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Don't Stop Swaying
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2003
RATING: PG.
DISCLAIMER: Characters not mine. Interpretation mine.
ARCHIVE: Sure, just keep my name and headers.
SPOILERS/TIMEFRAME: NIHT 2 post-ep.
CATEGORY/KEYWORDS: Vignette, Knowle/Shannon.
SUMMARY: "She can live with the way the wind keeps changing, as
long as she keeps on swaying."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just an odd little something for Mish. Happy
birthday!
MORE FIC: http://fiction.deslea.com
FEEDBACK: Love the stuff. deslea@deslea.com.
AWARDS/ELIGIBILITY: Spooky Awards 2003 eligible.
"You ruined my sweater."
She stands there, knee-deep in water, stretching out the
offending article so she can see it. Loops of knitted stitches
unravel. The blood is just a pinkish stain under the narrow
streams of light that filter through the boards above. Shadows
fall, then dirt, as people tramp about on the pier overhead.
"Shut up and help me," Knowle says. "We have to be sure there's
nothing left they can use." When she doesn't reply, he looks up
at her. "I'll buy you a new sweater, Shannon. Will you please
just help me?"
She sighs, smoothing down her ruined clothes, and walks further
into the putrid water, wading from pylon to pylon to meet him.
She picks past driftwood and oddments from the ship and random
bits of litter besides. Baltimore water at its best, she thinks,
as the stench of industrial waste and human remains invades her
nostrils. A glass beaker floats by, whole and unmarked, and she
marvels that it was spared by the blast.
"How long do you think we have until the divers get here?" she
wonders, peering over his shoulder at the documents in his hand.
Lights flicker, red and blue on ink-streaked pages. She sees the
bloodstain on his collar and remembers that she was the one who
put it there. Was that only an hour ago? It's not the first time
their alignments have changed so quickly, but it feels like
longer.
"Not long," he says, casting the useless papers aside. "Those
are heavy-duty floodlights. I don't think they're planning on
waiting til daylight. Tough break." He spots something out on the
open water. He waits for a lull in the floodlights scanning the
coastline, then dives down beneath the surface to get it. She
keeps on looking.
"How's your head?" she wonders when he surfaces again beside
her.
"The one you knocked off, or the one that grew back?"
"Very funny."
"It's fine," he says shortly, opening his prize, a scorched
manila folder. He flips through it. Draws out a data CD - warped,
but whole. He holds it out to her. "The real question is whether
the other one survived the blast. I bet your friend John would
have a field day running forensics on it."
She takes the CD and pockets it. "He was your friend, not mine.
He only came to me to look for you."
"You should have let me kill him," he says reflectively, still
flipping through the folder's sodden pages. "He's seen too much."
Just once, she wishes they could get through a conversation
without switching sides. She finds herself counting on her
fingers. Apart. Together. Apart. This is, what, the third time
tonight? "We served with him, Knowle. It could have been
handled."
He shakes his head. "I've already let him live much longer than
I should have. He's a danger to us now." Together. That makes
four. "How much did you tell him, anyway?"
"I told him what we are."
"Let me guess. 'I'm a bio-engineered combat unit.' Did that make
it into the sermon?"
Apart, if only on basic principles. "Don't you fucking mock me,
Knowle. I can still whip your ass from here to Annapolis. I'm not
the one who came out of this without a head."
"Which is why we're in the lovely, scenic waters of the
Baltimore docks at midnight looking for it," he says, rubbing his
face. "Aren't we lucky?"
"Shut up and keep looking," she says. Pissed off.
They carry on searching in silence.
Presently, the spray of light intensifies over the water, and
they draw further back beneath the docks. His hand closes
protectively on her arm, and she doesn't have enough
bloody-mindedness left to shrug him off. "They're getting ready
to drag the water," he says. "Let's go."
She breaks her silence to make a grudging sound of agreement,
and follows him down beneath the water.
They swim a while. Their ultimate destination is her house
further down the Bay, but by unspoken assent, they linger around
Baltimore a while first. Cleansing themselves, ridding themselves
of rancour, and of the filth of smoke and death. Aches clamour
for her attention, not physical aches, but mental ones from which
even she is not immune. She lets him lead her. Lets the water
draw out her nagging hurts, and leaves them all behind.
