Of Butterflies and Men
Introduction:
This one's too short to say much about. Suffice to say some more experimentation in perspective, tense, and writing AU using only canon characters. And also "intellectual" reference to a concept you've probably heard.
Warning: Present tense. And before we forget, the 16th amendment prevents me from owning either Max or Jeb. So you know. Also, I've used second person because I am an artiste, not because I want you to interact with the story. Apparently the Guidelines prevent this. I am an artiste, though, and this is something up with which I will not put. To which, I think I'll be over here wearing all black and smoking a bubble pipe. Y' know... artiste.
She's actually kind of cute when she's asleep, you think. Light brown hair spilling over her shoulders and brushing the feathers of her delicate wings – which remind you of being a kid and watching the hawks in the park, circling over the pond while the sun goes down. She has the fingers of her left hand looped loosely through the wires of her cage, which makes her look like she fell asleep waiting for someone.
You stand there for a moment in contemplation of her, the air conditioning at its usual dull roar in the background. She has a childish face, soft around the edges like any little girl's – she will be pretty someday, though. Strikingly so, you think. Her hair is soft and downy and her skin an off-white. You can't remember if she's ever been let outside for good behavior – she has a temper, this girl.
She mutters in her sleep, and you squat down on the floor, heels tilted up. The fluorescent panels in the ceiling hum high in your ears and glare down at you.
You put out your hand and give her the shot. She stirs, and it's like someone is there, as if before this were just a shell.
"What?" she says. "Where is this?"
"This is the School," you say, palming the syringe. What's her name? "Don't you remember that, Max?"
"You're lying," she spits, and you're reminded of how young she is. "Where's my Flock? The Flyboys? Ari?" She peers at you with open hate in her gaze, and in the back of your head, something turns over in its sleep, weeping. "What have you done with them? Whitecoat bastard."
"The other avian experiments are right where they've always been, Max," you say. "Who's Ari? … and tell me about these Flyboys."
"You know what I'm talking about," she says, and it's a little sad how she tries to put sting and slap in her words – she is, after all, only a child.
"No," you say. "I don't know what you're talking about."
She rolls her eyes. "What have you done with my Flock?" she says, looking around. They're asleep in their cages, like she was.
"Nothing," you say. "They haven't moved one bit since last night."
"Last night I was in Arizona," she says. "Tell me, how did you dope us?" A string of words you didn't know she knew pours from her lips. "I guess one time betraying us wasn't enough, you bastard," she says.
"I'm sorry, Max," you say, "but I don't know what you're talking about."
She studies your face with her wide brown eyes, silent.
"Well, come on," you say, and unlatch her cage door. "More tests this morning, and then I've got a surprise for you. You'll like it."
She follows you down the hall, bare feet padding on the linoleum tile. She looks up at you all the while like a dreamer coming up from deep sleep.
By ten o' clock she's stopped insisting that you've taken her from Arizona and put her here – but she keeps looking at you as if she's no longer sure which is the truth, your words or hers.
You're quite used to being called whitecoat, you reflect later in the shower, but not bastard. That one stings and rankles in your thoughts… and like the words you heard in school, which will never leave your head, not until you die.
You consider the bubble on your hand, so delicate and yet so impervious – you remember that if you are careful, you can put a knife right through a bubble, the iridescent skin bending around the metal. You twist the cap back onto the shampoo and it's gone, like a vision or a dream.
You think back to earlier, maybe one o' clock, when you were leading her along the hall. She looked up at you and said, like a child does in utmost seriousness, "Jeb, I had a dream. You were there."
You wash the shampoo out of your hair, remembering a scrap of dream from this morning.
"Max, I had a dream, and you were there," you say, and it echoes in the tile. You laugh, hearing your own voice echo Max's words.
Which Chinese philosopher was it? He dreamed one night that he lived an entire life as a butterfly, and when he woke, he said that he was no longer sure that he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly. He might well be a butterfly dreaming he was a man.
"Butterflies," you say. "Men."
They're both the same, really.