AUTHOR'S NOTES:
I'm really afraid this sucks, but now that Nix has finally decided to cooperate with my muse and let me finish this, I just want to post it so I know it's done. ^^; It's kind of bizarre-- sort of a companion piece to Down Endless Street-- which you can find here: http://www.demando.net/everglow/endless_street.html -- and I really hope it doesn't suck. ^^ I thank you in advance for taking the time to read it and give it a shot. I don't think the gender of Lewis' child was mentioned on the show, therefore-- this being FPS and all ^_~-- I just made it up. I hope no one minds. Any other mistakes are all mine as well. This fic is dedicated, as always, to the very brilliant Leigh, and to my new friend Kayla. ^_^ Please enjoy.
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In Scorching Glass 1/1
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
http://www.demando.net/
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His very first memory is of a mirror; _the_ mirror, in his mother's bedroom, the one with the scalloped gold frame, hovering with authority over the marble-toped vanity. Nix could see himself in it, young and small across a sea of red carpeting. He was three or four-- hard to grasp time, at that age-- perched on the wide bed. Past his mother's finely carved back and over her shoulder, he could see her pale moonshine
(he never drinks moonshine-- only the best.)
face in the silvered glass. Small pursed lips, shadowed green eyes, dark hair curling against her high, painted cheeks. She was frowning, then speaking, each word produced with care out between her ivory teeth and coral lips. He could see the little boy being lifted under the arms, soft blue pajamas riding up; he saw her reflection say, 'Goodnight, Lewis' and it was the nanny, the nanny's old hands pulling him off the bed. The little boy was crying, face scrunched up,
(when was the last time he cried? he doesn't search, doesn't try to remember)
reflected in the mirror beside Mother, unconcerned as his image passed out of the guilded frame.
He remembers, also, watching her face at dinner. Her careful picking, the click of silverware on fine china. She never ate more than a bite or two of anything, she covered her mouth with a satin-gloved hand, laughing gently as she leaned towards some guest. They always said she ate like a bird, but Nix-- Lewis, then-- fed his stale bread crusts to the pigeons and sparrows outside Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow; he knew she wasn't like that at all. There was too much consideration, that pause as she would glance up quickly to see if anyone was looking, before she took a bite. The sparrows the inched ever-closer to his grubby child's hand were jittery and quick-- they'd snap up anything. Mother ate so little that Lewis became convinced she had to be surviving on something else.
(he suspects her, the little boy child who knows better than to try and climb into his mother's lap. she is endlessly distant and endlessly beautiful-- no matter how close, she'll always be twice as far away. he knows she subsists on the mirror.)
There's something else, too; he's fifteen or sixteen, angry, standing in her sanctuary threshold, thinking of breaking and smashing...
No, that can't be right. The meaning of the mirror has left him, a ripple through the surface and all he really remembers is wondering occasionally if she was his true mother. Thinking of the Wicked Queen as the sound of her skirts drifted past his bedroom door.
(How the hell do kids pick up these things? He doesn't remember anyone ever telling him fairy tales-- he grew up reading primers on history, and he went to an all boys school-- but he knows, still knows that mirrors are always a bad idea. Fickle and dangerous, and didn't Alice have problems with them, too? It's not like he ever read stories to the Kid, either. Emily. Still, he remembers all the fuss over that animated movie when he was just getting out of school-- he remembers stopping for just a moment in front of one of the posters plastered up the Paramount wall and thinking... thinking, what?)
He must have made that up, read it somewhere, overheard it in some smokey gentleman's bar. It's not real, so he discards it-- carelessly, over his shoulder, as if to to show how little it disconcerts him.
(it's the mirror, he knows it's the mirror...)
