A YOOK BY ANY OTHER NAME
Chapter 14: Forgiveness and Despair Amongst the Happy Pleasantries
Slowly he opened them, meeting his own gaze in the mirror before looking at his
palm. He stumbled. Sparkling blue was oozing from the cut.
"NOOOOO!" he screamed, throwing the brick at his reflection, sinking to his knees in the uttermost depths of despair as the mirror
shattered, sending large slivers of itself skittering across the floor toward
him.
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When Ute woke, she found Jeffrey had gone. "Were we out of soy sauce
already?" she wondered with a smile. She puttered around a bit,
getting ready, and in a few moments he opened the door. He entered the
caravan, trying to hide his grin as well as the package he held behind his
back. She could see part of it, though, and it was flattish and square, not at all likely to be containing soy sauce. "What have
you got there?" she asked, her curiosity having mounted as high as she
could bear.
It
was then he let his grin loose and swung the package around in front of him.
"For you," he said, almost shyly and so adorably that she was
reminded again of just why it was she loved him so. Not that she ever forgot,
mind you. It was just that as he stood there, his whole face
beaming with delight in anticipation that he had done something that would
please her, her love for him bubbled up and overflowed with her gladness that
he was who he was, that he was hers.
He
sat beside her on the couch, watching expectantly as she lifted the lid of the
box. He was not disappointed. She gasped with excitement,
happiness, and even with a bit of relief. For the last year and a half
she had been wearing the same awful gown from Lucilla's party in Tierra del
Fuego. She had never liked gowns in the first place, and having been stuck in this one for so long, having climbed mountains in it,
crossed oceans and several deserts in it, not to mention steaming jungles
and the frozen wasteland that was Pennsylvania in winter, had come to hate it.
There in her hands she held a thing of priceless value, of inestimable
worth. Blue jeans! Pressing them to her bosom in sheer awe at their
presence, she looked at Jeffrey.
"How?"
she said. Then a great and terrible worry struck her. Would this
be...allowed? Were there gown police lurking about unseen, ready to
pounce were she to slip the blue jeans on? Her eyes skimmed the interior
of the caravan. Were there hidden cameras?
Jeffrey
laughed fondly at her, then pulled her into his arms. "It's all right, Ute," he chortled. "I got special permission."
"Oh,
Jeffrey!" she glorpilated. "Thank you...thank you!"
She
stood to run put them on but he added, "Wait! There's something
else." Her eager fingers parted the tissue paper, discovering a
short-sleeved T-shirt. "I would have gotten you a sweatshirt,"
he explained, "but I thought it would be too warm right now in
Australia."
"It's...it's
perfect!" she said, smiling at the "I 'heart' soy sauce"
imprinted on its front in large letters. Seconds later her gown came flying out of the bedroom. "Put that down the garbage
disposal," she chortled, coming out and giving a small twirl for him.
How...comfortable...she
felt. For the first time in all the long months she felt at home in her
clothes. "I can't tell you how grateful I am," she said, settling onto his lap and wrapping her arms about his neck.
He
cleared his throat. "Maybe you
could...show...me?" he suggested, a boyish smile on his lips.
So...she did.
Joimus, though, had changed garb several times in The Village (Journey Into Jeopardy) due to Sid's
constant pushing of the buttons on his small plot device. She had been
through blue fishnet stockings, a short
fluffy pink dress, and the night mission garb of the female Ninja. So
when she awoke and saw the pale yellow gossamer gown lying across the bedroom
chair, she was quite glad to have it
back. Quickly she slipped it on and went to the front of the caravan
where Pat was scrambling eggs in the
small kitchenette each caravan had.
"Look!"
Joimus said. "It's all fixed!"
"Rose
did a good job, didn't she," Pat commented, pleased to see that her friend
seemed in much better spirits this morning.
"I
must thank her!" Joimus cried, and went out the door.
"Wait!"
Pat called. "I'm coo...," but there suddenly in front of her stood
Alex.
"You're
'coo'?" he asked, smiling.
She
grinned wickedly. "Sometimes I'm very, very 'coo'," she
laughed. Then she pointed at the eggs. "But right now I happen to be
coo-king eggs."
