noteful | Going to See Kim

Entry tags:

kim,
milliways

Going to See Kim

She takes the time to change back into her own clothes before she goes upstairs. Fairy tale dresses, she has decided, are very lovely in book illustrations, but rather less than practical for everyday wear.

She doesn't exactly rush.

She also stands outside her sister's room for a long moment, turning the key Kim left over and over in her hand.

And then she squares her shoulders, takes a deep breath, and knocks firmly on the door, two sharp raps that sound ridiculously loud to her, in the empty hallway.

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It doesn't take long.

There's the sound of footsteps moving swiftly, then that of a lock clicking back, and Kim pulls the door open.

"Meg. Hi."

Gray eyes search her sister's face.

"Is it over? Whatever it was?"

Meg doesn't make any move to go into the room.

She just nods.

"Yes. I'm back. And I'm fine. And it's over."

A subtle tension slips from the set of her shoulders. Kim nods back, and lets her breath sigh out.

"Okay."

After a second's awkward pause, she appears to realize something, and moves to one side of the door.

"Want to come in?"

Meg shrugs.

"I guess," she says.

She kind of just wants to go home, honestly.

But she comes into the room, a little ways.

There's not much to the room, honestly told; it's much like a standard hotel room in Toronto, for all that it's at the end of the universe. Kim steps back and sort of waves toward the three nondescript armchairs that stand over in the space across from the bed.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Meg glances over at the chairs, then crosses her arms across her chest and leans her head and shoulders against the wall.

Not an I'm-settling-in pose, but not an I'm-leaving-any-second-now pose, either.

(But a fairly guarded and defensive pose, it must be admitted.)

"I don't know."

"Okay."

Kim eschews the chairs as well in favor of perching on something that's probably either a tall side table or a low desk. With both hands set flat against the wood for balance and one foot swinging idly back and forth, she looks about six years younger, and even fairly comfortable.

"You weren't alone, were you? I mean, you mentioned a friend in your note..."

"There were five of us," Meg says. "Who went when I did.

"Parker was already there."

There had been five of them when they'd left for Fionavar, too -- herself and Jen and Kevin and Paul and Dave.

For all that the situation's not the same, she can't help but note the ironic whim of coincidence.

Kim doesn't say anything about it, though; she just nods.

"I hope you weren't too worried," Meg says, after a silence that's a little too long.

She's even reasonably certain she means that.

"I'm glad you left a note," Kim tells her.

There are so many other things she could say, but... no.

"I was going to try to find someone who'd heard of the place in a day or so, if you -- if there wasn't any news."

"Well, someone needed to know. In case."

"In case," she repeats -- but not without a hint of something that might be understanding.

"Right."

Kim's remembering Sol Laine, who'd lost a son.

Oh, Kevin.

Meg waits for a moment to see if Kim is going to say anything else.

And then she nods, and takes a step away from the wall.

"Anyway, I'm back. And I'm fine."

"I'm glad," Kim says, softly.

"Of both."

Another moment, and then Meg nods once and starts to leave.

What else is there to say?

Maybe not much, but...

"Are you sure you don't want to sit down for a little while?"

Kim can't keep the concern from her tone as she adds,

"You look kind of tired, Meg."

She doesn't sit down.

She doesn't even quite turn around.

But she stops, and maybe that's a start.

"I can't imagine why I would," she says, dry and sarcastic and very, very tired.

She's taken bigger risks, and when it comes down to it, there's only one way to find out.

"What happened?"

Meg turns, then.

"Why do you want to know?" she asks.

It's very neutral, and a little cautious.

"Because you're my sister," Kim says steadily, without hesitation. "And I love you. And I'm worried about you."

"Hmmmmm," says Meg.

"Sometimes," she says, and then stops.

"Sometimes," she says again, a little more firmly, "I feel like you only remember those things when it's convenient."

"...No," she says, after a second's shocked pause. "No, Meg."

"It's always true, and I always remember it."

A beat.

"That doesn't mean it's always easy. For either of us."

"And is that an excuse, or an explanation, that it's not easy?

"What you've done, in the past . . . what you're doing now, how am I supposed to see that as your being worried about me? Or do you only worry about me when I do things like go to help save a friend from a dragon?

"Why did it take that for you to get back in touch with me? It's been almost two months since the last time we talked, Kim. And both know we wouldn't be talking now if I hadn't gone to Ambergeldar.

"Every time . . . every time I let meyself think, hey, maybe . . . maybe this time around we'll . . . it just got worse. And worse. And I . . ."

"A dragon--?!"

The look on her face is one of horror, but she breaks off there, steadying herself.

"I've been here every week, Meg. Sometimes twice a week. Just in case there was, there would be something."

Kim pauses, then continues, more slowly,

"I can't explain, but what you told me before, that you think I need to do? I don't think I can, Meg. I don't think anything I can do is going to be what you need. Or enough. Every time I try, it all goes wrong. It's like you're setting tests for me, ones I can never pass."

"But that doesn't mean I don't love you, or that I didn't wish it was different."

Meg's eyes narrow.

(It probably doesn't help that Kim just threw her phrase about tests that can never be passed back at her.)

