My Oh My
'Like Seaweed'
"I'd hope you would all know why you're here, but... I guess not, right? ...Right. Okay. Let's see if I can begin somewhere... Um... Where to begin, where to begin...?"
x x x
Larxene had once viewed her grandmother in the adoring way in which all children view their grandparents. Somewhere amidst the gently wrinkled face and the delicate blue veins just beneath the surface of the flesh, there is something intangible that all grandparents have, having seen as their own children have given birth to their children, watching, waiting, and seeing the cycle continue. Watching, waiting, and knowing they are part of that cycle, even.
It was that certain special something that made Larxene love her grandmother. The old woman's husband had died in a bar brawl some years before Larxene was born and this gave the woman a sharp tongue and an even sharper temper, fending for herself in her later years as she did. "Larxene," she would warble in her ancient, sweet voice, "don't you ever let this happen to you. Don't you ever fall for a man who loves a drink and a fight more than he loves you. Don't you ever do that honey. Just don't you ever do it."
"Yes, Grandma." Larxene would nod her little head and wring her little hands, nervous and timid, wanting so much to make the old woman happy. She would do anything, she thought, just to see her old grandmother smile and know that she was the cause- the root of that happiness.
Roots, though, grow deep. Far past topsoil and far past heredity. For Larxene, she saw a common bond between her and her grandmother.
"When I was a girl Larxene, you know what I used to do?"
"What, Grandma?"
"Well there was this old farmhouse some ways up the street. Back then there were forests stretching all over these parts. All over. And this little friend of mine... I can't remember her name... Oh what was it? ...I just can't for the life of me remember. But this friend and I, we used to have to trek all the way over to this farmhouse once a week for our milk. It must've been a five mile walk, Larxene. Five miles in the blazing heat of summer and the freezing cold of winter..."
Yes, there was a common bond. A common ground. A ground so thick with roots you'd think it was solid through and through. No breaking it, no digging through it. No erosion and no tremors to jolt its surface.
"And one day it just so happened the woman there asks us... She asks us, 'You two walk all the way over here? All the way around the woods?' And we say... 'Yes, m'am, yes we do.' And so she tells us about this path that cuts through the woods instead of looping around it. Now, I'd been told to follow along the main road, the one that looped all the way around the outskirts of the woods. But the path through the middle must have cut the walk down by about three miles. So of course we headed off down this path the next time we had to go for milk."
And yet somewhere, deep with in the tangled roots of her grandmother's life, there lay a deeper ground between them that Larxene could not shake. She could not comprehend it, she could not define it. Back then, she did not understand what it was or what it did. To her, her grandmother was immortal- a figure that would always be there until the end of time, unchanging and solid as the very earth she played hop-scotch on. Just that solid and true.
"We must've reached about the dead center of the woods that morning... We were talking and laughing, you know. Like girls do. And all of a sudden this huge black bear just comes wandering up from the woods, right onto the path."
Some things simply happen because they need to happen in order for people to grow as human beings.
"Of course we were both terrified. But..."
Some things simply happen because they need to happen in order for people to learn from their mistakes.
"I remembered what my uncle had told me, Larxene. My uncle... he was a forest ranger, you know. He'd once said, 'Now if a bear ever comes up to you, you know what you do? You do nothing. You don't run and you don't try to hide. You gotta stand there and suck it up. You gotta stand still.' So that's what I did. That's what we did, we stood still."
And yet most things happen because by some horrid twist of fate, some mysterious higher being has ruled it so. Maybe it's karma. Maybe it's not. But on the off chance that it is, what had Larxene done in her small innocent little life up to then to make her deserving of such a fate? What had she done to deserve to lose everything without even knowing it was slipping away in the first place?
For that was what happened. Over the years, though Larxene didn't realize it, something was shifting. That ground she'd relied on, her grandmother's spirit, mind, heart, soul- whatever you want to call it- began to die. And she didn't- couldn't- comprehend that death because to Larxene, her grandmother was perfectly fine. There were no doctors, there was no medicine. No coughing fits, no sniffles, no fevers. There was just Larxene, her grandmother, and the unmentionable link of heredity and the deeper It connecting the two of them.
