Warning: The pairing (Skinner/Swamp Thing) pretty much says it all. Run away quickly if it bothers you! Swamp Thing was created by Wein and Wrightson, but given new life by Alan Moore’s brilliant writing. Moore’s first issue “The Anatomy Lesson” takes place in Washington, and contains Swamp Thing’s discovery of his true nature. This fic begins immediately after his escape from the Sunderland building, and hopefully contains enough backstory about the rest. Liberties have been taken with the DC timeline in order to place the event during the time of Mulder’s disappearance in Season 8. Yeah, it’s exceptionally weird, but I really wanted to write it! Thanks to Phoebe, Sergeeva and Xanthe for encouragement, advice and much Walter-adoration. And for not being completely horrified . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Night Flowering The old man Sunderland is dead. Alec Holland would not have killed him, would not have lifted him from the ground in one mossy hand and strangled the life from his pathetic, withered body. Would not have left the broken corpse to lie in a crumpled pile within the towering walls of metal and glass that had been its home and sanctuary, before escaping into the night. Alec Holland would have been grateful for his accidental return to life, even if only through the malicious schemes and machinations of an old man with too much money and a desperate fear of death. But you see, I am not Alec Holland. Alec Holland was a doctor, a gentle man who believed in life, and growing things, and the green. When the bomb blast hit, and he was flung into the swamp, screaming, drenched in his own experimental fluids, he died that day. That is what the pile of neatly filed reports claim, and I believe them. The being that rose from the swamp was a monster, a thing of dripping weeds and slime that held the memories of Alec Holland, and believed that it had been transformed. For years it held onto this belief, held onto the memory of his murdered wife, and his experiments, and his desire to improve the world. But it was mistaken. There was never any humanity in it at all. Its form, its shape, that of a plant desperately trying to recreate the memory of flesh that existed only in its strange new consciousness. Alec Holland will never find a way to return to his human form, because Alec Holland is dead. Only I remain. Perhaps if I had not found those notes, the old man would still be alive. Perhaps. *** The storm outside seems to reach a peak of ferocity as I run out of the gleaming tower and into the night, but that bothers me not at all. The soft, warm summer rain seeps into my body and gives me a new surge of life, dispersing the last lingering frost of the cryonic storage tank that had held my unconscious self during those weeks of examination. Even if I had not learned my location from the experimental reports, I would have known Washington soon enough from its streets and landmarks. Alec came here twice, once as a teenager on a school bus trip, and once again for a biology conference in his later years. I have no real concern for time, but the flowering of night plants tells me it is early morning, and the streets are still and silent, washed clean of all but the most determined travellers. Despite my size and mass I make little noise as I pass, and I try to stay to the shadows, away from the artificial light that casts a pale, sickly parody of the sun, nothing that would fool a plant for an instant. Perhaps a drunk blinks a couple of times as the tree in front of him appears to shift and flow, maybe a cleaner returning home from his shift honks a horn at a too-tall shape in a mossy overcoat running across the road. I find that I do not care whether they have seen me or not. If they are even believed it will take some time before they bring out the dogs and the guns and the sirens that shatter the night with their screams. Alec loved Washington, the power and the history of it, but all I see now is an overgrowth of humanity, filled with white marble buildings, monumental gravestones to the death of grass and trees and birdlife. The green is part of me, singing through every root and leaf in my body, and I follow it, needing to find a respite from the endless blocks of earth suffocated by bitumen and tar and the desolate sobbings of trees planted in unnatural rows along the footpaths, stifled by slabs of concrete. It leads me to the Mall, where I am somewhat comforted by the large tracts of grass allowed to flourish, even though kept bound low, under tight rein. To my left passes the slim spike of the Washington Monument, a needle taller than the tallest tree that ever existed, a thing that speaks volumes about the arrogance of man. Still, I continue on, towards the Reflecting Pool, and when I find the water’s edge I throw myself into its shallowness, reaching out with every cell in my body, sucking in