"I've been here a lot, Kim. I've never seen you. I've never gotten any word from you.

"Even if all you had you say was what you just told me . . . that would have been something.

"But instead, you do this over and over. You go away. You leave me to wonder -- hell, that note I left you is a damn more lot than you ever left me. And then you come back. And you tell me you want things to be different, but then you do it again. Over and over and over.

"You wish things were different? Stop leaving it for me to fix, and do something about it.

"And, yes, a dragon."

"I know you haven't." She squares her shoulders, and meets her sister's eyes.

"I haven't known what to say."

Three beats.

"This may sound stupid, but what kind of dragon?"

"Very big, blue, and named Norman."

"... he talked?"

"Not to me personally."

A pause.

"Anyway, he's hardly the point."

"No, I suppose he's not," she says quietly.

The way she's holding herself, the steadiness to both voice and stance, makes it look as if she's waiting for something.

Or perhaps bracing herself for it.

The problem is that as far as Meg can tell, that's what Kim always does. She waits for Meg to make the first move.

Meg's tired of having to do that.

So she doesn't.

Not this time.

The quiet draws out between them uncomfortably, but when Kim finally does break it, she doesn't sound rushed, as though she's trying to fill the void.

"... The thing is." She glances absently to one side, as if looking for something, then returns her attention to her sister.

"The thing is, Meg -- this isn't up to me. I'm not leaving it up to you to fix, though; that's not what's going on."

"It's that I can't think of anything I can say, any explanation I can give, that will be good enough for you. Whenever I've tried, you've refused to listen, or returned letters without reading them, or told me I was crazy, or that you wanted me to leave."

Tension shows in her body, but not in her tone. Kim just sounds tired, and resigned, and not a little sad.

"So when I waited instead for you to be ready, for it to be time, for -- I don't know, for something to be right -- then you blamed me for not trying, not pushing, not...."

She trails off there with a shrug.

"I'm not perfect, we both know that. I've done a lot of things for reasons that seemed right at the time that maybe I could have done differently, and that might have gone better if I had. But you could have done some things differently, too, Meg, you know?"

"I am not apologizing again for the fact that the story you told me that day at home scared the hell out of me, Kim. Nor do I believe that fearing you'd gone insane was irrational reaction at the time. That was a year and a half ago.

"I've listened to you say a lot in the intervening year and a half. I've listened to your friends say a lot.

"And apparently your idea of waiting for me to be ready is to move to a foreign country and not tell me until your apartment is practically empty? To abandon me -- terrified and trapped -- at the end of the universe when you knew I couldn't leave until I was ready? To come here week after week and not make any effort to get in touch with me when I had asked you to? To make every conversation, every communication, about you and what you felt and what you wanted and what you needed to do?"

Kim shakes her head. "I don't want you to apologize. I want you to understand why it made a difference, why it makes a difference, in what I've done since."

"I didn't tell you about moving to Glastonbury until I was certain it was really going to happen. They could have denied my entry visa, you know," she points out. "And then I kept delaying, because I wanted to tell you in person, and I wanted to do it right-- which obviously didn't work-- because I was afraid of how you'd react."

She tugs at a lock of white hair, then pushes it behind her ear. "I had to go, Meg. I can't change that."

"And I've just told you why I didn't say anything, what I was waiting for. As for making things all about me, don't you understand that's not what I was trying to do?! You'd already told me that I didn't get to assume anything at all about what you thought or felt, so how could I even try to explain anything except by putting it in terms of comparison so that you could see why I was thinking what I was!"

"Apparently, what I am to understand is that any opinion I have ever expressed must be the one I currently hold.

"And that I don't need to know what you think is important, or what you feel you have to do? I only need to know about things that matter much to you when you actually do them, not when you decide when you want to, or decide they matter, only when you know they're possible?

"I'm not going to say that I would have been thrilled with the news that you were moving to England, Kim. It's a long way. But I wasn't mad because you moved. I was mad because you lied about, for months.

"You have to let me react, not anticipate the reaction and try to avoid it.

"And whether it was what you were trying to do or not, it's what you did. As for knowing how I felt . . . at any point, you might have asked."

"I didn't lie about it. I know you don't see it that way, but I didn't lie about it, Meg."

She sighs in frustration.

"I have asked. I've told you time and time again that I'm interested, that I want to hear, that I'd like to know things, that I care, and you keep telling me you don't know if you want to tell me, you don't know if you can risk it, you don't know if you want to say. Gods, Meg, just-- I can deal with you rejecting me if I've got to, the Weaver knows I've lived with things just as awful, but don't stand there and say I'm not asking, that I don't care."

"'For what we have done, and for what we have failed to do,'" Meg says. "A lie of omission is still a lie."

And "gods" is blasphemy.

Meg sets the key on the closest table.

"I'm not rejecting you. I'm just too tired to go through all this again.

"I'm back. And I'm fine."

She starts for the door.

She shakes her head, but--

"I'm glad you're back. And I'm glad you're okay," Kim says to Meg's back.

"Parker is too, right?"

"She is, yes.

"Thank you for asking."

"I'm glad of that, too, then."

A beat.

"Good night, Meg."

"Good night."

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Going to See Kim

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