| Subject: Chapter 303 - Part 2 (16 and above) (end of chapter 303) |
Author:
KatherineG.
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Date Posted: Wednesday, October 03, 08:11:36am
In reply to:
KatherineG.
's message, "Dreams in the Dark - continues with chapter 289 >" on Monday, June 18, 06:55:17am
My dearest, most beloved Nikita,
I know that it will be at least a week after my departure before you receive this, and I hope, even then, that you'll be able to read it. I'm now writing on an airplane and will continue to jot down my thoughts as I can, until I board the ship. I only pray that I'm able to get the chance to mail this--or find someone who can--before it's time for me to go. I don't want you to have to wait until this makes it back from England to finally hear from me again.
As much as I hope to find a way to manage this, I do have one other warning for you first, my love. I know that my thoughts will be unbearably repetitive; all of them you've heard many times before. Still, I can't bear the idea of abandoning you without leaving some small part of me behind. I only wish that I had more of you than your previous, precious letters to bring with me.
I don't know where to begin in my thoughts or how to tell you everything that's in my soul. I've been trying to since so soon after we met and have yet to succeed. You are too beautiful, too precious, and too important to me to be able to record all I feel. I know you understand the limitations of words all too well, but I do hope that some of my love will make itself clear to you here.
I'm so filled with memories now, my beloved, like the very first time I saw you. You have no idea what that was like for me, caught in yet another day of my despair, as well as in the endless grind at the studio, only to look up and see you. You shine like an angel, my love--not just your light hair and eyes but the very sense of love and compassion which comes from your soul. It was an experience I'd never have believed to be possible.
To tell the truth, I was terrified. Never before had I met anyone who had such an immediate, profound effect on me. I'd never known it could happen. With Simone, we were acquaintances and distant friends first; I don't even clearly remember first meeting her. No one before that is even worth mentioning. But you stole and held my soul from the very first instant I laid eyes on you. Even worse, I wanted to beg you to never give it back, wanted you to cherish and protect it for eternity. I'd never felt such need for, such devotion to, anyone else. Nothing else I'll ever know could begin to come close.
I don't know how to even make you understand this moment, my one; as much as I cherish your love, you can't know what it was like. You may not have been my biggest fan, but you had certainly seen me before, knew of my existence--probably thought me less than enticing. All I knew of you was that Adrian's granddaughter would be arriving from Australia, was that you were all the family she had left. If anything, I imagined a naive young girl, slack-jawed, like most newcomers, at the reflective tinsel you had suddenly found; I'm not even certain that my thoughts went that far. To suddenly discover the most perfect angel on earth--again, not just your immense physical beauty but that soul I so desperately wanted to be able to touch--was far too intense and terrifying an experience. If you remember, I ran. If only I'd had some idea of just how much . . .
No. I can't come up with the right word for the sensation. I've been staring at this page for five minutes, discarding every idea--wishing I were a poet. But I only mimic and mouth the words of others on the screen. When I need to find them for myself, especially when faced with describing all the perfect joy you give me, I can't help but fall unforgivably short.
Let me go back to my early reactions to you, then, since I can't begin to describe what you've done for me since. Still, my whole, initial response to you was so immediately soul-deep and spiritual that I can't quite describe it, but it does have one odd trait to tell. It wasn't physical, wasn't at all sexual. Given your multiple charms, that's probably a first, from any man.
I don't want you to misunderstand that statement, however--as I know you're far too prone to question yourself. It certainly wasn't that you were less than attractive or that there was anything about you which didn't call to me. It was more that, initially, all I could think about--or, often, try absolutely futilely *not* to think about--was how absolutely moved I was by you. I think you could have easily convinced me to become a father figure or a permanent protector. Such physical distance would have become torturous for me within days, but it's a *slightly* better explanations of the purity of my feelings then. More than anything, I wanted to see you as the absolute happiest of women, whatever it took from me to make you so. That alone was all too confusing a reaction, was probably another reason I ran. Older man that I am and was, it had been many years (or, put more rightly, there had never been a time) since I felt so purely and wholly drawn to another soul.
This description has not begun to get across my feelings then, and I fear that my next one will make you forget even what I've tried to explain. While my first reaction to you was a desperate need to draw you close, to hold you protectively in my arms, it wasn't long before other emotions joined it. Probably, by about three days, if that long, into your visits to (and then your contract with) the studio, I was absolutely *aching* to hold you as far more than a simple consoler. Given the state I had been in before I met you, the trauma of finding Simone and the guilt of all I wasn't able to do for her, it was an almost painful, and utterly confounding, return to life. For one thing, I had never imagined that I could love again--or, indeed, that I would ever feel anything but hollowness. Still, only a little over a year after her death, you came into my life.
I don't think you can begin to understand what this means; you'd never been in love before (a fact which I selfishly cherish to this day). I know I won't be able to adequately explain it. One day, I was dead, was simple, animated flesh with no will or motive remaining. But the instant I saw you, I had a point in living, some reason to see the next day--although I was far too terrified to admit it. Soon after that, my body started to reawaken from its coma. Little by little, I began--entirely unconsciously, even unwillingly--to imagine being near you. But even this nearly drove me mad.
