[ChallengeFic] Inertia
Title: Inertia
Author: Terra aka Conniferous
Characters: Quatre, Trowa
Warning/Rating: Some graphic violence, T
Status: Complete
Summary: Quatre doesn't understand poverty. Trowa explains.
Whew! It wasn't easy applying February's poverty prompt to Quatre "I-am-the-richest-person-alive" Winner but I gave it a shot. I'm so glad that I discovered this comm! I have a few dark fics floating around in my head that'll be right at home here. Enjoy!
Inertia
He thinks he knows when it began. The first time he forgets to eat his gourmet lunch because he was too busy. The first time he realizes that he hates sleeping on his thousand-thread Egyptian cotton sheets. The first time he wants to tear his silky Italian-imported dress shirts off in a meeting. He wants to watch their faces - his astonished board of directors, his scandalized prim and proper sisters - and shout: This is me! I am not someone to be coddled. I have lived. I have suffered. I have killed. Who are you to patronize me?
But Quatre doesn’t. Because he is a good person - a wholesome, moral, compassionate person who can never make another mistake. He already has a lifetime of sins to atone for. So he takes walks instead. And it bothers him that he never sees any panhandlers on L4. Poverty is just a buzz word for politicians running for reelection; the unemployment rate dropped again, they declare proudly. Because on the Colonies, everyone must work, must contribute something to the fragile, artificial shell that is their only shelter - their only protection from the crushing chill of space. Not so on Earth - he sees them everywhere. In Italy, they hand him babies and try to rob him. In America, they give him pamphlets with one hand and beg with the other. In China, they ask for his water bottle to recycle for a few cents.
Once, he is in a small family grocery when a young man wearing a ski mask points a gun at the cashier. Before Quatre can move, the cashier pulls out a shotgun and blows his head off. The young man’s eyes are twisted scars of horror, his mouth gaping in shock as he crumples to the ground, his arms eagle spread across the cheap linoleum floor. The cashier catches Quatre’s eye, jerks his head at the corpse and says with disgust: “What a mess.”
He wonders what the world has come to that people are this hardened. He grew up dreaming of making historic decisions, of winning epic battles and interstellar wars; but it is dime store muggers, shivering panhandlers and bony prostitutes who have won. He is not disillusioned, he thinks, because the prince of outer space - with his space yachts, his dozen estates, his billions of credits - has no right to compare himself to the poor.
When he expresses this sentiment to the only working class man he knows, his friend responds: “You think too much. People are just trying to live. No one cares who’s in power or who won the war. The poor are poor no matter who’s in charge.”
“But I can do something,” he protests.
“Lofty ideals are nice,” says Trowa, “but the only ones who can afford them are those who don’t need them.”
Quatre argues: “That kind of thinking is a dead end. Despair can only beget more despair.”
“Look. It’s inertia. It’s too hard to break people out of their ways. It’s why we can defeat rebels and terrorists and overthrow oppressors but we can’t ever win the war on poverty. You can throw money at people but you can’t touch the problem.”
“What is the problem?”
“Who knows?” Trowa shrugs. “Maybe progress is impossible without a cost. Maybe capitalism was designed to create victims. You can’t know you’re better off unless everyone else is worse off. Maybe it’s social evolution - weeding out the least fit to survive. Pruning the dead roses so that the bush can grow. Maybe it’s designed to create fear, to keep us in line, make us easier to control so the elite can feel safe.”
“You think having socioeconomic classes is the problem?”
“I don’t know, Quatre. I don’t think about it. That’s the point.”
He remembers his friend’s words from time to time. When he sees long lines winding around soup kitchens in crumbling churches, when he sees disheveled Santas ringing bells in front of stores, when he sees scrawny artists in the park with a cigarette in one hand and a charcoal pencil in the other, he thinks that optimism is hard. He has known pessimists from all walks of life but it’s the optimists he remembers being strong. He recalls them looking life full on and not shirking away from its reality. The ones he knows all refuse to run - to dismiss the difficult as impossible, the desperate as hopeless; they stand their ground and have faith.
It is almost a year later but he can still see the faint outline of bloodstains on the linoleum floor. That’s something he understands. There are things no one can ever wash off. The door dings as it opens and he watches the cashier glance suspiciously at the young man who swaggers in with his hands stuffed in his sweatshirt, his head tucked under the hood. When he shakes his hood off, Quatre sees bright blue eyes and a head bopping to the music player he has hidden in his pockets. When he's standing in front of the cashier, he reaches for a bag of sunflower seeds.