Something was pitted against them and they'd done nothing wrong. To put it very plain and simply, it was nothing more than the suffering of the innocent, overlooked quite frequently, but real all the same. So very, very real.
"Morning Grandma!"
"Good morning..." There came the puzzled looks.
"Grandma?"
And the small shakes of the head, the face, the sweetly aged face that tried to beg and plead for answers to questions that the woman herself never wanted to ask. Please tell me your name, child. I believe I can't remember. Are you my granddaughter?
When Larxene entered the sixth grade, her grandmother began to forget her visits on the weekend, her happy little blonde granddaughter bearing homemade cookies and lemonade, smiling as brightly as she could. She still wanted to make her happy. She would still do anything to make her happy. She was that devoted.
When Larxene entered the eighth grade, her grandmother began to forget her name and her features, the smiling child that aged through the pictures but was always still smiling and still hopeful. Larxene would try and understand as best as she could, but she couldn't understand. She still wanted to make her happy. She would still do anything to make her happy.
And as Larxene entered the ninth, the tenth, the eleventh, and the twelfth grade, more and more of her grandmother began to fade away. And as it was explained to her, there was nothing she could do. She was a bystander and there was nothing she could do to make her grandmother happy. That one little goal she'd lived for all those years was taken away by a twist of fate, by bad karma, and by the wicked humor of some power that watched on as Larxene fought so hard to comprehend the dirt beneath the roots and past their reaches, under the earth she couldn't get to, no matter how hard she tried.
That was the start of the woman's decline, for she saw what Larxene did not. She saw the flaws of her own mind and she felt the disease that dwelled there. And she hated it. As time drew on, her hatred for it grew and grew, her granddaughter's devotion grew and grew, and no one could understand the things they couldn't see or feel. No one could really feel the dirt of it all. No one could understand that as the woman sat there and stared out her window, she could not find a self within her body. She could not find the memories to think back on, the 'good old days' or anything of the sort. She was no more than a bottle. A very old, very fragile bottle which had long since poured its contents for the world to see, for all of mankind to bask in its glorious hues and flavor. And now it was gone. It was dried up.
It was just gone.
Finally the day came.
Larxene, a senior in high school by then, stopped by on a Thursday afternoon to check up on her grandmother, who had long since been moved into an assisted living center after having been deemed a hazard to herself. She could no longer remember the simplest of things, from combing her hair to brushing her teeth. Words frequently came out in jumbled masses and she failed to process what many would have referred to as nothing more than a simple train of thought. And because of it, because of all of it, the woman did what she did.
That was how Larxene came to sit beside the bed and that was how she came to hear the slurred words whispered through the lips that had once kissed the top of her child's head and spoken words and stories that she'd grown to live by. That was how she began to cry and that was how she began to understand what no one else could- what no one her age ever could.
That was how she was given the gun; that was how she took it in hand. Examined it with all the curiosity which ever could kill a cat, or more. Shook her head and snuffled and tried so very hard not to understand. "Please, honey. Do it for me. Do it for me."
Larxene had come to hold it, understand it, perhaps even cherish it, in her own strange way.
"I don't want this anymore. Please, honey."
And Larxene then came to fire it, ending one hell and starting another.
x x x
Cloud smiled, the action falling somewhere that nearly placed it as 'sweet,' though it could more correctly be classified as 'curious.' For indeed, as the small fellow surveyed the room of people around him, he felt slightly unsure as what exactly it was that he was supposed to do. The impulse he'd felt was very weak, but it was through that weakness that picked up on the urgency. He needs me to do this before it's too late. Before his time runs out. Before my time runs out.
For in every person, faerie or no, there is a sort of idea of repayment, gratitude, and the concept of there always being 'strings attached.' Cloud owed it to him.
"You can all see me, right?" he asked tentatively, not wanted to shock, startle, or spook. Simply wanting to inform. Teach, and learn in return.