You can't trust memory, Nix knows that. Whenever he thinks of his childhood, it always seems to be raining, gray clouds and the New Jersey skyline. It never seemed to rain at Toccoa, though he can recall once or twice-- always painfully bright sunshine through the window, on clean wood, on Dick Winters' red hair. Himself and Dick, in clean tan uniforms, in the bunk house that seemed so cramped then but calls for only wistful longing now. Dick, while the boys ran Curahee, saying 'don't listen to Soble, we can do this, I know we can do this...'. Sometimes it seems like he woke up in Toccoa, woke up blinking and jostling with Winters in the shower and someone just told him the rest of his life. Maybe it was because it was the first time he was away, really away from all the people who Expected Of Him, who defined him. Theodore Nixon's son, Cathy's husband, Emily's dad...
(take up the family business, hold Cathy on your arm at parties, lift Emily onto your lap although she's uncomfortable and you don't know quite where to put her. Read the paper, go to work, kiss the wife, ruffle the Kid's hair, have a drink and do it all over again.)
But Nix doesn't trust that, it's too easy, and he knows that beneath that explanation lies another one he'll have to watch, from the corner of his eye, so he can move before it strikes.
He doesn't trust memory, and he doesn't trust time. Time stretches, time conceals-- Bastogne lasted forever, so did the night when he lost all those boys, and the weight of Dick's hand on his shoulder lingers on and on. A drop from a plane takes a blink of an eye, moments skip and pick up without him. He looses time, not just to the bottle, but to his own internal maze-- he wakes up next to Dick, watching the other chest rise and fall, and all he wants to do is grab something and bring it all to a screeching halt so he can really make it register. He went on leave from Mourmelon and met a pretty face in a bar-- her touches all teasing and discrete but on his skin so long that he was burning, burning, so he left her sitting perched on a stool so he could try and wash it off. It's not fair-- and he'll knock back another swig of the old 69-- he never asked for Dick Winters and his quiet, mountain-in-the-wind determination. Never asked for those eyes, that steady friendship, those smiles that couldn't possibly mean as much as they seem to. But one slump of those shoulders, one stroke from that gaze and he's back again-- putting his hand here and /here/ and _here_, always asking, 'just how far will you let me go?' A touch on the neck, on the back, on the hip-- leaning forward to say something close to his ear. 'Going my way?' He keeps waiting for Dick to draw the line and it doesn't happen, so he keeps pushing, pushing because he'll take all he can get. He'll go back to America an immigrant now, a time traveler or some pulp cliché like that. If he gets through this war, his citizenship will change and he'll have no country save the nameless hills he waged war on and no one to understand but the men who fought there with him. He sees the change seeping amongst them all, slithering, quiet and under the skin. Malarkey's lost time too, he's lost years; Liebgott's eyes are wild everyday now, only heated when he squares off with Web; and Lipton's usual silence rings now with a different note. He considers these men his friends, brothers in arms-- but if he calls them brothers than what the hell does he call Dick?
Dick calls _him_ 'Lew', when it's dark enough or they're alone enough or sometimes for no discernible reason at all. They snip at each other, wrestle with each other and then stop because... because they're skin to skin and breathing hard and if either of them would just lean in... Nix tells himself that Dick doesn't know, doesn't suspect-- that this is the way it will always be. A Pennsylvania farmer and a New Jersey socialite; if they'd met any other way, he'd never have gotten a chance to look twice, to want. But there's this god-damned war-- Nix snorts, thinking of Muck and Malarkey, leaning together as they all partook of the lukewarm slop that passed for dinner in Bastogne. Muck's voice had been shaky with everything save the cold, he'd said, 'It's just this goddamn war' and the next day, he was dead. The war, and Dick's familiar weight on the bench, in the tench, on the bed next to Nix. Dick's face when he's dreaming, like smooth, unbroken water with something moving underneath; Dick through the gloried glaze of alcohol, through the dirty grit of combat. Lewis Nixon wants, and it scares him, he wants and _feels_ and gets absurdly grateful for Dick's promotion when really they're both soldiers and perfectly able to take care of themselves.
