Blue Bottled Belly Dancers and other fine myths
Part 11
Sometimes, you have to take everything you know, and everything you think you know, and throw it all away. Because you find out, that maybe, just maybe, it was all wrong.
When I wished my final wish, I didn’t know what would happen, I had purposely left it up to Heero to take it wherever he would. For all I knew he would make us equally dead. But, I didn’t think so.
So what happened? The world ended.
And then, it began again.
***
I still sat in the tub, my hand extended towards him. I waited a moment, thinking maybe a wish like that took more time. Nothing happened. "Well?"
He stared at me, still with that strange look, fear.
"What did you do?" I was starting to get a bit afraid myself. Hell, anything could have happened. For all I knew, I would walk out of the bathroom to find nothing there. "Come on Heero, this isn't funny and I'm not laughing. What did you do?"
His mouth opened and shut a few times, his eyes shining with unshed tears. "I don't know, I just made us equal. Wishes are granted in strange ways, I've never controlled them. They happen as I feel truly in my heart." He stopped and rolled his eyes, looking for a moment like he was trying to see his own mouth.
"Well that was weird, you've never... " I leaned over and peered at him. "That's odd."
"What?" He stood up, whirling around and glancing in the mirror. He didn't look any different, except perhaps, for the fact that his eyes had changed. His mouth hung open as he stared and stared at his reflection. I got out of the tub and stood behind him.
"They're beautiful. But what's it mean?"
He turned and I looked at his eyes more closely. They were softer, more human, and yet they still had that extra light to them, as if something stood inside him and peered out.
"What have you done Duo?"
"I don't know!" Then I looked at him in shock. He had never, ever, referred to me by my name before. Human, Master, slave, but never my name. What the hell was going on? "I know, try to be bigger then me."
It was a silly thing to ask, and yet I wondered what would happen. Then, he was larger than life and the same as he had been in the palace. I looked up at him, feeling a strange sense of ... home. "We can't be equal, can we?"
He shook his head, holding out his hands helplessly.
"Wait a minute, then why aren't you in your bottle?"
Both our heads turned towards the bottle where it still lay on the bathroom counter. He picked it up, holding it in his hands and then setting it down again, slowly, cautiously.
I picked up the bottle and glanced at him. "Well? What does it all mean? Why aren’t you back inside here?" I shook the bottle slightly, waving it about for a moment.
"Don’t!" He grabbed my arm, taking the bottle and carefully laying it back on the counter. "I don’t know what any of this means."
That’s when I looked into the mirror, and froze. "Oh my god... "
Heero turned and glanced at what had stolen my attention. "Holy shit!" He said, echoing my sentiments exactly.
My eyes had become like his. They had kept their amethyst coloring, they just seemed to have that same added something, that extra that humans didn’t have. I turned and gave him a glance. "Holy shit? Why are you talking so differently? And why are you using conjunctions all of a sudden? What did you do?"
"I made us equal, equal as I truly felt. That’s how wishing works. You always thought it was because we’re tricky, when really; it’s the human mind and the human heart that are the tricky things. A wish is granted with true desire."
"So, what you’re saying is, however you felt deep down inside, is whatever has happened?" I raised an eyebrow and turned from the mirror. "What did you truly feel Heero? What could make us equal?"
"Emotions."
"There’s more though, why else would my eyes change, and yours too. And you said my name, and... " I stopped talking, something hammering against my mind, trying to gain my attention. "Magic, you still have magic."
"Yes. The magic is a part of me, I don’t think I could stop that if I tried."
"But if you still have your magic... and we’re even..." I blinked a few times as I realized what I’d just said. "I don’t want to be in a bottle!" I wailed at the top of my lungs.
The bathroom mirror splintered, shattering into a million fragments that scattered across the sink. Heero grabbed the bottle and held it out of harms way, small cuts suddenly appearing on his back and shoulders as the glass struck him.
I fell onto the floor, arms crossed over my head to protect myself as the glass continued to rain around us. I could feel the tiny bites as the shattered mirror slashed into my skin. Then it quieted at last, a few faint tinkling sounds the only noise as the glass settled.
Slowly I looked up, and then looked at Heero where he too crouched on the floor, cradling the bottle in his arms. "What was that?"
"Your power." He said softly, standing up and brushing a few stray slivers of mirror from his arms.
I tilted my head, regarding him holding the bottle so tenderly. "If that breaks," I said gesturing at the bottle, "do you die or something?"
"I don’t know. It’s cursed so that it’s a part of me. All I know is that if something happens to it, it happens to me too."
"Oh." We stood across from each other, silent. I thought of something. "Give me the bottle for a moment Heero?"
He held it out, and I took it, rolling it in my hands, looking at it from all angles. Then, I very slowly and deliberately began to shove it inside my chest. I know that sounds odd, and it was. I don’t know where the idea came from either. It just suddenly hit me that the bottle was the key. It seemed as if some part of me I never knew was there, knew exactly what to do.
Heero watched in shock, as the last of its dark and fluted shape slipped between my ribs. I let out a shaky breath and met his eyes. "It’s mine now, just like you."
"What did you do!?" He yelled, crossing to my side and laying a hand over the smooth, unbroken skin of my chest.
I smiled at him. "I don’t know. It just seemed like the only thing to do." I could feel it inside of me, sitting just near my heart. Larger than life. "I think it’s killing me." I said, meeting his eyes.
"Fool. Idiot. There are other ways. What were you trying to do?"
I slid to the floor, clutching at my chest, feeling the thick glass surrounded by my blood and flesh. "I was trying to free you."
"I’m already free you fool. It was part of your last wish."
I started to chuckle weakly. "You never have given me enough information."
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