troubled waters (FierroChase AU)

sixteen

Magnus' train of thought did not really know any other subject than Alex anymore. He was captured, imprisoned, hypnotized by her sheer presence, by her eyes, by her voice, by the fact that she lived upstairs, which he still could not believe. Something had radically changed, there was no doubt about it, Magnus was certain. He had written and played such a long time, living for himself, and when he did not write about himself, about his thoughts and opinions, he wrote about other people in an objective, observing way, rather than become invested with them, searching to explore their hearts and minds. He had stayed on the surface. He had tried to imagine what was going on between two lovers, two friends, and it had proved difficult. His poetry, his prose, even his music had a deeply melancholic, sad character. It was an expression of regret, sometimes even of desperation, of the deep depression and sadness he had gone through, struggled with, overcome. There was the joy of a sailor who was saved from the arms of a merciless ocean in his writing, the pure lust of life that comes to those who almost lose it or know those who have lost it.

A pure lust, that is quiet and still nevertheless; it was not the joy of those who usually attribute this love of life to themselves, who in reality do not really know how to appreciate it. It is a more special, more subtle, more true kind of loving life, loving people, loving this world. That could be found in Magnus' words, in his expressions, in every single note he played, in ever rime he found, every syllable he pronounced. Deep, restrictedly joyful, melancholic. A strange melange to find in a teenager going to college. But this had Magnus learnt, that it was not the ordinary people who became artists, who wrote, played or painted. Through college, through the authors he knew and marvelled at, he had learnt to observe and discern the shapes and shadows of a personality, because the edges and cliffs, sometimes depending on a single memory, a single word, a single thought or image, created strange and powerful associations, fantasies; whole worlds were coming for those who died to see them and live through them.

That was the essence of writing for Magnus: To discover, to live, to observe, not necessarily to explain, but to transmit. Metamorphosis. A vague idea, developed into a distinct thought, put into words, put onto paper. Writing was magical to him; it was the best and most valuable invention of humankind. Writing allowed to escape and to influence, to change the world. The ancient ones knew how a quill was more powerful than a thousand swords. Magnus did not want the power associated to writing; what he was looking for was pure, absolute beauty. Because beauty, in this point he was following the German classics Goethe and Schiller, meant truth. The beautiful and the true were the guidelines for humanity, their essence, their real sense. Aesthetics counted more than anything else. Magnus was not on the path to become a journalist, he was a poet and a novelist, bound to the never-ending road to the absolute.

He could find truth in a sunrise at the Atlantic Ocean, in the pure song of a bird at noon in a hot summer, when everything else was still in the woods. He could see it in the nascent blossom of a dahlia, then truth meant hope and pride and life. Or he could see it in the perfect mosaic of an autumn's New England forest, with the colours showing death and despair, and yet in a true, beautiful way. Even the cold monochrome ice fields of January and the misty fogs of November bore truth in their own, bleak, lifeless way. And they were beautiful. All of this Magnus wanted to put into words, he wanted to describe it, he wanted to become one with the nature of this world, sometimes neglecting the people inhabiting it. This was a topic he had often discussed with his professor or his fellow students, sitting on a bench on campus, or in a café somewhere in downtown Boston.

Magnus could however not see truth and beauty in a human body, in the shouts of a child, in the passion of a lover, in the sadness of a widow. This part of him had died with his mother, his smile had been the only human emotion or picture he could cherish. Everything else was not only dead, it was meaningless. He was a human, so he had to live with humans. He liked people, he enjoyed his profs' or other students' company, he relished conversations with them. He had begun to reintegrate himself, but still, humans were not a source of beauty, they were a source of distress, and, only sometimes, a tool, a companion, a passe-temps, not more. He found what he was searching for, only in what humans could create, not in how they lived. If he had ever encountered Hemingway or Yeats, he would have found them as meaningless as everybody else. It was only in their works, that their dead, meaningless humanity came to life, came to beauty, reached a peak of universal truth.

This state of mind, this shape of Magnus' personality was to change. Or rather, it was to make an exception. For with Alex somebody had come into his life, that was not subject to the restrictions of Magnus' mind. Alex was beautiful, this thought had spontaneously crossed his mind the moment he first saw her, and it was a very unusual thought. No human being had ever seemed beautiful to Magnus since his mother's smile had faded. This led to a state of confusion and of guilt, to a fear that he was betraying his mother. Magnus had not yet embraced life, he was on a path towards it, and every single day that he lived, good-humoured, sympathetic, joyful, was a step further. He knew that his mother would approve, that she would want him to be happy, to live, to create.

But now Alex had appeared and accelerated everything in an incredible way. This led to Magus' confusion, anxiousness, caginess. Alex could not understand, and this inner conflict between Alex and Magnus' mother, even though it only existed in his mind, put Magnus into a difficult situation, not knowing what to want, what to think, what to feel. He had been thinking a lot about it, since the first time they had talked, and he was about to resolve it, calming the troubled waters of his heart. After all, Alex' presence made him feel so happy, so alive. His reluctance from the beginning had slowly vanished and made place for the pure and innocent kind of affection only a person like Magnus, who had gone through hell without losing his heart, could offer.

It was the affectionAlex needed, it was the feeling Magnus needed as well, needed so desperately,to finally overcome the deathly shadow that sat enthroned above, sometimesinspiring him, but mostly suffocating him, a shadow he could only survive,because his mother's eternal smile was reflected in every aspect of thisshadow, telling him to continue, to break free. And in this paradox condition,being caught between the urge to live and the fear of living, between hismother's love and her death, he had not been able to continue for a long time.He had needed Alex to resolve the paradox, to take him by his hand, tocontinue, to take the next step, get to the next station, free. Turning hismother's smile from a cage to a remedy.