MBards Quarters

Disclaimer: I’m not sure there needs to be one, I’m basing the characters on Xena and Gabrielle, but only the way they look. So do I disclaim their parents, genetics, the make-up people? Well *whatever*. Everything else in this is mine, so hands off!!

Quote comment: It comes from a Stephen King novel, but I’ve forgotten which one. Sorry Stephen!

Title comment: It’s a Tori Amos song and its one of my faves, so I make no claims apart from that woman rocks!!

End comment: Okay so this story SO finished up somewhere I didn’t expect it to. It was meant to be all fluffy and heart-shaped, don’t know what went wrong. I think its all the Faith angsty stuff, its rubbing off into the land of Xena now…oh well.

Feedback, go on you know you want to tell me how good I am, you know where to send it.

Silent all these years
By Mbard

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them

It’ll be dawn again soon. I’m watching it out of my little window, in my little room, in this little city. I don’t sleep much anymore. I know my body has to, but if I take the right combination of drugs I can avoid it. Lately there doesn’t seem much point to sleeping the whole night through. I like watching the night outside slip away, it never even notices that its happening till its too late. The bright lights on the pavements; nightclubs with their neon signs; taxi’s headlights zooming in and out of the traffic that never stops, they all get caught out when the sun comes up. And off they go one by one, in a ripple affect like skimming a stone across a lake. When the last florescent light switches off I get up and go to the bathroom. My regular morning ritual of retching up then taking a whole pharmaceutical plant of little tablets takes no longer than ten minutes now, and I’m back to sitting on my bed watching the world go by.

She’ll be by soon. I’ll see her come around the corner at the end of my street. Always the same; that’s what I like about her. She’s reliable. Tight grey sweats, her long raven hair held back in a ponytail that whips at her neck when she jogs. Long strides that make her seem to move faster than she actually is. I wait for her most mornings. Another ritual I’ve come to loathe; its as necessary as taking the tablets and it makes me feel just as sick. I never realised when I moved to this part of town it was because of her. Maybe I blocked out the knowledge that she lived two roads down when I came to look at the room. Maybe I reasoned that anywhere else in the city it would cost me twice as much to live in the tiny space I occupy now, and that just didn’t make sense. Maybe for a few minutes I actually forgot what I feel for her and thought it would be nice to live so close to a friend. But now I watch and wait for her to come jogging past my house every morning just after the lights have gone out across the city, and I know that this is why I moved here. To be near her, to be able to see her everyday even if she never sees me, to feel as though she is a part of my life.

I’ve been sat in the same position for too long and my legs have gone numb. I move from the bed and walk in little circles around my room, because little circles are the only things you can walk in here. I feel the blood flow back to my limbs and the ache begins to ease. I catch a reflection of myself in the mirror hanging on the back of my door. I nearly don’t recognise the sight. My face is pale, and looks clammy. That’ll be from the numbness though, any pain I get these days is intensified so it always makes me look worse than I feel. My hair is short again, had it cut a few days ago before another bad spell and I hadn’t remembered how short until now. My blonde locks are gone; they used to hang half way down my back and were heavy when it was wet. Now everything is much lighter, the hairdresser bleached it a little as well as chopping so much of it off, so it makes me look like a whole different person. A stranger peers back at me from the door in dark clothes, a jumper that hangs to my knees, (guess it was my brothers once) jeans I don’t remember putting on and socks that don’t match on my feet. I see the stranger smile at my appearance; I used to look good I think to myself. I used to try and look good for her when we’d meet up for a coffee, a chat, perhaps a night out on the town with the rest of the girls. Safety in numbers I’d tell myself, and make myself look good for her.

There is traffic beginning to move on my street again. People getting into their cars and going to work. I move back to the window, taking a quick look in the sky to see how light it has become. She’ll be along soon I think as I scan up my street to see if I can spot her athletic frame rounding the corner. I wouldn’t have missed her, I know it sounds odd to be so sure of myself but I know that she hasn’t come by yet. It's like one of those feelings inside you get when you know who the person on the other end of the phone is before you answer it; or when you have been thinking all day about someone you haven’t seen in a long time and that night home on the bus you bump into them by accident. I just know I haven’t missed her so I perch myself on the slim windowsill and wait. Sometimes when she runs past my house she looks up at my window and sees me, she waves and flashes a smile up at me that makes her chiselled cheekbones raise higher and the blue eyes shine out like one of the neon signs I watch at night. I don’t know if she realises that I sit and watch for her, she has never mentioned it when we get together for our friendly little chats. A lot of what we say to each other remains on the surface though; knowing that if for once either of us dived deeper than that we’d both probably drown. Or maybe I’d be the one to drown, as she's stronger than me and besides I wait for her, not the other way around.

