Unspoken
Unspoken
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Some things are better left unspoken, and some things don’t need to be spoken at all… but it can be really hard to distinguish one from the other.
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“Two o’clock and I wish that I was sleeping,
You’re in my head like a song on the radio
(…)
It’s five in the morning and I can’t go to sleep,
‘Cause I wish, oh I wish you knew what you mean to me…”
(Jordin Sparks, “Next to you”)
“I’m sorry. It’s just that…my mind is so full of razors.
You know, sometimes memories are just like razor blades. If you touch them ever so slightly, they make you bleed. I sometimes feel that I can not even think a single thought without hurting myself.”
(Genesis)
The pale moonlight is illuminating the room just enough to see your face. It is so changed now…
When you are asleep, all the strain has vanished from your features. How comes that in our normal every day lives as Shinra SOLDIERs, you always appear so uptight and so damned much together, even if you are not? You wear that incredible aura of strength and distance as if it was part of your uniform.
I sincerely doubt that any of those other people whose paths cross yours every day could imagine how slender you really are, or how delicate the form of your hand is. It is indeed, I must know, for I held it so many times…
They don’t even realize that you are a tiny bit less tall then the average SOLDIER, but you have to take the credit for that. So many times I saw you carefully calculating the distance, keeping others at least an arm’s length away from you, so they would not discover that secret - or any of the others you were hiding.
I never knew a person so determined, yet so full of contradictions. Taking a life is as natural to you as saving one, even risking your own if necessary. You can be so sweet and almost innocent in one minute, and so terribly cold hearted and cruel in the next. But to be honest, most of the time you were only cruel to yourself.
Now, in the faint glow that hovers over your face, you look so calm and so much younger… and much more vulnerable.
After your accident, you threw yourself back into work, as if nothing was wrong. You managed to deceive them all, but you never fooled me.
Although you seemed as together as ever, I was able to glimpse beneath the surface and to see all those tiny disturbing signs hidden to the eyes of everybody else. I saw every slight staggering, any little insecurity in your fluent movements and every hidden notion of pain in your seemingly unmoved face. And I saw all of that far too frequent for my own liking.
Not that I could stop looking at you anyway. Never could, never will.
In my opinion, there’s only one thing that’s worse than a person who’s pretty and knows it; and that would be someone who’s gorgeous and neither realizes nor cares. I wonder how you can look into the mirror every day and fail to see it. You are so damned pretty. I can see you frown at that statement, looking at me in utter disbelief. But it’s the truth. If only I could lend you my eyes for one day so you would see it for yourself. You were pretty even in the middle of a raging battle, when your face was covered in blood and your eyes had that feverish stare. Even then.
Well, maybe ‘pretty’ is not the right word. Maybe ‘gorgeous’ is. Or ‘graceful’.
Don’t laugh. If you look up the word ‘grace’ in a dictionary, it should feature your image next to it. Your grace is natural, it’s in your every movement, it’s in the way you fight, in the way you walk. I walk like all others do, feet attached firmly to the ground, while yours never seem to touch it all.
And that is not even the most amazing thing about you. If I had to pick just one feature, it had to be your eyes. They are just stunning. I never knew that something could pierce through my heart more precisely than a bullet and more violent than a sword blade, but that’s just what your gaze does. Sometimes I could not even look at you, because I was sure it would kill me. No matter how hard I try to find an explanation for what you can do to me with just a single glance, I fail every time.
Is it possible that until now, I was only seeing the surface? How can you know almost everything about another person, share so many secrets and still fail to see one important detail? I can quote every single line in your Shinra Personal File, all those data and numbers; I am aware of all your dislikes and preferences. I thought I knew you, but I neither knew what was haunting you all those years nor why you where so terrified of showing any signs of weakness. And I would never have guessed if you hadn’t decided to tell me.
Why were you so afraid? The only thing that scared me was the fact that I had all the right questions on my mind, long ago. Somehow I just never managed to speak them out loud. Would it have changed everything, if I did? I swore that I would always protect you. Does it mean that I failed?
Nothing bothers me as much as questions I can’t answer or things I can’t explain. I’m not used to that, you know? Normally I twist and turn things over in my head, until my rational mind finds a suitable solution or an explanation. Why did we become friends in the first place, being such core opposites like fire and ice? As they say, opposites attract. Every magnet has a positive and a negative pole, every summer has a winter to follow, and every light casts shadow. Natural law. But to describe the ties that bind us together, this answer is too simple. It does not explain how our friendship could turn into something else. And it offers no good reason why you still fascinate me after all these years. Maybe that’s because I will never really know you, but still try.
I was looking for a rational explanation for so long, only to find out in the end that there was none. When I fight a battle, I’m used to win; so losing to my own emotions was just unacceptable. At least that’s what I thought. But finally, I surrendered. And I did it willingly.
As we are lying so close, I can listen to your breathing and even feel your heartbeat, once again a tiny little bit too fast for my liking.
That’s just another one of these intense moments painfully reminding me of the fact that you are so vulnerable. Despite all the strength you represented as a SOLDIER first class, despite your ability to kill as precisely as a deadly weapon and despite all your efforts to hide it, you still appear so fragile to me.
It’s for the delicate balance of your body and for all the frailty of your soul.
