title: i do, i do, i do
summary: Everything I do is for you. I hope you know.
author's note: so i tried to do something different. i couldn't quite catch Gale's voice at the moment, so i tried out this. basically he's too traumatized to remember much, except for how to work with his hands. i know it's really choppy and a lot of things probably don't sound right, but that's the point.
dedications: everyone go read thecivilunrest's GalePrim story. i'm so pleased to say that she wrote it for me, and it's incredibly well done. it made me miss me some GalePrim. so this is for her. :) and this is also for my lovely, lovely friend, LOLChanny819, even though she probably won't read this, because she asked me what happened to my lowercase. i love you, darling.
/
please.
it's a word with so many meanings; there's so little time.
/
he finds a photograph hidden underneath old bomb plans. bombs hurt, but the picture is a pretty one of a girl by the ocean. her fingers are knotted in her hair and she's staring at the camera with such joy in her eyes that he laughs as he creates new things in the factory. he thinks of himself as a slave, and sometimes, he'll pretend that he is chained to the walls.
he hears their whispers. he sees their harsh looks. he doesn't know why they think he's an omen, but he feels it in the back of his throat.
he thinks about the girl in the picture, thinks about how if she were with him, squinting with the sun in her eyes, everything would fall into place, maybe. the fact of the matter is, he doesn't remember much. he doesn't know where he is most of the time. he stays in the factory all day and most of the night, until the supervisor tells him to go home.
he has one of those aches that never leaves. he thinks of sand between his toes.
Sometimes, he thinks that he will always be like this; half alive and floundering like a fish out of water until he finds her – the ocean girl.
/
he's listening to his supervisor talk about the lack of money in the factory and how he won't be paid for overtime, when gale suddenly interrupts his boss.
everything i do is for you. i hope you know.
he is sent home. he doesn't understand why; he didn't do anything wrong. sometimes words come out of his mouth and he tries to catch them as if they were snowflakes, trying to catch them and put them back inside of him so they don't make a mark. he doesn't want to change the world. he wants to stay in his bubble at the factory with the machines that will make good things for good people.
he sees the others throw things together, make mistakes. their company makes bad things too. this is why he stays overtime, to fix the bad things and make them good. he doesn't like when people hurt. he doesn't like to see sadness or pain. he wants to imagine life to be the way it should be. one of those idyllic snow globes that sector 9 makes in the factory. they make so many things in the factory. sometimes he walks around it just to see what people are dreaming of as they make their living. they think he's strange, but he makes friends with the little children who come to help their parents. he doesn't think it's fair they have to give up their lives to help their families.
one day, he gets so mad they have to do this, that he breaks the machine one of the little boys is using so he can just stop. he was sent home with a pitying look.
he probably shouldn't have done that. he doesn't know why he did.
/
there's a secret room in his house. in the basement that no one knows about, he makes artwork. he likes art and the after part of finishing a piece makes his fingers stop moving. he likes the ocean the most, finds sea glass and slowly constructs the girl out of the pieces. it's a slow process because sea glass is really hard to find and he can only go to the seaside on his days off, but he thinks one day, when he sees the girl right in front of him, it will make him go right.
there is a woman who comes to visit him, nowadays. she has dark skin and dark eyes and she watches him. she makes him take pills that are hard to swallow and she strokes his hair back and it sticks up and makes him look like a goat. there's something about goats, he tells her, that he's supposed to remember. he is certain there was something about goats he was supposed to remember. when he tells the woman, she grimaces and checks his wrists. there are so many cuts there, and he wonders if it's from the sea glass or maybe something more sinister than the beautiful sea glass.
he thinks of pure, unblemished skin and he laughs slow, like he's just waking up from a particularly funny dream but can't shake the sleep out of his head. there's sun shining through his window, which is rare and he wants to trap it in a jar somehow, maybe so he could give it to someone. but gale remembers that he doesn't really have anyone, because the only visitor he really gets is this dark, dark woman with the needles and the checks and this is the moment he gets it.
gale has done something very bad.
/
ocean girl, he dreams about. she's older than she is in the photograph and she's touching him in strange places, long and soft with her still tiny little fingers. he's whimpering because he knows this is more than just a brush, this is causing something inside of him to stir.
shh, she smiles, you'll understand, love. you'll feel so good, and our time will never run out if you stay here with me. the world is a scary place until you can remember.
his increasingly rapid breath wakes him up, and he sees the lump underneath his blanket. he cries because he doesn't know what to do, but his hands involuntarily go to relieve himself.
ocean girl, he thinks, one day, i think i will remember you.
he cries out, unaccustomed to the feeling of being so warm in so many places, and he stares at the ceiling real good for a long time.
he decides, right there and then, that maybe he used to be a good boy and he may have had his ocean girl, once, long ago. and maybe then, they were happy and they used to do something with goats, because he knew he had to include them somewhere. maybe they went to the sea and she picked up a sea glass with her tiny fingers and held them up to her eye.
naybe, they held hands and kissed slowly, and she could have loved him, maybe. he knows if she was his, he would love her, most definitely. he wonders if this all did happen, how it all ended.
(he knows he's been a bad, bad boy. he can feel it in the blood in his veins and the truth is in the atria of his heart and his body is screaming it.)
/
he finishes the statue of the ocean girl, made of sea glass. her hair is made of clear glass and her skin is made of the faintest blue and he thinks that if she was brought to life, she would be forever perfect. he could live forever with her in his secret room. he can see through her. he thinks there's something sad about that, because he knows he will never understand again.
the dark skinned woman tells him a story about a boy who made bombs and lost the love of his life to one of his creations. he cries and she hugs him tight to her chest.
he can't help but feel like he had heard that story before.