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Love Is
by Nicole Clevenger (c) June 2003Notes and Disclaimer: For me, love is this. I'm only borrowing from Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. This was written for the ff_friday challenge at LiveJournal.
She knows what love is.
Love is daring. Shy glances and stolen moments, dreams of holding hands in the sunlight. Moments of laughter and shared secrets. They're never truly certain that each time won't be the last, but they tiptoe across the fragile heart shell anyway. Braving the journey by stepping lightly, swept along by the fantasy that this fresh tentative feeling might actually last forever. She sees them together - on the couch, leaning close - surrounded by the glow of their growing connection. Their mewling newborn green-gold love.
Love is faith. Putting your trust in something you can not see, counting on it to protect you from the evils of earth and of sky. A shield against the darkness both internal and external. Resting your weary heart in the cradle of its arms and finding your strength again in its healing embrace. She wonders what that gift of peace feels like. Wishes it were that simple for her - as if she could just chose something to believe in and wait for the calm to come. Of course, the things she sees inside the preacher's thoughts prove that it's not really that simple for anyone. Chaos sneaks in everywhere, a slimy companion of doubt.
Love is devotion. To an ideal, a cause, a person, a thing. Weapons of all sizes, each model an individual of personality and beauty. He names them all, cares for them with special attention that he bestows upon nothing else. They do not turn on him, mock him, dismiss him. They can be counted upon in a solid way that no one in his life has ever attempted to match. She has watched him - an actor in the crowd of their daily play - as he sits, detached and uninterested. She has watched him later when he thought himself to be alone with his favored companions, eyes bright and intent as he admires the metal in his hands.
Love is commitment. Vows and rings and tradition, pledges of emotions and eternities. They stood together, linked through their souls, strong in the face of objections and fear. They stand together still, palms tightly clasped in a Never Letting Go promise against the danger and difficulty of their lives. She sees them dancing together in a ballroom blazing with candle light, spinning in and out of the flickering shadows with only the slight stumble of misstep here and there. They never fall, and each time thus far they've managed to find the beat again.
Love is yearning. Watching the person you desire most move from day to day without ever stepping nearer to where you stand. Storing mental pictures compiled from discrete looks to be pored over behind the privacy of closed eyelids. Camouflaging emotions under war paint and verbal grenades, the line in the sand already drawn before either side has had time to consider the option of peace. Too late now to do anything but hastily muster forces and defenses before each battle, wishing that there was some way that things might be different. Both imagining in the darkness that instead of these trenches dug with words, they might come together to reshape the landscape into something more level. New boundaries and no sides. Rewriting their accords with the language of lips on skin.
Love is loyalty. A bond forged in fire and blood, a stubborn tendril of history winding its way ongoing and unyielding. A connection superseding the physical and the mental to find its way directly into the gut. The lungs. Like oxygen, this connection is an expected thing - take a breath and it's waiting. Filling and sustaining. Necessary. She knows the panic of seeking a breath that isn't there. She wonders which of them would gasp until they died if the oxygen suddenly disappeared.
Love is armor. Protection for a ship, a crew. A shield for young enthusiastic girls who dream in shades of adventures and machine parts, leaving behind everything they know to travel at a stranger's side. A shield for young fractured girls who dream while they're awake, lost and drifting through the currents of a stranger's world. No matter how hollow he thinks himself, he is not yet closed off completely. He still feels the pull in him to look out for the well-being of the others.
Love is sacrifice. Giving up every treasured dream, every future hope in the name of someone else. Opportunities and status and wealth all discarded in the planning of a single grand rescue. Sometimes he looks at her with so much adoration shining in his eyes, and she thinks she can only go blind from the glare. But if she focuses, squinting into the brilliance, she can see that the edges are dimmed by the smoky smears of what has been lost. Clouds of whispered grief inching their way across the sun. Still, he would do it again, he tells her with his eyes. The light remains inextinguishable no matter how overcast the sky.
She watches, immersed in it all yet apart. She knows the flavors, the textures, the scents. She feels it all, ensnared and entangled in their sticky tattered relationship webs until she wakes up covered in the strands. Trapped. Incapable of escape or any real inclusion, she is held there by thin filaments to be a forced witness to their dramas.
Sure. She knows what love is.
end.
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Nicole Clevenger
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