"Oh, good," he said. "I happen to be hungry."
Joimus was part-way to Rose's caravan when the door of Jack's opened and out
stepped Maximus, still wearing only his tunic and cape. They both
stopped, just standing there about 50 feet apart, looking at one another.
Jack appeared in the door right behind Maximus. He leaned down,
placing his hand on Maximus' shoulder.
"Go to her," he said softly. "But use care in what you
say. She as yet has no awareness
of what you did at Bunny's."
MaxiSid
was grateful for that bit of vital information. He gave consideration to what
he would say to Joimus, wanting it to be as much like what Maximus would say as possible. As she had remained
where she was, he walked toward her,
putting an expression of deepest remorse on his face, holding out his hands to
her. He saw that she wanted to smile, but was hesitant. But it was
her wanting to that gave him his opening, he knew. He was aware of Jack's
eyes on his back and felt as though he were on stage. He liked being on
stage. He was actually way more on stage than he knew as Pat and Alex
watched from Joimus' doorway, Rose from hers, and Bud and Berti from theirs.
With
a slight swirl of his cape, he dropped to one knee in front of her, taking her
hand and pressing it to his face. He should probably not
have swirled the cape, but he'd watched Maximus wearing it for so long now and
had wanted to have it draped about himself so much...that he couldn't resist.
Joimus didn't seem to notice, though Bud did. The cop's eyes
narrowed. He didn't like the gesture. To him it didn't seem genuine and
it bothered him.
"Can you ever forgive me?" MaxiSid was asking her. Taking her free hand, she rested it atop his bowed head.
"She looks like she's blessing him," Bud growled to Berti. And
in a way...she was. She was forgiving him, which, when you get right down to
it, is the biggest blessing of all. She
loved him too much not to forgive him. Love is like that. When she
finally moved her hand, she leaned forward, kissing the spot where her hand had
lain. The kiss was like a seal upon her forgiveness, saying that he could
do nothing...not ever...that would not be covered by her forgiveness.
MaxiSid
was both relieved and appalled. This
gift of her forgiveness, though he was calculatingly planning for it,
was beyond his ability to comprehend and it shook him. Because of this,
when he raised his eyes to meet hers,
there was truth of a sort in his expression.
"I...I
can't believe you did that," he said, his voice cracking. For the
first time he wondered about the outcome of this idea of his. For the first time he felt that he might be
losing too much of himself, that he would end up too changed and not recognize
longer who he was supposed to be.
His doubt and confusion were plainly seen in his eyes, only Joimus thought it
was because he felt unworthy to receive her forgiveness. She couldn't
bear that he would feel that and so she took his head in her arms, pressing it
to her breast, murmuring over and over, "Oh, Maximus, I love you, I love
you."
Jack was smiling, then looked over their heads, seeing that Rose was smiling at
them, too. When she saw that he was watching her, she tipped her head in
a slight nod of greeting which he
returned, only more broadly done.
"He
is gallant, isn't he?" Mary commented, standing now behind Rose.
"Who?"
Rose asked.
"Your
Captain," Mary said softly.
"Oh,
he is not 'my' Captain," Rose replied quickly.
Mary
said nothing more, but silently added,
"Not yet."
MaxiSid remained there on one knee for a while, not wanting to remove his face
from the concealment of her bosom. He wasn't sure he could handle the
look in her eyes were he to stand, and besides, she smelled wonderfully of warm
roses. She was doing little
petting gestures on his hair and he became aware that his follicles liked it.
Human cells were amazing things. Then he realized other parts of
him further removed from his head were liking it, too, so he sighed and stood.
Thankfully,
instead of looking in his face, she turned her eyes toward their caravan.
"Your armor," she said.
"May I?"
He
figured then that she must like to help him with that, and so he managed a
smile and nodded 'yes'.
At
their approach, Pat and Alex headed toward their own caravan. "There are
eggs," Pat called back.
Alex
tickled her side as they walked. "And, my dear," he leered
adorably, "I expect you to 'coo' for me all over again."
"Oh,
good," she replied. "I love to 'coo' with you."
