Residual (standalone)
- Title: Residual
- Author: memories_defeat
- Pairing: Gerard/Mikey
- Rating: PG
- Summary: Gerard reflects on his past lives. When someone dies, what is left is spirit. Energy. The Residual Self. Mikey, you know the residual part of me.
- POV: Gerard's
- Author's Note: For such a short, seemingly simple piece... this has been a long time coming. I suppose this means not everything has to be wordy to be complete--- my valuable lesson of the day.
- Dedications: Karafain
- Disclaimer: This is fiction
Let me know what you think. I'm unsure about this and am in need of some feedback, please!
Nobody’s home, so as I lay here quietly on the cool cotton of my bed sheets, I like to think about what’s left of me.
This time, this age, is shallow like a puddle on the sidewalks of an apathetic nation. I was born, and reborn, at an inconvenient time. This exterior now, this time, is something…clean. Lean and clean and crisp and apparently desirable. It’s all apparent to everyone but us. They tell me they need me, I tell them I don’t exist.
I remember times before-- and time is such a ridiculous word because it’s defined with clocks and calendars instead of breaths and kisses. These are what I know of you. When you were a tiny child with wide eyes, when you were a woman with a small waist and cool hands, when you were my teacher and my husband and my best friend.
The dynamics of all our relationships were explosive. Ground-breaking and breath-taking and heart-aching. Undocumented moments before we were here have led me to believe that what we are now is nothing compared to what we will become. Wait a lifetime, brother, you’ll see.
I can recall how Atlantis was golden. How the streets reflected the wealth and pride of a timeless and beautiful people, a people that we belonged to. Before we were complicated, before we drowned in that damn tomb of a city. When we were mythical and legendary, unlike now when we’re just… exploited.
Then there were the dark nights in the Arctic. It was cold there, everything but your lips. Everything but you was icy. The last night… the last night you held my hand and whispered in a language that I’ll never know but will always understand, that you’d meet me again.
Oh, and London. How can I forget the horses’ hooves on the brick? But it wasn’t brick was it? It was stone. God, I can’t even bring myself to whisper the name of the pavement below our feet because that wasn’t a happy time was it? London is a place we’d like to forget. A time when I lost you too soon. But I found you. I always find you. We’ve been playing hide-and-seek across centuries and I’ve yet to lose a round.
What is left when someone dies is spirit. It’s essence and energy and electricity. It’s what’s left, this residual self, that you know best of me. You know me. You know the oldest, antiquated, most archaic part of me. The residual me, that has followed you through deaths and births and wounds and intimacies that no one else will ever be lucky enough to experience. Times that have come and gone, events that have fallen between the fault lines of history, names that have all but been forgotten and certainly have lost any and all meaning. Everything but us is irrelevant now anyway.
You ask me, if this is all true, then why bother living this life? Why do I care so much about what other people think, about what I look like, about what I do with my physical body? Why have I made it a point to make a point when everything is recycled and turned over and I’ll only end up repeating myself until my voice is raw and sore and I go hoarse? I’d be preaching forever!
Because, Mikey.
Because we need something to remember in our next lifetime together. Nothing is in vain (except what is in vein, because this time, it’s blood and for us this means secrets and shame and controversy-- this life has taught us new things). Not when I kiss you behind the door or when you take my hand when the room is dark. Nothing.
Residual. Sensual. Binding. Forever. What is left of me, Mikey, every time… is you.