(The last time he felt anything like that, that rough squeeze, that ache on an organ that only pumped blood... well. He remembers standing on the platform in Nixon, New Jersey, in the din of boys going off to war, looking away from Cathy and Mother and Father. He'd said, 'See you soon', Father had remarked jovially about a quick end now that America was involved, and then Lewis turned away, only to hear Emily's little reed soprano calling 'Papa!'-- so strange, because he really couldn't remember her calling him much of anything at all. Her little blue hat was crooked over her blonde curls, pigtails the exact shade of Cathy's own burning-honeyed locks, but her eyes were dark, so dark as to swallow the pupils; his eyes, in that little face. She'd pursed her tiny lips and stopped a few feet away from him, suddenly snapping off a salute, six years old but stiff as a little tin soldier, doll-expression grave. He'd never felt that sort of protective swell, that feeling that he didn't want anyone to hurt her, and he'd make any bastard sorry who did, even if that person was him. Strange feeling-- he'd only been uncomfortable and vaguely fearful of breaking her was she was a baby. She'd stared at him and he'd stared at her, finally managing a return salute before he boarded the train and didn't look back. He's not upset that Cathy's packing up and heading back to her folks in New York-- Emily's a trooper, she's made of tough stock that came from somewhere that it's him and isn't Cathy either. And now he lives with another ache, so very different and a little bit the same, powerful, one that won't let him turn around and walk away. In Bastogne, he sipping lukewarm coffee sitting shivering next to Dick, reminded him to knock off of the night, to eat something for God's sake and not just run out there to relieve Dike no matter how much a waste of a uniform the guy was.)
They're soldiers. 'Curahee' means they stand alone, they fight alone, they keep moving no matter who's fallen, who's blood is leaking into the grass.
('But if anyone hurts you, so help me...')
So help me already, God, if you're even there at all.
Sometimes his fingers hurt, even though he's never fired a shot.
Lewis looses time again, because he can't ever remember thinking, 'I won't shoot', even if the idea is steel in his jaw and backbone now. During training he aimed and fired like he completed Curahee, quickly, because he had to, because it was there to be done. Then he landed in Normandy, helped secure a German tank, the whole time his grip white-knuckled and fierce on the gun. Not a shot-- though the butt of the weapon connected with several heads, though he held it level on a German officer while Web translated, 'arms up, stand aside'.
Shifty Powers is a great shot, always has been-- all smooth Virginian hands and a natural eye. One -- two -- three! clay birdies, shattering in the hot Toccoan sun, perfect aim even under Soble's harsh and mocking tongue. Bull has wide, strong shoulders; he swings his gun up like it's just another stack and still has plenty of room for more. Welsh shoots like he's too lazy to do anything else, Luz like he's laughing, secretly and kind of shaken. But the gun in Nix's hand is all wrong angles and odd turns. The sound of discharge cracks at the back of his skull, the smell crawls in his mouth lays there, and though he could usually hit nine out of ten targets, he would sometimes get the feeling that when the little clay molds shattered, a tiny piece got stuck in his eye.
(There's another story-- a piece of a mirror in a prince's eye? Lodged there, changing him.. and how the hell does he know this stuff when he's never cracked open a book like that in his life?)
The gun makes his bones ache, like the piano teacher stretching his own small child's hands over the ivory keys. Boy's hands, too small for scales and Arpeggios. To this day, Nix can play at least three pieces by Beethoven completely from memory, snatches of a few other classics and one quick, saucy jazz piece that always earned a stern glance from his father. His fingers on the keys, on the trigger-- a learned movement, a 'you should' movement, uncomfortable as someone staring at your back.
Guarnere shoots the way he does everything else-- with an angry jut to his hips, tightly reigned in, small eyes saying, "I got something, got something more right here, and you don' wanna see it." Nix has seen the private give cover fire like it's personal-- he shoots, but then he moves on, while Dick sits in the dusty, burning glow of the bombs on Eindhoven, staring at his hands.
So he fights but he won't shoot, maybe because he thinks he's some sort of gentleman, maybe 'cause he's holding on to his image of civilization, or maybe because he knows-- a deep, undercurrent knowledge unlike the taught reverence of Jesus and the Holy Father-- that what goes around comes around. It all comes back-- it's a sick, horrible feeling, but everything always comes back in a wide curve like the blade of a scimitar arching down, down, down and the person who gets hit is almost never you.
