As Beautiful As They Are

Disclaimer: All characters are © Sony Pictures, NOT ME!

The whiteness, though she was aware of it, didn’t seem to exist. She didn’t seem the exist. It was like a void, but instead of being empty it was full, and she suspended within it. Thoughts held no words, needed no verification to become reality because they were all that was there.

She wanted to move, look around. But there was nothing to move and nothing to look at because everything was everywhere, and she was everything. But there were others, she knew. They seemed as splotches on the edge of her thoughts; they were waiting to see if she would join them. But the feeling of being suspended without really needing to try to comprehend what was around her, because she was surrounded by herself, was so calming that she did not yet care to leave it. After spending so much time constantly aware and alert, she almost didn’t know what to do. The full void surrounded here, consumed her, was her. Or she was it, possibly. She couldn’t pretend to know the difference.

She felt nothing but the peace, happiness, comfort. No image of Six’s pale face and closed eyes swam before her, no pale complexion of those she had already left behind.

For a very long time, time did not pass at all.

The memories began to shift then, and she wondered why she had memories. Before she could come to a conclusion they were swimming in her consciousness without visual representation or words to solidify them, yet she knew them utterly. Six, in a good mood. Daxus, in a horrible one. The thing once known as laughter bubbled within the full void, rippling outwards. Then, one she did not expect or understand. Garth, smiling.

This image thrust itself into the void, disrupting the cool smooth whiteness of her wordless thoughts. She couldn’t escape how visual it was and her sudden, desperate desire to see it properly in simple, human thoughts. She contracted and became one small white dot in the void, surrounded by others. Her image contracted and made a small white Garth.

Reaching out a hand to him, she wanted to speak but didn’t know what words were.

His hand touched hers, though she had not seen him move it, and he drew her in and held her so close she felt sure that their tiny orbs would mesh together and become one. But he was only a projection, an extension of her own consciousness. She heard the others clucking in disapproval.

These news ones, they always cling to the old ways of thinking, they seemed to say. She ignored them and concentrated on the strange, frightening, beautiful and endless feeling of utter abandon and vulnerability she felt whilst in the arms of her imaginary Garth. But he had no face, and she hated it.

There was no sense of time here, so when he let go and drifted back into her thoughts again, she felt as if no time had gone by at all. She expanded, touched her fingers to the corners of reality and expanded to fill it neatly. She had just begun to settle back into her smooth, white nothing when she felt a jerk, and intensely physical feeling to have in such a purely mental place. Fear tinged her white with red. She remembered the false Garth’s arms and slipped into the memories she had of him. All of her thoughts, as they were the only things that existed, contorted into reality. The others had moved off to let her work it out on her own. Her fantasies and false memories and past dreams swirled into being within her void.

She was in a dark room, close to a dark person in a dark bed. It smelled like sweat and musk and a gentle sweetness. The warmth of his body was overwhelming but she didn’t dare to move.

“They say he’s got an antigen in one of his tissues that can cure the hemophages,” he said, the voice smooth and low and pleasant.

“I’m not diseased,” she replied tartly.

“Then I suppose ‘cure’ is not the word,” he shrugged, and she felt the rippling of his muscles and felt her spine tingle.

The jerk returned, and she fought it.

The valley was long and grassy. He pulled her along, showed her the tiny yellow flowers that could possibly cure the common cold. They picked a bushel with the sun beating on their backs.

“There’s a pool over there,” he said, grinning. The high steel walls on either side of the manmade meadow were being slowly matted to keep the heat and sun damage out.

“Race you!” she challenged, and dashed to the clear blue of the pool and yanking off her outer layer of clothes. She plummeted into the warm water and felt him plummet behind her. Their bodies danced, suspended in hydrogen and oxygen, and he pulled her closer to himself and kissed her gently under the water.

The next jerk was like having her spine ripped out, or being pulled away from the arms of a lover, or a father, or a friend. She gritted her imaginary teeth and pushed the feeling away.

“You really need to grow a little modesty,” he laughed, running his laser razor over his sculpted jawbone. She felt her stomach twirl.

“And you really need to learn to let go once in a while. Besides, I’ve got nothing to hide,” She felt her own stomach, the soft white of the skin that she knew so well, and let her fingers tentatively reach out to the smooth olive skin she wanted to know. His back seemed to convulse at her touch.

“Is it too much to ask for a nice shoulder massage?” he joked, and she giggled. Running her fingers over his skin delicately, she began to knead the stiff muscles.

“I was joking,” he muttered lamely, but did not stop her.

“Too bad, you’ll just have to endure a horrible back massage,” she replied.

“Oh dear, anything but that,” he retorted with a chuckle.

This time she saw, with her own eyes, a flash of impossibly bright light that faded as quickly as it had come. She hurt everywhere, and pulled once more into the thoughts that she clung so desperately to.

It was dark outside his truck before he returned, and she shivered on the threshold. He shuffled up to her and held out a white box. Even in the moonlight he was blushing.

“Sorry, had a hell of a time getting my hands on it,” he explained. She cast him a false angry look, then took the box gently and slid the cover away. Inside a few dark chocolates gleamed at her temptingly, and she felt her mouth fall open.

“How did you get them?” she ogled, popping one into her mouth.

“Well, I know a guy who knows a guy,” he replied rather sneakily. She enjoyed the morsel and then put the lid back on the box.

“Have to save them for later,” she said with a grin. Suddenly he was very close to her, and his hand was on her cheek. The blood rushed to her face.

“Happy Birthday, Violet,” he said gently, and his teeth gleamed as he smiled ever so softly at her.

“Uh,” she replied stupidly. “Thanks,” she added. But before she could even being to feel embarrassed, his lips were on hers. For the first time, she gave in. His arms snaked around her, his body held hers so perfectly to him. She felt the euphoria that she had never really known well up in her stomach.

The final jerk had her screaming inside her head, but she had no muscle control.

The white glares came from the lamps inside Garth’s truck. Everything else was a blur. The memories of her false-reality were echoing in her mind, and she felt nothing but anger.

“Welcome back!” said that beloved voice, enthusiastic, on the verge of tears. She saw his face and remembered her own reality, how it had been so violently jerked away from her, just like everything and everyone else in her life. As soon as she developed and attachment to anyone or anything, it disappeared.

Well, alive or not, it wasn’t going to happen anymore.