There is more movement out on the street. I see the middle aged couple from next door get into their car. They’re having an argument. I can tell from watching their lips move frantically, she keeps running her hands through her hair, agitated and angry. He’s behind the wheel but hasn’t switched the ignition on yet, no exhaust fumes are bellowing out. He checks his watch and looks at his wife again. They’ll be late and I smile when its obvious he has given in to her, they get out of the car and swap places. Seems she’ll be driving to work today. I follow the car as it pulls away and drives down the street, turning the corner at the end. My eyes stay focused on that spot, because that’s her corner and I want to see her this morning. She’s like one of my treatments I have to take now, bitter and sweet at the same time. It’s grown inside me what I feel for her, like a malignant tumour that has no cure. So long now I’ve waited for the right time to tell her, but there never is a right time and now it’s too late. We’re too close as friends, crossed over from the brief flirtation we shared when we first met and now I can’t recapture the moment when I could have been hers. That’s not the only reason of course. But it sits easier in my mind if I can just put it down to bad timing, and not something where the blame lies on my shoulders for never telling her the truth.

Too long has passed this morning, I’m getting stiff again from sitting down too long. She isn’t coming I think to myself and half recognise the despair inside at what that could mean. She jogs every day, I’ve never known her not to. Something about the way it makes her feel when she is pounding away on the pavement, no thoughts entering her head accept the next mile she has to get through. Its like meditation she told me over drinks once and I frowned at her for sounding so new-age. But it works for her and she does look good on it. Her tall frame would look too gangly if she didn’t have the toned muscles across her shoulders and along her thighs I’ve glimpsed during the summer when we wear as little as possible to the nightclubs and bars. She is like one of those Amazon women on that fantasy programme they show on tv. In my giddier moments, a long time ago, I used to imagine what it would be like to have her as my protector, to ward off the butches who always liked a femme little thing like me and say in her deep voice “She’s with me.” But that kind of thinking only hurt deep down in the end so I stopped all the fantasies, the wishful thinking and longing glances when my eyes would follow her walking across a room, and now I just watch for her in the mornings and try not to let on how serious things have got when we still meet up in town.

She’s not going to come this morning though. I realise it as I have to get up off the windowsill and get my legs working again. Sweat breaking out now on my brow because this time around it's a little more difficult for me to start walking around my tiny room. Things slow down too quickly in my body lately. I don’t go back to the window this time, not even for a quick glance. For whatever reason she hasn’t taken her usual morning run outside my window I don’t want my mind to linger on it. I don’t want it to tell me its because she got lucky last night in town and is waking up in a different part of the city with someone who isn’t me. I don’t want my thoughts to imagine her in someone else’s arms, torturing me with images of a woman who is everything I am not, everything that she wants and won’t let me give. I’d rather my mind get back to the day ahead, so I grab my towel and head to the bathroom again before my housemates get up and the banging on doors, yelling for me to hurry up starts. I need to shower. Helps my muscles when they’ve tightened like this and will wash away the sweat I can feel pouring onto my cheeks. I catch myself in the mirror again, its not sweat after all. So much for not letting my mind linger.

The water is hot. So hot it's difficult to breathe properly. But that’s okay, soon my lungs will adapt. I stand under the stream and turn my face up into it. Not moving a muscle. I feel them relax under the hard torrent, the opposite sensation of getting caught in the rain outside when they tighten and ache. My face is cleansed now and I turn to grab the shampoo. If I take too long and use up all the hot water I’ll have angry housemates who don’t understand my need for heat. They think I have that cleaning fetish, one of them was off sick and saw it on Oprah, put two and two together and came up with the wrong number. Its amusing really. They time me sometimes and make remarks about how much shower gel is left after I’ve been in the bathroom. If any of them actually took the time to look at it properly, they’d realise that I don’t spend my time in here scrubbing my skin raw, that there is always plenty of soap left beside the sink and when I run out of my shower gel I don’t break out into hysterics rummaging on the shelves for one of theirs. But I let them think what they want. Wouldn’t do to tell them the truth, and besides I kind of like the idea they think I have something psychologically wrong with me. Makes me sound more interesting instead of being the lesbian they rent a room to, she works in publishing and never brings anyone back to stay the night. Pretty dull really. I let the heat crash over me and try not to think of anything. I hear the doorbell go downstairs and pray that there is someone down there to answer it as there is no-way I am getting out just yet. This is a comfort I let myself enjoy without any regrets or bitterness. Most things I’ve had to give up because they don’t mix well with the drugs, smoking was the last to go and the hardest to say goodbye too. I couldn’t even give up smoking when I knew that she detested it so much, despite everything else I did being informed by her in some way. But I haven’t touched a cigarette in months, and I take at least four showers a day. Its the one thing they can’t take away from me, the one place I feel normal.