They sat, for your information, in a loose semi-circle, each spaced away from the other in unconscious fear of somehow catching their glance and finding that yes, they saw it too. It wasn't just them. They weren't just hallucinating. Maybe, with some sweet little twist of luck, they would wake up in the morning with that mowed-over feeling of having gotten high the previous day. This could all be some strobe light spectacle, some pipe dream moment in the sewer of their brains. That was what they were hoping.
And yet Yuffie knew. Naminé had shown her once before, in her visit with the other girl during the brief and shaky time when their friendship was first developing. What felt like years ago, was only a few weeks. And in those few weeks... how much had she changed? She glanced swiftly across the floor from the corner of her eye, her gaze landing on Kairi's left hand, supporting her weight as the girl sat cross-legged on the floor. The nail enamel caught the light as she drummed her fingers nervously against the linoleum floor, winking flirtatiously at the poor girl who quickly averted her eyes once again, only to find them drawn to Leon and the tiny man perched on his shoulder, watching them all with intrigue.
No way was this happening to her. ...Or if it was, she was definitely going to have to make it her business to complain to whatever head-honcho was calling the shots with this whole deal. It was just way too screwed up for her tastes. Way too screwed up. Way too gay.
...Man and she actually... ugh, she kissed me. Another glance. Nails, clicking quietly. Shorts loosely bunched around her legs, long and tucked beneath her, nicely tan, but not overly done.
No one noticed the strangled little choking sound that escaped Yuffie's mouth. Or if they did, they tried not to.
Naminé regarded Cloud with a soft confusion, her eyes laced with the fondness of a friend, but also with the eternal question. 'Why'd you do it?' Why did he feel he had to leave her like he did? Why had he come to her in the first place at all? Why were they all gathered there and what had gone wrong to cause Cloud to worry like he did? Somehow it was connected. In the end, it's all connected. That's just the way it works nowadays.
"Cloud..?"
"Right. Right, right. Um... why you're all here. Right. Well, I think..." Cloud began to fidget, his hands wrapping around a loose thread of Leon's jacket, pulling irritably at it with both hands, little face screwed up into a frown as he thought his words through while he said them. "Maybe sorta... you all know why you're here. I think you do. You know. Kind of. But not really. Like, it's somewhere at the back of your mind. ...And I mean, maybe you can't tap into it or anything, but the reasoning is still there."
"What I want to know," Larxene said, scowling slightly and leaning forward as her tone took on a slightly nasty little edge to it, "is why I'm seeing a massive furry bug sitting on Leon's shoulder. Why he hasn't squashed it yet. And why I shouldn't."
"Larxene!" Naminé whined, tugging at the girl's sleeve and pulling her back away from poor little Cloud, who, at that particular moment, seemed just a little more pale than normal. Truth be told, he actually seemed to take on the complexion of a piece of chalk, but that's not entirely the point here. Naminé frowned, Larxene huffed, and the room fell into silence again, the only sound being that of Kairi's nervous nails upon the floor and Cloud's worried tugging at a piece of thread.
"Maybe you should tell them the whole story," Leon said softly.
x x x
Okay now, you can say. Just wait a minute. Where is this going? "You're telling me that here are five screwed up individuals suffering from some sort of severe set of hallucinations and they're all somehow sharing some sort of deeply fragmented and incorrect past?" Well, perhaps that's what I'm saying. To be honest, I can't really say. And to be unable to say what you're saying, well, that's quite a predicament.
But that's life, sweetie. Plain and simple. To believe, even for just half a second, that you could in any way pull off being some omnipotent and all-seeing being- well, that shows a severe lack of insight on your part. But now try and regard this as if you were watching a movie. This would be where you could press a button- any button- and sit and think, the characters' faces frozen in time on the pixels of your TV screen, your brows furrowed, your lips twisted into a frown. Your ice cream melting into that horrid ice-cream soup we all hate so much.
It's called thinking. And thinking is exactly what Cloud asked of those seated around him as he perched on Leon's shoulder, telling them what he knew in the easiest and simplest way he could possibly manage to tell it. It was confusing, no doubt, to be told that there was a force and an energy you couldn't grasp with mind or hand, somehow controlling whether or not you were fit enough to move on in life. Darwin at his greatest may even have thought such a thing debatable.
