Note: Not only would I like to thank reviewers, but I'd also like to announce (i.e. shamelessly advertise) a fun thing my forum is doing. Secret Santas! You sign up to write someone a fic for the holidays (secretly!) and someone does the same for you. Just wanted to put that out there, 'cause it'll be fun. :D Anyway, this chappie actually needed some tweaking before posting this week, but I hope it is to your liking. Enjoy!
Chapter Six: Moonlight
I feel so silly.
The light reflected off her pearl earrings, drawing rainbows on the wall in the shadow of her lamp. They were simple, small, and elegant, and Gwen didn't doubt that she'd have put them on without a second thought if she'd had Bob as her date tonight. Festivals came only so often; Eve had told her many things about them, including how going the extra mile to doll yourself up always yielded positive results.
"If all conversation fails," Gwen repeated the girl's advice with a laugh, "at least he'll have something worth looking at."
The soft touch of blush against her cheeks tickled her, and the smearing of lipstick tasted sticky and wet on her mouth. Funny, wasn't it, that she would put so much effort on a date she couldn't care less about? In an effort to maintain her dignity, Gwen had forced herself to keep her usual vest-and-tube-top array, complete with maybe just a little more shine on her boots and belt. For a few moments, she debated taking down her hair before realizing all the straightening, gelling, and combing that would require.
Overkill. Definitely.
She wiped the excess makeup off her hands, and glanced once at the mirror. Awkwardly, she smiled, a petite and pretty girl grinning back at her. Well, on the plus side, you look cute. Whatever good that would do her, anyway.
"Gwen, are you ready?"
Steiner's signature knock sounded on the door—"shave-and-a-hair-cut"—before she twirled about and twisted the knob. "Um, yeah." She scanned her date's appearance (his usual fur coat convincing her that keeping her everyday attire was a good idea) and nodded. "You?"
He smiled wolfishly, arm extended to escort her from the Inn's doors. "My fair lady, it would be a pleasure."
What was remarkable about a star, Claire decided, was that you could reach for one, swear that it fit in the palm of your hand, and yet have grabbed nothing. They were taunting, these jewels of the sky, and Claire stared at them from the beach with a calm, almost emotionless air.
"It's almost criminal, isn't it, that something can be so beautiful, yet so far away?"
Claire took in a deep breath, steadying herself. No, she wouldn't think about him. Not tonight.
Elli's voice had been feathery and timid over the phone: "The doctor will be working late tonight. He's asked me to tell you that, um, he won't be back till morning. He's sorry to be missing today's festival, though. Really."
Really? Claire closed her eyes, the crash of the waves filling her ears with its thunderous cries. Really, Trent had to work late? Was that all? My Goddess, I'm being paranoid, Claire rebuked herself. He's just doing his job. You knew it'd be like this, marrying him. Stop whining.
Her hand closed about a wooden beam, the small rain-shelter above casting a shadow on the moonlight. It felt splintered, rough, beneath her fingertips. Natural.
"Stars and people aren't so different. Why so distant, beautiful?"
"What do you know about beauty?" she'd answered him instead, eyes downcast.
"Dance with me, and I'll show you."
Full moons cast mystery over the night. They're pendulums of eerie light, chandeliers of the sky. All around her, the ocean's waters had sung their song, and she'd let the music overtake her in its exotic melody. Everything had been set so beautifully, so perfectly—as if nature herself had prepared a ballroom, playing Cupid with a temperament that changed with the tides.
"A ballroom for two. Come on, Claire. Dance with me."
Her nails dug into the wood, the memory burning into her mind no matter how desperately she tried to shake it away. "I—I can't dance. It's silly, doing it here."
"Look at me, Claire. You can dance. Take off your slippers, Cinderella. Let me lead you."
"No, I—"
"You're a free person. You can dance on the beach if you want to." A hand had extended itself towards her, soft and inviting. "Do you?"
Trent was a man ruled by law. By logic. By rules. Trent was a sensible man, and sensible people did sensible things. Yet that night, long ago, Claire had become a nymph of the sea, slipping out of her shoes and dancing barefoot like a wild girl on the sand. The beach had cushioned her feet, and he had held her steady, their waltz changing into a gavotte, a carmen, a tango, a creation with no name at all.
"Dance with me all night," he'd pleaded. "Don't leave me, beautiful."
And she, the lovesick fool, had replied, "Never, Skye. Never."
Now, she stood alone on the beach and stared, emptily, at the frosty white moon, chaste and round. "Never, never," Claire laughed to herself. "Those were my words, weren't they?" Then the syllables began to pile, one by one dragging her further into despair. "And they were yours. Yours, too."