Once
in their caravan, MaxiSid was not quite sure what to do, so he just stood there, waiting. She seemed, however,
to know each piece of Maximus' armor intimately and placed it on him in just
the right order. This must be some ritual they had. Again he was taken by
the sheer weight of it as piece after piece was laid upon him. The last
thing, of course, was his cape...much more impressive over the full armor than
just thrown over his tunic. When he was complete, she stood in front of
him, waiting for him to hold his arms out. But he turned, studying his
splendor in the bedroom mirror. Over his shoulder in the mirror, he saw her
face fall a bit and knew he had done something wrong, had omitted some step she
considered vital. What could it be?
What would she expect from him at that point? Obviously not
studying himself in the mirror. Ah! Perhaps this...and if not this, then it would probably
do. Turning back to her, he held out his arms. When she smiled in
relief, he knew he had been correct. Mental note: upon donning of armor,
hold out arms.
She
came into him then, pressing close, curving her arms about his back under his
cape. He put his around her, and
stood there, squeezing her lightly. He had no way of knowing that she was
waiting for him to take the edges of his cape and cocoon it around her...and so
he didn't. After
several long moments, he felt her sigh and knew there was still something more.
Well, he couldn't be expected to fulfill every single little bit of their
routine, now could he!
Sidimus toppled onto his side. Were he capable of unconsciousness, he
would surely have fallen into that state so paralyzed with horror and despair
were his emotions. Nothing in his life...not one thing no matter its
unspeakable awfulness...had ever been so bad as this. In all his
sufferings, in all his pains and losses, he had managed somehow to bear
them...but this...this was something that so overshadowed them with the stark
purity of its unbearableness, that life could not continue. He lay there, every part of him trembling, waiting for sweet death to release him.
Immediately
a small, almost slurpy sound emanated from the wound. He had never really known
what made Sid Sid and so had not realized that the wound he had inflicted with
glass had, in the implement of injury itself, its means of healing.
Sid's silicon-based body simply sucked out what it needed from the shard,
completely restored with no trace of its presence, leaving only a small piece
of external, unneeded glass that fell onto his lap. He opened his eyes,
looking at the small piece, his despair growing. Was there no way at all
to end the existence of this horrid bodily prison? Picking up another large shard,
he turned it in his hands. He thought of emasculating Sid's body
but dropped the shard, knowing now even that would simply regenerate. Surely he
had hated Commodus, but his feelings for Sid made that pale in comparison.
If he must live, as so it seemed, he needed to take all his horror
and turn it into anger. That was a harder task than he imagined. He
was so consumed with the utter
revulsion of being in Sid that waves of it washed over him, nearly drowning him
with their intensity. What saved him from being entirely lost, from his
sanity being entirely washed away, was his sudden centering in on the thought
that Sid was not only wearing his armor, but, in fact, was wearing HIM. Clearly
in his mind the vision formed of Sid lying beside Joimus in their bed, his
hands on her body. If he had thought his being in Sid was unbearable,
this new thought added so massively to it that he quite expected to split in
half. He bit his lip until the blue ran, his jaw working, his eyes pressed closed with the need to make that vision stop.
Evil
incarnate in his own form, in his own bed, with his Joimus. A giant,
primal roar rose up within him and he leapt to his feet, pulling on the chain
with all his strength. Sid had cleverly seen to it that manacle, chain,
and wall plate were all made from some titanium alloy that could withstand even
nuclear attack. Finally dropping the chain, his palms blue with the
effort, he discovered a small note tacked to the wall just above the metal
plate. Tearing it loose, he read, "What should be completely clear
is that anything you can think of, I've already thought of...and I thought of
it first." His lip curling in disgust, he ripped the note to shreds,
then sliding down the wall to the floor, buried his face in his hands.
No
matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get rid of the sight of Sid in bed with
Joimus. Would she somehow KNOW? Would she sense the difference? He had known she would were Sid merely dressed in
the uniform, but with the body the same? Would she then? If she had
doubts, if she looked for his familiar scars, they would all be there as proof
that he was he. It would only be by the inner man that she might know.