And yet there comes a point in time when logic is bound to escape you and thinking may not get you anywhere. So what do you do? Go with gut instinct? Act on impulse? Or perhaps you take what you do know and try to apply it as you see fit.
"This is bullshit," Larxene snapped, rising to her feet with finality and scooping her helmet off from the floor of Leon's rather crowded apartment. She turned to survey those still seated around her on the floor, an icy glare falling on anyone who dared to even think of meeting her eyes as she said, "I can't believe you're all actually sitting here and listening to this crap! I mean... come on! You can't honestly believe it or anything, right?"
"Larxene..." Naminé tried again. Did she understand? Well, that would depend on your definition of understanding. But the point is that she was making the effort to do so, which is certainly saying something.
Kairi and Yuffie sat side by side, blinking owlishly as Larxene stomped towards the door. Yuffie made no motion to stop her partly because she didn't know the other girl too well and partly because from what she did no of the other girl, she didn't really like her too well either. Kairi did nothing because Larxene had been puzzling her lately and the ground between them had just been brought back to being pretty level and stable. She'd be damned if she was about to go screw it all up again just to get Larxene to believe there really was a small pixie seated on Leon's shoulder.
"I'm not trying to upset you, Larxene..." Cloud murmured, safely tucked away next to Leon's ear. "I'm just trying to help."
"Why?" she spat. "Why the fuck would you try helping when you know nothing about any of us? When we never asked for you help in the first place? Why... Why this is all so completely fake it makes me want to puke! Why are you even bother-?"
"Because I just have to!" Cloud shouted. The room was thrown into a stunned silence as each of its normal-sized occupants turned to stare at the little faerie. Leon stayed motionless altogether, though his right ear was ringing uncontrollably thanks to the incredible amount of noise that such a tiny pair of lungs had produced. Unbelievable. "I just have to, okay?" the faerie repeated, quietly this time, trembling slightly from his last outburst and clinging to a strand of Leon's hair for support.
There was a hopeful sort of expectancy in his eyes, laced somewhere there amidst the blue and black and deep within the center, Cloud trying so hard to will Larxene to stay with his gaze alone. It was the only power he had, for if he tried to do anything else, Larxene could very well have him resembling a very botched job of a pancake in a few seconds flat. To say he was vulnerable... Well, then again, that might not be quite correct.
Leon glowered at Larxene. Kairi and Yuffie exchanged puzzled glances, but as soon as Yuffie realized that she was doing so, she quickly stopped, suddenly very interested in the hardwood floor. And Naminé... Larxene was shocked (and somehow, slightly hurt) to find that Naminé wasn't even looking at her. In fact, she was simply looking out the window as though she'd lost all and any interest whatsoever in the conversation at hand. ...If you could even go so far as to call it that.
"...You're all fucking crazy," snapped Larxene, just before the door slammed and the room fell back into silence. The only difference was that Larxene was no longer there.
Somewhere between the front door and her motorcycle, as Larxene was tugging on her helmet irritably and trying to conjure up as many nasty thoughts about the crazy little mental asylum she'd just left behind her, she began to start hoping that something would stop her. It was strange, not because half of her wanted one thing and half of her wanted another, but it was because as much as she wanted to leave and as satisfied as she would be with leaving, what she wanted was for someone to act as though they cared enough to give a damn if she did one or the other.
If she stayed or if she left.
And she hoped, with every silly little ounce of it she had left in her pale and jaded body, she hoped for Naminé to come running outside and demand that Larxene stop acting like a bitch. That she surrendered and went back inside.
And as she slid on her helmet, Larxene realized something very peculiar about herself. What she wanted, more than anything else, was to give up. Not to die, not to find a beautiful, perfect love. But to find someone who she couldn't possibly stand up to. Who wouldn't back down in the face of sharp words and wit. What Larxene wanted was to fail miserably, and it was the one thing she could never manage to do. No matter how hard she tried.
