Galactic Duality fic

[icarus_chained]

I just like writing them whenever I'm a bit down, that's all.

Title:  Trembling
Rating:  PG-13
Universe:  Galactic Duality
Characters/Pairings:  Isander, Dowling/Isander
Summary:  He was old, when we went out among the stars. And I was breaking.
Wordcount:  1061
Claimer:  Mine

Trembling

He was old, when we went out among the stars. Dowling. He was old. Eighty years together, by then. Eighty years of Asylum and running, of Gestalt, of the confusion and panic and relief when it broke, of the restarting of society after it all. Eighty years, and however many he'd had before the Asylum. By the time we made it to space, he was old. Humans made bodies to last even then, with medicine and technology, but still. They were hard years. They showed. I'll never forget how much.

He does, you know. Forget. To him, bodies are ... they're beautiful and joyous and sensual, but functional too. He sees them in terms of what they can give him, and what he needs to do for them. Whether he looks good or not honestly never crosses his mind, unless he has to go to an interview or something, and people are fussing at him. *smiles* Though he does look at me. He does look at me. That being said, I could be rusted, corroded and shaped like a spider, and he'd probably still think I was beautiful. He's a little blind that way.

Anyway. He was old. When we joined the Duality. When ... when I fell. Telepathy. There were machines, out there. They ... touched me. First Earth machine out, with the first Earth human. *grins* Practically thrown off the planet, we were. And we hit ... them.

I remember he was old. I remember it because his hands, they used to shake. When they held me down, when they wrapped around me. They'd shake. And his eyes. They were all crinkly. Blue. So very blue. They always looked a little wild, under that storm of white hair. His eyes were wild, and his hands shook, and I remember thinking, sometimes, in the clearer moments, how glad I was that he was human. That I couldn't feel whatever emotion of his made him tremble like that, whatever coursed through him so strongly that his body couldn't hold it in. *smiles* He was so ... old. So frail. So damned powerful.

There was a female, an organic machine. She was sent to help me. They hadn't realised Earth had machines. When they did ... let's say the Machine Unity was somewhat more considerate than the human one. If the humans knew what they were doing when they sent telepathy to Earth, that is. They say they didn't. I'm not convinced.

I remember her. I remember the feel of her, like silk and ice over my mind, like a veil that shut away the rest of the Unity until I could cope with them, like a whisper telling me I could do it. I remember seeing her, my head in her lap, her face smiling down at me, the green-gold mist of her eyes while she whispered in my mind. I remember loving her, just a little. The relief of her presence, the sheer awe of being that close to another being, to feel another mind wrapped inside my own. I loved her. I did.

Dowling knew it. He knew. He was there, beside me, all the while. The memory is so clear to me, even still. Even against the blur and storm of those days, of the rush of minds against mine. Like a figure backlit against a fog, standing out. Every time I lay there, my head in her lap, he'd be kneeling beside me. His hand always on my chest. The hand I could feel shake. He knew I loved her for what she did for me, what she was for me, and he didn't care. He didn't give a shit. Because she helped me. Because she kept away the Light. Because she made sure that I never suffered what he'd suffered, locked away on Earth where everyone thought him mad, and the Gestalt hammered his mind down to nothing. She kept me from that, and he would have cut out his own heart for her, so long as she did that for me.

I wish I could say ... I wish I could show ... the kind of love I felt for him, back then. The love I feel now, it's as fierce, as deep, every bit as precious, but back then ... he was so old. He was so old, and so fierce, and my mind was split asunder and held together by a woman neither of us knew, and I loved her, but it was nothing, nothing, to how I loved him. The fading tremble of him, the way his hair puffed and billowed like it was in a perpetual wind, the way his eyes used to shine at me like it was the last time he was ever going to see me ... the way we felt that he was dying, the way our time seemed so short, so very short, the way every moment seemed sharp and edged and precious. The way he smiled at her when she shielded me, and whispered wrinkled hands over my nerves and sent me where all the minds in the galaxy couldn't follow ... he was dying and I was breaking, and there are no words in any language for the kind of love we had then. There are no words.

I remember it. I remember every minute, every second. The glow of him, the trembling storm crouched dying at my side. I remember wishing I could trade all the galaxy, all the damn minds that whispered at me in the Light, trade them all and buy him another minute, another day, another year. Just one more. Just to see him there, at my side. Just to see the love in his eyes, and the tremble in his hands.

I'd have done it, too. If I could. Every last one, for one more day. Maybe they knew that. Maybe they could see it. Maybe that's why they gave him the body. I never believed their pretty lies about rewards. I never believed that. Doesn't matter. They gave us another day, year, century. They gave us that, and it's that memory that keeps me from hating them now. Just. But it does. Because for one more day, for him, for me, for us ...there's nothing I won't give, nothing I won't take. I sold a world, once, for his peace. I'd do it again.

I'd do it again.