(He thinks about Dick-- about his blood, seeping through the bandage on his leg and Doc Roe murmuring in his sing-song way, 'Stay offa it, suh; stay offa it just 'til it clots better'. And Dick, not listening, walking through Carentan. There was an off-level step, a flicker of pain in his cheeks and the muscle of his jaw; he stumbled, caught hold of Nix's arm and kept walking. But the hand stayed there, stayed warm against the cloth soaked with French dust and American sweat. Blood would be warm, too, at first; Dick, laying in some Godforsaken field, Lewis crawling towards him shouting 'Medic!' like it's some sort of charm. And yes, he'd reach his best friend's body, say, 'come on, come on' like it would change something and the blood would be all over and it would be warm and Dick's and gone.)
But that's not it, either, because Nix has felt the odd, alien itch creep under the skin of his trigger finger, he's lifted the rifle once or twice, not really thinking 'I'm going to shoot someone'. One of the other boys always beats him to it, makes relief flow in place of trained habit, makes the world come flooding back in when all Nix could see was Winters running across a field, a street with little cover and-- no. To be honest, Nix doesn't understand why he won't shoot-- he just makes up reasons-- anymore than he understood how there could be faces and bodies so stripped of flesh and miserable and there still be no such thing as mercy. It just is, and he lives with it, with the gun on his shoulder, shivering and glistening like it wants to be loosed. With fear and want sliding under his skin, so that sometimes he dreams can feel it moving, trapped in the seamlessness and looking for a way out.
You can't make sense of time, or the hazy, sweltering heat of memory, and you sure as hell can't make sense of a war. He wants to laugh, sometimes, at Webster, not gratingly or harshly, but like a big brother who's done all this before. David Webster, Harvard student, Liebgott's 'college boy'--a smack on the back here, or an irreverent musing of hair and a 'lay off, Lieb!'. Always writing, always watching the battle with narrow blue eyes, recording it all as it happens, or maybe even before it does. Once, on a long march across dark, sleeping France, Web had muttered something about Hemmingway, about not having a taste for him anymore, and Nix just handed him a cigarette, thinking about bright, gaudy covers and being able to flip to the end. Isn't that last line a dozy? He was there when one of the replacements got his foot blown off by a mine-- a clap like imagined gunfire, right next to his ear, and then he'd turned around to see that young, baby-faced private on the ground, just staring. Gaping, really, mouth slack and eyes diffuse before the pain finally penetrated and his teeth disappearing behind the wailing nothing of a scream.
Plot twist. You can't trust these goddamn things, stories or Hemmingway or blood or mirrors. In Landsbergh, he'd seen his first mirror in a long time-- in the house of the Officer's Wife, as chill and empty-echoing as any palace. She'd been bitter and small and reflected on forever; he'd looked down the endless gilt-framed corridors and wondered 'who the hell is that guy in the glass?'. He doesn't think he's the same Lewis Nixon who went off to war, but he's not sure. He can't remember. All he knows is that he never used to want the badly or love this gracelessly and damnit he really needs to stop looking in mirrors.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He's been out walking, ever since he left Dick by crisp, morning touched lake. By now, Nix is pretty sure he's walked the entire town at least twice-- he's traced every inch of the handsome hotel they're quartered in, been up and down each flight of stairs, he's even jogged out to the checkpoint and back. Nothing else to do, and Nix doesn't stop moving until there's no other place for him to move-- he's standing again in the lobby of the ski lodge, ignoring the nice, now-mud-stained carpet and all the little flashy ornaments perched on shelves and mantles. Some of the boys are playing cards, sprawled in chairs with their feet up on tables older than they are, drinking cheap brandy out of fine china cups. They look like some sort of surrealist painting, paradoxical, out of real-time, out of what the rest of the world calls life. Back home, the war is shrinking on the horizon, and their battlefields are only 'somewhere over there'.
