Now Brian...I want you to concentrate on my voice...can you do that?
Brian! Brian! Can you hear me!
Does it ever just feel like something's missing...like parts of your life are missing...like one fucked up jigsaw puzzle?
What are you doing here?
If you aren't living...for something...then you might as well be dead mwahahahahahee!
Hey...come back to me...
Wareware wa futatabi au yotei...
There just so happen to a few times where you can find little wrong with allowing yourself a little lapse in focus or attention, we are creative beings and with such comes to understanding that we are going to end up zoning out every now and again, but if you are going to just lose track of the time and blink with the result being a period of seconds or even minutes being forfeited...for the love of god you should never do it when you're out with a girl. For crying out loud, unless you are so accustomed to women throwing themselves at you at every opportune moment, then you are going to be like the rest of us hopeless saps who get to see such a pleasant change of pace less frequently then the aurora borealis. So, what exactly does that entail? In short, it means that if not for yourself, every single man should have enough sense to take advantage of the times where such lovely women would willingly join you for a night of plans that were half regurgitated from the sloppy mind of a drunk and antisocial hermit such as myself. With all of that being said, I guess you could understand just how infuriated I was with the situation when I closed my eyes just to take a deep breathe and steady my footing, and I swear I managed to move from just outside of my workplace all the way to some handful of miles down the paved pedestrian crosswalk. Admittedly she still was managing to take in the trace amounts of moonlight effectively enough to look just as graceful as she had the last two times I had seen her, my own consciousness wished to be able to drill a tad deeper and say she was beautiful, but if I did just that it would have been from the perspective from an uninterested party. That would have been a disservice to such a magnificent sight, and sure considering my rendezvous in the alley some time back I cant really talk but this was different to my staggering cerebellum, and with her it was nice to be beside her without the slightest idea of lustful embraces. My body had been elsewhere, and much the same could be said of my dizzying heart, but with her all I wanted was to envelop myself in the foray of sensation and refute any desire to fornication...for with her it wasn't about me or what I wanted at all.
"Are you sure you'll be okay...I mean not that I don't trust you're ability to drunk walk...just you still haven't told me where we're even going." She asked uneasily, she didn't seem at all fettered by the lack of a destination, but more so just that I actually make it there with my lunch and dinner intact.
"Did you ever ha-have anything that you loved or wanted to be...but you just never followed through with it?" My voice was still slowed to a whisper, but in such a way that made it appear that I was both trying to tell an unsaid truth behind the mystery of life, yet also accomplishing it as secretively as possible. I was managing to speak and walk at the same time just fine by this point, and really the only thing to impede my multitasking was the incessant burping that was making it nearly impossible to finish a sentence without the swelling of air in the my throat.
"Yeah, I wanted to be a ballerina...well, I did eventually settle for trying to be a dancer. Period. But I basically have two left feet so...it didn't go too well." She was keeping the smiles coming as if she was having them mass produced out of my sight, and by some measure I could tell that they might have only had half the intensity by heart, I appreciated her level of care in not trying to drag me down emotionally.
It wasn't always a tactic of mine to applaud such a strategy, seeing as after the incident at the movie theater you wouldn't believe how many people treated me as if they were afraid to shatter me like a glass window pane, always planning out ahead of time how they would handle everything they would say to me. Penelope's carefully calculated verbiage didn't reek of the same child-friendly mannerisms of all the rest, but instead just was someone calling out in vein and hoping for the best but knowing better then to expect anything but the worst, in a way it was like how some people might talk to their cat or sing in the shower. It's not the end all be all solution but more of a Band-Aid to cover a skeleton in the closet, there's no need to air out ones dirty laundry to the world but the same time we all do the same things at times to alleviate the scars effects. For the while, whether it was to be just for this night only, or if it were so willed by the fates that I get more chances to stand beside her I would proudly be the water to drip down her slender form and chase away the casualties of the past as well as the burdens of her world. That cape had been enough to allow me anonymity in my plight to save many, despite myself having only had a few weeks of hands on practice, but non the less it was with her that things actually sunk in and began to resonate. I could save this city in so many a manner of ways, and while it had been so easy to lose myself in the brutality I had seen with the likes of those I had faced, in the eyes of those I had saved I made a connection that had grounded me in what I would lose. It was also this that made me partiality downtrodden that I couldn't give her more then friendship, but it would be of no use to her or I if I gave her myself half hazardly, I just mumbled an inaudible derivative of this to myself as I made a few disjointed paces towards her still standing form. She was finding the purpose behind my own body closing in lost on her, but considering you would have to understand how the mind translates the thoughts into actions when its severely tied down by the spirits of Sicily, so I wasn't expecting her to have any less of a confused expression on her face. Taking her hands into my own, she leeringly went along with my motions as after one last unpleasant burp I began to speak.
