Title: Fixed, OR, The Taxonomy of Desire
Author: Keeper of Tomes
Song: "Be, Be Your Love," and "Elephants," Rachael Yamagata
Summary: 72 of the 100 Challenge. AU- "The definition of an atom is a unit of matter so small, it cannot be broken, not without some great force, not without going out as a supernova." A what-if scenario regarding the science of love.
Words: 3984
Pairing(s): MC/P
Rating: T
-
I know. I should be updating my millions of WIPs. But this wouldn't let me go.
--
:fixed
OR
:the taxonomy of desire
-
The world, Piper, could be ours.
-
There was a flash of aspiration in the girl's eyes, and she must have been imagining the feeling of having the world beneath her thumb, something to be raised or crushed as she wished. And what child does not dream of saving or damning mankind?
But her team.
"I… no!"
And her fingers tighten around the cold metal of her staff, knuckles turning white in desperation. She's doing what's right; her heart swells and blossoms within her chest, beating in time with the lightning her opponent has raised.
"Oh, Piper. Sweet Piper." And Lark… No, Cyclonis… She beams, radiant with dark energy. "Come now. You cannot live your life for others. Think of yourself. Come with me and we'll have all we want and more.
"Power is for the strong. You are immensely strong."
"But my team…"
Cyclonis relishes the indecision that runs through Piper's voice and words and breath. She is gravitating, like a polar molecule that is being pulled apart by opposite bonds, towards Cyclonis' side.
"Your team will do without you. They don't deserve you. What have they ever done to show they care for you? Disregarding your plans, never appreciating the art you wield with such efficiency… But I understand. I'm just.
"Like.
"You."
Emphasizing each word with a step forward, Cyclonis approaches. Hand open and palm empty.
"Come, now. You've come this far. You know I'm right."
"But what you do is evil!" And Piper cringes away.
"Evil?" Cyclonis laughs, fingers finding her abdomen, steadying herself. It is not yet time, and she must take this slowly. Piper, Piper… Come with me… Love me as I love you… We'll have the world, the whole world…
"Good, evil, they're only words." Intelligent design and evolution, conversing and converging, coming together into holy science within Piper's fast-running mind. "You didn't honestly believe that us Cyclonians think of ourselves as 'evil,' did you? No one is born wanting to hate; we have only our intentions. And mine are for your good."
Roads to hell notwithstanding.
And Piper breathes in, air shaky in her dry mouth. What does she want? She wants… she wants…
She wants to want.
An open palm is in her mind's eye, empty but waiting to be filled.
So she lifts her fingers and slides them tentatively into those of her enemy, her rival in all, her opposite. Skin cold and dry.
There's a moment of whiteness, her breath being sucked from her lungs, and she is suspended in a vacuum, where objects fall free, unhindered by air friction, and not a molecule is touching her skin. Save, of course, the pale hand of Lark Cyclonis.
And in this suspension, where dimensions meet and become one, Piper believes with all her heart that she has made the right choice.
-
She wakes up to a horizontal world.
Piper had been laid flat on a bed, curled as a fetus would be in its mother's womb. Doing away with trimesters and umbilical cords, Piper stands and straightens out her shirt, noting the absence of the Storm Hawks insignia.
Outside the sky is red.
"Cyclonia. I'm in Cyclonia."
Oh.
-
"…Lark."
"Okay, then."
Piper will have to readjust to calling Cyclonis by her first name. There is something about the word, the way it molds itself against her lips and teeth and tongue. She feels as though she is being stripped of something essential from herself, and that Cyclonis… Pardon, Lark… is a taxonomist, ripping to Piper's core.
"Do you want to go back?" Lark will ask, every now and again.
And try as she might, Piper can never bring herself to say "Yes."
Lark has a grand crystal lab, with books lining the walls and equipment Piper has only dreamt of. No more duct-taped handles or faulty gauges. Everything shines with newness.
"Wow."
"I knew you'd like it." Lark turns her head, revealing a face both pale and sick, so different from when she was cloaked. Piper would liken it to camouflage, but she's not sure if it's to keep away the predators or to pull in the prey.
Lark's lips suddenly become thinner than usual. She looks up, violet eyes driving themselves into Piper, and she whispers, "Can't we be the way we were, before you… Before I took off the shield? Just like sisters, or friends?"
