III. [Basara]

 
          He had half-heard a familiar melody running through his mind in his dreams, and when he opened his eyes he expected it to be playing somewhere near his ear, from a radio or something. But there was only sunlight streaming through the window and it was three in the afternoon.
          For a moment, he panicked, thinking he had missed a gig, or a rehearsal, or a performance or a recording session. That Mylene had really gone through with her threat and had just not bothered to get him out of bed, and people were counting on him when he wasn't there.
          But no, today was Sunday, and there had been a recording session yesterday, and he had been sick.
          The memories came rushing back and he flopped back down on the bed. It was bright outside. Someone had opened his blinds for him and there was a pitcher of water sitting on the bedside table.
          He frowned.
          The first thing that hit him when he stood up was a wave of dizziness that seemed to pass through his head and out his ears, whirling him around on a floor that had suddenly become unstable. When it passed, he was leaning against the wall, gasping. The second thing that hit him was the blank spot where his hand was touching, where there was supposed to be…something. A poster?
          A promo poster. It wasn't there anymore.
          He had faint memories of ripping it from the wall and throwing it away, but there was nothing in the trash can. Maybe it had been a dream, and it had blown out the window in the middle of the night or something.
          What was a poster, anyway? Another worthless momento of the past. Something he didn't need, to remind him of better days.
          There was a knock on the door.
          "It's open," he called, this throat scratchy. He coughed. Took another look at the cold pitcher of water and poured himself half a glass with an unsteady hand as the door opened and the bulky figure of Ray Lovelock peered up at him from below.
          "Feeling better?"
          He winced. "Not particularly. I can stand, which is an improvement, I suppose."
          Ray chuckled. "Quite. I'm glad you're feeling more like yourself."
          "What's that supposed to mean?" He growled darkly, downing the glass of water. "You aren't going to give me crap for walking out in the middle of a recording session, are you?"
          Ray eyed him thoughtfully. "No…I think Mylene can manage that better than I."
          "Great." He set the glass down on the table. "What did you come for? Don't tell me you stopped by this dump of an apartment to pay me a get-well visit."
          This time Ray laughed out loud. "You never do change, do you, Basara?"
          He said nothing.
          "Actually, I wanted to ask you about that song you were writing. The one you didn't finish. It might be a nice song to close out the album."
          "No," he said flatly.
          Ray frowned. "Why not?"
          "I don't like it."
          "It's worth a-"
          "I don't like it. I'm not keeping it."
          "Can't you just let me see it?" Ray sounded a little hurt, if that was possible. He hadn't thought it was possible for the big man to sound like that. He sighed.
          "Fine. But we're not using it."
          "If you say so," Ray returned, though he didn't believe for one second that the smooth tone held a bit of sincerity. He hobbled over to his music stand and reached for the piece of crumpled paper-
          -that wasn't there. He frowned. That was odd.
          "It's not here," he called down below. "You ran out of luck this time, Ray."
          "What do you mean, it's not there?"
          "I left it here…" he lifted up the composition books on the floor, checked under the bed. "…left it here that night, on the stand. But it's not here now."
          Ray sounded suspicious. "If you're trying to get out of-"
          "Seriously!" He held up his hands, looking down at the keyboardist. "Would I lie about something like this?"
          "I wouldn't put it past you."
          "Oi!"
          Ray shrugged. "Well. That's too bad. I suppose I could get Mylene to go write us a song, if you can't find yours."
          "That's fine. I told you, I wouldn't have let you use it anyway."
          "See you later, Basara."
          "Jerk," he mumbled as the door shut behind Ray, and he sat down hard on the floor, trying to figure out what exactly had happened the past forty-eight hours or so, which were all blurring in his mind. He remembered sleeping…music…waking.
          Mylene?
