Your hand shakes when you hold your pencil, but that's normal. Your fingers curl around the pencil, and confuses it for a weapon. Maybe that's normal. It's too light on the wrist. You need heft. You expect the weight of a sword, full and round, and you roll your wrist before you begin writing.
You have tried, and you have failed. There is still work to do. There is always work to do.)
-
Raleigh stands at your door, and says you don't have to just obey him.
You want to ask him how a man can live a life without loyalty, how a man can live a life without deferring to the knowledge that there is something greater, that a love is worth something greater than your defiance. That trust demands this, and that does not make you weak or carve you hollow.
it's not obedience, you answer, and you wonder if a man who has saved so many lives can understand the debt that comes with being saved. If a man who continues to fight for the rest of the world can understand the weight of being patient and just watching as the world around you collapses to pieces.
After all, the world remains everybody else's world, fighters or not. The world was still yours when you were cowering in the streets; the city was still your city; no matter how much you willed it so, you could not defend it with your own small fists, with your own body.
No matter how much you wished. You want to know if he can understand. So, you try: it's respect.
-
And when you are in the suit the second time and the third, when the weight of it grows familiar, when you clench your fist and the giant machine does the same, part of you curls at the notion. You had expected… not more, but something different. You had expected something greater in the blood. Less fear. More preparation.
Still, there are other things you could not have anticipated. The fullness in your head and Raleigh's voice, Raleigh's presence, dirtying everything like smudging fingerprints on clean glasses, and part of you knows that you will never be able to strip those clean again. (Part of you wonders if you would ever want to.) There is the smooth tone of his voice, the even rhythm, as you move together, and the noise of the machine follows like a heartbeat, a two-beat noise of squealing metal and joints before the resounding footstep echoes across the sea bed.
And there are things even Stacker did not tell you about battle. The way your blood makes everything seem too present, the noise of it drowning everything out, the way the inside of the machine can spark from the blows sustained; Raleigh is in your head; Raleigh whispers, Raleigh groans, Raleigh feels the blows and you feel them too --
But now you are heavy; now you are a soldier; now you can throw your weight against the world and hear the echoes of a landing blow.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2013-07-22 03:04 am (UTC)Your hand shakes when you hold your pencil, but that's normal. Your fingers curl around the pencil, and confuses it for a weapon. Maybe that's normal. It's too light on the wrist. You need heft. You expect the weight of a sword, full and round, and you roll your wrist before you begin writing.
You have tried, and you have failed. There is still work to do. There is always work to do.)
-
Raleigh stands at your door, and says you don't have to just obey him.
You want to ask him how a man can live a life without loyalty, how a man can live a life without deferring to the knowledge that there is something greater, that a love is worth something greater than your defiance. That trust demands this, and that does not make you weak or carve you hollow.
it's not obedience, you answer, and you wonder if a man who has saved so many lives can understand the debt that comes with being saved. If a man who continues to fight for the rest of the world can understand the weight of being patient and just watching as the world around you collapses to pieces.
After all, the world remains everybody else's world, fighters or not. The world was still yours when you were cowering in the streets; the city was still your city; no matter how much you willed it so, you could not defend it with your own small fists, with your own body.
No matter how much you wished. You want to know if he can understand. So, you try: it's respect.
-
And when you are in the suit the second time and the third, when the weight of it grows familiar, when you clench your fist and the giant machine does the same, part of you curls at the notion. You had expected… not more, but something different. You had expected something greater in the blood. Less fear. More preparation.
Still, there are other things you could not have anticipated. The fullness in your head and Raleigh's voice, Raleigh's presence, dirtying everything like smudging fingerprints on clean glasses, and part of you knows that you will never be able to strip those clean again. (Part of you wonders if you would ever want to.) There is the smooth tone of his voice, the even rhythm, as you move together, and the noise of the machine follows like a heartbeat, a two-beat noise of squealing metal and joints before the resounding footstep echoes across the sea bed.
And there are things even Stacker did not tell you about battle. The way your blood makes everything seem too present, the noise of it drowning everything out, the way the inside of the machine can spark from the blows sustained; Raleigh is in your head; Raleigh whispers, Raleigh groans, Raleigh feels the blows and you feel them too --
But now you are heavy; now you are a soldier; now you can throw your weight against the world and hear the echoes of a landing blow.
-