life. I run my fingers along the gloriously mossy bottom, and my senses are flooded with relief and pleasure. I lie there for a long while, fully immersed, pretending that it is where I belong. The rain is easing, and its last drops dimple the pond surface and spread little ripples above me. A new moon makes its first pale appearance in the sky. Idly, I wonder whether I could disperse myself into a million pieces along the length of the pool, to gather and regroup at will, transforming the pool into Washington’s own version of Loch Ness. Losing myself in the old dream of being able to live once more alongside humans in peace. Then I remember what I am and the wistfulness turns into anger. I am not one of them, and never have been! I should not wish to be accepted, or tolerated as some kind of freak in their midst. I emerge from the water with a roar, and set off at a run again, dripping pond weed and grass. In the song of the green I ask for somewhere to assuage my anger, and it leads me along the path of the unseen sun, across the river. The river is wide, and deep, but I swim across it easily, and deposit myself on the far bank. Then there are walls, and barbed wire, but I have lost none of my strength, and the tickle of an electrical current does me little harm, nor the ripping away of a few surface tendrils on sharp steel hooks. Despite my humanoid structure, I have no vital organs, as I have learned from my reading. All I have to fear is fire and poisons, and neither of them are in evidence here. I recognise where I am at once, and cannot help a short, bitter bark of laughter. Around me stretch miles and miles of living grass and trees, and rows of white markers celebrating dead human bodies - Arlington Cemetery. Indeed a place for rejoicing in my newfound status. More importantly, it feels safe here, under the half-clouded moon - a place where I can stay hidden for long enough to think about my new self and decide where it should take me. The air around me has started to turn chill, and the rain has finally stopped. I do not need sleep for the purposes of rest and recovery, but my consciousness brings with it the need for a resting phase, or I would go mad with constant thought. I thread my way through commemorations of the dead to a thickly wooded area as yet untenanted, and slip over a low chainlink barrier marked ‘No Public Access’. I find a grassy bed between two ancient oaks, and slip into the green. *** I dream of Linda. She has on a white wedding dress, and a neat black bullet hole through her forehead, blood ruining the careful set of her blond hair. In my imaginings I draw her cold, dead body down into the depths of the swamp and she is transformed into something just like me, something that remembers Linda yet is not her. Would I still love her then? Would the memory that is Alec love the memory that is Linda? But then, love is a human emotion. I should not think of these things. I am connected to the earth, and through it everything that roots and grows and lives and dies in it. Yet all I feel is loneliness. I wake to the sound of birds, with the dew wet on my cheeks. *** I spend the morning roaming the tiny wooded pocket of Arlington, letting the damp and earth soothe me for a little while into forgetfulness. It is cool and dark amongst the trees, and a part of me wants to lie there and surrender, root myself into the soil and become a part of it. Let the plant that I was and am take over and bury this unasked-for consciousness forever. I am not Alec - the thought batters at me repeatedly - and yet there is no denying there must be some humanity at work in me. There is nothing else in the green that thinks and feels as I do; only a low hum of need that knows enough to turn its face to the sun, to draw water from the driest ground, to find some way to live in the harshest climates. The plant in me wants unquestionably to live - it is the unsatisfied consciousness that questions whether the struggle is worthwhile. I see the man in the early afternoon, through the trees, across the gravelled pathway that divides the unused patch of woodland from the rows of headstones. The grounds of the cemetery are vast, and much of it to be sought only by those who know exactly where to look. He’s the only human being I’ve seen the entire day, apart from the drivers of a couple of ground vehicles that pollute the air with their passing. I stand hidden in the grove of trees, and watch him. He’s standing in front of a headstone, one of the white markers that looks exactly like every other white marker in the field. As interchangeable as the lives they represent. Yet to the man, this particular one somehow means something different from the rest. He bends down to place something on the grave site, and I recognise it instantly as a bunch of flowers, red poppies and white carnations and the purple-blue of irises. Dead