[ Cracked out, a rending like the crash of thunder pursuing a light split sky. His voice ripples like that, ruptures like that, his fingers in the grass, in the dirt, and clawing with a seismic jerk, as if shocked. Heart rumbling in ears, like that.
The boy that becomes the man who kills him blurs, in and out of focus, and if he could wonder at it, he would need assume dilation rather than a wet film.
A violent thing, to lash out even verbally at the boy so small and curled, so retreated, with that so known expression made less familiar by what he cannot possibly feel, and if he does feel it, would and could have felt that, at what point had Gaelio become hated?
At what point had he become meaningless? All that gazing, had he succumbed to the restoring reflex of a blink, and missed the moment McGillis turned away? Closer, and closer after all, to having been able to hold and deliver his heart. ]
You're wrong. Don't say it, if you can't remember, if you don't know. He can't -- you can't -- I --
[ Gaelio swallows, teeth aching with how they grind for gum in his mouth, forcing his face away as he blinks, and blinks, and blinks, refusing the why of the need for it. He does need it. Do not think of illusions, of showing the child. Every muscle taut and tight, every cell in conflict, and he urges his vision clear, the savaged pulp of his heart out of his throat.
Then, only then, can he understand the next answer.
Hadn't he?
Memory, uncertain and doubted and distorted and too bright, too dull. Had McGillis noticed the frown of his prolonged stare, had he tugged up his collar, had the question shivered and stalled on his tongue? He had climbed onto his father's knee, had pestered, had accepted. ]
I didn't ask you.
[ Said to the grass, tone still gnarled and erratic, now precarious, as doubting as the frames skipping through his head, doubting, why always doubting, why still doubting? ]
no subject
[ Cracked out, a rending like the crash of thunder pursuing a light split sky. His voice ripples like that, ruptures like that, his fingers in the grass, in the dirt, and clawing with a seismic jerk, as if shocked. Heart rumbling in ears, like that.
The boy that becomes the man who kills him blurs, in and out of focus, and if he could wonder at it, he would need assume dilation rather than a wet film.
A violent thing, to lash out even verbally at the boy so small and curled, so retreated, with that so known expression made less familiar by what he cannot possibly feel, and if he does feel it, would and could have felt that, at what point had Gaelio become hated?
At what point had he become meaningless? All that gazing, had he succumbed to the restoring reflex of a blink, and missed the moment McGillis turned away? Closer, and closer after all, to having been able to hold and deliver his heart. ]
You're wrong. Don't say it, if you can't remember, if you don't know. He can't -- you can't -- I --
[ Gaelio swallows, teeth aching with how they grind for gum in his mouth, forcing his face away as he blinks, and blinks, and blinks, refusing the why of the need for it. He does need it. Do not think of illusions, of showing the child. Every muscle taut and tight, every cell in conflict, and he urges his vision clear, the savaged pulp of his heart out of his throat.
Then, only then, can he understand the next answer.
Hadn't he?
Memory, uncertain and doubted and distorted and too bright, too dull. Had McGillis noticed the frown of his prolonged stare, had he tugged up his collar, had the question shivered and stalled on his tongue? He had climbed onto his father's knee, had pestered, had accepted. ]
I didn't ask you.
[ Said to the grass, tone still gnarled and erratic, now precarious, as doubting as the frames skipping through his head, doubting, why always doubting, why still doubting? ]