AUTHOR: Kristen Kilar
TITLE: My Kind Of Rain
RATING: PG, I guess…
PAIRINGS: Harper/Original Character
DISCLAIMER: I own Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, and all related characters and plots. I receive much money from this. Harper gives me daily backrubs. I'm lying about all of this. But I do own Heather Saunders, and anybody else in this story you don't recognize. Title and opening and closing quotes are from Tim McGraw's "She's My Kind Of Rain". I don't own that either.
ARCHIVE: Just ask, I'd love to give permission.
SUMMARY: A rainy night sends Harper's mind back to the love of his life.
SPOILERS: Uh, I don't think there are any, other than tiny little background things. I'm not even sure what season this is set in.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Dedicated to all the people who reviewed my first foray into writing Drom, "Hidden". Yea!! You're all so kind. This story is completely unrelated, aside from the fact that it's a Harper introspection. I am working on a sequel to "Hidden", but I have plot problems, so it may take a while. This is my second Drom story, and my first attempt to introduce Heather to the general public, so please R&R and tell me what you think. Also dedicated to my beta, Myna, who gave me advice and support and pointed out typos. And finally, dedicated to the Harperchondriacs, who welcomed me to their Ward.
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&&&&
She sits quietly there
Black water in a jar
Says, Baby why are you
Trembling like you are
&&&&
It's raining.
Me and Beka and Dylan and Trance came to Corazón to negotiate a peace treaty with the locals.
(I really have no idea why they brought me along.)
Peace talks stalled and we went back to our very nice hotel for the night.
I couldn't sleep, so I went for a walk.
Nice planet.
Nice scenery.
I was starting to unwind.
I love planets.
Comes of being raised on one, I guess.
I love the feel of soil beneath my feet.
The smell of a fresh breeze.
Dependable gravity.
I'll never understand how Beka can prefer artificial environments and starships and drifts to gorgeous planets like this one.
And then it started raining, a sudden onslaught of water from a black sky.
Now I'm just standing here like a fool.
Getting drenched.
Knowing full well there's no way I'm gonna make it back to the hotel before the rain stops.
And really not giving a damn.
Knowing my immune system?
I'll get sick and be put out of commission for a week.
And I still don't give a damn.
Because of a name my crewmates may never hear.
Because of Heather Zuleika Saunders, I will never be able to hurry when it rains.
See, Heather…
I was crazy in love with Heather.
Still am.
Always will be.
Can't help it.
And Heather wasn't exactly easy to love at all.
Much less unconditionally.
She was wild and dangerous and homicidal and insane and relentlessly truthful and brutal and pathologically conscience-free and unable to perceive many differences between friend and foe and unconcerned about other people's emotions and damned proud of being a first-class Earther bitch and I was always terrified that if I got too close I'd get burned and never recover.
I did get burned.
I've never recovered.
And I don't regret a minute of it.
I was mad for Heather.
And I think she loved me too.
I think.
It was always kinda hard to tell with Heather.
Life was a joke to her.
Even though we were living in hell, life was one big joke to her.
But she said she loved me once.
Once and only once.
Still.
Heather never technically lied in her life, so.
She must've loved me.
Right?
Right?
I guess I think about that too much.
Anyway.
My point.
Most of us Bostonians didn't call her Heather.
She had dozens of nicknames.
We shortened her first name to Heddra.
Or translated the word heather into other languages:
Brezo in Spanish.
Bruyère in French.
Fraoichín in Irish Gaelic.
Or a few random nicknames:
Diabla, because she was so devilish.
Green Eyes, for obvious reasons.
Brendan just called her the Yankee.
Given the whole NY association, ya know.
In any case.
Heather was nearly impossible to love in nearly all her moods and personalities.
All my friends and family said I was nuts to get involved with her.
Because she's crazy and she's mean, Seamus, and she'll break your heart.
Or most of them said that, anyway.
My friend Tasha had a different reason:
Heather's from New York, Shea, she said.