flowers. Slaughtered at their peak of beauty so that this man can waste them on a long-dead human corpse. The thought stirs a sudden, violent anger in me, and I emerge from the trees bellowing like a wounded bull. I am far enough away that he has ample time to react. I see the glint of his glasses in the bright sunlight as he turns to face me, see him reach under the black suit jacket he is wearing despite the heat. He shouts something and points the gun at me, but he holds nothing I might fear. Three bullets strike me, ripping uselessly through my mossy chest even as I tackle him to the ground. He struggles to the best of his ability but his kicks find no vulnerability, he hands grasp and tear at my surface but damage nothing. I throw him to one side and he strikes his head on a headstone and lies still, his glasses askew on his face. For a moment I am satisfied enough to leave him there, for the other humans to find and mend and take to safety. My rage has died as quickly as it had come, and I cannot find it in me to kill again over a handful of dead plants. But then I see my opportunity. What better way to understand than to examine? Just as the old man employed Woodrue to carve and weigh and measure my plant-like body and discover its truths, so might I use this man’s mind to discover what the conscious, nominally human, part of me might hold. Despite my bitterness, or perhaps because of it, I find the thought amusing. Without further reflection I throw the limp body over my shoulders and retreat to my little corner of the woods. The first words out of his mouth when he regains consciousness are ‘what’ followed by ‘where’, and then ‘what’ again. His mouth closes and I see his eyes widen in fear and shock behind the glasses that I’ve gently slipped back in place. I’m left to mentally complete the sentence ‘in god’s name are you?’. I know exactly what he sees; a seven-foot tall plant in the shape of a man, dripping with grass and fern; hooded red/black eyes and an angled bridge of a nose, leading back to a recessed mouth. He stares with that utter look of disbelief that indicates his mind is not quite processing what his eyes insist he is seeing. For a moment I almost pity him. His next reaction is to flee, but I had anticipated that easily enough. I’ve laid him out as neatly as a corpse on a dissecting table, reaching deeply into the green to coax the tree roots and undergrowth to grow and curl themselves about his arms and legs, holding him fast. The ground under him is soft, and still a little damp. He struggles a little, testing the strength of his bonds, and I see in his eyes a fleeting panic he does not allow to show in the rest of his face. Only the tight clench of his jaw betrays him. He’s a fine specimen, this one I have felled from the forest of humanity. I am reminded of one of the stately trees that grace the cemetery - tall and broad, with a solidity that grows rather than diminishing with each passing year. His dark eyes are the colour of peat moss, rich in depth and emotion, his features carved strong and blunt. Skin the colour of polished hickory. Only the glasses and the smooth expanse of scalp edged with fine greying hair show his true age to be somewhere in the middle of life. Alec Holland was born in 1950. If he had lived, he would be around the same age this man is now. The fact of this coincidence comforts me, gives me hope that I may yet find the key to my humanity, if indeed it exists. “Be still,” I command him. The relief of simple understanding crosses his face, and he does actually stop straining for a moment against the roots that hold him in place. I expect a flood of words, of questions, but instead the stillness in him extends all the way to speech. He lies there quietly, his eyes re-evaluating me, trying to decide whether I am not in fact a monster, but instead merely a grotesquely misshapen man. I wish I knew the true answer myself. I let the silence draw out between us, unsure of where to begin. I almost wish that he would begin asking all the obvious questions, give me some footing on which to begin my experiment. Instead, I stare at him as if by sight alone I can understand what it is to be human. I reach out a tentative hand and touch the side of his face, trailing tendrils across the skin, trying to remember what it was like for Alec, inside a casing of flesh and blood. He tenses, but his carefully dispassionate features show no revulsion. I take my hand away and stare at him a while longer. Finally, he clears his throat a little and says, low and soft, “Why?” If I began telling him my story, I might never stop. Instead, I evade. “I might ask the same of you. Wasting flowers on a patch of earth and a white stone.” His eyes darken, and I see that despite the knowledge that he is trapped, and helpless, the capacity for anger has not been lost. Indeed, I can empathise with that feeling. “It