From: char@chaffin.com   
      
   NO ARCHIVE   
      
      
      
   I'LL KNOW MY LOVE   
   By Char Chaffin   
   MSR, R, Vignette, some AU, some angst   
      
   Spoilers:  "Pilot"   
      
   Disclaimer:  Clones on Loan   
      
   Dedication:  To Rita, who asked for romance.  It's been my pleasure   
   and honor to write it for her!   
      
      
   "I'll Know My Love"   
      
      
      
   I'll know my love, of this I'm sure.   
      
   In my world of uncertainty, of willing solitude, I'll know my love   
   the first time I see her, touch her hand.  Her smile will be as   
   familiar to me as the air that I breathe.  Her voice will be the   
   voice I've heard in my dreams, on those rare occasions when sleep   
   hasn't eluded me.  I'll stand before her as a supplicant, needing to   
   learn all about her, those small things that I haven't already   
   sensed.  The shape of her.  The color of her eyes, her hair; the   
   scent of her.   
      
   Will she recognize me?  I'd like to think so, but perhaps not at   
   first.  I can live with that. It's a moot point, you see... because   
   I'll know my love.   
      
   ****************   
      
   I'm a loner by choice and by circumstance, a man who owns little of   
   emotional value and who has learned to accept and to live with less.   
   My family - what few I claim - has never understood me.  That's not   
   really a problem since I rarely understand myself. Raised in cold   
   comfort, rich in material possessions but dirt-poor when it came to   
   familial affection... my childhood was a painful twist that I'd   
   sooner have avoided completely.  I lost my family in one fell swoop   
   the night my younger sister left me.  I've searched for her for   
   years, refusing to give up on the smidgen of certainty that she still   
   lives, still waits for me to rescue her.   
      
   I am under no illusions as to what to expect of my sister's frame of   
   mind when I at last locate her.  I expect she won't remember me.  It   
   doesn't matter.  Once I find her, a part of me will finally heal.   
   Only a part, however... for the other wounds that I've been   
   accumulating over these many years will only be soothed by one   
   person... and I'll know her when I see her.   
      
   *******************   
      
   I've grown to the age I am without strong ties to friends or lovers.   
   I've had both; I've lost both.  They didn't understand me, either.   
   What friends I've made have found that friendship with me has meant   
   dealing with my peculiarities.  Most of them couldn't handle it, so   
   they've gradually stopped calling me.  Of those friends, I have a few   
   left, fellow oddities like myself, as solitary in their own right as   
   I am.  I find myself grateful for their frequent presence in my life,   
   even as the hermit that dwells inside me sometimes longs for the   
   quiet and solitude of my self-imposed cave.   
      
   Women have smiled on me, seeing the outward and never really   
   attempting to decipher the inward.  They've taken me and I have   
   allowed myself to be taken, understanding that I required the   
   experience in order to mature, to strengthen my inner resolve.  Some   
   of them hurt me; a necessary evil, unfortunately.  I once took an   
   older lover, a woman who taught me technique if not much else.  I   
   once had a lover my own age, calculating and avaricious, wanting not   
   so much to love me as to swallow me in one painful bite and then spit   
   out the used husk, rendering me unfit for further female   
   consumption.   
      
   I was unfaithful, to first one woman and then the other, as I found   
   myself searching for some kind of balance between two such opposite   
   poles.  I later discovered that neither cared all that much about my   
   fidelity, or lack thereof.   
      
   I learned a great deal, even from the most cruel of them.  I learned   
   how to recognize the woman who will mean the sum total of the world   
   to me.  So, in a way, I must thank those past lovers regardless of   
   how badly they may have scarred me.  Because of their careless   
   handling, I'll know my love when she comes to me.   
      
      
   ****************   
      
   I lean back on my sofa, another, possibly sleepless night beginning,   
   and I think about what I've done so far in my life, the accolades as   
   well as the defeats.  All I have endured, bad or good, has helped to   
   mold me into who I am this moment in my life.   For all of the   
   important things, the tasks that have given me professional prestige   
   and fulfillment, still I sit and I wait for the day I can look up and   
   see her, smile at her, at last speak to her.  I have no real sense of   
   when it will happen; I only accept that it will.   
      
   I'll know my love... but will she know me?   
      
   Will she look into my eyes and see her future there, understanding   
   with perfect clarity that it's been ordained, fated, for more years   
   than either of us could count?  Will she see the need I have, to bond   
   with someone who can relate to me on more than a few select levels;   
   will she feel the same way?  Will she come to me openly, freely and   
   joyously, uncaring of the outer and only seeking the inner me?   
      
   Yes.  I want to believe so many things, and this is one of them.   
      
   *********************   
      
   A friend once asked me if I thought we'd all lived before, and   
   whether reincarnation was a matter of fact for 'someone like me.'   
   Oh, he meant it in a kind way, I suppose.  Because he knew my   
   fascination with the existence of life on worlds other than earth, he   
   also labeled me as wildly open to any and all extreme possibilities.   
   He knew a small amount of my past as well... the sister who'd been   
   taken when I was still a vulnerable young boy too weak and too   
   frightened to find a way of saving her.  But I carried my guilt close   
   to my heart, so he never knew how viciously I blamed myself.   
      
   I considered his question carefully.  Of course, I'd have liked   
   nothing better than to accept that our souls remain after physical   
   death, to be scattered elsewhere.  I'd spent time imagining what I   
   would most deserve to return as, and usually my imaginings were   
   rarely human.  Would I be reincarnated as a feline, perhaps a barn   
   cat with only a lowing bovine or two as company, finding sparse   
   warmth from the winter harshness in a loose bale of hay?  Would I   
   return as a dog, perhaps a hungry mongrel roaming the streets in   
   search of that one boot that would walk beside me in camaraderie   
   instead of kicking me into the gutter where all mongrels belonged?   
   Even in my thoughts, even back then, I was less than kind to myself.   
      
   It's funny how I never thought beyond the animal and into the human   
   realm.  Not in the past when I was still beating myself up over   
   losing my sister... not when my family was still, in their own vague   
   way, placing residual blame on me.   
      
   Ask me what I now believe, and I'll tell you that I'm a strong   
   promoter of fate.  Even more so than trying to reassure myself that   
   I'll die and live again in another body somewhere in some future, I   
   believe in fate.  Kismet.  I believe in that one woman, out there   
   looking for me, even as I look for her.   
      
   I've sensed her many times, in what dreams I have.  I've touched her   
   satin hair; have stroked her skin, softer than rainwater and twice as   
   sweet.   I've kissed lips that have clung to mine with every emotion   
   from passion to desperation.  A hundred scenarios, a thousand bouts   
   of lovemaking...   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)