"Claire, I think I've discovered what it is about you." His hands had tangled in her hair, his smile sincere and proud. "You're not logical at all, are you? You're a passionate fool, just as I am."
No, she was not sensible. She was not logical, ordered, methodical, no matter what pretenses she fought to uphold. Trent knew as much, didn't he? The emotion continued to seep from her since Willow's disappearance, and yet he—that damned sensible man—had yet to shed a single tear or miss a day of work. Claire choked for a moment on the bitter, bitter irony—the "I do" and the "Don't leave me" that had both, once, seemed such powerful words.
For a second, she let herself wonder when Trent would come home. If he would see her crying like this, tangled and tied in her own miserable mistakes. If he would ask her what was wrong.
If it even mattered anymore.
"Nothing adds up."
Nami tossed a giant wad of discarded theories and scribbles into the waste basket behind her. It fell in with a decided thud, and Gustafa loudly cheered "Score!" in the background. She rolled her eyes, his bizarre participation more a hindrance than a help, and asked, "Well, what do you think? Really. You've got to have some kind of opinion."
The man might have been her second shadow, knocking on her door and asking her plans for the Full Moon Festival. "Working," she'd answered, slamming the door. Another knock. "Can I help?" he'd asked, and she'd slammed it again—only for his foot to catch in the door.
His dark eyes now traveled from the paper strewn about the Inn's room to Nami's haggard and strained expression. Deep lines stretched across her forehead, wrinkling as she puckered her brow and bit her lip. "I think," Gustafa replied, "that you're slowly killing yourself with this career."
"Not helping. Your real opinion, please."
"But I wasn't lying!"
"Once again, you're not helping. Help or leave."
A sigh. "Fine." He piled the pretzels in front of him with meticulous care, and said, "So. Claire won't talk to you about Skye. Trent will. And, if Claire won't come clean, Skye has no motive, and—since the note isn't signed, and we can't prove it's his—he might not be our man."
"You're just regurgitating what I said, Gustafa."
He topped the pretzel tower and grinned. "Not true. You were far more eloquent."
"Suck-up." Nami made a face and stole a pretzel. "I feel so unprofessional doing this. Like, you have no idea."
"Well, you're the detective, so you tell me: is stealing a pretzel illegal?"
"I mean sharing the case with you!" she groaned. "Goddess! Don't you take anything seriously?"
He flicked the tower, causing everything to collapse. "Nope. Not really."
"You are so immature," Nami muttered. She pulled the bag of pretzels closer, glaring daggers at him as he dared to steal one more. "Listen, I've got a criminal to catch, and if we don't—!"
"We! She said we!" He applauded her, grinning ear-to-ear. "For the first time in her life, Detective Nami Stone has said the word we! What next? Civil answers? Invitations? A secret love of Harlequin romance novels?"
"Get out. Now."
Gustafa crossed his arms and laughed. "You're all talk. Make me."
"You stupid man," Nami scowled, flicking a pretzel at his nose. He blinked.
"Ow. Nice aim."
"Leave already!"
The musician studied her, Nami's cheeks red with anger and her mouth twisted into a snarl. "Every time we leave each other, you're always mad. Do you think there's a reason for that, or is it just me?"
"God, Gustafa! You are the reason!" she shouted back. "Don't you get it?"
"No. No, Nami, I don't get it." She'd thrust her hands forward to shove him out, but his grip was stronger, and his hold more bold and sure. "Look at me," Gustafa ordered her softly. "Nami, look at me. Why are you always trying to push me away? What do you see in my eyes that makes me so repulsive to you?"
"What do I see?" she repeated. Harder, she had to push away harder; pretzels crunched beneath her shoes, and the two of them twirled about, the musician leading her struggles away from the door. "What the hell makes you think it has to do with seeing? Maybe I'm just not interested, Gustafa! Maybe I've never been!"
His fingers tightened. "In me?"
"In anything, okay?" Her eyes escaped his, preferring the dreary walls, the unfeeling furniture, to his piercing gaze. "I…I don't know what I'm supposed to say to you. I don't know what you want from me—actually, I take that back. I know exactly what you want from me. And, Gustafa, it's—" Nami shook her head, and elbowing him sharply in the ribs, she slipped away, eyes hard as diamonds. "Go home. Go home, Gustafa."
He collected himself, a gasp still caught in his throat like a knife. He managed a weak smile, but Nami knew enough about lies to sense one when it was uttered. "Ate too many pretzels, didn't I?"
