Preface: I'm sorry I glorified Cagalli. Canard. Somebody.
DREAMCATCHER
When somebody goes out to save humanity, is he appreciated?
You can't apply the term 'humanity' to refer to everyone, can you? And what kind of question is that, anyway?
Does humanity want to be saved?
There you go again, getting all profound….
He was such an idealist, spacing out almost entirely half the time. And yet, she loved him-not as one loves a person because of some sort of attraction, not like a man loves a woman. It was pure love, the kind that only a child can feel for his or her parents, only a sister feels for her brother. Like George and Anne: it was not to be underestimated.
Jealousy killed the cat- or is it curiosity? The irrelevance of it all…
I hear you got your letter today- from them.
I have. And you? Are you going?
I suppose. I mean, it's not a bad career choice- good money, respect, recognition… not to mention all those hot guys… it's the works, huh?
You're so ordinary, child.
What do you mean ordinary?
Conformity, girl, the mainstream- the world can't exist without it. Got a drag? I'm dying for one.
How was one to know? That he would be dead or missing- that's as good as dead. At least those who remain are at ease, that he or she died with a purpose, died a martyr. No need to mourn already and then over and over again. The pain, sheer agony…
A psychedelic was in good order, and desperately required.
What about you? Are you going?
Me? Hell, no, I'm 18. Nobody goes to the army at 18. Besides, I'm already contributing to the war effort. You sacrifice your life, I sacrifice my voice. Propaganda is VERY useful, ya know.
Right. I got the point.
Oh, no, you don't.
Liar, liar, pants on fire. But his whole person caught fire.
Even now, the images played in her head, deep in the night, when she was alone, penetrable. She felt violated, every time, every single time she saw him, by the old oak, which she wondered even now if it was synthetic or real, she saw him, bursting into flames, as if he had on Morgana's cloak.
The singed shock of black, once thick and smooth, so beautiful to simply behold, turned wiry and stripped of it's once grandness. The grace was all that he managed to retain.
The elegant fingers, divine on any instrument, turned to mere sticks of calcium and collagen. The pure skin, torn away, like snow turning, somehow transfiguring into lava, reduced to shreds of papery, ashy material. The flesh cooked before her eyes, roasted into overly barbecued flesh turned inflexible and unresponsive, like cold, uncooked fish, only to reveal nothingness, a packet of air, bulging, constrained into white structures, hollow, porous.
If anything, the imagery was frightful.
You're not really gone, are you?
No, I'm not. I'm right here, even now. I'll always be here.
It was a dream, intangible, and yet, it evoked hope. There was a possibility- that he was alive, he was somewhere out there. Suffering, starving, weak- but alive. Maybe he didn't die, but was caught by the enemy. The eyes grew misty; the letter lay forgotten, for a reply had been obtained anyway.
Will you hold me now, my frozen heart… I'm gazing from the distance and I feel everything has to fade…
And so ran the old song.
Lost in deep winter sleep- a favourite phrase of his, especially to describe his orphan-hood. I have no parents because they're in a winter sleep. They're lost in a deep winter sleep.
Now she used it everywhere, with everyone.
Everybody listened to him at the base. So fervently…
It really did boost the morale after all, his songs. Not the lyrics, but the voice- so powerful, so amazingly beautiful.
She was so proud of him, so proud. The posters that hung in almost every dorm room were absent in hers, for she already had one in her heart, way back from her childhood, and there, he was a thousand times more vibrant, a million times more brilliant- like a diamond. For he was so precious to her, so valuable in her eyes.
Hey, I didn't know you like Canard Pars!
Well, not really.
He's not bad actually, but I don't get why he had to reject the army life. Seriously, what does he think of himself? The next Lacus Clyne?
You've got a point there.
It was a temptation that she had to bite her tongue at. Everyone thought she was just a fan of his. But she was more that that. She was the only one to understand him, the only one. The rest were just flukes, looking down on him, underestimating him over such a trivial issue.
You hear that, Canard? That's how they see you. Sure, you've got a great voice, but you're just a traitor to them. But you're not. You're true, to where you have to be, you are honest, you are pure. I know you are. I know you, and I know you well.
