I Wear the Face
Title: I Wear the Face
Characters: Jude/Max
Fandom: Across the Universe
Rating: R
Table: 1
Prompt: 87, Monsters
Author's Note: This is entirely a product of imagination, and I do not own Jude Feeny, Max Carrigan, or any of the other characters depicted in the film Across the Universe.
Dear Jude,
I shouldn't be writing to you now, not when everything that's happened in the last couple of days is still so fresh in my mind. It's all so close that sometimes I feel like this place is closing in on me and it's going to swallow me whole.
Or that it'll crush me and leave nothing behind. I feel like there's walls closing in on me, and no matter how hard I try to push them back, they keep getting closer and closer and I've got less and less room to breathe or even to move.
I can't even scream. It's like the walls are crushing the ability to move or to make any kind of sound out of me. All I want to do sometimes is scream at the top of my lungs, like that screaming is going to make everything stop, like anybody around me will pay attention to me and make all of this be over so I can come home safe to you.
I know that's not going to happen. I know that what I'm dealing with here will keep going on, and that it's not going to stop until some fucking bureaucrat thinks we've "won the battle."
All the guys here know that there's no winning this war. We shouldn't even be in it, because there's nothing we can do that's going to make it good or make it right. People back home who think it's some kind of "badge of honor" to be here are fooling themselves.
But hey, that's what they want to believe. They want to think that we're doing something great and that we're "doing our country proud." If they were the ones over here seeing everything I've seen, dealing with all of this, they wouldn't think so much of it.
It gets uglier every day -- uglier and more hopeless. It's like seeing monsters under the bed when you're a kid, and wanting to pull up the covers and hide away from them to make them less real. When you're a little kid, you can do that because the monsters aren't really there.
But when you're an adult, that's not possible any more. You have to face up to the fact that those monsters under the bed are real -- and they're not hiding under the bed any more. They're all around you, in your face, around every corner. You've got to hope and pray they don't jump out at you with a gun or a knife, ready to shoot you down or stab you in the heart.
I don't want to make you worry about me, babe. I don't want you to go through every day being any more scared and stressed out than you already are. I know this is hard on you too, and I don't want to make things any worse for you.
But that's the stark reality of being here, Jude. I look monsters in the face every day, and I can't pull up the covers and hide, or turn away from them.
I have to charge straight at them, screaming and raising my gun and my knife to drive them back. And sometimes I have to take a life that I don't want to take. I have to be fearless in the face of the kind of monsters that would make anybody run away screaming.
And worse than that, I have to become the monster for another human being. They're only doing what anybody would do, some of them. Trying to protect their families and their homes, trying to preserve the only way of life they know.
The ones who aren't soliders, the ones who aren't trained to kill and end up having to do it anyway -- they aren't monsters. They're victims, and the people who're sitting on their fat asses behind desks running this war -- they're the real monsters, the ones in power.
Sitting their rubbing their hands, gloating about all the money they're making off the lives being lost and the blood they're spilling, making sure they don't get their lily-white hands dirty or get as much as the littlest smudge of dirt on their immaculate business suits -- they're the ones who have the real faces of monsters underneath that civilized veneer on top of it all.
Yeah, I know what you're going to say. That I sound bitter and disillusioned. Well, what do you expect? I've got a right to feel that way, don't I?
I don't even remember how long I've been here, Jude. I don't remember what I feels like to laugh any more. I don't remember what it feels like to hold you, to know that I'll wake up in the morning in our bed with you in my arms, all warm and soft next to me.
That scares me more than anything, the fact that I have to reach way back in my memory to remember what all of that's like. The fact that I don't know what it is to be happy any more. This war is taking all of that away from me, taking it away too fast.
I'm scared that if and when I do get back to you, that I won't remember anything of the kind of life we had. I'm scared that I won't be able to be the man who left, the man you need to come back to you. I'm scared you and me will have drifted so far apart that we won't ever find our way back to each other, that tthis war will be always be the monster that stands between us.
That's the most fucking terrifying thing about all of his, the thought that I could lose you like that. That I could lose everything we've had and everything we've been, just because of a war that I didn't want to fight and that I shouldn't be a part of.
And every night, all I can think of is the fact that day by day, I'm slowly turning into the kind of monster I despise, the one I've always been afraid of.
Every night when I go to bed, I wonder if those monsters are going to get me. Doesn't matter if it's the monsters outside that are waiting for the next unwary person who walks into their path, or the monster inside that's clawing and scratching to get out.
Those monsters are real, Jude. And they're here with me every second, whether I'm awake or asleep. They chase you out of my mind, and they make me wonder if you're dealing with them too. Or if you're having to deal with different kinds of monsters, the ones that tell you I'm not coming back, the ones that pull you further away from me with every day that goes by.
I guess all I can do is hope that they won't get to you, and that you'll be strong enough to resist them. Monsters are hard to fight, I know that from experience. But we'll both have to try, because I don't want them to pull us apart.
The really scary thing about all this is that I'm becoming the monster a lot more quickly and easily than I thought I would. This war is changing me.
I'm turning into somebody I never wanted to be, and I'm terrified that person will be someone you can't love. I wear the face of change, Jude, and it's a face I don't want to have. I'm starting to think I wear the face of a monster, and that it'll always be there. That when all this is over and I'm back home, there'll be no way for me to hide that monster that's under the surface.
I don't want you to pull away from the monster I can feel myself becoming, either. That's what scares me more than anything, that when you look at me after all this is over, you won't see Max. You won't see a man, just a monster you don't know and don't want to be around.
I've got to keep telling myself that won't happen. I've got to trust in you, and trust in what we have. Hold on for me, Jude. Be strong for me. Because sometimes I can feel myself slip, and I'm scared that I won't be able to keep that monster from taking over.