"Fi-first off, sorry if it smells like a foot died in my mouth. Alright, the whole "i have two left feet so I cant dance" thing is kind've bullshit, it's all...in your head." I informed her as my left pointer finger lightly tapped her forehead before going back to its original place in holding her right hand. "It's extremely simple, now all yo-you need to do is just take both of your hands and wrap them around one another and go over my neck. Now, here's the tricky part. I am going to one direction, and you are going to go the opposite technically, but just whatever you do...follow my footsteps, okay? We're going to go left, right, then i'll take a step back while you take a step forward, and then we'll switch."
As soon as I had finished my giving instructions, albeit I most likely overcomplicated the whole process in the way I worded everything, we were off and my feet inched to the left at an awkwardly dull snails pace to which she matched the speed and met back with mine. Then we did the same thing to the right side without any issues to be seen, now at this point I was grinning like I had been a part of some grand scheme that was all going my way, but considering I was pulling this off at half capacity and no one was having their toes crushed it was worthwhile to smile toothily. Hips swaying a bit as I did so, my feet went back as she moved hers front and center, and then as my hands slid around her back I managed to send her off in the opposite direction from me with a faint nudge. My own grip on her wrist was the one thing which kept her within reach, the slight breeze that was hitting her face at the moment managed to be enough to lighten her spirits and she soon wore much of the same grin that I had before I pulled her back toward me with a flick of my wrist. In the wake of my little exercise of flare and style, which by the way she was glowing was indicating that I wasn't the only one who felt it had been executed to perfection, she sat for a moment carefully resting between the base of my chest and the crook of my neck. It had always made me happy to witness others have their dreams come forth and be more then just placations of the nights embrace, sometimes people attribute irritability to unhappiness and yet they never come around to thinking that the fruit of their labor has been placed in a branch that is far too high for most with but two hands and an able heart. Once you open your eyes, its fairly simple to give others something that can make a world of difference, sometimes you just need to be broken in a few places...sometimes you just are required to be a bit crazy.
"See that, you're a dancer after all. Any other dreams you had growing up, miss prima ballerina?" I jested.
"Well...when I was sixteen I wanted to be a cosmetologist?" She was making a slightly more apologetic smirk this time around, and she was slightly pulling away from the hug that had lasted longer then either of us may have envisioned, but then again Gotham isn't about figures and expectations.
"No, not going to happen, alright, I mean you really just go with the ten right away? Like, I wanted to be a pornstar at one point in my life, but that doesn't mean im going to streak down fifth avenue! Just...just...oi. We're going to need bleach, and I might just need a few more drinks afterword's at this rate..." Begrudgingly I trailed off into a whisper as she become as giddy as a kid high off of a box of pixie sticks, overjoyed at the idea that she could have such a chance to live out her dreams on a willing...well, mostly willing...volunteer.
"You're amazing, just letting you know that. Don't worry, i'll take care of everything, I've looked up so much in the last couple years. I can handle everything." The night wasn't as far along as the fall breeze might have let on, but I feared by that point that it would only prove to be even longer of an ordeal to simply reach the morning with my sanity intact, and little by little regret seeped its way into the framework of my mental revision.