Telepathy
Our new reality suits Duo. And the longer we live in it, the more he fills it out. The more it fills him in. Replacing those broken pieces that we lost during the war.
I don’t think even he realizes how… fractured he had become. Or maybe, remembering that he had gone to that poppy field to die… maybe he did.
I think, had our respective mentors not given us the parting gift of those vials of serum, Duo might eventually have become unhinged in time, lost in the layers and possibilities until he couldn’t have told reality from the visions he saw any more.
I think, if we had not found each other when we did, that he might not have survived that serum.
It took some time when that horrible, wonderful day was over, for me to ground him again. For him to begin the healing process. For us to find our way.
I could easily hate Dr. G in a way I had never hated my own mentor, for what he put Duo through, if I hadn’t seen for myself the alternative. Seen through Duo’s eyes the fate he saved us all from.
I fell for him when we were young and naïve, in the way that the young do. I’d been captured by his smile and his wit, his handsomeness and his skills. The burgeoning attraction had turned bitter when he’d rejected me, but I’d never quite been able to dispel the notion that there was… something more to him. Something I wasn’t understanding.
His smile had waned after that day, and his laughter had died. As hard as he tried to pretend that he was unaffected, it was painfully obvious it was a lie. And while I had been angry and confused, I had never quite been able to hate him… no matter what he came to think.
Through the war and after, I’d been consumed with the need to understand him. Understand the mixed and confusing signals he gave me.
When I followed him back to that poppy field, and I had bought the truth from him with my own abilities… I had been humbled by his sacrifice. The bitterness in my heart was eased with the feel of his own pain. The feel of his own resignation.
The anger salved with understanding.
I had thrown my hesitation to the wind and grabbed on to the memory of his dream with both hands.
But it was the feel of him afterwards, his body so strong, but his mind, his psyche, so fragile, that made me fall in love with him all over again. He’d needed me so much, to guard and guide while he found his way back to level ground. He’d been like a ghost living within his own body… though he hadn’t seen it. Had somehow been unaware of those times that I would find him just standing in the middle of a room, staring at nothing, utterly confused about just where his place in the world was.
Had you asked, he’d have only told you he was tired. A bit worn out. He didn’t understand how fractured his senses had been. Only looked to me to be his north star while he slowly learned to focus on what was real.
I thank God for the urge that had overtaken me that day. The decision… not to swallow the serum along with Duo.
I don’t think I could have brought him through without the gift Dr. J had given me. It’s funny, Duo called those enhanced abilities a curse, and before that day in the rain in the middle of a poppy field, I might well have agreed with him.
But I have blessed it every day since.
Yes, I screamed and cursed along with him that afternoon, because I’d felt his pain and had been so damn sure I’d killed him. Had held him to me, and rode out the changes ripping through his brain, fearing that I would lose him in mind, if not in body.
And all the while, he had held fast to the vision he’d had of us together, had held fast to me, his faith that I had made the right decision, unshakable.
Even when he was sure I’d killed us both… he believed in me. Was glad to end his life if it could be in my arms.
How could I not have forgiven him? How could I not have fallen for him even harder than I had the first time?
It was days before we made love the first time, though he’d slept in my arms from that moment on. It had been an easy thing, a gentle thing. Almost as though we’d been lovers for years.
And, I suppose, in some reality… we had.
Just as in another reality, we’d failed to stop the end of all things.
All his realities pulled at him in those first days and I had proved to be his anchor in the storm that followed. The one thing in all the infinite universes that he believed in.
A heady and frightening responsibility. One that I embraced with all my heart. With all my mind.
And when I am buried inside him as deep as we can manage, body and mind…
When I can answer his needs and his desires almost before he knows what his body wants…
When I can raise him to heights that make him forget his own name…
Reduce him to nothing but quivering, sobbing, panting need…
Somewhere deep inside him… he knows.
He knows… and he is not afraid of me. Is not afraid to open his body and his mind to me. Not afraid to lay himself bare and vulnerable before me, because there is nothing in him for me but the purest love and trust. There is not a dark thought that he can’t offer up… not a corner of his soul where he wouldn’t let me go.
When he is in my arms, lost to his passion, he belongs to me wholly.
Touch has always granted me glimpses into people’s thoughts; bursts of noise and input that is sometimes impossible to interpret. But the level of touch that we have achieved offers me so much more from him than that. Gives me feelings and pictures, memories and dreams. There isn’t a part of him I haven’t swum through. Isn’t a part of him he hasn’t unlocked to me.
Though he doesn’t know… somehow he knows.
And as our days pass together, and he comes closer to living completely in the here and now, I find that I don’t even need to touch him to feel his thoughts.
I’ve been so far within him, that I don’t think I can pull back any more. Not that I want to.
And sometimes… I think that somehow he can feel my own thoughts, as impossible as that is. As though our love-making has forged a bond that only grows stronger with time.
We wonder, sometimes, what the future will bring us. But we’re fine with waiting to find out.