Piper looks at her hands and at the metal surface of the lab's examination table, her own reflection staring back.
Lark looks so eager. Maybe somewhere in her is that giggling, bubbly, sweet little daughter of everywhere.
"Sure," Piper says. And an unexpected smile blooms across Lark's lips, full and real. She reaches out for Piper's hand, but the grin dissipates, because Piper is not so quick to change, and she has flinched away.
And Lark becomes Master again, placing hands at either side of her body and drawing her face into poker mode. She places palms together and raises them to her chin, a praying mantis ready to strike. "I understand," she says, voice unfeeling.
Piper says nothing.
"I'll leave you to explore, then."
Left alone in the lab, Piper runs her hands over everything and imagines Lark here, bustling about, creating her crystals and drafting her machines. The world, the whole world, seems very far away. Piper considers running. After all, she has betrayed everyone; her team, her homeland, all left behind to scramble about, alone.
Black widow spiders. The females eat their mates.
This fact surfaces and pushes all the bad memories away; Piper is left wondering what brought it out.
She laces her fingers together and attempts a smile.
Is delighted to find herself successful.
-
Lark takes to coming down to the lab when she knows Piper is there, and they will work together, Lark busy putting together an Enhancement Crystal while Piper tinkers with a little of everything.
She holds an Oblivion Stone in her hand for the first time. It is remarkably cold and heavy and dangerous in her hand; sort of like holding a gun with a hair trigger. She aims it at a vial and attempts to channel energy through it without a staff, as she has seen Lark do, but is not able.
Lark sees her frown and smiles, saying, "It takes practice."
What else takes practice?
Piper grows, slowly, accustomed to the feel of her companion's skin on her own. The accidental touch that was not so 'accidental' to begin with, grazing shoulders as they move. She begins to laugh around Lark, begins to grin and be herself. But sometimes she will quiet and she will remember. Her team, her friends. But is Lark not her friend, as well?
Best friends forever.
Best.
Aerrow and Finn, reckless, disrespectful to her work. Stork, paranoid, terrified of everything. Junko, lazy and slow to catch on. Radarr, nothing but an animal, and the Condor, nothing but a junk heap ship. Piper must be happy, if only for Lark's sake, and she must be glad, or else she will feel hollow again. This was the right choice; she knows this to be true. Loggerhead turtles always gravitate towards home; so she has returned, back to where she always belonged.
Synthesis, fusion, fission, decomposition.
The whole world defined in terms scientifica.
-
Master Cyclonis sometimes levitates herself to the highest tier of the highest window in her great, dark palace, where she will sit to watch the rain fall, should it have come. The acidic drops of water streak the glass, and below, factories belch and sag and burn, the fire swirling, smoke rising to become mist to become nothing. Eventually, everything will become nothing. This is no water cycle, it is instead, a cycle of poison, and limestone deteriorates and yet the metal remains, albeit stained.
She will sometimes smile and she will sometimes frown, but she will always see only destruction in the making. The differentiating factor is whose.
One day she raised Piper with a Levitation Stone up with her, and the girl was squealing with delight at being able to fly without a skimmer beneath her body. They both perched themselves precariously on the high window ledge and stared out over the smoky horizon, fading and revealing itself in intermittent bursts.
"Sunsets," Lark announces, "Are always more beautiful here. More chemicals for the sun to reflect off of. A million shades of one color."
"I'll bet," Piper mumbles, agreeing. Her palms press themselves against the glass. She leaves frail handprints that quickly vanish.
The delightful taxonomy of desire: Lark's thin lips curling into a smile, reflected in every droplet of water burning down the window. The frail curve of her breasts and belly and hips, lifting and falling, topography of a woman's barely-developed body. And the burgeoning urge to grab and hold and keep holding.
The lighting comes down, Lark smiles, her face is lit up, everything is white, if only for a moment.
Piper grins; this is home.
Milliseconds, nanoseconds, wearing away, disappearing--
gone.
-
Skin grazing skin touching infinity, which is only a concept to begin with—and Darwin, he was wrong. This we know.
Man was made in the image of God, not twisted from the visage of an Ape. But if Man is God, then what is Woman, but a twisted visage of Man? And is she what is best in him or worst, or is she new altogether?