"Now who took what, again?" a replacement inquires, looking nervously from the pot to the carefully schooled faces of Perconte, Luz and Popeye Wyn.
"Oh, can we just get on with the game already?" Luz rolls his eyes, "I'd like to actually be able to spend this shit, you know?"
"Assuming you'll win," Perconte quips, laying down his cards with an offhanded cockiness. Popeye snorts and abandons his cards, the replacement swallows hard, and Luz just hoots and holds his cards close in front of Perconte's face.
"Ha! Read 'em and weep, my friend!" A drop in tone as Luz assumes the carefully composed face of a newscaster, "Another sound victory for our brave young boys." Luz is shameless and the winning hand looks like a full house from where Nix is standing, far away enough that he's surprised when Popeye turns towards him.
"Major Winters is in his office, sir," he informs with a smile, while the others chorus 'sir' and begin to deal the next hand. For a moment Nix can only frown, thinking about all the things seen and not seen when you're practically living in each other's pockets, but in the end he just nods his thanks.
Dick's office is really the lounge off the room he's taken, filled with all sorts of pretty, breakable things that seem to catch the Major a little off-guard. So the delicate chairs and fine chaise have been pushed to the walls, leaving room for Winters' desk and one sturdy chair, the whole thing surrounded by a sea of papers that makes Nix smile. He steps through the threshold, picking up a small Dresden figurine off one of the shelves, tossing it gently from hand to hand. The typewriter clicks away industriously, and Nix taps the same rhythm onto the figure's glass skirt.
"Put that down, Nix," Dick doesn't even look up, doesn't see that Lewis can't hide his smile, even as he gently replaces the miniature back on her shelf. A few more clicks while Nix paces to the window, gazing out appreciatively, before leaning over to inspect a nearby painting. Dick's sigh is audible but not in the least annoyed. "What are you doing here?"
"Keeping you from being constructive," Nix grins, cocking an eyebrow.
The Major bites his lip, "It's working."
"Well of course," Nix shrugs elaborately, "we Intelligence officers know our stuff." He glances at the modest stack of finished reports stacked neatly on the corner of the desk, "You been at that since this morning? Take a break."
"Swimming was my break," Winters replies reasonably, "I've got nothing to do except paper work until the Higher-Ups give us a go on Tokyo."
"The magnificent East," Nix rolls his eyes, "land of silk and tea." A pause, "Really, it's probably best for Easy that you stick around. We can go jump on Japan any time now."
"Yeah," Dick rests his chin in his hands, giving up on typing at all. "I just don't like waiting. I want to get this over with-- I'd like to actually go home someday."
Nix bites his lip briefly, "You thought about it?"
"About what?"
"New Jersey." He concentrates on letting out the breath he's holding slowly, noiselessly, afraid to be heard. Turning away, Nix feels just a brief moment of shock, of betrayal and the slice of glass on his skin-- he's facing a mirror, and he can see Dick's face anyway, a perfect reproduction in the silver surface that's shattering without breaking at all.
(Always the mirrors, reflecting until you've lost your barings and ended up somewhere else.)
"Yeah, I've thought about it."
"Of course," Nix is deliberately casual, "that's assuming we live through what the Japanese throw at us."
(Dick, bleeding on the ground, and he's seen a film reel of Iwo Jima, all those white crosses and tall, Japanese obelisks marked with characters that look like the slash of a knife. It's a war-- people die, everyone dies, even the men who make it home in one piece.)
"We've made it this far," Dick's smile is small, almost shy, circumscribed by the golden frame. "There for a while, I wasn't sure any of us would live through this, but now... Austria is spoiling me. I feel like we have to make it, now."
"It would be a shame to get it now, when we've come so far," he shifts on his feet. "I need a drink." He doesn't really, what he needs is to break this mirror, so he can talk without looking at Dick, without being faced with Dick no matter where he turns.
(That's the real bitch of it, you know. Mirrors always show you what you least want to see.)
