[Fanfiction] "But That Was Far Before You Or I"
“But That Was Far Before You Or I”
Rated: PG
Characters: China, Russia (this is very very arguably Rochu but not really?)
Summary: Yao tells Ivan about the woman he loved during the Tang Dynasty. All Ivan can see is an excuse and a crutch. For shiningking.
Yao tells the story of her slowly, haltingly, not because he is ashamed but because it takes so long to rediscover the proper words to capture her seeming as it flits through the archives of his eternal memory like a gossamer apparition.
He wants to find the right things to say, because she deserves these accolades to honour her memory. He wants to find them so that he could perhaps, impossibly, make Ivan understand. Though maybe Ivan already does, imperfectly, in his own way. Ivan has always observed much, understood more, but said very little.
And thus Yao attempts to describe, through inadequate words and half-sketched gestures in the sultry night air, a love that transcended decades and centuries; love that had opened a wound that had refused to scab over and had festered in time, because there was no way of knowing if that love had been returned before it was cut short.
“How sad to love something death can touch,” Ivan said finally, exhaling a wispy cloud of blue tobacco smoke. Yao leaned silently against his side for a moment, feeling almost disappointed. But he straightened up and laughed quietly to dispel the tense air, like leaves falling onto a pond to cast ripples outward.
“You must think it stupid,” Yao began, “for one such as I to do something so foolish-“
“I do not think it foolish.” Ivan interrupted.
The pair went silent again, the quiet broken only by the thin sound of a slight wind blowing through the grass.
“…what you are calling foolish is a human condition,” Ivan continued, taking another deep drag of his cigarette. “And though we are more than human, we are made of humans and susceptible to their vices, their strengths, their weaknesses, their sicknesses, and their triumphs. It is never foolish to love someone.”
“And this result. This is the best result I could hope for?”
“Happiness is fleeting. Even the mortals know this and I should think we know better than they, since it flees us all the quicker. It is admirable, I think, to love one so fully and to know that even despite the happiness you hold then, it will depart. The only foolishness I ascribe to you,” Ivan said, turning his gaze to Yao, expressionless and nonjudgmental, “is that you have clung so desperately to an answer that will not come that it disrespects the memory of what you so cherished.”
Ivan looked away again, this time frowning slightly at the half-filled moon.
“But I would not blame you for that either,” he murmured. “I also know what it feels like to love someone who will not or cannot answer.”
He stood this time, leaving Yao staring up at him in confusion. He bent a little, to place his hand heavily on Yao’s shoulder.
“Do not live your life idly waiting for death. You disrespect those who love you or will come to love you. Death should always come as a surprise so that you never forget to live fully.”
“How?” Yao asked. “How can you be happy with that?”
There was another long silence. Ivan pulled away, holding himself upright and away, staring at some distant point far away.
“It’s not a question of happiness,” he answered. “It’s a matter of being content with what you have received.”
Rated: PG
Characters: China, Russia (this is very very arguably Rochu but not really?)
Summary: Yao tells Ivan about the woman he loved during the Tang Dynasty. All Ivan can see is an excuse and a crutch. For shiningking.
Yao tells the story of her slowly, haltingly, not because he is ashamed but because it takes so long to rediscover the proper words to capture her seeming as it flits through the archives of his eternal memory like a gossamer apparition.
He wants to find the right things to say, because she deserves these accolades to honour her memory. He wants to find them so that he could perhaps, impossibly, make Ivan understand. Though maybe Ivan already does, imperfectly, in his own way. Ivan has always observed much, understood more, but said very little.
And thus Yao attempts to describe, through inadequate words and half-sketched gestures in the sultry night air, a love that transcended decades and centuries; love that had opened a wound that had refused to scab over and had festered in time, because there was no way of knowing if that love had been returned before it was cut short.
“How sad to love something death can touch,” Ivan said finally, exhaling a wispy cloud of blue tobacco smoke. Yao leaned silently against his side for a moment, feeling almost disappointed. But he straightened up and laughed quietly to dispel the tense air, like leaves falling onto a pond to cast ripples outward.
“You must think it stupid,” Yao began, “for one such as I to do something so foolish-“
“I do not think it foolish.” Ivan interrupted.
The pair went silent again, the quiet broken only by the thin sound of a slight wind blowing through the grass.
“…what you are calling foolish is a human condition,” Ivan continued, taking another deep drag of his cigarette. “And though we are more than human, we are made of humans and susceptible to their vices, their strengths, their weaknesses, their sicknesses, and their triumphs. It is never foolish to love someone.”
“And this result. This is the best result I could hope for?”
“Happiness is fleeting. Even the mortals know this and I should think we know better than they, since it flees us all the quicker. It is admirable, I think, to love one so fully and to know that even despite the happiness you hold then, it will depart. The only foolishness I ascribe to you,” Ivan said, turning his gaze to Yao, expressionless and nonjudgmental, “is that you have clung so desperately to an answer that will not come that it disrespects the memory of what you so cherished.”
Ivan looked away again, this time frowning slightly at the half-filled moon.
“But I would not blame you for that either,” he murmured. “I also know what it feels like to love someone who will not or cannot answer.”
He stood this time, leaving Yao staring up at him in confusion. He bent a little, to place his hand heavily on Yao’s shoulder.
“Do not live your life idly waiting for death. You disrespect those who love you or will come to love you. Death should always come as a surprise so that you never forget to live fully.”
“How?” Yao asked. “How can you be happy with that?”
There was another long silence. Ivan pulled away, holding himself upright and away, staring at some distant point far away.
“It’s not a question of happiness,” he answered. “It’s a matter of being content with what you have received.”