For SereneCalamity
'Running Up That Hill' by Placebo
You wanna feel how it feels?
You wanna know, know that it doesn't hurt me?
You wanna hear about the deal I'm making?
You be running up that hill,
You and me be running up that hill,
And if I only could make a deal with God,
And get him to swap our places,
It was like an explosion of emotion. There was the announcement, a moment of intense silence and then suddenly everyone was laughing and clapping and talking at cross purposes. Mia just smiled serenely and let the madness carry on around her. This was her third time at the rodeo and she now knew how to let the excitement flow over her rather than wash her away.
She also knew how to ignore the way Brian responded, carrying on like an idiot and grinning so much it looked as if his head was in danger of falling off. She was sure that, if given a few more moments, pride would actually have his feet leaving the floor. As if he were the first man alive to have sired a child, though admittedly this baby would take their total to three. A reason to be a little proud perhaps.
"Mia," In the loud and over enthusiastic gathering, the soft voice and light hand on her shoulder instantly had her attention. "I just wanted to say congratulations."
"Thanks." Mia said and not knowing what else to do step in close and hugged the other woman. Letty was good, really good, but under the warm smile and heartfelt words Mia had still sensed the flicker of sadness. Her embrace was subtlety different to normal, delicate, as if she were afraid of hurting Mia or the new life she carried.
"Letty I…" She started to say as they separated but the other woman had already slipped away, and that was probably a good thing as Mia had no idea what she could or should have said.
"Give her time." Mia actually jumped, her feet coming several inches off of the floor, when Dom suddenly appeared and spoke. "She really is happy for you both Mia, she just needs some time is all. Just a little time."
"I know that." She said patting the hand he'd put on her shoulder, and she really did know after all she'd already seen it twice before. The car crash which hadn't actually killed Letty had however killed any chance of her having children, and Mia knew each time she conceived it brought back her friend's pain, fresh and sharp and cutting like razor blades.
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It was a good pain at least that was what she told herself. The rest of Letty's body was of the opinion that no pain was good pain and at the top of the list of bad pains was the sensation that somebody was driving knitting needles into her legs. Of course the icy fire in her side was coming in a close second and the sensation that a baby elephant was crushing her lungs was also hard to overlook. But they were things that could be ignored, as long as she concentrated on matching her pace to the rhythm of the music coming from her head phones everything else could be blocked out.
Her muscles screamed as she forced herself up the hill towards home. It was funny but she drove up and down it every day and somehow always managed to forget just how steep it was. It wasn't until she made herself run up it that she remembered just how harsh the incline really was. Lactic acid flooded Letty's muscles the same way the sweat flooded her eyes, stinging the orbs and blurring her vision as she forced air in and out of her lungs. She knew she was making progress yet the hill still seemed to go on forever making it seem as if she were going nowhere. There was probably a metaphor for her life in there somewhere but she was too tired to look for it.
Letty didn't ease off as she covered the last few yards and turned up the drive way. Instead she held the same brisk pace she'd adopted when she set out, stretching her legs out and firmly planting her feet. It was a long lopping stride that covered ground and that she could maintain for hours. Well one hour anyway, at least she had been able to when she was younger. When Letty was a teenager while other girls were trying out for the cheer squad she'd been down in the boxing gym, back then she could run three miles and think nothing of it.
She reached the top of the drive and forced herself around to the back of the house before admitting defeat. Mia waved at her from a lawn chair large white framed 60s style sunglasses perched on her nose, she was sipping from a glass of iced-tea complete with fresh chopped mint. Letty waved back and then pressed her waving hand to the stitch in her side as she walked stiffly over. Her teenage heyday, her aching body pointed out emphatically, was long over.
"Hey." Mia said as the other woman closed the space between them. She carefully set her glass on the table then picked up the bottle of water she'd also brought with her, ice cold and straight from the fridge, and held it out.
"Hey," Letty gasped out a response, before wiping sweat out of her eyes with the back of her hand before reaching out and gratefully taking the proffered bottle. "Thanks."
"Been jogging?" She asked as Letty cracked the top and drank deeply, giving her friend the snake eye over the top of the bottle as she did so. "Oh no, that's right joggers are evil right. So did you fall over any bodies today?"
Letty bent over and breathed in deeply through her nose, held the breath for a moment before letting it out with a whoosh of air. She did this several times, but she also held up two fingers in answer to Mia's question.
"Just two?" Mia asked, just in case the sign was actually 'V' for victory and she missed something, but the runner nodded affirmation. "A slow day it would seem, killers just aren't what they used to be. Either that or you're just running in the wrong places."
"Could be." Letty said as she straitened, having finally managed to get her breath back. Funny how each time she ran it seemed to take her just the little bit longer, but she'd rather shoot herself in the foot than admit she was getting older. The truth was the hill was getting steeper, that was Letty's story and she was sticking to it.
She shook out the last twinges from her calves, drained the rest of her water then sat down on the end of Mia's recliner. Letty studied the woman who had been her best friend for longer than she could remember, literally. True over time bits and pieces of her old life had come back to her and while Letty knew she would never remember everything some things were just too important to ever truly be forgotten. This meant she knew when Mia, sitting there in her white cotton summer dress and sipping ice-tea like a Southern belle out of Gone With The Wind, was acting odd.
"So, what is it that's bothering you?" Both of them had lost so many people that they loved, but while Letty found a strange sort of comfort in death humour Mia was just the opposite. So if she were joking about joggers falling over corpses, which they were always doing on T.V., something must be seriously upsetting her.
"I'm that obvious huh?" Mia had to close her eyes as the wave of pain of something she had once thought she had lost swept over her. She could remember doing this when the two of them were young, sitting in the hot summer sun Letty calling her on whatever nonsense she was trying to cover up. Decades had passed but that was all that had changed and against all the odds she and Letty still sat together in the back yard of 1327.