It started slowly, my love--never had any element of lust. First, it was a vision of you in my arms. Next, it was a gentle kiss. But, within days, my fantasies were getting out of control, my desires for you pornographic. There was nothing I didn't want to do with you, do for you. It started as an itch, became a need, grew into a hunger so powerful it threatened to break me. I wanted to devour you entirely--and yet I was absolutely, entirely terrified of harming you.
I've had to take a deep breath and a short break from my writing to pull myself together. I'm on a plane, after all, am far too easy to view. Already my fellow passengers seem to think me a little strange for writing with such constant fervor; one man asked me if I were writing my memoirs. I had to tell him "yes," just in hopes of keeping him off the scent. Lord knows where the gossip columns will go with that.
Now that I've pulled myself back together, let me try to express myself again. Nikita, my love, it is a *very* good thing that you were a virgin in those days. Not because I would have judged you harshly, had you not been--and certainly not because I would have ceased wanting you. My sole reason is because, had you been in any way experienced, I would very likely have dragged you off to a hotel, tied you to a bed, and had my *very* wicked way with you in every manner Imaginable, until the police finally came to arrest us both for the noise.
No, don't say what you're thinking. I remember, as well--all too perfectly well. I'm in public, my love. There are certain things I need to do my absolute best *not* to think about.
All right, I've tried to calm myself again. Believe me, when I tell you how much, and how deeply, you affect me. Every man should be even half so fortunate as myself.
Let me, quickly, turn to another time--if only to try to keep my sanity. I still, so vividly, remember kissing you for the first time. You were just so innocent and sweet. As much as part of me wanted to ravish you on the spot, another part felt only terror that I wasn't good enough, wasn't pure enough to deserve such pleasure. I so desperately wanted to guide you, wanted you to choose me as your teacher. By the time that first, brief encounter was over, all I knew was that I wanted you for life--and that I probably didn't deserve you at all.
This may sound silly to you, my love; you always seem to say so, in your self-effacing way. I spent so much time agonizing over my feelings for you, my desire for you; after that initial struggle, I had no doubts at all about my love. But I was reduced to a virgin myself in your presence, was aroused by the smallest things. Remember that this is your husband writing this, a man with far too much experience--mostly, useless, meaningless experience. You have no idea--and I *never* want you to know--how much such things can become no more than a simple matter of interlinking body parts, how selfish, empty, and even boring it can be. Novelty wears off quickly. Still, with you, I was lost. I had a hint of your calf, and I was almost painfully aroused. We would dance together, repeating dull, pointless words, on a bright, hot set, filled with far too many bored people minutely watching our every move and then thinking of nothing except whether the sound was captured correctly, and the only thing I could see, feel, or sense on earth was *you*. Not the character, not the right nuance for the picture, not whether I was hitting my marks--none of that mattered a damn. The only person *in existence* was you. I wouldn't have noticed if every other person on earth had disappeared.
I still feel this way, my love. I still see only you. As much, as dearly, as I want to see our child healthy and happy, as fiercely as I wish to defend and support our friends, there is nothing, *nothing*, else on this planet or beyond it which fully matters to me--or ever will--besides you and your happiness. As greedy as I am for your love, as much as I want to shut off the world and retire to bed with you for a lifetime, there is nothing else as important to me as your health and welfare. So long as you are safe and happy, there is some reason for the planets to keep spinning. Without that, nothing else on earth can ever hold a single moment of meaning.
I know I've said all of this before, could very well be boring you with my trite attempts at recording my love. I don't want this to sound like a goodbye, either--or, at least, not a permanent one. I still assure you that, if there is anything I can do, any bargain I can make with God, I certainly won't leave you alone. Still, I suppose that each day, out of every life, is fragile. I just want you to have my love for you written where you can see it, until I come back to you again.
Take care of yourself, my love. Be happy, as much as either of us can be, when we're apart. Know that I will not only do everything in my power to come back to you whole and well but will find methods which should be beyond human reach, if I can. I'm obsessed, greedy--and I will use all the power of those emotions, if necessary, as ugly as they can be, to ensure that we do see each other again. There is nothing, ever, which will begin to mean as much to me as you.
I want to write so much more than this, but the final plane is about to land, and my handwriting has been bad enough already. I pray you'll be able to make any of this out. It would be just my luck to pour out my entire heart and soul and find that you can't read a single word.
Your eternally-loving husband,
Michael
P.S. I'm just about to get on the ship, my love. I'll be leaving soon. I wish I could write more. Still, I'm enclosing the address where you can write me on a separate sheet. If anything happens to it, Helmut can probably get it for you again.
Write to me when you can. Know I love you. Stay safe. And please, more than anything, remember how absolutely vital you will always be to me. I love you.
M.
Dear God. She had had to stop at least three times due to the tears--but they were certainly happy ones. As many fears as she had, as many potential terrors as life held for them, she did remember the truth at last. This was all that mattered. And, as she kissed the sheets--hoping to transmit some sensation of her love to him an ocean away--she knew that, so long as it did, they would always be alright.
[End of Part 303]
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