They break the surface at the south end of Hanover Street
Bridge. She follows him out of the water and sits with him on the
rocks. She tugs her pitiful finds from her pockets - a few CDs
and other oddments - and she breaks them one by one, flinging
them back into the river where they can do no more harm. When
it's done, she sits there, shivering lightly - funny how her body
responds to the cold even now - and she nurses her head in her
hands.
"Get those things off," he says, not unkindly. "They'll only
pull you down going home."
She looks up at him for a long moment before getting to her feet
with a sigh. She drags her saturated clothes off her skin, and
they fall to the rocks with hard, slapping sounds that echo in
the still night air. Water laps at them, seeping into them,
waiting to claim them with the tide. She gives her sweater one
last regretful look before dropping that on the rocks as well.
"I really will get you another one," he says, stripping his
clothes off beside her. His tone is conciliatory.
"I should never wear clothes I like with you," she says in
resignation.
He shrugs. "Hey. You lop a guy's head off, he's gonna act on
reflex." She laughs a little at the sheer ridiculousness of it.
"Sorry."
She finally spares him a smile. "It's okay."
His hand closes around hers. "Come on. It's cold."
She follows him back into the water, and they stay there a
while. Divesting themselves of their hostilities as easily as
their bloodstained clothes.
Together again, she thinks. That makes six, maybe seven. She's
lost count.
They watch the lights of the cars coming and going on the
bridge. Splashing a little. They swim in shallow, easy strokes.
The water is cold, but they meet it, move with it, and it warms
them anyway.
"I wasn't mocking you, you know," he says after a while. No
preamble. As though there had been no break in the conversation
at all. "You're not a combat unit, Shannon. That's just what they
did you. It isn't who you are. It makes me mad when you talk like
that."
"Knowle, you just grew back your head. You can't seriously sit
there - float there," she says, pre-empting him, "and say that
we're human beings."
"No," he says. "But I'm not a fucking combat unit, either."
"Aren't we?" she demands. "You and I switch sides with the
changes in the wind. We do whatever they want, or whatever
survival requires. There's no big picture for us. We shift and
sway to meet it, and then it changes all over again."
"That's what we do," he says. "But it isn't who we are."
"Then what are we?" She finds his hand beneath the water,
searching his eyes for an answer, as though he knows any more
than she does. He doesn't, but she needs to know what he sees in
himself. What he sees in her.
"I don't know. What we want," he says. "What we need. That
doesn't change." It's incomplete, the way he says it - he was
never blessed with eloquence - but she knows how he thinks, how
the dots connect up in his mind. He means that it always boils
down to together and apart for them because that's the only
yardstick left that matters. He means that they sway back and
forth this way because it's better than being blown away.
It isn't the answer she was looking for, but it's enough. She
can live with the changes in the wind, she thinks, as long as she
keeps on swaying.
"What do we need?" she asks him at last, moving closer, though
she knows the answer already.
"I need..." he begins, and he trails off, stroking back her
hair. Close enough that his breath is a fall of warmth on her
face.
She feels him, wants him, acknowledges again their
inevitability. From the day they became whatever it is they are,
different and alike, there have been only two options for them.
Apart is what they do. Together is what binds them and grounds
them while they do it.
"Yes," she murmurs against him, and closes the space between.
She meets him, adrift yet tethered with him through the love and
through the need. Through the darkness and the chaos and the
sadness, she stays with him, melding with him in the dark, and
she keeps on swaying.
END
"Hansel and Gretel are holding hands deep in the forest. They
are lost. This is their own story. The two have fallen in love,
and so, after a long quietness amidst the creatures of the night,
they begin to kiss. Travelling like heat through each others'
bodies, they pass through centuries of insecurities, and into a
rhythm where they are not afraid. Mama has led these children
into the wild unknown for reasons, known, with father's help, of
course. They tried very hard to get back home, but of course,
they could not. And so they find themselves, through the
darkness, through the sadness, making love, making peace, making
music. They find themselves through the chaos, making sense. This
is what they want. This is who they are. These are the things
they need."
-- Sophie B. Hawkins, Don't Stop Swaying