TITLE: forgetting would so be cruel
AUTHOR: Pepperrrr
RATING: This is so taaaame. PG.
PAIRING: Roger Waters & Syd Barrett
WARNINGS: Angst angst angst, posting this after writing when sleep deprived, whatever, totally non-perfectly-proof-read
P.O.V: Third person.
DATE WRITTEN: August 26th 2012 9:15-10:09 PM
SUMMARY: Roger feels a lump in his throat as he thinks about Syd. He closes his eyes and tries to erase certain things that are too painful to think of. He tries, but the haunted eyes stare him down and dare him to forget. He can't forget. And so he doesn't. Because forgetting the last time you ever saw the only person you ever really loved would be so cruel.
AUTHOR NOTES: God i'm tired and i just love roger and syd so much and this has some weird ass writing in it but man i'm proud of it for how tired i am and you should read it yeah.

whuff NOW I'M OFF TO BED TOO.

Roger remembers Syd. Oh, Syd. Wonderful, darkly delicate R. K. Barrett. He was so lovely. Dark hair, dark eyes, perfect this and perfect that and perfect perfect perfect.

Roger feels a lump in his throat as he thinks about his lovely once-was leader. He closes his eyes and tries to erase certain things that are too painful to think of. Hollow, haunted eyes and things that were too big. Uninvited. Poor Roger suffering selfishly, breaking down and sobbing into his hands that same day.

He tries to erase that moment, but the eyes stare him down and dare him to forget. He can't forget. And Roger supposes he shouldn't anyway. Forgetting the last time you ever saw the only person you ever really loved so deeply that it hurt. Well.

It would just be cruel, wouldn't it? He sighs and instead blinks away the eyes that are etched upon his mind. He thinks then. Of how many changes Syd's eyes had gone through during the years they were alive. His final years, Roger heard, his eyes were black and very nerve-shattering.

Roger didn't doubt that really. He knew Syd when his eyes were green-yellow spring gems. Shining and sparkling and still staring. He had a habit of staring all through his life, Roger remembers. Yet there was a lack of eye contact in certain situations.

Strange things. But yes. His eyes were once green-yellow. Very bright and young. When they first met.

And then his eyes gradually darkened until they became obsidian-nether-portal nothingness. Hollow . Haunted. Help. In the midst of the H-begun words in Roger's head, he hears the faint old radio crackle sound of Syd's voice.

His heart falters and he bows forward at the wind knocked from him at the sound of Syd's years-too-far-removed voice. He struggles to get his breathing back under control, tightens the frazzled loose ends of his emotion-scarred mind. He straightens again and makes his way over to a chair where he auto-pilots himself to sit down, his eyes not blinking since one of the last pleas for help from Syd echoed in the back of his mind. He sinks back against the chair and closes his eyes, tipping his head back against the back of the chair as he places the voice to a visible moment. It was so easy.

This little mind-moving-picture had Roger standing in Syd's room, around maybe 69 or 70, and he had Syd's hand clasping his. Syd was sitting on his bed, messy hair and messy clothes and messy messy messy. His head was bowed. He didn't look at Roger. Even when he licked his lips and spoke, voice broken and hoarse.
"Help."

Roger remembers the way his heart fumbled and faltered, dying a little once again. He remembers the way Syd's hand held tighter to his own, squeezing. And then Syd's head tipped up, his black-smudge framed eyes cast up at lanky, tall Roger. Roger looked down and
oh

Roger remembers that he wanted nothing more to do with haunted eyes and the thump of a body meeting floor in the studio
(maybe we could...and then we could.. you know? syd was mumbling, and roger turned the intercomon, blinking confusion.
excuse me what- he looked down through the window to see syd sitting bowed in on himself
collapsing and caving into himself
on the stool

until he fell with a dull thump to the floor
and the guitar gave a mourning, desperate twang as it suffered the same)
and long silences. He couldn't stand it. And so he shook his head and watched as Syd watched with a fallen, wounded expression, as he shook his hand free of Syd's wrecked and desperate grasp.

Syd's hand still lingered, fingers crumpling around nothing but still air as his eyes grew even more wounded. Because Roger was walking away. He opened the door and called behind his shoulder,
"Too late Syd. There's nothing left to help." And then he closed the door, hearing too-still silence on the other side of it.

It pained him. And so he left that too. Roger hates that memory. It could have been the last time he ever saw him. Syd had other plans though.

Roger sighs and tries to ease the dull ache in his chest at all of Syd. He kept everything about Syd stashed away like a video archive in his memories. And he thinks so much. About those memories. Laughter and songs and chocolate shared on the beach and and and and.

He's so tired. Roger rubs his eyes and shudders at the dark ones that seem to eternally be staring into them. He looks over at the clock. 1:30. This one's called Late Night.

He rises from the chair and heads to bed while visions of the Mad Piper lingered in his head.