was not waste,” he snaps. “It was remembrance. The way the living respect and honour the dead. If you can understand such a thing.” I think of Linda and for a moment I want to strike him, but I quell it with some effort. “Yes, I understand,” I say. “But your offering is of little use to him where he lies now.” Most likely he senses my anger; in any event he does not see fit to argue. I continue to question him. “So who is this one who you seek to honour with dead petals?” For a moment it looks as though he will not answer. Then he fixes me with a glare and asks, “What are you?” I note that he said ‘what’ and not ‘who’. I think that should be his answer. “A ghost,” I tell him. “The ghost of Alec Holland.” “A ghost,” he repeats, and perhaps he finds some comfort in that thought. He pauses, and his eyes turn inward, reflective. “His name was Richard Johnson,” he says at last. “Ricky. He would have been 50 today.” “A good friend.” He hesitates. “Less,” he says, “and more. A... brother.” I hear many unspoken truths behind that brief description, and can only guess at their depths. “Tell me about him.” His eyes widen in disbelief. “What? Why?” “Because I ask you. Because he is dead, yet you remember him.” He struggles again in his bonds, but it is evident even to him that it will achieve nothing. I sit on the grass, and wait, untouched by his anger, his helplessness. Dissection is never easy on the subject. Finally he sighs, and begins to speak, not meeting my eyes. “Ricky was in Vietnam with me. The war,” he begins, looking over to see if I understand the event he means. It reminds me that I am still as much of a mystery to him as he is to me. “Yes. Alec was in college. He missed the draft,” I offer, and it seems to reassure him. “Yeah, well, I actually enlisted,” he says, grimacing. He tells me about a war fought in the jungle, all wet and dripping and green. Machine gun fire amidst the dirt and tropical heat. Hardened men and half-grown boys crawling though the darkness, with the screaming and the bodies and the blood. And in the sweat and terror of it all, friendships made to last a lifetime, or beyond death. Despite himself, he smiles a little as he talks about his fallen comrade. I think briefly of two saplings entwined together, straining towards the pale light. “And you have a name too, I presume?” The look of disbelief in his eyes again. “Skinner. Walter.” One hand flexes open within its bond, then curls again. “I won’t shake your hand,” he adds dryly. I take his point and ask the trees and plants to loosen their hold on his wrists, while retaining the ankle holds. He sits up and rubs at his wrists a little before bracing them behind him for support. The day is warm and humid, and a little awkwardly, he shrugs off his damp jacket onto the grass. “How appropriate,” I say. His name. Skinner. A person to strip a thing of its surface and reveal the bleeding, trembling reality beneath. My cryptic comment does nothing to lessen the dazed look in his eyes as he takes me in all over again from his new perspective. He reaches out a shaky hand towards me, and I do not take it, but allow him to feel the surface of my arm, mottled with cool moss and lichen and veined with root-like structures. His touch is warm, and gentle, and for a moment I am reminded of Abby, fearless in her embraces. “This is...” he shakes his head a little, and reaches out to touch again, furiously processing the sensations. “Mulder would have loved this.” I question him a little further, making no secret of my ignorance, and he tells me a tale almost as strange as my own. It would seem that I would fit quite nicely into the definition of an ‘X-file’, indeed. His initial fear has passed, and a part of him seems willing to accept the situation, biding his time until the threat I present can be more thoroughly assessed. All the power he once held - his gun, his phone, all the skilfully man-wrought things of metal, plastic and leather I have removed and placed well out of his reach. I have taken him from his own world by force, and there is no reason he should speak freely to me, yet he does. Perhaps it is easier to talk of monsters with monsters. Caught up in my own troubles, I had forgotten the profusion of other oddities in the world. The thought is strangely comforting, making me feel somewhat less of an outcast. I take the measure of him as he talks, his voice a deep, pleasant rumble. I push him a little further, and he begins to tell me hesitantly of darker things, of aliens and conspiracies, glancing at me occasionally as though waiting for a display of scepticism. As though I would be one to make such judgement! Like Alec, he is in the blind employ of the government, caught up in machinations he barely understands. He is careful not to reveal too much, a caution obviously born of experience, but the outline I receive is intriguing enough. I do not push