"I might have forgotten everything Mia, but I still know you." And joking about finding dead bodies on the street was defiantly out of character. "Whatever it is you can tell me."
Mia nodded, took a deep breath and opened her mouth. Then she closed it without uttering a single word. A shiver ran threw her, goose bumps following in its wake and in spite of the warm sun she suddenly felt very cold. It was all very well for Letty to sit there and say she could tell her anything, but this wasn't just anything and Mia couldn't even get the words together properly inside her head. And she dreaded to think what they would sound like if she said them aloud. The inside of her head was a mass of confusing and conflicting thoughts, of wants and desires that on the surface seemed wrong but which she knew in her heart to be right.
Letty was strong and kind and the best friend that Mia could have ever asked for, and sure they had been knocked back and beaten down but each time they bounced right back. Their friendship became stronger with each and every obstacle they overcame. But while Letty was open and honest there was also something remote about her, like a distant start or an ice burg, Mia always knew there was far more going on with the other woman than met the eye. It was an odd facet of her personality, but it also meant no one ever really knew how Letty would react to what was done or even what was said. And there was so much Mia want to say if only she could find the right words.
"I can't." Mia saw the worry, the fear, start to form in the other woman's eyes and hid her face in her hands so she wouldn't have to see it. And it was only when she pressed her palms to her face and felt the slick wetness against them she realised that she was crying.
"You can't…. what?" Ignoring the fact that she was still sweat soaked and there for probably didn't smell too good Letty leaned in close and reached out a hand so she could sooth her friend.
"It shouldn't be like this!" Letty flinched back at the shout but also at the wild half-crazy look on the younger woman's face. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes fever bright and there were tears rolling in rivers over her skin. "It shouldn't but I can't change it and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry Letty."
"Sorry for what?" Confusion coated her words and bafflement that only increased when Mia dropped her tear streaked face and stared at her hand resting atop her belly. "For the baby!? Why Mia? Why would you ever be sorry for that!?"
"Because it should be yours." The words came out as a piteous sort of wail, full of pain and anguish, like a knife being dragged across exposed nerves. All the fear and love and despair and indescribably longing that Mia could never find it in herself to voice filled those five words.
"Mia…" If the Italian woman had physically struck her Letty could not have been more stunned and yet there was a very small part of her that said she had known this was what was upsetting her friend. She thought she had come to terms with her inability to bare children and she had thought that when the pain of that loss hit her she had been able to hide it. Time, if nothing else should have told her that she could never hide anything from Mia, she always saw everything.
"It should be you! I don't know what else I can do, I've preyed. I've preyed so damn hard," Letty grabbed the other woman and held her tightly, more than a little scared that if left unrestrained she might do something stupid, like trying to start a fistfight with God. "Every minute of every day, because it should be you. You deserve it to be you. I would do anything to make it you. I'd beg, borrow or steal to make it you."
"Mia enough, please, stop." Letty shook Mia none to gently by the shoulders, trying to snap her back to reality, because she knew if she didn't then she too would end up crying uncontrollably, she could already feel the hot prickle behind her eyes. "It's not your fault, it never was, and there's nothing you can do to change the way things are."
"I would if I could." Somehow the soft whisper cut deeper than all the shouting combined had been able to. Mia raised her head and looked at Letty, her eyes swam with tears, impossibly dark and deep enough to drown in. "If I could make a deal with God Letty, this child would be yours. Yours, and not mine."
"Mia, I…" Letty started, but the sound faded and she mouthed silently as her body started to tremble. She hadn't cooled down after running that was it. Her body was rebelling because she had mistreated it that was all it was. But even as Letty tried to convince herself she was still in control she could feel her grip slipping even further.
Letty was always strong for Dom. She was the one person he could always depend and rely on, the only one who would bend but never break. His one constant in an ever changing world, was how he'd once described her, his one shining star. But with Mia she didn't have to be strong, she'd never had to be, with Mia she could be just what she was. And what she was was a girl who was scared and afraid and who wanted to beat her fists against the sky and scream that it just wasn't fair.
The first tear slipped passed the barrier of Letty's lashes and started to roll down the curve of her cheek. Mia reached out and gently brushed away the salt drop, the backs of her fingers feeling cool against the fevered heat of her friend's skin. But no sooner was the first tear brushed clear than more fell to replace it. Think and fast, like a river of salt, and Letty found herself hunched over trembling and gasping as all the pain she had pushed down of so long came spilling out in huge racking sobs.
She felt Mia shift on the seat next to her and a pair of arms were wrapped around her, holding her tightly and anchoring her against the torrent of grief that threatened to sweep her away. Blindly Letty reached out, hands seeking and fingers grasping, until was clinging onto Mia as ferociously as her friend was hugging her. They clung together the way two children might when thunder boomed and lighting ripped the sky and there was no guaranty the storm would ever pass.
Together they sat and cried, sobbing and venting. They mourned the loss of things that could now never be, once glittering dreams that were smashed and broken and things that were forever lost. And, above all, they wept with the pain of knowing that they were powerless to change any of it.
At the back door Dom and looked on helpless to offer comfort to his sister or his lover. All he could do was stand and watch the two women he loved most in all the world cling together. The sobs raked and convolved their bodies, while tears fell thick and fast causing dark hair to stick to damp skin. Their cries were harsh, and must surely have ripped and torn at the backs of their throats, screams of gut wrenching agony as they gave voice to a pain that was soul deep.
(A/N) I know other people have written for this song, but I was listening to it while thinking about Letty not being able to have children and the idea just came to me. I just hope I managed to, I don't know, make it seem realistic I think. Dotty forever.
Lamanth xx