As I head back to my room, towel wrapped protectively around me and my muscles behaving normally I think I can detect a familiar aroma in the air. A perfume that I recognise, one of those citrus kinds that are either for her or for him but will smell completely different on either. I breathe it in again and try to place why I like the scent so much. I’m still wracking my brain as I open the door to my room, then it hits me why I should know the scent so well. It’s the perfume she wears. How can I be so sure? Because she is sitting on my bed. I just stand there, my skin suddenly breaking out in a million goose bumps that aren’t down to the cooler air of my room reacting to my still heated flesh. I must be staring at her, or look surprised, or both because she gives me an apologetic smile and stands up to explain.

“You’re housemate let me in, he said it would be okay to wait in here.”

She doesn’t say anymore as if this explains why she is here in my room so early in the morning. Then I realise she isn’t in her jogging clothes but looks as though she is dressed for work. She has a dark grey suit on, faint thin pinstripes I only catch because I’ve seen this suit before. Her shirt is pale underneath, perhaps pink or even a shade lighter, she has the top two buttons open and I can see that she has been on the sunbeds again as her usually pale skin is tanned a nice golden colour. Then I notice her hair hanging down on her shoulders, the thick tresses layered so they will always fall in exactly the right place. And my breath catches in my throat at the sight of her. I always thought that was just a cliché you read in cheap romance novels until I met this woman; but she has that affect on me every time I see her up close. Her beauty has grown over the years; she has a way about her that makes me die inside and I know she doesn’t see me in the same light. I have to look away from her, if I don’t she’s going to see the love in my eyes, the pain and the desire, even the hatred I hold for myself for feeling like this in the first place.

Trying to act as if it’s the most normal thing in the world for her to be in my room, me still wet and half naked from the shower, I close the door behind me and move to the wardrobe. My heart is hammering in my chest, I need to slow it down, won’t do for my blood pressure to go rocketing now, the doc will kill me on my next visit if it’s too high again. I reach out to the chair that rests in front of my homemade desk (blank of wood four breeze blocks from the dump down the road) and grip its back, steadying my body and taking the deep breaths in that usually bring me under control when I see her. My back is to her, and that’s just fine with me. I can’t look at her face again before I have some clothes on and my blood isn’t clocking a 100mph through my veins.

“Are you okay?” Her voice wraps around me as tight as this towel. I squeeze my eyes shut against the sound, as if I can will it to not effect me this time. If I just try I can stop loving her. It’s a thought I’ve had and lost so many times over the years now; I try but I fail. Story of my life really.

I nod my head; shaking the water free from it and fresh drops of cold meet my flesh and I realise that I’ve begun to shiver against it. I need to get dry and warm again, else the aches will come back and I won’t be able to get into the shower for another hour, for the house is awake now and they’re all lining up waiting their turn.

“You’ve cut your hair.” She seems to be struggling for things to say, I’ve never known her to sound so awkward, say such short sentences. She’s one of these people, because of her education and background that is never stuck for words, likes to use whole sentences that drift into others, and has to be physically interrupted when someone else has a thought they’d like to share.

I run one hand through the damp blonde hair and feel the length; yes it is short now I forgot again.

“I got bored of it long.” I must have said that because I hear a sigh of relief come from behind me, she’s glad I am able to speak I think, but I don’t remember forming the words in my head.

“It suits you short.” Was that a compliment? My heart wants to grab onto it and lock it away with all the other throw-away remarks and niceties she’s said to me over the years but this time I resist the temptation. Suddenly with everything else that is happening right now, whether my hair suits me short or not seems unimportant.

I shrug my shoulders in response to her and open my wardrobe for some clothes. I have a choice of black, dark blue, black again, an interview shirt also dark blue, and my old sweat shirt from university. Least it’s grey and warm. I turn to ask her if she wouldn’t mind turning her back as I dress, I’ve suddenly grown shy and more than that I know if I were to be more naked than I am now in her presence my heart would explode as its nearing that point now. But she’s already moved away a little and is looking out of my window. Now she's looking at what I see every day; but she doesn’t see it the way I do. I quickly slide the thick jumper over my head and pull on a pair of jeans that look clean even though I found them bunched up on my wardrobe floor. I run my fingers through my hair in the absence of a brush, I want to dry it so I don’t get a chill but it seems rude to spend time getting ready whilst she is in my room.