Quatre thinks that maybe Newton didn’t know everything.
Author: Terra aka Conniferous
Characters: Quatre, Trowa
Warning/Rating: Some graphic violence, T
Status: Complete
Summary: Quatre doesn't understand poverty. Trowa explains.
Whew! It wasn't easy applying February's poverty prompt to Quatre "I-am-the-richest-person-alive" Winner but I gave it a shot. I'm so glad that I discovered this comm! I have a few dark fics floating around in my head that'll be right at home here. Enjoy!
Inertia
He thinks he knows when it began. The first time he forgets to eat his gourmet lunch because he was too busy. The first time he realizes that he hates sleeping on his thousand-thread Egyptian cotton sheets. The first time he wants to tear his silky Italian-imported dress shirts off in a meeting. He wants to watch their faces - his astonished board of directors, his scandalized prim and proper sisters - and shout: This is me! I am not someone to be coddled. I have lived. I have suffered. I have killed. Who are you to patronize me?
But Quatre doesn’t. Because he is a good person - a wholesome, moral, compassionate person who can never make another mistake. He already has a lifetime of sins to atone for. So he takes walks instead. And it bothers him that he never sees any panhandlers on L4. Poverty is just a buzz word for politicians running for reelection; the unemployment rate dropped again, they declare proudly. Because on the Colonies, everyone must work, must contribute something to the fragile, artificial shell that is their only shelter - their only protection from the crushing chill of space. Not so on Earth - he sees them everywhere. In Italy, they hand him babies and try to rob him. In America, they give him pamphlets with one hand and beg with the other. In China, they ask for his water bottle to recycle for a few cents.
Once, he is in a small family grocery when a young man wearing a ski mask points a gun at the cashier. Before Quatre can move, the cashier pulls out a shotgun and blows his head off. The young man’s eyes are twisted scars of horror, his mouth gaping in shock as he crumples to the ground, his arms eagle spread across the cheap linoleum floor. The cashier catches Quatre’s eye, jerks his head at the corpse and says with disgust: “What a mess.”
He wonders what the world has come to that people are this hardened. He grew up dreaming of making historic decisions, of winning epic battles and interstellar wars; but it is dime store muggers, shivering panhandlers and bony prostitutes who have won. He is not disillusioned, he thinks, because the prince of outer space - with his space yachts, his dozen estates, his billions of credits - has no right to compare himself to the poor.
When he expresses this sentiment to the only working class man he knows, his friend responds: “You think too much. People are just trying to live. No one cares who’s in power or who won the war. The poor are poor no matter who’s in charge.”
“But I can do something,” he protests.
“Lofty ideals are nice,” says Trowa, “but the only ones who can afford them are those who don’t need them.”
Quatre argues: “That kind of thinking is a dead end. Despair can only beget more despair.”
“Look. It’s inertia. It’s too hard to break people out of their ways. It’s why we can defeat rebels and terrorists and overthrow oppressors but we can’t ever win the war on poverty. You can throw money at people but you can’t touch the problem.”
“What is the problem?”
“Who knows?” Trowa shrugs. “Maybe progress is impossible without a cost. Maybe capitalism was designed to create victims. You can’t know you’re better off unless everyone else is worse off. Maybe it’s social evolution - weeding out the least fit to survive. Pruning the dead roses so that the bush can grow. Maybe it’s designed to create fear, to keep us in line, make us easier to control so the elite can feel safe.”
“You think having socioeconomic classes is the problem?”
“I don’t know, Quatre. I don’t think about it. That’s the point.”
He remembers his friend’s words from time to time. When he sees long lines winding around soup kitchens in crumbling churches, when he sees disheveled Santas ringing bells in front of stores, when he sees scrawny artists in the park with a cigarette in one hand and a charcoal pencil in the other, he thinks that optimism is hard. He has known pessimists from all walks of life but it’s the optimists he remembers being strong. He recalls them looking life full on and not shirking away from its reality. The ones he knows all refuse to run - to dismiss the difficult as impossible, the desperate as hopeless; they stand their ground and have faith.
It is almost a year later but he can still see the faint outline of bloodstains on the linoleum floor. That’s something he understands. There are things no one can ever wash off. The door dings as it opens and he watches the cashier glance suspiciously at the young man who swaggers in with his hands stuffed in his sweatshirt, his head tucked under the hood. When he shakes his hood off, Quatre sees bright blue eyes and a head bopping to the music player he has hidden in his pockets. When he's standing in front of the cashier, he reaches for a bag of sunflower seeds.
Quatre thinks that maybe Newton didn’t know everything.