She MUST know! He sat there, his hands gripped into tight fists, smacking
the back of his head over and over against the wall.
The prop man had just finished fixing the last of the two broken tower steps
when Hando walked up. "You!" the man cried in horror.
"You stay away from my tower!!"
Hando
merely glared at him, then continued on his way to meet Ando by the Eucalyptus
Sepulcralis. He strode quickly past the pink house and curved down the
slope towards the river.
Sepulcralis...Sepulcralis...what the heck was a Sepulcralis anyway? Sounded like something escaped from a grave yard, it did. He smiled then. He liked the concept. Indeed, that was exactly why Ando had chosen it...for its Hando-appeal factor. She knew he would never find the tree by just its name, of course, and so she waited at its base, striking what she hoped was an artful pose as she leaned against its trunk. When he had been literally fished from the innards of the tower last evening, his mood had been so terrible that she knew she must do something utterly distracting to restore his good humor today...well, at least what passed for good humor in the Melbourner. In any other man, that would have been called a murderous rage. Things in this world tended to be relative, she had found. She fidgeted a bit against the roughness of the yook bark. Perhaps fastening her gown only to her front with double-stick tape may actually not have been all that good an idea?
No one had actually seen Cort and Sue the Vile since their arrival yesterday at
the Caravan Park. Upon passing their caravan the rest of the day, one
would have noticed the continuous slight bounce to it, mixed from time to time
with a noticeable side to side wobble. Susan, one of the many who had, in
fact, made note of this, just smiled to herself. "Buttons," she
said to herself, adding, "and lace."
Jeff and Marti were circumnavigating the house as she studied its construction
with a bit of a wry eye. It was, she had to admit, rather an interesting,
if unusual, structure, looking as though it had been cobbled together from at
least three distinctive houses. She liked the Dutch gable on the front of
the highest section near the tower. Such features on a house always made
her feel like the roof had bangs of a sort. Below the "bangs"
were matching bay-type appendages, the lower a porch, the upper a balcony.
All the railings on this side of the house were set with large, white X's
in rows. She thought it would be nice to stand on the balcony and look
over the land, but the house was buzzing with people still dressing the sets
and visitors were not welcome at the moment. So she and Jeff wandered off
amongst the yooks in the pleasant morning air.
She was determined to find one of the five varieties of Scribbly Gum, wanting to see for herself the word-like markings in their bark made by tunneling insect larvae. Perhaps there might even be something that one could read. There had been stranger things than that...especially in epis. It was, therefore, not at all unreasonable that she had such hopes.
Now that Jack had seen which trailer was Rose's, he decided to go and ask her
to walk with him before lunch. Maximus was safely (one hoped!) inside his
caravan with Joimus and the Captain wanted to combine a pleasant walk with
keeping his eyes peeled for clues as to Sid's whereabouts. Rose, wearing
a soft lilac skirt with a simple, light sweater, accepted his invitation and
the two of them set off together. In spite of the concern over Sid,
Jack's heart had not felt so happy in a long time. He smiled down at
Rose, thinking how she was every inch a lady, liking that. She would have
done well at court, he mused, with her manners, her refined intelligence, her
delicacy of person.
He wanted to know more about her. "Have you always designed
costumes?" he asked.
"I used to teach," she replied, "and then I became so interested in the history of clothing that the one just flowed into the other." She didn't mention her special interest in things...and people...of the Napoleonic era.
They walked for sometime upstream along the Never Never.
"Look,"she said, pointing to where an old farmhouse had long ago burned
completely down. She stopped, staring at it, musing aloud, "When I see such a thing, I cannot help but wonder about the people who once lived there, what their lives were like, did they escape the fire and, if so, what became of them."
"It
does make for a bit of mystery," he said, "since no one ever came
back to rebuild."
"And
the barn behind it has quite fallen into ruin," she added.
"A sad place," he remarked, taking her elbow to guide her toward a more pleasant glade of yooks.
He had no idea how sad, no idea that back beyond the barn lay an implement shed, its single occupant's heart breaking even as they turned and walked away. Had they walked there rather than the sunlit glade, they might have heard the dull thumping through its walls as Sidimus banged his head in despair and frustration.