Her tall frame is bent down slightly so she can see out of my window. I feel more calm now I am dressed and I turn to look at her, not able to break the silence that has invaded my room. I just watch her and watch where her eyes focus on the world outside.

“You can see all the way to the park.” She says it as if she’s just discovered there is a view of the Garden of Eden out of my third floor room.

“I know.” My voice sounds cold. I don’t mean it to be but my reaction to her being here in my room has changed from heart-thumping blood gushing euphoria to resentment and annoyance. She invaded my room without being asked; I have things in here I don’t want her to see, the view from my window is one of them.

When she looks at me her eyes seem hurt and her voice holds an edge of forced humour to it.

“Of course you do. Silly of me to say it really. I just… never mind.” She moves away from the window and then finds herself with nowhere else to go. My room is small; I think I’ve mentioned that. The double bed takes up most of the space between the door and the window, there is a patch of space at the end of the bed where I am stood, still leaning on the desk chair, and then the wardrobe dominates. She looks about her, I guess she’s never seen a room so small, or so squalid. I can imagine what her apartment is like because it would be exactly like she is; neat, tidy, and clean with fresh flowers every week in the vase on the kitchen table. It's not that I’m messy, or I leave mugs growing science-experiments in them on my desk for weeks on end, it's just I don’t see the point in being all spic-and-span when my world is crashing down around me. Who’s going to care about a few dirty dishes when the fat lady sings anyway?

“You can sit down you know.” Maybe that should have been said with a bit more warmth, I’m not acting like the woman she knows and she gives me another one of those puzzled looks. She thinks I don’t notice it when she raises a left eyebrow at me, she probably does it herself without realising it. Before that gesture would make my insides clamp tight and twist around like I remember happening as a kid and the babysitter from down the road would come for the night in her tight white jeans and let me sit on her knee if I was good. As she raises her eyebrow at me now I am only incensed by the gesture. Is it so difficult for her to see how she affects me? Is she really that blind that she doesn’t get it?

I look at her again, she’s settled for leaning on the windowsill I was perched on an hour before, her feet are crossed and her arms behind her supporting her weight slightly on the narrow shelf. She looks relaxed, she always looks relaxed though even if she doesn’t feel it inside. That’s like me in a way; I can hide things from people. Important things they shouldn’t have to know. Maybe that’s why it kicks me in the stomach so much now that I hid myself from her so well for so many years, doing such a good job at masking what was going on inside, pretending everything between us was fine. Well it isn’t. It never was. And now too long has passed to do anything about it. I’m not even sure I want to tell her anymore, if I said the words out loud they’d no longer be just mine to hold onto, they’d lose something in the translation I think if I actually said it.

She brings me from these thoughts with the directness I first admired about her.
“What’s been going on with you lately?”

It's an accusation, not a question and I am both surprised and touched that she should have noticed me at all.

But I don’t like her tone, so mine remains as lifeless as before.

“Nothing, why what’s been going on with you?” My trademark sarcasm can’t help creeping to the surface and I see her bristle slightly at my response, as if she knows the conversation she wants to have with me is off to the worst possible start.

“Nothing...” Before she can continue in the eloquent way she has I cut her off. If I let her melodic voice enter into my thoughts I’ll be back to the heart thumping stage and I’ve only just calmed my pulse down.

“Well that’s then, thanks for stopping by.” I look towards the door, this would be your que to leave I think but she doesn’t. And I don’t want her to.

I hear her sigh and the movement of her uncrossing her booted feet draws my eyes over to her sat by the window. She has a sad look in her eyes I don’t understand and my heart can’t help responding to her. Just like always when I behave like a petulant child at Christmas who doesn’t get what they want wrapped under the tree, and my mouth runs away from me saying words I don’t mean, hurting those who care.

“You can be so difficult to talk to sometimes.” She says it wearily, and I wonder again why she isn’t acting like the assured woman I know.

I relent and return the wistful look she gives me with one of my lopsided grins.

“I know, its why you like me so much.” That sounds more like me; the carefree, cheeky irreverent me that makes jokes at her own expense and often teases the woman by the window with stating emphatically if we had actually gotten together it would have ended in the divorce courts by now. And like on those occasions my old joke invokes a small laugh from her pale pink lips, finally the smile I see in my dreams night after night emerges and I’m back to the heart pounding after all.