But Larxene did leave and her motorcycle could be heard puttering off down around and away from them. And none of them moved to stop her and none of them, save one, thought twice about it. Kairi believed that it was no more than Larxene getting angry and upset again. Leon believed that it was no more than Larxene being a pompous bitch again. And Yuffie honestly didn't care one way or another, for she'd never honestly been all that fond of the girl.
But Naminé had thought about it. She had hesitated and in the end she had chosen to do nothing. But she was aware of Cloud watching her. And she realized that between them was a common knowledge.
She should have done something.
That was how they all came to leave an hour or so later, more puzzled than ever and certainly more self-conscious. None of them could possibly understand the way this all was supposed to work out. Even Cloud.
"I wish I could explain it to you better, really, I do, but... I don't know. I mean, I don't even know why I'm doing this... Or what it is that makes me know what I do about you. I mean, maybe I do know. But maybe I don't...?"
That was how Naminé returned to her apartment, shaken and troubled and thinking far too much about herself. Where had she gone wrong? What exactly was it that she'd forgotten to do as a kid? She couldn't understand. She flopped onto the couch, she stared at the ceiling, she stared at the floor. She searched in every place in her apartment that she thought divine inspiration could be hiding, and still she came up with nothing.
And then her mind began to wander...
Is Larxene okay? I should've said something... I should've done something... I wonder...
Naminé's thoughts chased themselves in circles and lines, patterns across her muddled brain as she tried to sort through too much. She wished Cloud was still with her. She wished she wasn't alone in her damn apartment and she wished that she could understand what was going on around her.
She wished she could understand Larxene... She wished she could help Larxene...
And despite all of her wishes and wants, Naminé didn't dare think to voice her wish, or to do something so silly as to wish upon a star, for it was still broad daylight outside. And as her child's mind told her, nothing bad could ever happen in the daylight.
...So then what was it that had just happened?
x x x
Many hours later, Kairi found Larxene along the highway, her motorcycle pulled off to the side, her helmet in her lap. Larxene herself was seated far too precariously on the edge of the overpass, a breeze picking at the threads of hair and skin that made her up, brushing against the cloth that covered her up, and somehow creating an impenetrable shield around her that kept Kairi at bay.
...That kept Kairi from cursing and pulling her friend back to safety, far away from right along the edge. Larxene wanted to risk her life to sit somewhere that probably wasn't even that comfortable? Fine. Okay. Kairi took a deep breath, she strode forward, she tried to look as confident and demanding as possible. In reality, she was no better off than the rest of us.
For if you'll remember, Kairi was very normal.
But Larxene was also very normal. So it was pretty much just normalcy that Kairi was relying on to talk some sense into the girl, for they had almost nothing else between them in common.
"Larxene..."
"Hey, Pooh Bear."
"Don't call me that." Arms rigid at her sides and mouth scrunched up into a pout, Kairi looked the picture-perfect definition of defiance. But one look at Larxene's eyes was enough to make it wither away and die. Once again she was defenseless, just like always. And once again she wished she hadn't said anything, for Larxene simply gave her a half smile, a joking smile. She turned to look back out across the overpass. "I'm sorry," Kairi said quietly. Lamely.
"It's okay."
Biting her bottom lip, Kairi moved to sit next to Larxene, but the other girl shook her head firmly and held out her arm to hold Kairi back, saying very slowly and very quietly, "Don't sit here. It's not safe for you." And so Kairi sat, her back against the concrete wall that stretched a mere two feet above the asphalt. This way she couldn't see Larxene's face and this way she couldn't be reminded that she'd hurt the girl's feelings only a few moments ago.
"Are you okay?" Kairi asked.
"No," Larxene answered. She was as blunt as ever, only this time she was entirely sober. It was almost a weird and unnatural state for the other girl. Kairi didn't mention it. She simply picked up a small pebble -one of the many scattered along the side of the highway- and held it in her hand.
"It's weird..." Larxene said. "They built this entire highway system, this huge overpass. These tunnels and turns and clovers. And I guess they though a lot of people would use them. ...I guess they thought that with the highway would come the cities and the jobs. And the money." There she stopped. She looked down at the empty road stretched beneath the overpass and she was aware of the empty road stretched left to right around her.
