Title: Theme from Harper's Sitcom

Theme from Harper's Sitcom
by L0C


//But I have not seen it now or ever
Women descending on escalators//

Harper awoke with a strangled sob, staring at his outstretched palm. He lay, motionless, in the dark, before he remembered to breathe. Oh yes, breathe. He kept forgetting to breathe. Forgot how to.

Or sometimes it would seem like there was a heavy weight on his chest, like he was drowning, and it was difficult to breathe. He had to stop and think about it, and force himself to do it. That was usually around the same times the nightmares would come.

They would never be the same nightmare, but always along the same lines. Harper was back on Earth, or back in a ship's dark slave hold, and there'd be fighting, or crying, or something. Things that didn't bother him at the time. But then he didn't know freedom, or friendship, or happiness. Somehow happiness made things worse.

//Coupled with this but also the same thing
Dolled up and spat out
So many definitions//

Harper didn't know how long he stayed lying there, staring at his hand. He couldn't bring himself to move. But there was no way he was going back to sleep now. Now there would only be the memories, and the faces, and the screaming.

So he sat up. He sat up on the edge of his bed and buried his face in his hands and wondered if he was supposed to cry. He wondered if other people would cry, given his situation. Wondered if he would have cried if he had been different.

He felt like he wanted to cry, but he couldn't. He felt like he should cry, but it would be a sell-out. It would go against everything he was. Or, rather, everything he wanted to be.

Harper wondered, fleetingly, if Dylan would ever cry after a dream like that. Or Tyr. Well. Definitely not Tyr. Tyr would probably not have dreams like that anyway. Dylan might, but he wouldn't cry. And he wouldn't tell anyone.

So Harper wouldn't tell. He wouldn't come off as a bigger nuisance than he already was. He couldn't bear that. He was either the nuisance, or the genius, or the genius that was a really big
nuisance. He'd love to be something else, but he never was. Better to go with the lesser of two evils.

He decided he'd go for a walk. Maybe a walk would keep the tears from coming, would keep the images of that face from coming back. The images of a small girl, her tear-streaked face, her hair whipping in the wind. Harper would think of other things.

//I remember what you tasted like
A gumdrop
Lemon lime//

Harper walked down the silent metal corridors, concentrating on his breathing. Tyr, when they sparred, always told him to remember to breathe.

Breathing didn't stop the images coming back. No amount of oxygen and nitrogen and other trace gases could drown the small girl with the tear-streaked face and the windblown hair. She was with him on Earth, and later, in the slave ships. She was with him the entire time, the one constant, never faltering. Harper would have liked to have thought that he loved her. He wasn't so sure though. When you loved someone you didn't abandon them to some horrible fate for your own freedom.

He couldn't even remember her name. He thought he should feel pretty bad about that, but it was hard to tell what he even felt about anything anyway. There was always an outside reaction, of course, he would act enraged or saddened or something characteristically Seamus Harper, but it didn't mean he actually felt it. It was like he was dead inside. Like he had died a long time ago.

It didn't really make any sense, the way he didn't really feel anything. It was inhuman. A young man like Harper, even given his past, should have emotional reactions to things. He thought he
should.

It would make sense if it were someone else. Like Tyr. But even Tyr must have his limits.

//And the numbers
on the rotary dial
Rewinding//

Harper stopped and looked out a window and turned his thoughts to Tyr, if only to keep the nameless girl and why he couldn't cry out of his mind.

Tyr looked the way Harper felt most of the time. The theory that the way you dressed and carried yourself was an outward manifestation of your inner being was complete bullshit to Harper. If Harper had his way, he would be a big, broody tough guy, he'd be able to fight for himself, he wouldn't take gaff from anyone.

But Harper didn't have his way. He never did. He was stuck in the body of a small, scrawny, albeit good looking ball of energy, the one everyone loved but secretly found a little irritating. Except Tyr, of course. Tyr just saw the irritation.

Now Harper got along fine with Tyr. They had their differences, but nothing huge. There was a time when he used to trust Tyr, used to be comfortable in his standings in the other man's eyes. But not lately. Not when he started to forget to breathe. When the images of the nameless girl with the windblown hair and the tear-streaked face began haunting his days and his nights.

//Cinnamon driver
Big sexy jerk//

Then he'd start to worry. And he'd get agitated, with Tyr around, this big reminder of what he always wanted to be and never was and what he always wanted but would never get. And that thought would scare him, that he could possibly have feelings for someone or something like Tyr, someone that could never love him back. Maybe no one would ever love him back. Except the girl with the tear-streaked face and windblown hair. And he had failed her.

Would Tyr have left her behind, he wondered? He imagined Tyr could not care about anyone that much, but then again, that could just be Harper's stilted view because he imagined no one could care about him that way. Now if her survival had been imperative to his survival, which is what it was beginning to look like, Tyr would not have left her. But if leaving had ensured his survival, at least for another few years, Tyr would have left. Just like Harper did.

Somewhere, though, deep down, Harper knew that wasn't the truth. He knew that he could have stayed with her and survived, in the slave holds, live a horrible pitiful existence and eventually die, just like he was destined to eventually die out here. He left because he had a chance to make his own life better, not because there was a better chance of survival.

Tyr would have done that too, right? Anyone would have. Right?

Is that what love is?

Harper leaned forward and stared intently into the darkness, focusing on some distant star, like he was about to happen upon a revelation, an epiphany.

He had left her behind for a better life and he would like to have thought he had found one. But what was that the truth? How long could Harper keep lying to himself? He liked to imagine that the girl with the windblown hair had forgiven him, that her painful existence and slow death had not been in vain, because he had benefited from it. Then, maybe, he could cry and mourn her.

Somehow he knew she hadn't forgiven him. That he wouldn't have forgiven, if it were him. She probably hated Harper. If she were still alive.

Then why couldn't he cry about that? He imagined anyone else, who still had a soul or a heart or whatever was needed to feel, would cry.

Harper leaned his hands against the wall, his brow creased with worry. What he needed, he figured, was for someone else to forgive him, to love him, to give him the better life he had left for. Then the nameless girl's death wouldn't be in vain, and her screams and face wouldn't haunt him day and night anymore.

And that person would have to be Tyr. He was everything Harper wanted to be and everything Harper wanted to have. Only Tyr's forgiveness and love would mean anything to him.

But that would never happen. Harper drew his hands away from the window, in realization, that he had yet again dreamed himself up an unrealistic scenario. Tyr was a bit of a mystery, but the one blatant thing was that Tyr looked out for Tyr, and Harper would never be in the picture.

Tyr wouldn't even give him the time of day. Let alone love him.

//Down in the murk
Of your mystery
That's me, swimming//

At this, Harper collapsed to where the wall met the floor and started to cry.

//Down in the water at the corner of your eye
That's me, swimming //



TBC in "A Plane Scraped Its Belly on a Sooty Yellow Moon"