him along lines he does not want to follow, and this seems to reassure him. There is an intensity to his face when he talks of his missing Agent Mulder and the sum of his work, not the madness of obsession, but something a little softer, yet more powerful still. The purity of faith. Alec believed in his work too, to the point of death. If Skinner is telling the truth, and I think he would not be the sort of man to embellish or imagine such a story, it sounds likely his involvement may well prove fatal to him, too. At some point he stops, and looks abashed. “I don’t know why you want to know all of this.” But there seems a relief in him at having spoken of it, all the same. By my estimation he is a man more accustomed to silence. The rasp in his voice reminds me of his human needs, and I coax some water up through the ground root system to pool in my cupped hands, offering them to him. He takes a very cautious sip, then takes my hands in his and guides them to his mouth to drink more deeply. “Thanks,” he murmurs afterwards. He looks uncomfortable again, shifting in his restraints. The awe has begun to fade and he is now wondering exactly what I intend with him. I take a gamble and release him, whispering my gratitude into the green. He tests the circulation in his ankles, though the restraints have been gentle enough, then stands and stretches. I stay close by, not wanting him to lose him yet. In the human world he would be a tall man, yet in my reshaped form I am fully a head taller and considerably broader. If this intimidates him, he doesn’t show it, nor does he make any immediate move to flee. The sun is low in the sky. I have kept him two hours - three? Long enough to learn everything about him, and nothing. “I apologise, Walter Skinner,” I say. “I have treated you no better than I was treated. I wanted to remember what it was to be human, to live amongst other humans in the world. I had hoped that somehow you would be able to show me what I am.” “And what is that?” The curiosity burns in his eyes, and I know he is as fascinated with me as I am with him, his heart that beats as my proxy does not, the red blood that flows in his veins. I begin to tell the story from the beginning, and he listens intently. As I describe Alec’s background and his work, he takes off his shoes and socks, and sits back down on the grass, digging his toes into the damp, inviting me to do the same. I talk about the day of Alec’s death, and the long trail of events that led to my resurrection within a cold, glass coffin in downtown Washington. When I describe the content of the laboratory reports, how they proved that I was not human at all, but merely plant-life shaped into human form and given a memory and a consciousness, he nods a little, but says nothing. “So there is nothing human in me after all,” I explain. “Nothing to bleed or break. I can feel pain, but only as great wrongness in the body, as a plant does. The memories I have aren’t even mine. I don’t know who or what I am.” Despair overwhelms me, the great rush of hopelessness I have been successfully avoiding ever since I fled the body in the skyscraper, and I put my head in my hands. To my surprise, he edges a little closer beside me, knees drawn up to his chest. During the course of my story he has discarded the constricting tie and loosened his shirt collar, and his shirtsleeves are rolled back to show the wrists. No longer an adversary, though not quite a friend. He clasps his hands around one knee. “Does it matter?” he asks softly. That provokes a sudden flare of rage, and I snarl something in reply. “Everything changes,” he says calmly. “So you’re not Alec. The things you feel and think were shaped by his experiences, but everything you’ve thought and done since then has been your own. There’s no way of knowing who Alec might have been if he’d lived, but he wouldn’t be the same man who fell into the swamp. And having his inheritance doesn’t make you any less you. Whatever that is,” he adds. I turn to glare at him, but the half-smile on his face defuses my anger somewhat. I think it’s the closest to his true self that I’ve seen so far. “Human enough, anyway,” he points out. “I’ve never met a plant that got annoyed so easily.” I’m forced to laugh, and he gives me that mildly incredulous look again. It feels good to just sit, and talk, warmed a little by the late afternoon sun that filters through the trees. Talking to a human that doesn’t want to kill me, or run from me, or take me apart on a cold metal table to discover my body’s secrets. So few like that. I think of Abby, and Matt Cable, and Linda. Alec’s family; my family now. Alec would have missed Linda. I miss her. I tell him then about Linda, about her murder, how I rose from the swamp transformed to find not only my old self, Alec’s self, gone, but Linda as well. The lonely days and nights that followed as I roamed the