Fic - Fugue: Reposted
Title: Fugue
For MOL V with Prompt: courage
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Anything up to and including 'Revelations'
Summary:They love, even in the intertwining boundaries of dream and reality, and it's in the boundaries between love and despair that they find themselves.
Fugue
Prelude:
Spattered tears
A muttered oath
Screamed Prayers…
A lost child’s tantrum Erupts
As the Wind blows.
XxX
Fugue n.:
Music. a polyphonic composition based upon one, two, or more themes, which are enunciated by several voices or parts in turn, subjected to contrapuntal treatment, and gradually built up into a complex form having somewhat distinct divisions or stages of development and a marked climax at the end.
Psychiatry. a period during which a person suffers from loss of memory, often begins a new life, and, upon recovery, remembers nothing of the amnesic phase.
XxX
A woman, barefoot with warm grey-green eyes and gray-silver hair, stood, her other features faded out by the light that this place, wherever it is, emanated. By her side was a piano, by all appearances, new, and dark as ebony in a world of white. “Come Laura.” The tone which spoke to her reminded her of her mother’s, gentle and enveloping but commanding and firm. There was no arguing against whatever this vision, hallucination, dream, or reality wanted.
And if it was even just a brief escape from reality, the poor, desperate reality of Earth, then Laura was quite willing to escape… for a while at least. So Laura found herself walking up to the side of the instrument as the woman sat herself down onto the piano bench and positioned her slender hands above the keys.
“Melodies tangle and meet very much as our lives do, with harmonies to support and counter, consonant and smooth at times, when other times the dissonance of music forms a fabric very similar to our lives, just as jarring and discordant and still desirable because it offers moments when our attentions are turned and captured, our perspectives challenged.” The woman, whoever she was, and Laura wasn’t quite ready to continue down that road of questioning just yet, quirked a knowing brow at Laura. Her fingers skimmed the keys of the piano in front of her before running through a series of chords and intervals, some smooth and harmonious, others, as she said, almost painful to the ears. “So you see, Laura, music is very much life. It has questions and answers, conventions and new discoveries, and just as musical moments entwine to form a fuller composition, so do our own lives entwine with others.”
As the woman spoke in wonderfully understated and perfectly understandable metaphors and symbols and riddles, the sounds formed concrete memories in Laura’s mind.
Warm, blue eyes…
Firm yet gentle hands…
Calloused skin…
Metal-and-smoke-tinted scents…
An alluring, commanding voice…
Flipping pages…
Secrets…
And lips on lips... hands on hands…
The woman’s knowing look warned Laura just how transparent her mind was.
She began playing a solemn piece filled with lilting tones that progressed up and down. “Did you know Laura, that a human… from the ‘Thirteenth Tribe’… named Chopin wrote almost exclusively for the piano, and so many of his resultant works are beautiful, simple yet complicated entwining notes in soft nocturnes, light waltzes, little preludes, but at the same time, he, ravaged and weakened by a disease called tuberculosis…” Her fingers suddenly shifted and although they continued up and down the keyboard, the pattern and firmness of her touch had shifted until an overpowering sound flowed from the strings controlled through the delicate ivory keys. “This is the same composer who supported the revolutionaries of his country through his music. This is the same mind and heart and soul that created some of the most beautiful sound forms of the eighteenth century of Earth… who derived such strength which he imparted to the fighters in his occupied homeland and gave his life to do so.”
Laura felt an uncomfortable tug at the familiarity of a repeating storyline. Any further contemplation was interrupted as the melody abruptly shifted again. “All these wonderful artists who walked the thin path between madness and genius, fame, fortune, and failure… The rules established broken and rewritten again, and again. Can’t you understand better than you want, Laura?”
She couldn’t help the wry reply that leapt naturally from her tongue, the sharp tongue her mother always warned her about and her sisters teased out then fought down. “I seem to choose inconvenient times for self-rediscovery, don’t I?”
Suddenly, Laura found her seated on the piano, her now apparent music teacher occupied the delicate stool beside it. It was uncomfortable, being so out of control and yet relieving at the same to no longer be the one in charge, to be the student and child once again discovering a new world; hopefully, one not quite as disappointing as the one they just found.
“Don’t these cycling, meandering paths of change and evolution focus on something that seems so insignificant when considering the physicalities of survival and politics and governing? And yet, these are the things, this music and art, missed most, these central tenets to the foundation of civilization, years of work and lives and inspiration, everything, destroyed and lost… at least, in this world, this existence.”
Laura wasn’t sure what to say in response to her current lesson. She had thought about the lost culture of the civilization of Earth, wondered if anything could be salvaged, but thoughts and troubles in her own small civilization had quickly overwhelmed her curiosity and pity for the already-lost peoples. It was a depressing memory.
Instead, she focused on the black and white keys in front of her. She had never really been particularly musically adept. She manages to just hold a tune, and her love of jazz has given her a dynamic sense of rhythm. Her fingers lightly brush against the smooth, cool surface, and she almost expected the keys to magically start their dance. Almost.
“Laura, the keys cannot dance alone. Your fingers have to partner them, just as in any ballroom.” She has honestly just resigned herself to the idea that this strange woman knew what she was thinking, disconcerting, but strangely not invasive. Gentle hands lifted her wrists to the proper position. “Follow your instincts and your ear, the notes with come, and the knowledge of what has been forgotten and lost. You will recover them and use them. Your people need hope, and in the end, Earth will provide that hope. As promised.”
