Through A Sheet of Glass
Cap'n
Fuu picked up the pair of discarded glasses, handling them with great care as she scooped them out of the sand of the river bank. How she had ever found them after so long she'd never know. It had been a few years, but it felt like a great deal more, before she gathered the courage to return to that island, simply to reflect.
Sand had worked it's way into a few tiny cracks that had formed, but they were still good she reasoned. One could still see out of them if need be. Bunching up some of the fabric of her long sleeves she gently tried to clean the dirt that clung there before holding them up to the sun to inspect them. They were his. There was no doubt that they were his. As she held them up she could almost picture his face hovering behind them, a ghostly image that taunted her.
Still, it was nice to have a piece of him waiting there for her.
She assumed during their journey that he had needed them. She wasn't sure of their purpose or why, but she had seen him without them, and he had functioned fine.
The night he came to her at the river bank he had left his glasses behind. She was kicking herself now, had been for the last few years, that she had refused his company. She was afraid then. Afraid that if she bound him to her any longer he'd grow bitter, and there was always the thought of the other women looming over her head. She had loved him then, and she had known it, but there was noway to tell to what extent he cared for her.
When he came to save her at the cliff, his hair astray, his clothes torn, looking more passionate then she had ever seen him, which isn't saying much, he didn't have his glasses. He had given her everything that day, but she couldn't reach out her hand and take it. Somehow, without the glasses on, she could almost know what he was feeling. Without the glasses to hide his eyes, she could see the emotion there that had long since laid dormant.
She slipped the glasses onto her own face and looked around her, trying to detect any diffrence. At first she could see none. The lenses were made of glass it seemed, nothing else. Just a normal sheet of glass cut to fit in the frames. Yet, when she concentrated it seemed there was a slight diffrence. Everything was framed, like a picture. Like a moving, living picture, and it gave Fuu the feeling she was observing life, rather then living it. Everything seemed distant, out of reach. Even when she moved her hand into her line of sight it seemed alien, something that really wasn't part of her.
She wondered what she might look like with them on, through the glasses. She still wasn't use to the aloof feeling however, and had to make her way carefully to the river bank to stare into the waving shape of her reflection. Through the glasses she hardly recognized herself. She looked the same, but through the sheet of glass she seemed untouchable, it was as if a weight had been added to her body and she couldn't even lift her hand to touch her face.
One could spend a lifetime hiding behind that force field of anti-reality. It was as if your actions weren't really yours. Everything became surreal, like you were watching a play you were simply acting in. No matter what happened around you, you didn't have to care. You really weren't there.
But that meant you couldn't experince the things you wanted either. They were too far away to reach. Yet their pull was so powerful that you were reluctant to take them off.
She understood what Jin had done for her when he came to her without them. It must have been as if he were looking at her for the first time.
Suddenly, through those frames, she understood everything.