There were no cars and there was no one. No one but two stupid girls on the side of the road, at least.
"And then the deep dark seaweed called up to the monster, 'There's no one here but us fishes!' The monster, hungry and bloodthirsty, dove madly into the water, eager to sink his teeth into the soft scales of a poor promised fish. But there was nothing but seaweed." Larxene watched her grandmother with wide eyes, enchanted by her voice and her fingers as they brought the yarn up and over, around and around the knitting needle.
"Larxene...?"
"It didn't work, Kairi. It didn't work. I've lived here my entire life and I've seen the roads being built. I watched the construction and I believed this place would turn into something new." Kairi had to squeeze her eyes shut, root herself to the spot, clench her fist around the pebble in her hand, for she could hear Larxene's voice waver and break and she could feel the tears begin to come as she continued quietly, brokenly, and so very unlike herself.
"The monster was soon trapped in the seaweed, Larxene. Fooled by the evil tricks that water can play and frightened because he couldn't move, the monster struggled viciously. But he could not break free. The seaweed held on tightly and kept the monster down in the deep, down under the surface. And not knowing what to do and fearing that he would die, the monster started to cry. Great huge sobs that were lost underwater as he began to give up."
"It's stupid for anyone to ever grow up believing that they'll amount to anything. Or that this place will amount to anything."
"That's not true..."
"Yes it is!" Larxene bit down hard on her bottom lip, she tasted the blood and she tasted the salt and she felt the tears sliding down her face freely. She hated herself for it and she hated Kairi for listening to it. "You tell me when you've ever lived here and seen it as a beautiful place! It's not. None of it is. This old town background is just a load of shit, Kairi, and you know it. You know it!"
They fell into silence then, the only sound being that of some distant crickets chirping softly away. The only lights were those of the distant streetlamps and the small flickering sparkle of a firefly here, then there. Kairi released a shaky sigh, she released her death grip on the pebble and saw the red imprint in her palm, no more than a little circle.
With a soft clink, the pebble hit the asphalt and she asked, "...Why were you so afraid of Cloud?"
"But then there came a small little voice as the world began to grow dark for the monster. The voice told him not to worry, 'You'll be safe with me, it's alright, it's okay.' And the monster, for the first time in his life, was shown kindness. 'I don't understand!' he cried. 'How can you worry and care for me when I'm this horrible ugly thing and when I do so much wrong!' He gnashed his horrible teeth and he fought even more furiously against the seaweed, only becoming more deeply entangled.
"...I don't know." Larxene rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, scrubbing furiously to erase all traces of tears that could possibly be found. "I... ...Maybe I..." She closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. The air was clean, for as there were so few cars, there was scarcely any pollution. But the air felt empty then and only filled her lungs halfway.
"Maybe I'm just afraid. That... he's right. I mean... Maybe I just don't want to know that I'm messed up. That my childhood sucked. I mean I already know that, for crying out loud. I pay for it every day of my life. He's just rubbing it in. He's just reminding me of all the crap I wanted to forget."
"...Maybe you're not supposed to forget," Kairi said softly. Her fingers brushed against the familiar little pebble and she regarded it with a small frown. She picked it up in between those fingers against and rolled it along the palm of her hand, over and across the fading imprint it'd left there already.
"What, so I'm supposed to learn from it or something?"
"Maybe. ...Or maybe just accept it. I don't know," Kairi said. "I can't tell you what it is that's wrong in your case. I can't tell you what it is that's wrong with mine. Cloud couldn't even tell us himself. But oddly enough, I'm not even thinking about how crazy this all is. How weird it must seem for us to see this little faerie guy and hear him talk and tell us all this stuff about ourselves. How we have to fix it. It's not that I'm thinking about. I'm trying to think about what it is he could be talking about. ...About what I overlooked."
Larxene, who had been listening silently the whole time, discovered that she had nothing to say. Her throat was a mess because she didn't cry very often. Her vision was off, her balance precarious. One wrong move could send her over the edge, and yet it wasn't that she was thinking about. It wasn't about how supernatural their situation was. It wasn't even about what had gone wrong, where it had gone wrong, and what could be done to fix it.
