent beginning or end. This is a tale of a cycle of injury written in a language not spoken by the tongue but the eyes. This is silver strands caught in a dried mess of gauze that was once pristine; a healing as haphazard as the path it traces over the tiles until it bumps softly against the edge of the bed.
This is the bed, a massed sheeted tangle like a knotted battlefield of white cloth snakes. This is the site of a battle in and of itself, settled in an aftermath of stillness and greyed-out shadows in the dim artificial light.
This is silence, not simply the absence of noise but the peaceful opposite of it, not disturbed but simply accentuated by the soft hum-tick of the clock whiling down the hours; by the rhythm of quiet breaths in sync, in sleep. This is auditory comfort to a science-numbed ear, and a blanket for the weary to lay their voices and differences to rest.
This is the scent that matches the silence, with an undertone of release betrayed within. This is the atmosphere lying heavy in the air as it is breathed in; as of the crumbling of paperthin diamond dams, of pent emotions spent in an unstoppable flood.
This is the calm heady freshness found after the storm.
-
This is the pair of hands that held strong and true through fury, now breeze-light as they cup a sharp hipbone's jut, dark fingers curled unconsciously possessive and gentle over what they are at last allowed to touch. This is the other pair of hands, that would be white-knuckled under any other circumstance but are relaxed in their opengrasp slung casual over shoulders and the way they thread loosely through hair, stay close, stay here.
This is skin, sprawled invitingly over the bedclothes, covered temptingly by them, with glimpses of pale flank or bronzed thigh through the half-order, half-confusion. This is a strange unevenly equal symmetry painted by a tangle of limbs; smoothness, human beautyThis is something approaching sacred simply by its hidden and unlikely existence.
These are the scars that are only on the outside, not marring but enhancing. These are badges of honor and honor-borne pain from a time when the heat and struggle of both nearly eclipsed the cold unyielding face of duty, even if duty did not notice. These are long clean lines of ambition, of self-worth and esteem, besting and bested, testing and passing and trying, failing, trying again.
This is the scar, the mother and child of strife, important infamy. This is the ragged twisted remnant of a wound that went deeper than the skin and sank barbed hooks into the pride held checked and simmering beneath. This is phantom pain and a petty excuse for death and terror, just like all the others in the far reaches of sentience and barbarity. This is the mirror's murderer and a brand: I have killed and will kill again. This is not excused by the mouth that brushes its roughness in unconscious benediction, or the face it refuses to accentuate--this is a product and a catalyst of a vicious cycle; fightbloodpaindeathmourning repeated in vengeful retribution again and again and again.
This is the new might-be wheel of the future, a weak and uncertain seed that is nevertheless growing. This is two beings taking their first steps into the refuge offered by encircling arms. This is yin and yang, hot and cold, sun and moon, silver and gold; opposing complementary contrasts that would be cliched were they not so essential. This is (these are) the two puzzle pieces needed to complete the picture of what is, the two threads braiding a new road into wherever their choices may lead them.
This is possibility. This is the first step on the long path to healing.
-
This is emotion. This is fragility. This is the beginning of love and the fulfillment of lust. This is want and need and circumstance coming together in crescendo-decrescendo.
This is knowing that this precious moment in time will be broken, even if space has no sunrise. But this is also waking to feel a way through the next day and the next day and the next, uncertainty making everything good that comes after something to be marveled at (or snapped at and rebuffed on reflex, as the case might be.)
This is the now of simply living and holding, and it is enough.