          She had come in, he was sure of it. The washcloth which he had found on his forehead in the middle of the night had not dropped from the ceiling of its own accord. He supposed it was sweet of her to check up on him like that. Wasn't it what she always said? So-and-so was so sweet to do this or that.
          He'd shrug and pluck some more chords and drown out her rambling with the music inside his mind.
          But that was then.
          Now she didn't ramble anymore, and he couldn't seem to find the chords. She had grown up, and he had simply grown…jaded. He thought that was the word.
          Yes, that was the word. His music was missing and he couldn't even bring himself to care much. Inside there was a small knot of disappointment that four hours of work had gone down the drain like that, but the song would never have amounted to much anyway, and he was sick of writing for an audience that didn't understand the music, sick of writing for a group of people who had become a liability instead of the musicians he had once seen them as, sick of writing for himself when he wasn't even sure what he was writing for anymore.
          Before, when he didn't know why he was singing, he'd leave. He'd leave and go far away where the duties of City 7 and Sound Force didn't weigh him down, with one goal in mind. He'd leave until he had found what he was looking for, and then he would return.
          Becoming responsible had changed all that. He couldn't leave the band. And he didn't really want to. He was getting too old to go traipsing around the galaxy in search of an elusive dream that kept hovering just out of his grasp. And when he would capture it, it somehow would manage to escape, to lure him further and further away.
          It wasn't worth chasing anymore.
          Sighing, he got up, waited until the wave of dizziness had passed, and then set about climbing down the ladder. It took him more effort than he would have liked, but he made it down without hurting any major organs. Stood there for a moment and surveyed the mess that he called an apartment.
          "I thought about cleaning it for you, but I thought I'd let you take responsibility for your own mess."
          "Hello, Mylene," he said.
          "Hello, Basara. Feeling better?"
          "You didn't have to come in last night, you know," he said, ignoring her question.
          "Of course I did," Mylene returned, stepping into the room, leaving the door open. "I couldn't let a fellow band member lie sick by himself."
          "That's all it was, huh."
          A confused look. He shook his head. "Never mind. Forget it."
          "What do you mean?"
          "Nothing. Have you seen my music?"
          She shook her head. "You mean the song you were writing the other night? It was on the music stand when I came up last night."
          "It's not there anymore."
          "Did you look under the bed? Remember you lost Light the Light and Power to the Dream under there a couple of times."
          "Yes, I looked under the bed," he said in exasperation. He didn't even know why he was exasperated; she was doing her best to help. But he did not feel like visitors right now, and she was in the way.
          "When are you going to do your laundry?" Mylene said.
          "I'll do it when I feel like it," he said, resisting the urge to make a nasty remark. That wasn't like him. It must be the fever talking. He put a hand to his forehead. Yes, definitely the fever talking.
          "I knew you would say that."
          He made it up the ladder without mishap, not answering her, sitting down on the floor and breathing hard. What a time to be sick.
          His guitar case was closed. Odd. He didn't remember closing it…his memory might be fuzzy, but he was still a stickler for the details that mattered, and he never closed his guitar case when he had been composing at night. It was just one of those things he never did.
          "Oi, Mylene! Have you been messing around with my stuff?"
          "Stuff? What stuff?" Her voice was muffled, and when he looked down he saw she was stuffing dirty clothes into a basket.
          "What the heck do you think you're doing?"
          "I'm washing your clothes," she retorted, with a hint of superiority. "What else does it look like?"
          "I can wash my own clothes!"
          "No you can't."
          "You-" She was already out the door, and he dropped his threatening fist with a sigh, feeling drained. He might as well just not speak to her. She would do what she liked, whether he told her or not, and he knew that already. Why did he try? He wasn't sure.
          He opened the guitar case and drew the instrument out, positioning it across his lap. Strummed a chord, whatever felt right. The opening melody, like sunlight across the clouds.