And Bostonians and New Yorkers have been feudin' for millennia, she said.
And I laughed at her.
I loved Heather.
And nothing else mattered to me.
Heather attracted trouble.
That's a bad thing when you're living on an uber-controlled slave planet.
Constantly running for your life.
And Heather, this unflinchingly honest nomad out of Broadway, got me into hundreds of fights I didn't want or need.
I almost died dozens of times.
I should've died dozens of times.
And I didn't care.
That scared me.
But not enough to back off.
—I'll never get the water out of these clothes.
They're ruined.
And the rain's not letting up.
I just close my eyes and drink it in.
Back on Earth.
Heather had dozens of moods and personalities.
I loved them all, unconditionally.
But only one was easy to love.
She referred to that mood as being "in a New York state of mind."
It inspired me to call her my rain goddess.
Heather loved the rain.
Do you know what the rain is like in Boston these days?
On Earth these days?
It's acid.
Poisonous.
It kills.
So much pollution in the air, y'know?
From the ubers' mistreatment of our planet?
So we don't go out in the rain, us mudfoots.
But every time it rained, Heather would get introspective.
Almost melancholy.
Creep out of the sewers and subway tunnels we lived in.
Sit in the doorway of one building or another.
And watch the rain come down.
And I would go with her most times.
So that I could watch her.
She always looked so blissful when it rained.
She told me once that she dreamed about going somewhere where the rain came down clean.
Where she could stand there and get drenched.
Where she could dance while water came down from the sky.
I didn't understand back then.
Didn't understand her desire for rainfall.
Her need to dance in the rain.
Her love of this form of weather.
The bliss she felt just watching it come down.
But now.
Now I think.
I think the way I feel when I surf that perfect wave.
I think that's how Heather would feel.
If she ever got the chance to dance in the rain.
Sometimes I wonder if she's ever gotten that chance.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to her after she left me for Laredo, Texas.
I think I should probably hate her for that.
For abandoning me in Boston.
Then…
"Ya know, Shea. If ya wanna come with me, I won't say no."
"Thanks for the offer, Heddra, but…my place is in Boston. It's not in me to run."
"Right." Pause. "I don't even like you, ya know that?"
"I know." Pause. "But as long as you love me, I don't mind."
"See ya around."
I never saw her again.
The following spring Bobby Jensen came to Boston and offered me a way out.
I took it.
I think at least partly to prove to Heather that I could run.
I wasn't some idealistic idiot.
I was as realistic as her.
It was probably a stupid move.
Except.
Except it introduced me to Beka Valentine.
Except Beka Valentine took me to a planet where the rain comes down clean.
And for the first time in my life, I understood my rain goddess.
Black water in a jar.
And now, seven years later.
Seven years since I've seen my rain goddess.
I stand in the rain on Corazón.
And I cry.
Because Heather should be here with me.
Instead of me, even.
She should get to dance in the rain.
She should get to scare people in the greater universe.
Spacers would be terrified of her.
Why am I here instead?
I'm soaked through.
And cold.
Beka's going to kill me.
She'll never understand.
She doesn't understand the allure of uncontrolled weather.
Of unfiltered water that falls from the clouds.
And she doesn't know about Heather.
I can't tell her why I don't come inside out of the rain.
So I stand here in the pouring rain.
And I cry.
And I curse Heather's name.
Because of her, I will never be able to hurry when it rains.
Because of her, as much as I love the beautiful and graceful Andromeda Ascendant, my pretty little starship will never compare to being planetside while it rains.
Because of her, my heart breaks daily.
And yet.
And yet when I stand in the rain and remember when she was in a New York state of mind.
It doesn't hurt quite so much.
And it's a good hurt.
It reminds me that I'm still alive.
It reminds me that I still love her.
My Heather.
My Heddra.
My Brezo.
My Bruyère.
My Fraoichín.
My Diabla.
My Yankee.
My rain goddess.
And I laugh.
It's raining.
&&&&
So I wait
And I try
I confess like a child
&&&&