Love always,
Max
Characters: Jude/Max
Fandom: Across the Universe
Rating: R
Table: 1
Prompt: 87, Monsters
Author's Note: This is entirely a product of imagination, and I do not own Jude Feeny, Max Carrigan, or any of the other characters depicted in the film Across the Universe.
Dear Jude,
I shouldn't be writing to you now, not when everything that's happened in the last couple of days is still so fresh in my mind. It's all so close that sometimes I feel like this place is closing in on me and it's going to swallow me whole.
Or that it'll crush me and leave nothing behind. I feel like there's walls closing in on me, and no matter how hard I try to push them back, they keep getting closer and closer and I've got less and less room to breathe or even to move.
I can't even scream. It's like the walls are crushing the ability to move or to make any kind of sound out of me. All I want to do sometimes is scream at the top of my lungs, like that screaming is going to make everything stop, like anybody around me will pay attention to me and make all of this be over so I can come home safe to you.
I know that's not going to happen. I know that what I'm dealing with here will keep going on, and that it's not going to stop until some fucking bureaucrat thinks we've "won the battle."
All the guys here know that there's no winning this war. We shouldn't even be in it, because there's nothing we can do that's going to make it good or make it right. People back home who think it's some kind of "badge of honor" to be here are fooling themselves.
But hey, that's what they want to believe. They want to think that we're doing something great and that we're "doing our country proud." If they were the ones over here seeing everything I've seen, dealing with all of this, they wouldn't think so much of it.
It gets uglier every day -- uglier and more hopeless. It's like seeing monsters under the bed when you're a kid, and wanting to pull up the covers and hide away from them to make them less real. When you're a little kid, you can do that because the monsters aren't really there.
But when you're an adult, that's not possible any more. You have to face up to the fact that those monsters under the bed are real -- and they're not hiding under the bed any more. They're all around you, in your face, around every corner. You've got to hope and pray they don't jump out at you with a gun or a knife, ready to shoot you down or stab you in the heart.
I don't want to make you worry about me, babe. I don't want you to go through every day being any more scared and stressed out than you already are. I know this is hard on you too, and I don't want to make things any worse for you.
But that's the stark reality of being here, Jude. I look monsters in the face every day, and I can't pull up the covers and hide, or turn away from them.
I have to charge straight at them, screaming and raising my gun and my knife to drive them back. And sometimes I have to take a life that I don't want to take. I have to be fearless in the face of the kind of monsters that would make anybody run away screaming.
And worse than that, I have to become the monster for another human being. They're only doing what anybody would do, some of them. Trying to protect their families and their homes, trying to preserve the only way of life they know.
The ones who aren't soliders, the ones who aren't trained to kill and end up having to do it anyway -- they aren't monsters. They're victims, and the people who're sitting on their fat asses behind desks running this war -- they're the real monsters, the ones in power.
Sitting their rubbing their hands, gloating about all the money they're making off the lives being lost and the blood they're spilling, making sure they don't get their lily-white hands dirty or get as much as the littlest smudge of dirt on their immaculate business suits -- they're the ones who have the real faces of monsters underneath that civilized veneer on top of it all.
Yeah, I know what you're going to say. That I sound bitter and disillusioned. Well, what do you expect? I've got a right to feel that way, don't I?
I don't even remember how long I've been here, Jude. I don't remember what I feels like to laugh any more. I don't remember what it feels like to hold you, to know that I'll wake up in the morning in our bed with you in my arms, all warm and soft next to me.
That scares me more than anything, the fact that I have to reach way back in my memory to remember what all of that's like. The fact that I don't know what it is to be happy any more. This war is taking all of that away from me, taking it away too fast.
I'm scared that if and when I do get back to you, that I won't remember anything of the kind of life we had. I'm scared that I won't be able to be the man who left, the man you need to come back to you. I'm scared you and me will have drifted so far apart that we won't ever find our way back to each other, that tthis war will be always be the monster that stands between us.
That's the most fucking terrifying thing about all of his, the thought that I could lose you like that. That I could lose everything we've had and everything we've been, just because of a war that I didn't want to fight and that I shouldn't be a part of.
And every night, all I can think of is the fact that day by day, I'm slowly turning into the kind of monster I despise, the one I've always been afraid of.
Every night when I go to bed, I wonder if those monsters are going to get me. Doesn't matter if it's the monsters outside that are waiting for the next unwary person who walks into their path, or the monster inside that's clawing and scratching to get out.
Those monsters are real, Jude. And they're here with me every second, whether I'm awake or asleep. They chase you out of my mind, and they make me wonder if you're dealing with them too. Or if you're having to deal with different kinds of monsters, the ones that tell you I'm not coming back, the ones that pull you further away from me with every day that goes by.
I guess all I can do is hope that they won't get to you, and that you'll be strong enough to resist them. Monsters are hard to fight, I know that from experience. But we'll both have to try, because I don't want them to pull us apart.
The really scary thing about all this is that I'm becoming the monster a lot more quickly and easily than I thought I would. This war is changing me.
I'm turning into somebody I never wanted to be, and I'm terrified that person will be someone you can't love. I wear the face of change, Jude, and it's a face I don't want to have. I'm starting to think I wear the face of a monster, and that it'll always be there. That when all this is over and I'm back home, there'll be no way for me to hide that monster that's under the surface.
I don't want you to pull away from the monster I can feel myself becoming, either. That's what scares me more than anything, that when you look at me after all this is over, you won't see Max. You won't see a man, just a monster you don't know and don't want to be around.
I've got to keep telling myself that won't happen. I've got to trust in you, and trust in what we have. Hold on for me, Jude. Be strong for me. Because sometimes I can feel myself slip, and I'm scared that I won't be able to keep that monster from taking over.
Love always,
Max