It was simply about Kairi, the girl sitting behind her. It was about Larxene's realization that this girl did not care for her as a lover or a role model or a sex toy. Kairi was no more than a friend and she did everything possible that a friend could do. And she'd been doing that from the time she first met Larxene.
And right then, it was simply about her luck. How lucky she was to have come so far and fallen so often and still have someone like Kairi at a time like that, at a time like this.
Or perhaps it wasn't luck.
"'I love you,' said the voice, 'because you are evil. And I will never hate you for that.' The monster could feel the weeds slipping away from his arms and legs, sliding off his hideous claws. He was pulled from the water by small hands, and he opened his ugly eyes to discover that the voice had been a small faerie all along. Hundreds of the small silver creatures were happily flitting about, pulling him from the water and up onto the shore. The faerie who had spoken to him smiled warmly and simply said, 'You'll be okay now.'"
x x x
Cloud looked up from where he sat, perched in an empty candlestick holder. He watched Leon for a moment, silently studying the quiet human, watching him quietly eat his dinner in his quiet apartment. Cloud waited for his to pause, put down his fork, and take a sip of water.
Then he said, "I think it's working, Leon. I think they're starting to understand."
Leon regarded him with a blank stare over the rim of the glass. He swallowed. He put the glass down. He was quiet for a long time and the silence of the small house ruled with all its own regal splendor before he calmly asked, "Understand what?"
"...So... even you still haven't found it yet, huh?"
"No. I haven't."
"...You won't be able to see me when you do find it, you know." Cloud leaned forward, tiny elbows resting on tiny knees, peering up curiously at Leon as he prodded, "Are you even trying at all?"
x x x
Mr. Tigi sat in the folds of the crisp and overly starched hospital sheets. The hour grew later and later and he closed the small novel he'd held clasped between his two soft, pudgy hands for the last few hours. The only sounds were those were those of the IV beside him, steadily drip-dripping away, a distant squeaking drone of a cart being pushed down the hallway, the slippers of one of the many nurses puttering along behind it, pushing the cart forward.
He was tired, but a slow and steady glance at the room around him brought back a small bit of his old familiar vivacity and he was forced to smile when his eyes fell upon the stack of books at his bedside.
Yuffie had returned that evening, after she'd left the Laund-Dry-Mat-O in the hands of Irvine to close up, bearing a backpack full of books and her whirlwind energy, zipping around the room and performing her usual routine of turning on the TV, bringing her employer up-to-date on the happenings of the world and town around them, prattling on mile a minute, nearly nonstop and nearly incomprehensible. But her worry was endearing and her grudge towards the hospital staff was even more so as they demanded she leave Mr. Tigi come ten o' clock so he could get some rest.
He closed his eyes for a moment and thought. He could feel the presence of him upon Yuffie that evening and Mr. Tigi could rest with ease that night knowing that it was all being taken into consideration and being dealt with as quickly as possible.
For he did not have much time left and he knew this. It was, after all, why he did the things that he did and why he tried so hard...
He opened his eyes slowly and shook his head slowly. Slowly he picked up the novel on his lap and slowly he glanced at the page to find where he'd left off. Slowly his eyes read over the words and slowly his mind reached an understanding. A small, knowing smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before he dog-eared the page and set the book on the bedside table, one hand lingering on its cover, the tube to the IV attached to the wrist.
Frankenstein. The story of a man and his creation. The story of the untimely suffering of both man and creation.
Mr. Tigi turned off the bedside lamp and closed his eyes, falling into a deep slumber moments later, lulled towards that steady sleep by the quiet drip-dripping and the unnerving stillness of everything around him.
"But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be- a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself."
(x) (x) (x)
And My Oh My breaks the 100 page barrier. Yay! (Three more chapters to go. I will get this done by the time school ends.) Frankenstein and its quote up there credited to Mary Shelley, naturally. Kinda short chapter here, in comparison with some of the others, at least. But I think the rest are about this length too, except for the last one... Hm. Oh well.
