Spring is coming...
     One cannot tell it from the sudden arrival of rain -- this is Wales. Nor can anyone truly tell if the sun is lingering any longer -- one would have to see it first. It's the smell of spring. Winter's musk, the aroma of mud, moss, and putrified leaves is lessening, transforming into something more grassy, oak pollen, and the promise of buds on the vine.
     The earth is in a constant state of reincarnation. Everything but me is changing. The bud becomes the flower becomes the leaf. I am the same width, the same weight, the same density as I was eight-hundred and twenty-eight years ago. Even an English Oak would have grown, would have changed in all that time.
     It has become daunting. He reads the paper, knows it's March nineteenth, in the year of Our Lord twenty-twenty. Twenty-twenty, Christ. And there's one thing Davydd ap Owain knows for certain: he shouldn't be Here.
     What being of his age hasn't looked tiredly over the world spectacle and sighed in perpetual boredom at least once? But the nagging, chronic realization has become a searing, acute comprehension.
     It all started when he sat in St. James Park and told Edward he didn't believe he was a vampire. No, what he actually said was that he wasn't -- though that, too, was a lie. Maybe what he really meant to say was: I don't belong here.
     I shouldn't be here anymore...
     And now that his son is grown and whatever duties he assumed have been passed on, Davydd has felt the void that exists when one realizes one has...truly... nothing to live for. Relationships. That would be it. Those relationships that he sacrificed in that moment of desperation (desperation that has also now become acute) would be enough to sustain a reason to be here. A reason for him to linger past his usefulness.
     But those relationships, those brothers, are gone and now there is truly no reason to linger, no reason to remain behind. His woman, his sons, his family -- he will see them in the thereafter. But not his brothers. Stay, and he feels the loss of their friendship. Go, and he loses them forever.
     Davydd ap Owain stands on the precipice, his body leaning against the stone railing of the upper garden plateau. Around him, the first budding flowers of climbing vines. He stands at the edge of the portico, his arms resting on the broad red granite rail. Were it not for the pallor of his skin and the redness of his hair, he would be invisible, the black sweater and wool trousers blending into the night air.
     It's as if he were losing his grip on this plane already...

     "Davydd."
     She speaks it out loud, she steps out behind you, in jeans and in punk t-shirt, her hair cut to the tip of her chin, dyed fuschia. There is too much metal in her face; too much metal in her clothes. She puts her hands on the small of her back, staring at you with sea-grey eyes, head tilting to one side as she waits for you to turn around and see her.
     I see you, I know you, I love you. I don't know, Davy. What're you doing? You don't know either, do you? But we muddle on as we always do, and I have to be the one to decide if what you're doing now is a mistake or not, and try to stop you if it is. With tears, with words, with whatever it comes down to - and wait and hope for the best.
     But one thing I do know ...
     I'm not the type to sit placidly and just WATCH...
     Her thoughts are her own, not offered nor shared, and she paces towards you whether or not you turn to her. "The chocolates went bad. I want you to conquer Switzerland for me in retaliation." Fiona doesn't sound like she's kidding. She doesn't look like she's kidding, either. She looks at you, stopping and putting a fist on her hip as if to say 'well? why aren't you mobilizing right now?'

     His eyes remain on the forest even through your approach -- for he certainly had to hear it -- and a half second after you speak. His body still leaning forward against the railing, he cocks his head to the side and then back to look behind him. He peers at you, as if trying to place you or sort you out. "Chocolate doesn't go bad," he contends, straightening then and turning to face you.
     He gives his body to the stone as he should have given it to the earth a long time ago. His hands rest on the coolness of the rock, his body temperature matching it like a reptile. "You shouldn't eat that nasty Swiss shite," he says with an even tone -- not the clipping humor of previous years. "Belgian or French. Then English. Then Swiss."
     We're not really talking about chocolate, are we?
     Folding his arms against his chest, Davydd falls into staring at you. Without a word, he pushes off the stone and moves to meet you. His arms unfold as they reach you, surrounding you instead. He is cool to the touch. You are the only thing that warms him.
     "I'll buy you new ones," he murmurs, his mouth pressing into your fuschia hair to plant a kiss in the soil of your crown. Then, your forehead. And the side of your neck.
     What he means to say is I'm sorry.

     Her arms go around you as yours go around her, and she sighs, leaning in against you with her eyes closing. "Smelly old bastard," Fiona whispers. "So you won't conquer a kingdom for me, then? I'm not sure if Switzerland IS a kingdom anymore anyway, but still."
     How're we to get prime real estate, anyway...
     She sighs again, and one hand comes up to slap at your chest. "You're having a rough time of it, aren't you, Davy," Fiona murmurs. "You're stuck in a Yeats poem and you don't know how to get out. I'm worrying for you, you know. This is entirely too much like the poem for my comfort."