And then Dick is right behind him in the glass, hand on Nix's shoulder, looking kind and concerned and far too close for anybody's comfort. Memory betrays him as well, reminds him of all the times she's slipped beside him while he sleeps, her hands pretending to be the hands of someone more dear, drawing on every little touch. He wants to step away, to shrug it off, but he can't-- he can only stare at Dick while those blue eyes gaze back, level and sure.
"I have thought about it," the Major says, in that soft, deliberate tone of his.
"About what?" Nix parrots, mischievousness not as opaque a mask as he'd prefer.
"New Jersey," Dick plays along. "I think I'd like it."
"Really?" he tries very hard not to grin, "We've even got a freezing cold ocean you can dunk yourself in when the mood takes you."
"I just..." it's rare to see uncertainty so exposed on Dick's face, it makes Nix stagger back, and now they are standing chest to back, Winters' mouth next to his best friend's ear, and that extra inch Dick has on him really makes them look like they fit together. "Can I ask why?"
"Why what?"
"Why New Jersey?"
"Well, gee, Dick," Nix's laugh is brittle and too close to hysteric, "it's where I live."
(Stupid, stupid-- you can't trust mirrors, can't trust the way it reflects your friend's expression, can't trust anything it tells you at all. Always a bad idea, a bad idea...)
Patiently, the Major says, "You know what I mean."
"Goddamn it, Dick, you're my best friend, that's why."
Winters steps back, just slightly, nods and smiles and looks glad to be counted as one of Nix's friends-- it's not any sort of glass that's shattering, but Lewis Nixon himself, turning, grabbing fistfuls of Dick's shirt. "This wasn't supposed to happen, you know." He's very close now, he can smell soap and a little sweat and clean cotton uniform. Winters looks like he's about to speak, throat striving for sound, but Nix over rides it, looks at Dick without anything to warp or translate his gaze.
(They're outside Nunen and he's shaking as death slithers over him and away, Dick is touching him and looking at him and they both know that just one centimeter more would have had his helmet full of blood. They're in the battle of a goddamned retreat and Nix can't seem to make his hand let go of Dick's and he says, 'Stop looking at me like that' and he thinks that now, here in Austria, Dick knows because Lewis is the one, the one looking at him like that.)
Time skips, but that's okay-- he really doesn't want to think about the few seconds before he curved his hand to cup Dick's skull and pulled the other man down. They're kissing, hard and delicious, almost open-mouthed. He tries to pull away a little, really he does, but Dick only lets him get a gulp of air before cupping his face, fingers stroking cheeks and neck as soon as it's certain Nix won't retreat. Couldn't, really-- Lewis isn't afraid to hold on really tight because he knows Dick can take it. Dick is running hands through Nix's hair-- they're stumbling towards the chaise and their kisses are swift so that can catch little breaths inbetween.
"Well," Nix says as they stare at each other, breathing hard. "I've only been waiting to do that since Normandy." And he kisses Dick again, because he can, because one of them is sitting in the other's lap but they're so tangled up it's really hard to tell who.
"I didn't know," Dick mutters, "I swear I didn't know. I mean--" he looks at Lewis, tilts the other man's head so he can kiss along his jaw. "I wasn't sure. I thought it was just me." They're sitting on a fine blue-cushioned chaise, wearing dirty boots and clean uniforms and keeping their fingers crossed in hopes the war will end. This is not something that should be happening, but it is-- incomprehensible and _there_.
"Nah," says Nix reverently. Then teasingly, gently, "You bastard. You knew all along."
Later, while the other men hoot loudly and celebrate the final end of the war in the picturesque streets, Nix and Winters will sit on one of the big hotel beds with their shoes off, making jokes about Intelligence officer and strategists who miss the obvious. They'll talk about New Jersey, which will some how turn into a conversation about horses, though neither of them will remember why. Then, they will reach for each other, feeling uncertain and unhinged between the beginning and the end, between the last line and the first. Lewis will kiss down Dick's neck, shivering and coming apart as the Major moans into Nix's hair. His lips will come to Dick's shoulder, suckling, starved, and all he will be able to taste is sweet, warm, unshed blood.