One More Confessional
Part Seventeen
197S9.9.24
Mushroom Rock Road? Mushroom Rock Road?
They put us through all that just to bring us back where we started?
Given the meaningless detour I took through Bevelle back at the beginning of this adventure, I can't say that I'm really all that surprised. Efficiency has never been Yevon's strong point. And it's been rather amusing watching everyone's reactions. Gippal fell over laughing at the absurdity of it all, and he's still leaning against the railing, chortling randomly. Baralai just looked confused, and a little tired, and he keeps throwing worried looks at his boy. As for Nooj, I thought he was going to have a heart attack when he saw Mushroom Rock rising up before us. His eyes bulged out, his hands clenched into fists, and he let out a burst of invective. I wouldn't have thought someone as reticent as Nooj would be so creative in his vulgarity. It was the foulest and most inventive stream of insults and crude language I've ever heard, and that includes the Al Bhed lessons. I couldn't help it -- his reaction was so unexpected that I found myself snickering. Then he realized what he was saying, and he shut up so quickly, and turned to me with such a sheepish apology, that I forced myself to stop laughing, even though that was if anything even funnier. He should know by now that I'm not likely to blush at a little cursing. Or even a lot of cursing.
We'll be docking in a few minutes. I wish this voyage would never end. I've never experienced a time like this -- fresh sea air and salt spray filling my senses, time spent with true friends, long nights with my love, few responsibilities and much conversation. I can't imagine much better. Even with the awkward moment last night. I wouldn't change a minute of it.
I wonder what they'll do with us now, and if our plan will work. The moment of truth is coming.
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Nooj came back with his orders. Or, more accurately, lack of orders. He's been released from his larger command and is now back in charge of us alone. Supposedly we'll learn more in the morning, although given the Maesters, I wouldn't be too surprised if we sat around for another week.
Since they don't seem to care what we do, we headed back to our old camping ground. I know this sounds ridiculous, but there's something comfortable about being here. I almost feel as though I've come home. We're probably going to hit the shooting range this afternoon, assuming it's still there. The boys are wrestling again and have been all morning. I realize that it's the safest way for them to show their affection for one another in public, but I wish they would just give it up and hold hands or kiss or something. It grows tiresome at times.
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He wants to talk. I guess we need to, I know we need to, but I am so afraid. This almost scares me more than the specter of the sand-bear.
But he's waiting for me at the pool, and I agreed to meet him there. Best to get it over with.
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I--
I've been sitting here with my pen hovering over the paper for several minutes because there's so much to say that I don't know where to start.
That wasn't at all what I expected. Nooj-- he said-- he told me-- I am completely incoherent. I can't gather my thoughts.
We're going down to the shooting range in a few minutes, maybe I'll be able to write sensibly when we get back.
For the moment, maybe it's enough to say that I did not know that it was possible to be so happy, to be so at peace with the world, to be so in love with someone. Everything is different now. The entire universe has changed.
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Target practice would have gone much better if I'd been capable of paying attention to what I was doing. My thoughts were completely consumed by my meeting with Nooj, by his presence at my side. So I loaded my gun wrong, and the kickback actually knocked me on my ass. The guys laughed, and I felt like an idiot for a minute, but Nooj just smiled and helped me up, and then it didn't matter any more.
When I met him at the pool, he had already bathed, dressed, and reclaimed his old boulder. This one is a little too tall for even him to sit on, so he leans against it, just enough to take the weight off his left hip. I took a quick dip, then joined him there. Normally, I would sit at his feet, but today I was too nervous -- I would've felt like he was looming over me. So I stood next to him.
And then he took my hands in his and began to speak. His words were halting and nervous, but the things he said to me were like poetry to my ears, despite his bluntness and the occasional awkward pause. He told me how much I mean to him, how beautiful he thinks I am, how deeply he appreciates that I "put up with" (his phrase, not mine) his scars, his moods, his difficult behavior. He said that I have enriched his life and that he will miss me desperately when I leave.
When I leave? He's been expecting me to leave him? How could he have so little trust in my feelings for him?
And the scars -- I don't really notice them anymore. They're just another part of him, like the machina. Sometimes I even forget that he can't feel it when I touch the machina limbs. I don't care what he was before. I love the man he is now.