But this, this is wandering into the realms of dangerous religion, and there, Piper's mind cannot stray. She is not one for great philosophies; the words of Nietzsche and Goeth never sang to her; the musings of Socrates and Plato fell onto deaf ears.
She turned, rather, to the great calculations of Pythagoras and Aristotle, and the irrefutable truths of energy becoming mass and vice versa, and the grand terminology known to all, of genus and family and tree. She and Lark were alike this way, loathe to trust anything that could not be charged and graphed and described.
What is love but a burst of endorphins, temporary highs that cause elation and joy and lightheadedness? A chemical reaction within one's very brain, and not worth lingering on.
The definition of an atom is a unit of matter so small, it cannot be broken, not without some great force, not without going out as a supernova. Such is the nature of love, or, to be more specific, human love.
Consider this an experiment, and consider it kindly, for science is easily bruised:
Lark's brain moves in increments, calculations, each thought deliberate and planned to the last blaze of electricity, firing between synapses. She is the last great descendent of Prometheus himself, the Titan who embodied forethought—but look, she is straying into Mythos, and that will not stand.
She and Piper work side by side, touching each other's hands with familiarity, taking crystals from each other's fingers, feeling air and then nothing between each other's shoulders.
It is only natural then, what with all these endorphins and hormones and rushes of things-not-yet-explained hanging in the air, that Lark eventually reaches over, hand finding the bend of Piper's jaw, and turns her head, pressing their lips together softly, a sweet kiss that lasts and then bursts and then ends.
Air between flesh.
Electrons moving slower than usual.
And the remaining ideas of black widow spiders and praying mantises and the purpose of camouflage, they all disappear. Lark, meek for the first time in years, turns back to her work, but Piper remains straight up and standing, staring into nothing for a while, grinning.
They say nothing, but both smell the odor known when experiments prove successful, and hypotheses turn out correct.
She tasted like parchment and sunlight.
Hm.
She tasted like cave-darkness and crystal dust.
The synapses quiet, but only for so long.
-
The final days of war have arrived, and Piper is forced to churn out more creations with Lark. They are hardly lovers, but they are also no longer friends, so what are they? Lingering at an unsteady bridge between.
The thought that the crystals she makes will be used to kill never troubles Piper, not much. At night, she has Lark to curl against; the girls have taken to sleeping side by side and listening to the inhalation of oxygen, the exhalation of carbon dioxide, and feeling the imaginary plants grow, deep beneath the earth.
Few things shatter this existence of work and peace, the quiet repetitions, soft and rustic as the water cycle, but not nearly as polluted.
Oh. But.
Piper did once bump into the Dark Ace—only once.
She had been searching for Lark and had taken a wrong turn—the palace is a large one, it is easy to get lost—and had found her body pressed against the coldness of a metal chest plate and the heat of a human, all at once.
"What are you doing here?" He gives her a dark look and she backs away, her eyes dancing briefly at the mist her breath had left upon his armor. He terrifies her. How can they be… How can they both…?
Is she really, truly, wholly, on his side?
Piper glances around, but he saves her the trouble, growling,
"This corridor leads to the hangar bays. You've no business here. Now, Piper, if you don't mind." He places a firm hand on her shoulder and spins her around, before walking her to the other end of the hallway and seeing her around the bend.
She is left breathless, scared, adrenaline moving fast through her body, he reminded her of a predator; it took a few moments before she recalls they are of one species.
It is decided she will not tell Lark of this.
But it is food for thought. The skimmers of Cyclonia will rise and ride the southern wind to Atmosia, conducting bombing missions and raids on supply lines, and it sounds so natural, because Atmosians did the same thing. She has killed on both sides, killed for both sides, killed from both sides, and either way, it is been justified by love.
Later that night, on a whim, she looks up the word "love" in the dictionary that sits in Lark's room.
love, n. 1: the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration--in love: inspired by affection.
Inspired indeed.
-
In the end, it doesn't matter. She's gone. Aerrow, the others, they must hate her, and she prays, sometimes, to a God she knows does not exist, (even though nebulas sometimes spread out into crosses and the bodies of saints are often discovered in ancient stone tombs,) that she will not have to face them, none of them, ever again.
What will she say, what will she do? She will only repent because she will be in trouble. And it is for her sake, her own sake, and maybe even that of Lark's, that they cannot lose this war.