bayou, friendless save for the quiet murmur of the green, which I had not yet learned to hear. Skinner tells me about his wife, Sharon, and his story eerily echoes my own. Both of us left alone to face a world that had changed forever. Then I found Abby, the niece of another old man who would trade my life for his, and she became my confidante, my friend. Skinner keeps his silence on this matter, but I remember the way his face changed when he spoke of Agent Mulder, and I wonder whether he knows it himself. That he would sacrifice anything to have him back. We speak of love, and loss, and watch the sunset framed by trees. Skinner seems as comfortable with silence as with speech, but I know that soon he will collect his things and slip back into the world that calls him. I think to offer him more water before his journey, and this time he drinks from my hands without hesitation, cupping them with his own. He wants to leave, but his fascination draws him back to my fingers, and he looks up at me, his eyes questioning. I allow him to explore a little further, and he has the grace to murmur an apology as he sees the traces of powder on my surface marking a bullet’s passage, feeling the slight indent still healing, before moving on. He curls his fingers in the fern and grass that cover my upper body, the vines that take the place of sinew in my arms. “Flowers...” he says in wonder as his fingers find the tiny yellow-green sprigs amidst a mossy patch. It is summer, after all. I am seized with an equal desire to touch, to pretend at a reality that was never mine to begin with. To discover, perhaps, which parts of humanity are bound in the flesh. I reach out with large hands to draw his part-unbuttoned shirt over his head, almost dislodging his glasses in the process. He looks startled, but bears it with grace as I run fingers over lightly tanned skin, satiny in texture, pulsing with blood and heat, fine grey-black hair that curls like wire on his chest and arms. I am lost in the sheer human warmth and wonder of him. I run my fingers along one of the smooth white gashes that mar the skin on his belly, and search his face for answers. “I’ve been dead, too,” he says, his voice a low rasp. I think of the two weeks in the cryochest, and wonder if his death was as cold as my own. I am only half-done with my exploration of his torso, the muscles and ridges of it, when a sudden flush of blood rises to his face, and he tries to turn away, mumbling apologies, but I refuse to let him. As Alec, I understand his embarrassment, but in my transformed self, I cannot share it. His arousal is as natural as sleep, as food, as tears, and as fascinating as the other things I no longer experience as before. In spring I bud and bloom as the earth does, and there is a quiet pleasure as the bees come and go, but nothing resembling the sharp flame and flare of human desire. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “It’s... it’s been a while... since anyone...” Alec Holland was a scientist, delighting in the observation of the natural world. My mind retains the same pleasure as I reach lower to cup his blossoming erection in my hand, rest the other on the opposite curve of black cloth. I enjoy the hiss of breath through slightly parted lips, even as his hands come up to push mine away. His face is a study in conflict. “God, I don’t believe this,” he says, but doesn’t move, doesn’t take the steps that separate him from his freedom. “I didn’t know you... could want...” “I can’t, Walter Skinner. I can function as a human can, but without feeling. Only through you, if you will let me.” I give him a moment to let that trickle through his consciousness, and then reach out a hand. He flinches, but all I touch are his glasses, folding them and adding them to the small pile containing his belongings. He blinks as his eyes struggle to adjust in the fading light. “A dream only, if that’s what you want it to be.” I’m almost positive Alec Holland would never have done this, either. That pleases me. He sighs heavily and I don’t know how to interpret it, but I step forward and encircle him in my arms. He relaxes a little and lays his head against my chest, his breathing soft and slow. “I was always afraid,” he says, his fingers curled in my chest, and I know from the tone of his voice he is back again in the dripping, glistening jungle, earning the scars I traced on his belly, “Of dreams. Of dying. Of what might happen after death. Of extreme possibilities.” He lets out a short exhaled breath of amusement, and looks up at me, and for the first time I see the depth of his eyes, the vulnerability there. “I guess this is about as extreme as it gets.” I meet his gaze with my own and await his decision with the patience of moss beneath winter snow. The uncertainty in his expression battles with something resembling need, not a desire only of the body but something