I wanted to tell him these things, but something stopped me; I could see that it was difficult for him to speak so plainly about his emotions and that he wouldn't appreciate an interruption. Soon, I will have to make sure that he knows.
But then-- he told me--
Nooj told me that I give him a reason to live, that my presence in his life has kept him from making another suicide attempt, that he would have been dead long since without me. I couldn't believe it. Part of me still can't believe it. It was exactly what I'd dreamed of hearing, what I had convinced myself couldn't possibly be true. And yet it must be true, because Nooj never says anything that is not. I couldn't look at him for a little while after that; it was just too much. I had to close my eyes and swallow hard to hold back tears.
That was the last thing he said. Completely incapable of speech for a moment, I stepped forward into his arms and wrapped my own around him, burying my face in his right shoulder. I stayed there for a long time and just held him, feeling his warmth and his life, my own emotions building up in my heart until I couldn't hold them back any longer. Finally, after I had drawn the courage I needed from him, I turned into his neck, and I said the words I had been so longing to say: "I love you."
He stiffened in shock, just for an instant, and I realized that he hadn't known, possibly hadn't even suspected. Then he relaxed with a deep sigh and tightened his arms around me, breathing my name. He dropped his face into my hair and kissed the top of my head, oh so gently.
And then I told him everything, all the truths about myself and my life that I have held back from everyone for so long. I wanted him to know me, to understand what manner of woman it is who loves him. I told him about the warrior monk father and tavern cook mother I can barely remember and about losing them in one of Sin's many attacks on Kilika Port; about being taken in as a temple orphan, where the cruel and abusive matron had no idea what to do with a girl who had more interest in swords than in dolls; about the warrior monks who adopted me as their mascot and taught me how to fight, and how some of them forgot themselves as I got older and started looking more like a woman and less like a child; about how I had learned from them too well, and how I managed to steal a sword and kill the ringleader, my body mostly intact but my spirit in tatters; about taking flight from the temple in terror for my life, stowed away aboard a boat bound for Luca, where I found a gang of other children who also had nowhere else to go; about my three years running with them on the streets, the stealing, the fighting, the companionship; about the former street kid turned Crusader who helped me get the recorder job at the stadium. All this and more came pouring out as Nooj held me, stroking my back and my hair, just listening, absorbing all that I shared with him.
When I was finished, he looked into my eyes and thanked me. For loving him, for opening my life to him. And then he knelt down before me and kissed my feet. Literally, his lips gently pressing against the top of each foot, the insteps, my toes. It was the sweetest gesture I could possibly imagine. Then he stood and undressed me, slowly and carefully, as if he were unwrapping something fragile, and laid me down on the grass. He stroked me with his eyes, with his hands, with his mouth, touching every inch of me with reverence. Then it was my turn to explore every corner of his body, attending equally to the marred and to the unmarked, merging him into an unbroken whole with my kisses and caresses. When we joined at last, mouths and eyes and bodies meeting, we melded into single being, no longer Nooj and Paine but something new and different and perfectly beautiful, with no divisions or boundaries between us, existing in a moment out of time and space.
We have mostly returned to our separate selves now, but I feel a piece of him that he left behind, fitting perfectly into the space left by the part of myself that I've given away. He looks at me with utter peace and joy on his face. I have never seen him like this, never. Not even in sleep was he this carefree, before today. It's as though I've given him another balm for pain, except this one has relieved the pain of his spirit, of his soul. Looking at him, feeling the waves of contentment that pour out of him, I can almost believe that he's changed his mind about seeking death, that he is content and even happy to live. I don't quite dare hope for that, though; it would be too much bounty. For now, it's enough to bask in our happiness. In our love.
He never said the word love, but he didn't need to. It was and is there, behind every word he does say, in the gentleness of his touch, in the softness of his expression. But in a way, it doesn't matter. Knowing that I am binding him to life is more important, far more meaningful to me than a thousand I-love-yous. It is my greatest fear relieved. I only hope he understands that.
I think I'll ask Baralai to show me how to make the painkiller the next time we have some leisure, just in case our plans fall through and we're separated. If Nooj lives for me, I owe it to him to make that life as easy as possible.
Dinner finished some time ago and my love's eyes are beckoning to me from across the fire, where Gippal has just finished tending to him. Yes; he knows that the answer is yes. I'll go make my request of Baralai and then follow their call.