Built for two // By Mary
Title: Built for two
By Mary (thebitterone@hotmail.com)
Rating: PG-13 Summary: Tim as David Cain.
By Mary (thebitterone@hotmail.com)
Rating: PG-13 Summary: Tim as David Cain.
To describe her thoughts in the language of sound, or of ink, is near to
useless. As in the transcription of dreams, all truly essential elements
would lost during such translation.
She is more than she was. This is how she comprehends time, and age, and change. At first she is small, and then movement makes her arms and legs lithe with lean, limber muscle, and she is more. Sleeping, waking, the routine of her life: she becomes more than she was simply by the progression of the seasons outside.
In the winter, she is made to stand in the snow. In the summer, the sun is too-bright in her eyes and makes them water, as pain makes them water. When summer has become winter and then summer again, she is taller and her hair is longer.
At first he smooths the tangles from her hair and ties it back and dresses her, until the day she takes the comb from his hand and pulls it through the dark locks herself. She knows that he is pleased. It makes her smile.
She learns herself by learning what it is which makes her smile. Fighting the opponents he brings to her makes her smile. The sound of water as her bath fills at the end of the day makes her smile. The way his hands are gentle as he binds her wounds, after he has been teaching her, makes her smile.
These are happinesses in her life. They define who she is within her head.
His smiles define him to her. He smiles when she leaps to her feet at the beginning of the day, eager and lively. He smiles when she breaks her opponents' arms without visible effort. He smiles when she lies awake after the lights are off and creeps from her sleeping place to his. That last sort of smile is a smile she feels with her hand.
Smiles are how she knows him, and touch is how she teaches him to know her.
He does not smile when he is teaching her about pain. He does not smile when she tests her limits by breaking them and hurting herself. This is how she learns about lying, because she sees his stance and his movement and his pulse in the skin of his throat and knows that he does not want her to see. She learns about concealment and stealth in emotion, though she has no use for these herself and sees little value in their art.
He smiles when he thinks she is asleep, and strokes her hair. She understands what this means, just as she understands those noises of pain which her opponents make and which she no longer does; just as she understands the cold of winter and the brightness of summer as time passing. The word she would use, if she had any use for words, is love.
She watches him. He does not know. She sees him thinking, and planning. She sees he wanted a teacher, once. That he lacked himself what she has been provided with in him.
Metaphor is alien to her thoughts, but she sees him and understands his history as being like the balance tricks she does atop a pile of rods. With even one gone, all fall. She sees he had no rods, and fell.
She sees he built himself as he is building her, and she imagines what it would be to live without him. The thought makes her cry out as she has not for a winter and a summer and a winter, and he turns. A look of fear passes across his face and vanishes into careful smoothness, and she pities him for needing lies.
Then, needing an excuse for such a noise, she rests her hand against her belly. Remembers a time long, long ago, back when she was small and the sun was bright, when her belly hurt and he wiped her forehead with a damp, cool cloth. When he made small sounds like water with his mouth, as if he could tell her things that way.
She remembers clutching at his hand against the pain, her grip weak and then weaker and then a little stronger. She remembers a smile on his mouth, the day her hand was again strong enough to snap one of his fingers.
Now, as she holds her belly against a pain which isn't there - as she tells the first lie of her life - he looks thoughtful. Looks her up and down, as if her height will suggest an answer to what is wrong.
She drops her hand and shakes her head with a smile, and goes back to her balancing. He does not stop watching her.
He is watching her, and she sees that he is trying to conceal from her how vital she is to him. He thinks that her thumb tracing his smile in the dark is bad, because it will make her weak. He is telling himself that he will stop her next time she comes to him after the lights are off.
She imagines how empty the summers and winters before he had her with him must have been. The night is very long to her, and the sound of another's breathing is the way she knows the world goes on.
As she knows no other way of being, the knowledge that he is her world is no revelation. It is slightly more of a surprise for her to realise that she is, in turn, his world. That though he had always been there, as far as her self stretches back, some part of him which is vital did not exist until she did.
He teaches her to pull the throat from dolls, and gives her a dress of pink ribbons. He lets her comb her own hair, as she has always done since the first time she took the task from his hands, and knots the pale satin bows onto the dark locks himself. He gives her shoes that are shiny, like the moonlight on the bare boards as she moves across the floor from her bed to his.
He smiles, and she sees what he was hiding from her. She sees what it means, for her to reach her fingers into skin and pull at wet important things. She sees that this is something others think is bad. She sees that he has worked hard to quell that thought within himself.
She sees how many have died by his actions, and how they weigh upon him. She sees that he doesn't know the full truth of this himself. Or will not let himself know that he knows.