So she throws herself into work, diving into the blueprints with her friend-and-or-lover, and they rarely smile at each other during the day anymore. But at night, (or early morning,) when they are in bed and closing their eyes, invisible grins spread over tired lips.
And so it is and shall be and will.
The final victory does come, eventually. And it is discovered by Piper that the Storm Hawks fell apart soon after she left, her presence having been some sort of un-detected glue. The fact, picked up from Talon chatter, (--"wasn't hard to win after them Storm Hawks just went kapoot"--) stayed with her, festering.
They were not a threat, not for months, and yet, she was never told.
She catches up to Lark in the halls and grabs the pale and bony wrist.
"Why didn't you tell me? About them not staying together? I felt so guilty, for such a long time, and I'm sure you knew…" Her brow knitted itself into intricate knots of dark skin.
Lark shifts, and knows Piper is the only one who can make her feel guilty. "I didn't want you remembering. I wanted to be the only one you thought about that way.
"Now let go, Piper, there are things I need to do."
Piper does comply, she truly does, and her fingers unwind and Lark pulls away a little and becomes Master Cyclonis again, and the Master does frighten Piper a little, but she knows that later, Lark will return, Lark always does.
She feels confined, so confined, some birds just don't do well in captivity, and she finds herself missing the open air. She feels obligated to ask Lark to let her go and fly, but why should she ask, Lark is not her Master! Lark is her friend. And then some.
So she goes to the hangar bay and finds a skimmer and revs the engine. And soon she is airborne, remembering with muscle memory which buttons to push and levers to pull, and soon is flying, and the adrenaline is back, that beautiful rush—
How hard would it be to travel at the speed of light?
And sonic boom is not so far, not so far, not at all, push it a little more—
"Piper!!"
Brakes are pushed down and Piper turns her head to see Lark, furious, upon her own ride, face livid.
Later, back at the palace, when all have landed safely and gravity wins, and the swirl of the earth has finally subsided, Piper smiles shyly and laughs, "Why are you mad at me, Lark?"
And Lark snaps, "I won't have you flying around and putting yourself in danger like that, Piper. It won't stand."
"Lark!" Piper scoffs. "We're friends, you're not my mother or anything."
"I am the Master here, you do not question my authority—"
And then Lark realizes what she has said, but by then, or is it now, it is too late, because Piper has realized and Piper now knows, and she is storming back to the small rooms she never sleeps in anymore, and she is back on the dusty bed, back in fetal position.
Umbilical cord reattached and trimesters re-winded.
Black widow spiders returning.
Lark is, indeed, a taxonomist, and she knows just where to cut.
Later an apology is handed from pale hands to honey ones, and Piper is quick to forgive, and black widow spiders themselves must die eventually. But the seed has been planted, and as most seeds usually do, this one has begun to root.
Is Piper nothing but a trophy, she wonders, a stuffed face on a wall, for Lark to admire and love as a child loves its toys. She cannot run, it is too late, and where would she go, now that all of Atmos is under the Master's control?
But Lark has allowed, at least, for Piper to fly on a leash.
So Piper does. She turns and spins and cartwheels and searches for that renewal of energy. Does she still love Lark?
Yes, she does.
I do.
But, is this still home?
Ah.
And this, this she cannot, (will not,) answer. Not now.
Now, it is time to return.
-
Lark is in her throne room, curled up on her seat, when the Dark Ace approaches her.
"I bumped into the girl the other day." He is uneasy.
"Oh?"
"She was lost."
"And?"
"… What is her purpose? Did you bring her here to break apart the Storm Hawks? I'll admit, killing—"
"Not all is fair in love and war, Dark Ace." Lark smirks and glances out the windows, at the millions of pollutants the sun's final rays are reflecting off of, and she traces the imaginary contours of Piper's face with her dead hands. Linked parabolas and circles and spheres--
"No?" Dark Ace sighs and readies himself to be dismissed for the evening.
His Master is silent for a few moments. Then she stands and shrugs and asks, "Dark Ace, have you ever wanted desperately to rip something apart and see how it works, to refill it with something, to change and, and preserve? Make it yours?"
He turns somber and remembers someone—gone but never gone—and says yes, he understands.
Then the Master and Lark both laugh, all at once, and in her shriek is satisfaction of success.
-
Such is the work of a taxonomist, for whom life is defined in terms scientifica.
-
I'll be waiting.