Song Challenge:
What Do You Want of Me?
by Dianne T. DeSha
("What Do You Want of Me?" from _Man of La Mancha_)
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Why do you do the things you do?
Why do you do these things?
The startling clarity of the young crusader's outlook had
been what attracted him in the first place. And after all this
time, when so many interests had peaked and faded away, it
fascinated him still. A world painted in stark, indelible
pigments--white and black, good and evil, right and wrong--
the choices so clear and simple. A conception so alien to
the thousand shades of politically-charged gray he had been
taught to perceive.
The world had never worked that way, life and death were
never that simple, yet the knight's belief in them persisted,
beyond all credulity, beyond all reason. It drew his jaded
old soul irresistibly, with all the hypnotic power of a moth
circling a candle flame.
Why do you march through that dream that you're in,
Covered with glory and rusty old tin?
These were killers, murderers, sackers of cities and
destroyers of cultures older than anything they could
conceive, who nonetheless believed themselves pure, holy--
washed pure in the sight of their god by the spattered blood
of their enemies.
So he had claimed the crusader, brought him into the fold of
the night. Made him a hunter, a killer by his very nature.
And for a time they were as one--content, safe as a child in
its mother's arms, being taught to survive in a new and
exciting world.
Why try to be what nobody can be?
And what do you want of me?
What do you want of me?
But then that partitioning of the world that had so entranced
him had reasserted itself in rejection. For his child now
believed that the blood of his prey, his very nourishment,
stained him as the blood of the infidel never had.
And the pain of that rejection was sharp, and deep, and
utterly unacceptable.
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Why do you do the things you do?
Why do you do these things?
What parent, given the choice, would choose to watch their
child die, knowing that they could prevent it? What parent
would not do whatever was necessary to ensure that the
child lived, even at the price of their rejection, their hatred?
And the pain Nicholas caused himself! How could any
parent look upon their child wounding themselves, torturing
themselves, starving themselves from a twisted desire to
deny their own flesh, and not interfere?
Why do you rush at the world all alone
Fighting mad battles that aren't your own?
Do you allow a suicidal child to pick up a gun? No, you
take it away and hold them safe until the madness has
passed, no matter how they scream and writhe and tear at
you begging for release. In the end they will be alive, and
with that anything is still possible.
Why do you live in a world that can't be?
And what do you want of me?
What do you want of me?
Nicholas' passion for the mortal world had become and
obsession--an _addiction_. An intense and idealized longing
for what could never be. And each time LaCroix saw him,
weakened, changed, wasting away in body and spirit like
any addict, his heart twisted within him and he found
himself desperate to do something--_anything_--to break
the deadly hold that world had on him.
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Why don't you know
That you're laughed at wherever you go?
And the others laughed at him.
Never to LaCroix's face, but he was not fool enough not to
know what was said, whispered in the shadows, about his
child--the one who denied himself, who had changed his
mind long after there was any choice to make. The one
who would return to being prey--weak, and sick, and
doomed to die. They laughed at Nicholas and his pointless,
hopeless quest.
And they laughed at _him_.
The one with a child so foolish, a child who insisted on
displaying his madness for all the world to see, shaming his
father, his master--the one whose eternal gift he would spit
back in his face.
But I cannot laugh with the rest,
And why, I don't know.
And what if Nicholas were to regain his precious, deadly
humanity? How long would he survive, how much chance
would he have to come to his senses and return? A few
decades before disease took him? A few years until accident
tore his new breath away? A handful of _days_ until the
reflexes of centuries of invulnerability left him standing
unflinching in death's very path?
No, the "cure" he spoke so movingly of would be as much a
death sentence as a stake to the heart. That could not be
what Nicholas truly wanted. What had he ever really
wanted than to strike back at his parent? Of what else in his
existence had Nicholas ever been so certain? This was a stab
of anger at LaCroix whose blade would strike Nicholas'
own heart...and that he could not allow.
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Why do you do the things you do?
Why do you do these things?
Nicholas' pain hurt him, as it would any parent. And so he
tried to prevent it, eliminate it--to move the pan of boiling
water from the edge of the stove and to hold the child's
hand firmly when crossing the street. Such things were
always frustrating to a child's longing for independence, but
they were _necessary_. Until the child was old enough to
be trusted to keep himself from pain and danger, someone
older and wiser must guard him from the hazards of the
world.
Why do you batter at walls that won't break?
Why do you give, when it's natural to take?
And his behavior was unnatural, absurd! Does the wolf take
in the injured hare, tend its wounds, defend it from harm,
while eating grass and weeds? A wolf cannot survive so;
nature will not permit it. The wolf would starve trying to
deny its very nature. And to try to _become_ the hare...
Where do you see all the good that you see?
And what do you want of me
What do you want of me?
He had stepped in to save Nicholas from harming himself
and the result had been pain in his child's eyes. He had
stood back, letting him take big, brash, childish steps on
his own...and watched him fall. And then the pain was even
worse.
Far better then to protect him, guide him, knowing one day
he would understand--_must_ understand. And someday
Nicholas could be trusted to guide his own fate without
diving headlong for the grave.
Someday...but not yet.
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Dianne
Dianne la Mercenaire... -*- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
-*-"We must be powerful, beautiful, and without regret."-*-
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