     He exhales, the remains of his last cigarette still clinging to the air around him, the air he expels from the remains of his lungs. "I'm in a pickled quandary," he murmurs. "Oes." His hand covers yours that lands on his chest. He holds it there, his head tilting to look at the display. "I don't mean to be poetic and gloomy," his voice gravels after, rolling eyes at himself.
     Taking your hand in his hand, Davydd turns to head toward the nearby garden seats. "I'm stuck for certes," he sighs. "The point... my point for being here... you know, taking up space on the planet," he gestures to the surroundings as he sits on the bench and leads you to his lap, "... I feel ...done, Fiona. Like all my air is gone. Like the fork was stuck in me a long time ago but for some reason my carcass is still on the table."
     Davydd exhales, settling into the bench, thankful that it's carrying some of his weight and a portion of his burden. "I had half a mind to just... do it..just leave," he mutters, his gaze on your fingers as his hand plays with your own. But? "But... I'm having trouble... going. I'm not ready to say goodbye to them forever. Or... close to forever. My energy's gone -- I've given it away. All my magic, I think. Almost all of it," he whispers. "I've given everything I can give. I feel like a husk clinging to a stalk in a typhoon..."
     And yet...
     His hands come up to frame your face, to brush his fingers through your hair. His eyes focus on yours and on your face. "Part of me just wants to sleep. wants to get it over with, impatient as ever." He almost smiles. "But I can't think of leaving without feeling this just... gutted pain at the thought I won't see Edward, I won't see William again. I won't have mended it."

     "You have to fix things you've broken. I've told you that." She is patient with you, as she tends to be most of the time. She settles in your lap, thighs spreading as she turns to face you, hands cupping your face and then moving to your shoulders. "No, you're not done yet, Davy. But you want to be. You know your problem? You're empty."
     Fiona touches her lips to yours, then to the tip of your nose, to your cheek, to your ear. "You're not ready yet. You need to find some peace with them - with something. Even if it means letting go of them, Davy - and you're used to chasing people off, not being the one doing the letting go. Do you need to let go of me?"
     The question is asked suddenly, very seriously, a pair of grey and blue eyes turning up at you in query. She has a sudden need to hear your answer, no matter what it is; one palm pats at your thigh, and she settles forward against you, thighs sprawling open as she sits facing you on your lap with legs wide around you.
     "I think I know what you need ... but let me hear you say what you will."

     "No, not you," he murmurs. "I will see you there, I know. But I won't see them. I am tired. I am empty." He nods at that, not that it is any secret. "If I leave now, I will make things worse. It's hard to imagine how it could be worse," his lips curl in a downward trending smirk, "... but I know it can, and it will be. But... no, Fiona... I don't need to let you go. I'm not staying for you. I'm staying because it is not fixed, my relationship with Edward and William. And as long as it is broken, I will not be able to rest."
     He says it out loud and he sighs at it. "I need to fill myself with something. I need to find the energy, the will. I have not had it these last several weeks. I feel heavy, like I'm filled with muddy clay instead of blood." Davydd leans forward, his forehead resting at yours as his arms go around you. "Maybe... all I need is a vacation, a sabbatical. To rest here for the spring, gather myself for summer."
     He closes his eyes. "It would be nice to lie down with you a while," he whispers. Dark green eyes peek between the branches of his lashes. "Feel your energy. Remember... what it was like to be full..."

     She touches her fingertip to your lips. "Bite me," Fiona tells you quietly, seriously. No, she's not telling you off. "My blood has energy, remember? But don't bite me here. We need to go to London, Davy. If you're going to make things right, you need to get back in touch with who you were, not just who you are. You need to treat this despair as a cancer."
     Her other hand slips down your chest, fingers touching at your groin. There is no wickedness in her expression; just intent. "Cancers are virulent - invasive - malignant. They sap your energy and can only be battled or given in to. I know you're stronger than this; but you're tired. You have given your magic away almost entirely, and it gives you little energy to go on. Take mine."

     He dreads London. You can feel him stiffen, not in lust, but in a moment of fist-clenching stubbornness. But he doesn't have the energy to sustain even that. He closes his eyes, his lips puckering against your finger. He tastes the salt. He can sense what goes on there beneath the skin.
     And he exhales...
     You are right.
     Davydd opens his eyes, his hands resting on top of your thighs. "Let's go," he whispers, his hands sliding at your thighs, kneading muscles there, and then he pats you. "Before I dry up and blow away..."
     He waits for you to move first. He will follow you. In his emptiness, he could have opened his own throat and poured what was left of himself into the moonlight. He was close to it, closer than he has ever been. But, again, your hand is there to touch him where two other sets of hands are strangely missing...

     She does not move away immediately, her hands touching your face tenderly. She is still there. She still loves you. The look in her eyes, do you see it? There is adoration, but it is not blind. She sees your flaws; perhaps has all along. And loves you none the less for them. She leans in and kisses you thoroughly, an exploration of lips and tongue, her teeth scraping a little as she pulls away. She's still punk at heart.
     And your wife rises from your lap and steps away, leather jacket appearing as she looks to you and then turns. She is walking away from you. Expecting you to follow. Wondering if you will.
     "I'll give you everything I've got, Davy. Anything you want. My blood, my heart, my soul - it's all on the table. It always has been. I'm waiting for you, you know."
     And if this doesn't work - if you can't find the energy, if you can't fix it, she thinks, thoughts confined neatly under the cap of fuchsia hair where you cannot hear and cannot see, then I will talk to William myself. It isn't as if I haven't got his number, after all. But something's got to give, yeah? And it may as well be me.

Posted by rowan at March 23, 2007 10:02 AM