Needs Must
by Falstaff
This story is for Celendra, because everything I write is, and it is also for PollyMel, pseudobetareader extrordinaire, without whom I wouldn't have been able to finish it properly; for Kaylee-Jaya, who convinced me that Mel's idea for a title was a good one; and especially for Alicia McKenzie, whose Cable stories awoke the voice of the Mother Askani's First Disciple in my noggin and kept feeding it until he wouldn't shut up.
Hense the story.
Another thing. This is the first story, short as it is, that my muse has let out of me in a long long time. I've been really busy with college and other RL stuff, but I'll tell you what: if you like it and you want to see more from me, please, PLEASE drop me a line and tell me so. I need the comments! I craaaaaaaaaaave them!
Okay. Enough of me yakking. Take it away, Blaquesmith!
It doesn't matter, you see. What I do to him. What hell I put him through. How much he should hate me (and he should, stab my eyes). None of that matters. Not even She matters.
And She is everything to me. She always has been. Even when She wasn't, She was. What is, is; I know that better than anyone.
What matters is the Battle. Making things right. Doing what She wanted; saving the world. I don't care if I have to kill every living thing in every possible instant in time. I will do what she wanted. I will save the world.
And if I have to drive Nathan insane, or break him, or kill him . . . I will do it. I will hate myself for it, but I will do it, for what are my needs and fears and hatreds against what Is?
Do you know the first time I understood that? Of course you don't, you can't . . . he was fourteen. I was training him. He fell from a cliff-face. He hit solid rock below.
I could have saved him. I could have stopped him. And I could have come when he begged me to, crying out in pain, fearing death (and rightly so; his back was broken, you know.)
But I did none of those things. Why did I not?
Because he had to learn. He had to learn about what Is. And what Is is often dark and horrible and painful and hard. It is never easy.
That is the first lesson. The second, the one I myself cannot seem to learn, is this: you do not matter. I do not matter. Nothing matters except the Battle, ever-raging, ever-eternal. Nothing.
YOU certainly do not matter . . . no. What is, is. I must remember that . . . .
He does not hate me. Why he does not, I do not know. I would hate me. And in a curious way, I both do and do not hate myself, just as I both do and do not hate Nathan for failing to rise up and strike me down.
Sorry has no meaning. It is one of the first things She told me. In the deeps. In the dark. So long ago that there were no others. No Sisterhood. Just She. And I.
It was a sweat-slicked moment under the sleeping-skins. I knew then, as I know now, that She did not love me. But She allowed me to try and please Her. To give Her some of the ecstasy that I felt just seeing Her face or standing in Her shadow.
And . . . .
And I failed. I wept, that night, hot tears that streamed down to my jaw. And I begged Her to forgive me for not pleasing Her.
And . . . and this I remember with all the clarity of the sharpest blade . . . She looked down at me, from where She lay on Her back, I nestled beside Her, half-atop, and Her eyes were green as frozen fire . . . and She said, "Sorry has no meaning, Blaquesmith. Go away for a while. Then sleep."
Her skin is very cold.
Sorry has no meaning. So he was taught, in his time, the Boy, my Boy. And so, if I were to say to him, 'Nathan, dearest Nathan, child of my soul if not my body, I am sorry for every broken bone, every bruise, every time I caused you pain or anguish. I am sorry for the indirect role I played in the death of your son (for he does not know about that; he thinks that that was you and you alone) and for everything, Nathan. I am sorry," he would look at me and say, "Why do you say this, Teacher? What do you mean?"
Because it was done for a reason. Everything has a reason, because it Is, and would not Be if it did not. Even you, twisted ugly thing, have a purpose, don't you. Even I, twisted and ugly without as well as within, have one.
Guard the Boy. Train the Boy. Hurt him, chase him, make him howl.
And love him. Love him with a love that has no meaning. That is the other part of what Is.
And perhaps, when the eternal Battle ends . . . and in my secret heart, the place where my shields are strongest, the bailiwick within me that even She has never seen, I dream of that day. I dream that the Boy, my Nathan, will lift himself up and be all that he has the potential to be. That he will be happy, even if it must be with this female who distracts him from the Battle. And that She . . . .
That She gives me leave to return to Her bed. To find Her, in the timestream. To hold Her. To show Her how I love Her. To prove my loyalty, a loyalty that will never die. Can never. It is part of what Is.
And you, little clone, you are part of this too. You will assist me. Nathan has grown both too strong and too weak. He is forgetting the Battle. Moreover, he is forgetting why the Battle is being waged.
So you will remind him again. You will remind him by doing my bidding, by taking up the task I set for you without knowing why you take it up, as you have done before.
It is your reason, after all. It is why you Are.
So I shall set you loose into the timestream, evil little clone. I will send you to do what I can no longer bear to do.
You will bring my Boy home to me. And we will win the Battle for Her. Because, in the end, that is all that we are good for. That is all that Is.
What is, is. And thus it does not matter what I do to him. What you do to him. What pain he suffers. He is War Leader. He is Her champion. It is his place, his role to fill.
It Is. No matter how much I regret what I have done --
Sorry
Has
No
Meaning --
What is, is. And he is, the Boy, my Boy.
That is the beginning and the end of all of it.
That's what matters.
~fin~
Blaquesmith, Cable, Rachel Summers, the Askani Sisterhood, Aliya, Domino, Tyler Summers, Stryfe . . . they all belong to Marvel. Though I say Alicia oughta own 'em. She loves 'em more.
The story, though, is mine. I claim it. Don't archive or Pop-up or MST without checking with me for approval first.
And that really is the End.
Yours,
Falstaff
(arleccino@usa.net)