"This isn't a game," the detective snapped. "When you're ready to accept that, we'll talk again."
"But someone still wins, don't they, Nami?" His voice was tired, deflated almost. "And someone still loses."
Nami eyed him in silence before opening the door. "As I remember," she murmured, "I never promised you anything to begin with."
"It makes you feel like God, doesn't it?"
The girl laid her head on the balcony, the treetops and rooftops an endless sea below. Little stars sparkled above, but the full and pregnant moon bathed the world in a light no other force of night could surpass. Skye cleared his throat, his companion's voice a tiny whisper on the autumn breeze.
"God? I wouldn't say that." He came beside her, staring at her profile in the moonlight. "It just shows you how small the world truly is. Nothing is ever too far away."
"That's sort of comforting, don't you think?" Gwen commented with a smile. "You can never truly lose yourself if you can always find where you started."
"Sometimes you don't want to." His hands latched onto the balcony, but his eyes locked on what lay ahead—what lay beyond. "Sometimes you want the world big enough to lose you in the shuffle. Sometimes you wish you could escape."
One hand outstretched towards the heavens, shadows slipping through his fingers as he groped for something—anything—in this moonlit sky. Rumors, fears, and threats caught onto this breeze with their hooked, desperate fingers, and the thief closed his mind, unwilling to breathe them in.
"I'm sorry." The blonde turned away, the sight of his pain strange, unexpected. "I don't really understand. I've never felt that way…I—I guess I've never had to. I'm sorry."
"Sorry?" Skye whispered, trance shattered. "Why sorry?"
"I just can't imagine any of it," Gwen apologized. "I can't imagine that kind of rejection or that kind of pain. It's not possible for me. Here I am, in my own safe little world, where the worst thing that can happen is losing your childhood sweetheart. And it's…it's so shallow." She covered her face, make-up falling into disarray and mascara staining her hands. "Oh, God. I must look so immature. To be honest, you're right: I just asked you here because of my own silly, stupid, superficial problems. I lost a dream, but so what? You lost so, so much more. I shouldn't be the one resorting to something like this; I'm not the one who's been…" She swallowed back guilty tears. "I—I'm sorry, Steiner. I really am."
Astonishment danced in his eyes, this innocent girl before him cradling her head and murmuring the most absurd words for his sake. For not feeling pain. For not being hurt. "How old are you?" he asked her gently, something strange pulling at his heart.
"Nineteen, come my next birthday," she sniffed. Gwen turned her head towards his, eyes squinted in confusion. "Why?"
"Eighteen." So young. So naïve. A strange curiosity shot through him, and he brushed his hand against her cheek: soft, pure, smooth. His fingers traveled through her bangs, stroking them away from her face and resting by her ponytail. "Be thankful," he whispered into her ear. "Don't be sorry. Be thankful."
She laughed at that, dabbing her eyes with her hands. "Yeah. I'm just new to this heartbreak thing, so I…I guess I must sound pretty selfish, huh?"
"You choose the worst words to describe yourself," Skye chided her. His hands—why did they refuse to stray from her cheek, from the tangles of her hair? A thrill coursed through him as he met her eyes: "You are a beautiful, caring, and loving soul, Gwen, with a perfect heart to give. Remember that. Don't lose that."
Yet a gullible soul all the same. A manipulated heart—a weak heart.
These thoughts did not console him, nor did they leave his mind when Gwen put her hand on his own, and replied, "I'm glad you think so. But you're not him, and I'm not her, am I?"
"No." Skye sighed and stared across the village, dots in the distance promising of towns and hills not trodden ahead. He pulled away from her gently, her hands folded in his like a lily flower. "No, we're not. But, fair maiden, who ever asked us to be?"
They said, in olden times, that the sight of the moon made men mad. That moonbeams and moonlight caused a sickness of the mind, and led to strange lunacies and fancies. "Lunatic" and "Lunar" are words born of the same idea; maybe they're right, and our ill decisions are determined by the moon's tides. Perhaps foolishness, then, is blamed by something besides our own mistakes—something outside of our control, like fate and destiny. Maybe there are no mistakes at all, just accidents. Maybe we've just stood in the moon too long to know the difference.
Claire stared out her window once more, blankets wrapped around her ankles and her nose pressed to the glass. No one there but nature. Nothing but trees and sky. He'll be home, she reminded herself. Any second, now. Each reminder came dimmer than the last, quieter and less sure. Fragmented. He wouldn't abandon me. He wouldn't leave me alone. The pillow smothered her cries, and she bit her lip, the cock crowing in the field.
Maybe, in the end, we're just waiting too long for the dawn to care.