“I didn’t know I was going to come here this morning.” And so it starts, her reason for being here. I feel my grip on the chair back tighten as she stands to her full height again, casting her cobalt eyes at me to see if I will interrupt again. I couldn’t even if I did have a witty retort ready for her, my mouth is dry and there is a buzzing inside my head from the beating my heart is going through. Its disabled my voice completely and she continues with the purposefulness I’ve heard in her voice before.

“I was on my way into work early because I have a mountain of paperwork to catch up on and suddenly I found myself taking the turning for your road, and here I was. Outside your door trying to remember when it was the last time I saw you. I’ve been standing outside on your doorstep for ten minutes before I finally rang the bell. And then when your housemate told me you were in the shower and I could wait in here, I’ve been sat wondering why I came.”
She pauses, smiles at herself for she must realise also that she is not making any sense and turns her gaze away from me back to the day outside.

“Why do you always sit here in a morning?”

I look at her surprised. I’ve been caught out after all and there is a small whisper in the back of my mind telling me something that I don’t want to listen to. Telling me that she knows. She knows everything. But I silence this voice as quickly as I’ve managed to silence all the others that tell me there is a chance with this woman, and a lie so easily formed falls from my lips before I can stop it.

“Its like meditation. You jog, I sit. I always was a lazy arse.”

I shouldn’t have said that. Not only was it a lie, and I tell too many of those to her anyway, but it was a bad joke and she thinks I’m having a go at her. Still it's been said now, and as much as we wish we could take things back once they’ve left our mouths stupid remarks remain in the air, weighing it down.

“That’s not funny.” She’s angry at me. Her eyes have darkened the way I’ve seen them when her ex-girlfriend walks into the bar we are in and ignores her completely.

“It wasn’t meant to be.” And I’m back to being cold to her again. God why is it so difficult for me to be in her presence this morning? Is it because usually when I see her I have at least a week to mentally prepare myself? Plan what it is I am going to wear, what topics of conversation I will say aimless things about, how long I’ll hold her in an embrace of greeting before it gets too hard for me to let her go. By coming here uninvited she has stripped me of my defences and I can’t hold onto what is in my heart, in my body right now. And its making me angry. I’ve never been angry with her. Even when the tears come at night, I’ve never blamed her for making me feel this way. I’ve always shouldered the responsibility myself, it was my choice to stay in love with her after the initial falling sensation wore off. My choice to keep on seeing her over the years as her confidant, as her friend, as the woman she could turn to when her latest romance ended in tears because she knew I’d be there with a bottle of wine and a heap of sympathy. All my own doing, how could I be angry at her when she doesn’t know what she’s done to me?

For once the anger inside me isn’t directed at myself. It's all for her and its coming to the surface too quickly for me to control it.

“Look, why are you here? Aren’t you going to be late for work? So what if you haven’t seen me in awhile, big deal. If you were so concerned there is such a thing as a phone you know, its not like I’ve been avoiding you...” (another lie) “...its just I’ve been busy lately with stuff...” (lie again) “... and besides since when has what I do been such a big concern of yours? I don’t spend my time wondering what you are doing when I don’t see you for a few months.” (The final lie)

My tirade is over. She's looking at me, her eyes wide and shocked. I am shaking, shaking so hard that she sees it and her eyes go from shock to concern. I can’t breathe. I really can’t breathe. My blood is going too fast again and its leaving my legs without returning to them so they start to buckle. Breathe I tell myself. Breathe!! But its not working and I’m fading out. I always wondered what would happen if I let the anger inside me go, if I didn’t keep it bottled up the way I do and aimed at only me. Now I know.

This was not what she was expecting when she came here this morning I think to myself as I let the back of the chair go and feel myself slump to the floor. Its not what I was expecting either. The one person I never wanted to see me like this is rushing across the room to cradle my head in her soft warm hands and help me lay straight on the floor. The one person I would have done anything to prevent knowing how sick I am is crying above me and asking me what she should do, what’s wrong with me. The one person who I thought could never love me is leaning down and kissing my forehead, telling me something I can’t make out because the blackness is coming. Before it reaches me completely, before it shrouds my body in its dark cloak my hand goes up to her face. I feel her cheeks wet from salty tears and lips that are soft underneath my thumb. In that moment before my vision fades away I think I say the words that I’ve kept silent all these years, words that before were too important for me to utter. Or maybe I only said them in my head where I’ve always said them.

Everything has gone dark. My breathing has stopped. I don’t know if its going to start again. It always has before but this time I’m not sure I want it to. I don’t want to see her tearstained eyes peering down at me if I did actually say that out loud. I don’t want to face her. I’ll just wait here and see. Wait in the dark. The dark is where I feel safe now.

The end