Sometimes I wonder how on earth you passed the required psychological test to become a candidate for SOLDIER, with all those traumas you suffered.
That is not a reproach, quite the opposite. You always claim that I am so strong. But how much stronger do you have to be to survive that hell your memories put you through, again and again?
I try not to think of all the times I was close to losing you. A tiny thing would have been enough, any sharp piece of metal or a misplaced word.
Whenever I look at you like this, it hurts so much that I am almost unable to breathe. Although there is barely any space left between us, I am still trying to pull you closer. To hold you is the only thing that makes the pain in my chest bearable.
You are the most precious person in my life. Do you even know that? I really hope you do…
“You are nothing special? How stupid is that? Listen, just for once: You are pretty, you are intelligent, you are incredibly strong. And that’s just the first obvious three things that came to my mind. If you are interested in details, you better sit down. This might take a bit longer…”
(Angeal)
It must have been something in my dreams that woke me, made me almost rise with a voiceless scream. I can’t remember exactly, but for now, I’m happy and grateful for that fact. Some memories are buried too deep in my mind, making it impossible to grasp them. Still, they manage to come back to haunt me.
I can’t even recall the last time I slept without being tormented and woken by those dreams, cursed to lie awake and stare into the darkness, while the silence around kept screaming at me.
It took a lot of those nights to make me understand that a relationship should not be built on lies or secrets, especially not such a close one as ours. So there was only one decision left: to confide in you, or to push you aside. And there was just no way in the world I would have managed the second option.
So today, I shared those memories with you, all those hurting pictures burned into my soul I never wanted anyone to see. I thought I would rather kill myself than to let this happen… I am strong, even if it’s just on the outside. You are the only one I’m not keeping at distance as if my sanity depended on it (maybe it does?), the only one who is allowed to peek through the tiny cracks in that perfect image I created. I guess that simple fact spells out the way I feel for you more than any words could ever do.
Today…
I can still recall my despair, my disgust. I felt so bad, so… flawed. You are so different from what I am. I’m such a mess. You are perfection.
I will never understand how you can still be at my side, regardless. I never knew the meaning of the word ‘unconditional’ before I met you.
You must be tired of all that by now, tired of all my tears, all my weakness, of all the pieces you had to put back together, again and again. I wonder why you are not. You are so impossibly strong. And patient, no matter how temperamental or insufferable I was; while others just shook their heads and walked away, or (in the worst case) suggested that I could suffer from a really bad case of bipolar disorder, you just smiled and put up with me.
By now, I know it for sure what I only assumed before: The best part of me has always been you. As I said, I had no life before you came.
Being emotional has a dark side. Sometimes I was just so overrun by all my emotions that in the end, I would feel nothing at all. That numbness is my worst nightmare. I preferred to feel, even if it was pain. Truth be told, I was never afraid of it. There was a time when pain was just as natural to me as the air I was breathing. Still, all of a sudden, it has become too much to bear.
Right now, there are just too many thoughts on my mind. Being unable to focus on one of them feels like going crazy, especially for me, being such a genius in focusing (or where do you reckon my talent for materia comes from?). But concentrating on certain things can be worse than that. Sometimes it feels like I can’t think without hurting myself. The razorblades, remember?
Strange, how weird some things sound when I only think them. They are always so much more… precise when I write them down. Maybe that’s due to the fact that you can control and erase your writing, but you can’t banish the thoughts from your head…
Sometimes I felt so incredibly split. All I wanted was to scream out: “Leave me alone. I don’t need anyone. I don’t want to be rescued.”
But right in the next second, I knew I was lying, because in fact, that was all I ever wanted. My own personal redemption. Salvation.
There was a time when I needed you so much that I was unable to breathe without you. This time is long gone… So why did I recently feel like there was no air around me at all?
Right now, I feel like it’s one of those moments again. I’m being clingy and needy; and I hate it. Only the fact that you don’t seem to mind makes it a tiny bit more acceptable.
Weakness is the one thing I do not appreciate, especially not if I’m the one to show it. Being weak means becoming a burden to others. I have been called that countless times; and even if you never did, the last thing I ever wanted was to become a burden to you.
They say that surviving a trauma makes you stronger. I think in my case, that’s untrue. My traumas almost broke me. Yet in all that raging chaos on my mind, there was always one fixed point I could focus on, a light that would guide me. I stayed strong and I became the person I am now for a single reason. And that reason has always been you.
Will I ever get used to that? I was like thunderstruck when you told me: “I wish there was more I could do for you.” More? How could you possibly do more than you are already doing? That’s more than anyone ever did for me, after all. And besides, I don’t need anything else. You are there. That’s all that matters.
How can I spell out my feelings for you? The truth is, your name was written across my heart from the first day I met you. Could it be that in the end, we are not that different at all? Maybe we are just two parts of the same puzzle, or two halves of a whole.
You complete me. And you are the only person who always seems to calm me down, no matter how upset I am. Just like now. The simple fact that I can feel your arm around me stills the thoughts running through my head. I think that for the first time in an eternity, I might be able to sleep without being woken by another nightmare.
I might not really know what it is that you do to me, or how you do it. But I don’t care. The only thing I’m absolutely positively certain of is that everything will be ok, as long as you are here. You promised. And that’s all I need to know.