If you had a choice, would you be a Natural, or a Coordinator?
I guess I'd be fine with either, but it wouldn't make a difference would it? We'd only be on the other side of the war. In any case, we kill and get killed.
I think.. It's best to be neither. Screw co-existence, it's never happening, what we need… what we really need is a new world order, where there's no such thing as a Natural or a Coordinator, where we'll all be at least physio-chemically equal again.
Too bad it's not happening, huh?
But it's alright to dream, to hope, to desire.
You're doing your thing again. Wake up, this is reality. We'll always be fighting.
But dreams can come true, can't they?
If dreams did come true, this world would be a chaotic place.
Conflict is inevitable. He ought to have realized. Unless, of course, he wasn't talking about anything peaceful. That made a lot more sense.
And he hadn't, after all- looking at the remnants of his existence, she could safely assert that. Just as the world was cleansed by 40 days and 40 nights of floods in Noah's time, so would his dream be realized, his prayers answered-by cleansing the world, there was after all, a possibility, a slice of hope, a glimmer of light in the presently dark lamp that the segregation would finally end, once and for all.
She wept for him once more, for his abandoned dreams.
If it ever comes to such a stage, I will need you, even if I should be absent physically.
What the hell are you crapping of again?
It's the least you can do for me, right? Will you make my dream come true?
What- of course. I will.
It was an uphill struggle, a burden that she had picked up without knowledge of its contents, but it was lighter by the day. No matter what, she would give his life to his dreams, or die trying. It was the least she could do.
-FreedomValentine-
It was supposed to be Rusty, actually, but I don't like him and it would be stupid anyway to have three kids knowing the same chick, so what the hell. Besides, Canard is so darn cool/ hawt when he's flying or singing. I don't know, you decide.
And, yes, I know I totally destroyed the mainstream perception of Shiho the lean, mean, MS-flying machine who is coincidentally a hot chick. I'm really sorry, but I don't dig the whole perfection deal. She's very normal to me, very ordinary and that's why I just lover her to bits.
I know I've given her a lot of crap this one week, what with losing someone dear each time but I had to find a reason for her gloomy disposition and her silence, other than the fact that she doesn't have a seiyuu.
Voice actor, you munchkins.
Tamaki Nami turned the role down, apparently. Hell, I doubt she could've done it anyway, considering her ultra-blasé expressions in Love Complex.
Anyway, I wanted to show her in a new light, where she is loved and yet lost, shattered but made stronger. To me, she's extremely diverse, a symbol of reality in a dystopic story. I had to give her an all-new dimension that was being gradually taken away. It had to be worth it, because I spent two hours typing it while watching Dasepo Girls and about an hour to write it by hand.
Anyway, I think she deserves it- not the losses, but our admiration and understanding. She's not ever in the limelight and she still shines way more than sugary sweet hippies like Lacus, who are just damn well high on happy drugs every second of their lives. I wanted to show her in a warmer light.
That at least was my primary objective and as far as I can see, I have blabbed on far too long. I shall therefore go on to… REFERENCES!
DREAMCATCHER is a song by Olivia Lufkin, in the album of the same name. Olivia Lufkin also did Winter Sleep
George and Anne are the Boleyn sibling, who were very close from their childhood. At Anne's trial, George was accused by his wife Jane of incest with Anne. He was subsequently put to death.
A psychedelic is a drug or hallucinogenic that supposedly clears and frees the mind. See Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception for more on the experience. The guy was obsessed with it.
The phrase on 'starving, suffering, weak' or whatever I wrote- I can't remember- was modeled on Offred's description of Luke in one chapter in The Handmaid's Tale.
The allusion of Morgana's cloak is from a story of one of the woman's old attempts to kill her kid brother. This time, she devised a magic cloak that would burst into flames once somebody put it on and then burn him or her to death.
'Lost in deep winter sleep' and all those phrases are from Winter Sleep, also by Olivia Lufkin. Her PVs are weird, though.
The whole chemically equal thing is something I got from Henry Foster in Brave New World, who keeps one saying that men are only psycho-chemically equal or something like that. I can't remember. Besides, he was too annoying for me to tahan