She pities him for the lies he tells himself, and for thinking that he could ever lie to her.
She smiles, and holds out her hand, and lets him lead her toward what they'll become.
She is more than she was. This is how she comprehends time, and age, and change. At first she is small, and then movement makes her arms and legs lithe with lean, limber muscle, and she is more. Sleeping, waking, the routine of her life: she becomes more than she was simply by the progression of the seasons outside.
In the winter, she is made to stand in the snow. In the summer, the sun is too-bright in her eyes and makes them water, as pain makes them water. When summer has become winter and then summer again, she is taller and her hair is longer.
At first he smooths the tangles from her hair and ties it back and dresses her, until the day she takes the comb from his hand and pulls it through the dark locks herself. She knows that he is pleased. It makes her smile.
She learns herself by learning what it is which makes her smile. Fighting the opponents he brings to her makes her smile. The sound of water as her bath fills at the end of the day makes her smile. The way his hands are gentle as he binds her wounds, after he has been teaching her, makes her smile.
These are happinesses in her life. They define who she is within her head.
His smiles define him to her. He smiles when she leaps to her feet at the beginning of the day, eager and lively. He smiles when she breaks her opponents' arms without visible effort. He smiles when she lies awake after the lights are off and creeps from her sleeping place to his. That last sort of smile is a smile she feels with her hand.
Smiles are how she knows him, and touch is how she teaches him to know her.
He does not smile when he is teaching her about pain. He does not smile when she tests her limits by breaking them and hurting herself. This is how she learns about lying, because she sees his stance and his movement and his pulse in the skin of his throat and knows that he does not want her to see. She learns about concealment and stealth in emotion, though she has no use for these herself and sees little value in their art.
He smiles when he thinks she is asleep, and strokes her hair. She understands what this means, just as she understands those noises of pain which her opponents make and which she no longer does; just as she understands the cold of winter and the brightness of summer as time passing. The word she would use, if she had any use for words, is love.
She watches him. He does not know. She sees him thinking, and planning. She sees he wanted a teacher, once. That he lacked himself what she has been provided with in him.
Metaphor is alien to her thoughts, but she sees him and understands his history as being like the balance tricks she does atop a pile of rods. With even one gone, all fall. She sees he had no rods, and fell.
She sees he built himself as he is building her, and she imagines what it would be to live without him. The thought makes her cry out as she has not for a winter and a summer and a winter, and he turns. A look of fear passes across his face and vanishes into careful smoothness, and she pities him for needing lies.
Then, needing an excuse for such a noise, she rests her hand against her belly. Remembers a time long, long ago, back when she was small and the sun was bright, when her belly hurt and he wiped her forehead with a damp, cool cloth. When he made small sounds like water with his mouth, as if he could tell her things that way.
She remembers clutching at his hand against the pain, her grip weak and then weaker and then a little stronger. She remembers a smile on his mouth, the day her hand was again strong enough to snap one of his fingers.
Now, as she holds her belly against a pain which isn't there - as she tells the first lie of her life - he looks thoughtful. Looks her up and down, as if her height will suggest an answer to what is wrong.
She drops her hand and shakes her head with a smile, and goes back to her balancing. He does not stop watching her.
He is watching her, and she sees that he is trying to conceal from her how vital she is to him. He thinks that her thumb tracing his smile in the dark is bad, because it will make her weak. He is telling himself that he will stop her next time she comes to him after the lights are off.
She imagines how empty the summers and winters before he had her with him must have been. The night is very long to her, and the sound of another's breathing is the way she knows the world goes on.
As she knows no other way of being, the knowledge that he is her world is no revelation. It is slightly more of a surprise for her to realise that she is, in turn, his world. That though he had always been there, as far as her self stretches back, some part of him which is vital did not exist until she did.
He teaches her to pull the throat from dolls, and gives her a dress of pink ribbons. He lets her comb her own hair, as she has always done since the first time she took the task from his hands, and knots the pale satin bows onto the dark locks himself. He gives her shoes that are shiny, like the moonlight on the bare boards as she moves across the floor from her bed to his.
He smiles, and she sees what he was hiding from her. She sees what it means, for her to reach her fingers into skin and pull at wet important things. She sees that this is something others think is bad. She sees that he has worked hard to quell that thought within himself.
She sees how many have died by his actions, and how they weigh upon him. She sees that he doesn't know the full truth of this himself. Or will not let himself know that he knows.
She pities him for the lies he tells himself, and for thinking that he could ever lie to her.
She smiles, and holds out her hand, and lets him lead her toward what they'll become.