          Omae ga kaze ni naru nara
          Hateshinai sora ni naritai

          He wondered what he was missing. What had been in those songs so long ago, what Mylene and the people of Macross 7 and the Protodeviln had believed in that he didn't have anymore.

          Hageshii ameoto ni tachisukumu toki wa
          Guitar wo kaki narashi kokoro wo shizume you

          He heard the door open but didn't stop. The smell drifting up smelled like laundry detergent and the smell from the window smelled like a bright spring day.
          He remembered spring from when he was a little boy, when they had still lived on the planet and the seasons were real, with sun and birds and endless days of blue.

          Come on people
          Kanjite hoshii
          Ima sugu wakaranakute ii kara

He coughed again, wanting to stop for water, but stopping in the middle of this song was almost sacrilege. He wasn't going to die…he could finish.

          Come on people
          Inochi no kagiri
          Omae wo mamoritsuzukeru
          My soul for you

          He strummed a bridge, feeling too tired to sing, then let his fingers drop, one by one, until the song faded away into silence. He didn't feel like singing anymore. He was tired.
          "That was good," said the voice from downstairs.
          Setting the guitar back in its case, he closed the lid but did not snap it shut. "I'm glad you think so."
          "I do," she said. Pink hair and blue eyes appeared at the top of the ladder. "Ne."
          "What," he said, not really listening.
          "Why do you write love songs, Basara?"
          Out of everything she could have asked, he had not been expecting that.
          "Say again?"
          "You heard me," she said stubbornly. Her hair was done up in a ponytail and she was wearing a scarf on her head, like a maid. Well, she had been doing his laundry after all. "Why do you write love songs?"
          He shrugged. "I don't know."
          "That's not an answer!"
          "What do you want me to say?" he said tiredly.
          "I…I don't know. Is there a girl you love that you're writing these to? Was there one who it didn't work out with? Or something. Everyone writes songs about things they know, right?"
          "Well, what do you write songs about?" Turning the tables on her. "You write love songs too."
          "That's not fair!"
          He shrugged. "Life's not fair, Mylene. You should know that by now."
          They sat in silence for a while, feeling the wind on their backs from the open window.
          "Ne, Basara."
          "What?"
          "Do we have a name for our next album yet?"
          "No."
          "Are you thinking of some?"
          "No."
          She groaned. "You're impossible!"
          "Yes."
          "What's wrong, Basara?"
          He blinked at her.
          "I don't want to intrude on whatever problems you're having…and I know we've never been the best of friends…but you're not yourself lately." She looked pleadingly at him. "Can't you tell me what's going on?"
          "There's nothing going on," he said, trying to sound nonchalant. "Don't worry about me."
          "I-" she stopped. Then, "Ne."
          "What?"
          The look on her face was unreadable again. "What would you do if I..."
          "If you-?" he prompted, feeling somewhat alarmed, but she hesitated, then shook her head.
          "Nothing."
          He sighed. If she wanted to be that way, then there was nothing he could do about it. "You should probably go."
          "Yeah." She got up. "Your laundry's in the washer."
          "Thanks," he said simply, not watching her leave. She didn't close the door. She didn't say goodbye.
          Why do you write love songs, Basara?
          He'd never thought about it.
          It was just something everyone did. Love was a common topic of songs these days, and he thought he understood why. Love was the most powerful emotion of all, and powerful emotions moved the human soul.
          He'd known what love was, back when he had written those songs about love and dancing and heartbeats. Love was his music, what he lived for. Others might write songs about men and women and lost sweethearts but his songs were about love for the sake of love, pouring out emotion through his songs.
          Maybe that was what was missing. He had grown up, and love suddenly wasn't so innocent anymore.
          My soul for you. What rubbish.
          Unwillingly, his hand strayed to the case of his guitar but he didn't pull it out, just gazed at the doorway through which Mylene had left, wondering what had possessed her to ask something like that.
          There had been something different about her lately, that he had been trying to pin down but hadn't quite figured out. She seemed…more alone?
          Guvava. She didn't carry him around anymore.
          He hadn't even noticed when she'd stopped.
          I did it all for Guvava, he'd say, when he'd rescue her time after time as she was doing something stupid. Not that he minded, but for some reason he had a hard time telling her that he didn't want to see her hurt. Parental instincts perhaps, though he was a little young for that. He wondered what he would cast the blame for his actions on now that the creature was gone.
          Drumming his fingers on the case, he began to sing softly. It was a disease, the music, throbbing in his blood, never leaving him in peace. He hated it.

          Come on people shinjite hoshii
           Itsumademo kawaranai ore wo
          Come on people taiyou no you ni
          Omae wo kagayakaseru
           My soul for you

 
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