deeper born of loneliness and pain. Both as achingly familiar to me as they are to him, and I think he knows, and understands. The air around us seems to hold its breath as he finally wraps his arms around me, returning my embrace. “Alive... so green,” he murmurs, pressing himself against me, and his eyes are closed. A strange, overpowering exhilaration rushes through me at the promise of his words, like spring thaw. I fumble awkwardly with his belt, and his hands move to help me, slipping the layers off over bare feet with a glide and double step. As he stands there, naked, backlit and framed by trees, I see Adam once again in the garden, innocent of sin. A bed of grass is made a little more comfortable by my persuasion, and I gently push him back into its welcoming softness. I grasp him by the root, and he gasps, his eyes closing once again. I revel in the sight of him, taking his pleasure as my own. After a little while of stroking in a steady rhythm, I release him, and gently push his knees up towards his chest, wanting a deeper connection, wanting to be in him, part of him. His eyes flicker open with uncertainty, hold my gaze for an instant, then close again as he surrenders. The promise of trust touches me as much as his pleasure, perhaps even more. I open him up gently with fingers carrying their own lubrication, moist and slippery as the pitcher plant, transferring it to his body. He instinctively pulls away from the first intrusions, but slowly the muscles relax and his grimaces of discomfort fade. I take him in my hand again, and direct the internal movement of fluid to the fibrous network that makes up my own poor, unfeeling replication, making it grow and swell to size. I enter him, slowly, till we are completely joined, stem and flower. “Oh, God,” he whispers, but says no more as I begin to rock slowly inside of him, wanting the pleasure for him that I cannot have. The sight of him is beautiful. A light sheen of sweat covers his forehead, and his hands clutch wildly at the long grass beneath us. The low, hoarse sounds he makes are animal, brutal, alive, as the muscles ripple across his chest and arms. Undergoing his own transformation from calm, rational man to a creature knowing only need and the urgency of fulfilment. I reach for his hand to curl it around himself, briefly covering it with my own as I quicken my pace a little. His face is flushed and his breathing ragged and uneven. He reaches orgasm with a wordless cry, half-stifled in his throat, back arched with the force of his flowering, and in that moment my bitterness is burnt away. In that brief space I feel connected not only to him, but to the human world through him, just as I am joined to the green. I withdraw from his body, and gather him in my arms as I lie beside him. His passion expended, he looks a little lost, out of place in the green, fallen from grace. I realise that I have selfishly stayed him from his work, his home, his bed. “Thank you, Walter Skinner,” I whisper, and hold him a little tighter, already feeling the moment of connection wither and die. It is quite dark now, but there is a little ambient light from the cultivated areas of the cemetery and the bright spotlights of the barbed fence, enough for my eyes. He murmurs something indistinguishable as though caught in a dream from which he is unwilling to wake. I kiss him softly, for the first and only time, on the forehead, leaving a faint trace of dampness. Then I leave him on the bed of grass and move his things where he will easily find them when it comes time. It is not at all cold, but I cover him with his suit jacket against the chill of early morning, if he should sleep that long. As for me, I know now where I must go. To find the other half of my heritage, I must go home. To Louisiana, and the swamp, its insects, and the all-encompassing humidity. There I will sink into the green and listen as it whispers its secrets to me. Only then can I decide whether I can straddle the worlds, or choose to lose myself in one forever. I have a long journey ahead of me of travelling nights, and it would be kinder to leave Skinner some sliver of doubt to cling to, if he should need it in the morning. I break out of the sheltered wood and cross the gravelled road to the beginning of the gravestones. The scattered lights allow me to make out the one at which I first found Skinner. The tri-colour posy lies scattered to one side, the flowers already half-wilted. I collect them together and read the stark inscription etched on stone: Richard Ernest Johnson PFC US Marine Corps 3 Aug 1951 - 21 Nov 1970. Thirty years dead, but still alive in the heart of one man. Smiling, I touch the flowers to the earth before the grave, calling on their dying strength to take root and grow, and in the night air, they begin to bloom again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12th Feb 2002 Feedback