So Laura tried, stumbled, and tried again while the being sat beside her patiently guided her through the sounds, and minds painted on the canvas of emptiness in front with colors beyond imagination.
When the scenes faded and the music dissolved into silence, she woke up, still warm in the Bill’s arms, and realized that not once had the woman referred as anything beyond who she was, who she wanted to be: Laura. Self-rediscovery indeed. She snuggled herself up to the man beside her and thought that she should remove the “re” altogether. This was a new world, a new life, and she had/is/will-be discover(ing) a new side to herself with this man beside her. For the first time since finding the truth of the planet Earth, she no longer fought off those many fears, nor did she succumb to them. The melody playing through her mind lulled her back into a peaceful sleep. The fears no longer had the strength to haunt her because she was still alive and determined to keep it that way, determined to keep the man beside her… the rest of her new world that way.
XxX
Sometimes Bill Adama was afraid, filled with a fear so deep that he actually feared drowning in it as well. Fear begetting fear. It was ridiculous.
His father had been strict, and as he dreamt at night, he remembered the rough scratch of his voice as his father ordered (for he always ordered, never requested) him into action. Inadequacy born from the absence of his mother and sister soon became resentment and rebellion however. A voice he used to listen to on the wireless radio, intently following the arguments in the public trials, became something abandoned, something to be avoided at all costs, which led to his eager enlistment. Young and headstrong, he climbed the ranks at the military academy.
He was one hell of a good pilot, and he was not afraid to admit it; neither was he hesitant in proving it.
At night, he remembers all this and more. His mother’s perfume, his sons’ faces as he turned to leave again, his first wife’s love and her anger…
It is in his dreams that life made a lot more sense. He relives sensations and memories and moments of understanding.
A firm handshake…
Arguments and reconciliations…
Gentles brushes…
Gentle kisses…
Light giggles…
Lingering looks…
Words and gestures… All writing their own story that he reads every night…
He flies in his dreams, does zero-point turns, spur-of-the-instant flips, and figure eights. He pirouettes on a single wing and cuts through the emptiness and fullness of space, full of fire, escape, and freedom. Always returning to the same pair of viridian eyes and fragile-strong-capable arms, and just as he dances when he flies, he dances in her arms. It’s those moments of clarity in his dreams that he realizes most of all that he couldn’t live without her (sine qua non) in either life (aut in vita) or in his dreams (aut in somnis).
And so, he flies, he flies, always back to her, to a home, and in this dream world, he becomes truly living, and his fears come true in the form of nightmares, and so he fights, harder and harder until it starts to crack, until the world around him, awake or asleep, begins to crack like the mirror that reflected a fractured image (he remembers the pain, will always remember the pain, of loss, of heart-felt betrayal, of being broken only to be put back together again).
And as he is put back together, again and again, as long as he had her, had her faith, had his faith in her, had the smile, even the one that’s like a razor cutting through with cold-hard (undesired, painful, hurtful) realities and truths (sometimes those are the ones he needs most), he can fight his fears, fight back those nightmares, waking or sleeping, as long as he could feel her in his arms.
They are dancing this box waltz… one…two… three… and steadily pushing these four walls. They test the tempo of the metronome and experiment with the rhythm of the steps until the waltz is no longer recognizable until all that’s left is them: Bill and Laura.
Two equal to one.
And as he wakes up that night with her in his arms, wakes up from the nightmare of failure, of a ruined Earth, a lost paradise, into the living nightmare where dreams (nightmares) and life have intercrossed irrevocably, he finds his calm in her. Still drenched in fear and perspiration, he knows he will not give up the fight, will not fear his fears, will not give in even if it brings on more worries and trepidation, because he has his center already. She is the focal point where his new world/reality/dream revolves, and even if he is still a fearful man, he will never be a useless man.
XxX
It is enticing, the entwining of these lines
To look, seek, only to find
That only ashes matter most
When all the music one needs is in the mind;
So write these out each note and phrase,
And know that when time and world ends
And loneliness and fear abound,
Will the gaps of solitude begin to mend.
A/N:
Honestly, this was actually something personal that sort of worked into this fic for MOL V, and I’m not sure how it works out. The Laura part is sort of musically heavy, because I’ve recently been relearning the feel of the piano keys after losing the coordination in my left hand from sickness. It’s been a fascinating experience. I apologize for that though because I realize that it was probably a bit heavy though I can see Laura really appreciating that sort of stuff (as for the unanswered questions in that part of the fic… I think they will remain unanswered).
And as for the prompt. I’m not sure, according to the dictionary courage is the equivalent for fearlessness and I can see that, but for some reason, that didn’t really work for me… (^^)” Sorry. I somehow saw courage as not being fearless but being able to face those fears and being able to take a fearful or dire situation and transform it, the ability to act despite fear and induce a change against that fear, even if it means creating something new and strange altogether (sort of like falling in love ;). So I’m not sure if this was what people were expecting, but it’s my first attempt at something like this, so I’ll appreciate any feedback or critique, or anything really. (^_^)
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Definition was provided by dictionary.com (Unabridged v1.1).