Title: The Long
Afterglow
Fandom: Fifth Element
Rating: PG
Summary: Leeloo
offers her observations on humans and discusses what she does now
that the world has been saved.
Spoilers: This spoils the whole
movie as it touches on events that happened throughout.
--
The Long Afterglow
There are 400 words in the divine language only I am allowed to speak. There are roughly a 100,000 currently in use by the humans I live with.
Corbin has a vocabulary of about 3,000, better than most human's I have encountered.
These 100,000 words are used to code me, to pull me into the anonymous face of humanity. I look human, I act human now, better than I did when I first arrived, and I speak using these human words almost exclusively.
I carry a human name on my tongue, Leeloo and my thoughts have slowed to a human's level. I still instinctively process everything I see, hear, touch, smell and taste at a speed twenty times a normal human's.
Father Cornelius says it reminds him of a sparrow. I have never seen one in New York City.
Corbin says it reminds him of a first time driver in the streets trying desperately to avoid the lazily hazardous driving of a cab driver. This I've seen countless times.
In two years I have learned approximately 3,194 of the currently spoken human dialects. I have met Corbin's mother once when I first moved into his apartment. I like his cat more.
I still like his cat, her soft coat shimmering under my fingers, her voice loud and discordant and rough on my tongue.
During the day I go to Father Cornelius' to study, or I stay at the apartment with the cat, or when Corbin isn't looking, or pretending to look the other way while giving me a smirk I jump from buildings in the tall city, navigating and learning first hand all the steel and plastic shapes.
It took Corbin a year-and-a-half to accept that I do this, I don't think he'll ever understand this behavior he calls suicidal, but he accepts.
I look human, but I am stronger, faster, more agile, and more resilient. My arms can support the quick grabbing of a ledge after plummeting several stories without tearing out of my shoulder sockets.
Children, please do not try this at home.
There is a legend forming in this city, though how a legend exists after only six months I still have problems understanding, but there is a legend of a mysterious woman who jumps from buildings and stops crime.
I only kicked him in the face twice, my foot arching over my head and connecting under his chin and then descending onto the top of his skull. It was accidental that I landed on the floor of a building with a robbery in progress in an apartment. The kicks were not accidental. I meant them, swift and sure, my eyes and nose and hearing analyzing and assessing the situation in twenty seconds.
That night there was a news story about an orange haired woman flipping into an airlock and knocking out a would-be robber before jumping back out. I squirmed a little next to Corbin and tried to smile with my head tilted in the precise angle he likes me to use when he wants me to act cutely sly.
He looked bewildered and then chastising and then smiling at me.
I used the opportunity to push him onto the fresh plastic covering on our bed and let what he calls nature, take its course.
I like those games with Corbin, where he can act the stern, grizzled protector figure and I the whimsical, yet naughty young woman. I don't think he's consciously recognized yet that he needs that, or that he enjoys the byplay. Corbin told me early on that I have lived with him long enough and learned enough common sense to make my own decisions.
The robbery stopping has since been repeated several times. Always accidental, usually ending with torn plastic and sweaty bodies after my blurred image has appeared on the television.
We never fight, except when it comes to the military.
And then he fights with the Colonels and Generals and even the President a time or two and I stand behind him with a slightly vacant expression on my face.
Corbin wants me to be perfect, and gentle and strong and womanly. He wants me to go out and learn and adapt and be and also to stay home and hold him and love him and touch him as a woman does. He liked my innocence, which is perpetually recycled as I discover another new interesting facet of the various human cultures that seethe and melt on this planet, but he also wants me to be worldly.
He wants to protect me and to have me be able to protect myself, though he'd rather I was able to kick a would-be robber out cold or use a gun to defend myself and our property then go out and stop a terrorist occupation in another galaxy.
Father Cornelius just doesn't want me dirtied not after I've completed my duty. The idea of doing anything more than having tea with him and talking about the divine language is practically sacrilegious, almost as if I should be locked into a case and put on display with a placard reading:
This is the Fifth Element. She saved our world, a lot. She also likes roast chicken.
The creation of a second moon has sent the tidal waves of the planet seething and churning. It has caused increased seismic fluctuations and instability that scientists are attempting to correct for.
There is still argument over what they should name the second moon, right now most people call it Second, Corbin calls it an eyesore, and I call it enemy and a reminder of my duty and position.
I am a prophecy that has fulfilled her duty and is now supposed to quietly assimilate into the populous around me and be ignored. People wouldn't want daily reminders of how close they got to dying. Already the second moon is just another moon and some have chosen to walk blind, claiming it was always there.
Sometimes being blind seems to be easier than accepting the hairbreadth distance death was for these humans I live with.
Sometimes living blind as I do, molding myself to fit the image of what a perfect woman is in Corbin's eyes is the easiest as well, but when the Mondoshawan come for me in another few years I will leave him as that is my duty. I know that this will ruin Corbin, watching me step off this pedestal, and it will devastate Father Cornelius who always expected to be a gently guiding hand, at least through the rest of his lifetime.
I will return to space and sleep for five millennia and chew on the memories of this lifetime in my dreams as I have done in times past for other cultures that have risen and fallen, for other species that believe in the Five Elements, in the struggle of Light and Dark and I will wait for my enemy to return.
And slowly, very slowly I will process and break down the images of my time here and my tongue will return to the 400 words of the divine language and I will be whole and blank, waiting to be coded with the experiences of a new generation.