gundam 00, AU
Bleh. First time writing AU. It was...interesting.
Series: Gundam 00
Pairing/Characters: Tieria/Setsuna
Prompt: in bandages and naked, highschool AU [pairing was part of prompt]
Summary: Setsuna of the past-present and Tieria of the future together. A medic's office, the dressing of wounds. A parallel.
When he first came to him, his eyes were shining with the fervour of the newly initiated. This was not the first time.
"Pull your shirt down further, I can't see."
"Your nails are cutting into my skin."
"Would you like me to cut them? Your tie is in the way."
By now, such familiarities are permitted. The shirt, tie, slacks and blazer that were stiff with newness when they first met are now limp with use. This room, however, remains the same. The sleek tapered metal instruments lie in the same places that they had occupied in the physical tests for new students. The tautness of the sheet spread over the mattress, the lines that it creates, could almost be identical. The nameplate, T. Erde, on the door is untarnished.
"You come here, Seiei, almost every week."
"If I don't, you ask me to come."
"I need to see how the healing progresses."
Stuck to the skin by a sheen of sweat, it can be imagined that there's a sucking sound as the last layer of linen blend is peeled off. A slow sighing, the imagined sound of the bright red that seeps through the ball of cotton that is pressed to it. A small tray is picked up and filled with clear water, the cotton ball exchanged for a small cloth - and in places, a needle - that scrapes and picks out the embedded grains of rock and concrete. Deftly, exactly.
"Which came first?"
He isn't wearing any gloves and he is without the collected penknives and trinkets that serve as schoolyard trophies and badges of honour. One leans forward, one leans back. A small stone falls into another, waiting tray.
"The violence or the response?"
There is more than one border here. There is border between the grey of the slacks that the boy sitting on the mattress is wearing and the golden-brown of his skin, the border between the golden-brown of the skin, the white of the cloth, the near black of the stones. There is the border between the roughness of the schoolyard and the sharpness of the school medical room. What connects them across these borders.
"I don't know."
The cleaning of the wounds and cuts is finished and so he turns his back while the other dresses. It's a needless gesture, but then, most gestures were needless. He turns on the tap in the small sink and rinses out both basins. If possible, this is a more meticulous cleaning than that of the wounds. His fingers as they applied pressure on the needle and the cloth seemed to have spoken of memory and remembrance but now as they wipe away the last traces of moisture, they speak of erasing and undoing. The sound of the students moving to their next classes filters through the hallways, covering the whir of the electric fan. Both are more sensitive now.
The boy slides off the mattress, the white sheet now slightly speckled with black. As he turns to go, he pauses, pauses but continues, yet only to stop in the doorway. One hand - his right as it was his left side that was injured - rests upon the doorframe.
"Do you dream?"
"What?"
"Cities. A ring encircling the Earth. Green. The feeling of...anti-gravity." He can only describe the images using words. There are also the sensations and the thoughts; some kind of desperation, some kind of loss, some kind of resolution. He waits, but there is no answer. So he exits and joins the flow of the students.
In the medical room the small column of water still flows from the funnel to the sink basin. He washes his hands now. He thinks of how he had wrapped those long strips of bandages that the boy now wears beneath his uniform - closely and tightly, yet without once the contact of skin to skin despite their proximity. As if he wanted to attach or bind or restrict. Neither of them are skilled at subtleties beyond the instinctive. What Seiei should have asked Erde was "Do you still dream?"
They meet a last time at graduation. Perhaps it is because of the different atmosphere. Both are in formal suits, their hair sleeked back and shoes polished, they are in a hall resonant with the babble of hundreds of people. Or perhaps it is the knowledge of the last.
"Will you continue, Setsuna?"
"Yes." As taciturn as ever.
"This is my advice. Stop."
"Are you advising surrender?" Tieria pauses, looks doubtful. However, it is only brief.
"Don't believe that there is no other choice. There will come a point when you're not even sure of what you're looking for. But when you realise it, it's already pointless, impossible to stop. Does the ideal exist? For what ideal do you keep fighting for? Or has the ideal vanished long ago, and all that is carrying you forward is the weight of those who have already lost and the need to complete what was begun? You may or you may not finally leave it, but even if you do leave, it will have distorted you. What you dream of sleeping and weeking will ever have echoes, and even if you have sworn off it, sworn not to be involved again, you'll still find yourself drawn to wherever, however you can find the fight. And maybe it'll be a different kind of fight over different boundaries, but by now, you find fights everywhere like an addict scrambles for any scrap of his addiction. Except now, they'll mostly be with yourself. Sometimes it's dull, sometimes it's heavy, sometimes it's the opposite. Nothing changed, everything changed, you've changed, you can't change." Neither are skilled at subtleties beyond the instinctive, but subtleties are no longer necessary.
"Did you believe that there was no other choice?"
"Yes." It is Tieria now who answers.
"Would you have stopped if you were given a choice?"
"No."
"I don't think I'll see you again."
"No, I don't think so."
When Setsuna becomes the age that Tieria had been at their last meeting, he writes down what he can remember of what Tieria had said to him. He writes with his left hand - his right had been left largely paralysed - and addresses it to Tieria Erde, painstakingly selects the correct stamps, even though he knows that he will find it in his mail with "Return to Sender" a few weeks later. Wounds, boundaries, dreams, echoes.
Series: Gundam 00
Pairing/Characters: Tieria/Setsuna
Prompt: in bandages and naked, highschool AU [pairing was part of prompt]
Summary: Setsuna of the past-present and Tieria of the future together. A medic's office, the dressing of wounds. A parallel.
When he first came to him, his eyes were shining with the fervour of the newly initiated. This was not the first time.
"Pull your shirt down further, I can't see."
"Your nails are cutting into my skin."
"Would you like me to cut them? Your tie is in the way."
By now, such familiarities are permitted. The shirt, tie, slacks and blazer that were stiff with newness when they first met are now limp with use. This room, however, remains the same. The sleek tapered metal instruments lie in the same places that they had occupied in the physical tests for new students. The tautness of the sheet spread over the mattress, the lines that it creates, could almost be identical. The nameplate, T. Erde, on the door is untarnished.
"You come here, Seiei, almost every week."
"If I don't, you ask me to come."
"I need to see how the healing progresses."
Stuck to the skin by a sheen of sweat, it can be imagined that there's a sucking sound as the last layer of linen blend is peeled off. A slow sighing, the imagined sound of the bright red that seeps through the ball of cotton that is pressed to it. A small tray is picked up and filled with clear water, the cotton ball exchanged for a small cloth - and in places, a needle - that scrapes and picks out the embedded grains of rock and concrete. Deftly, exactly.
"Which came first?"
He isn't wearing any gloves and he is without the collected penknives and trinkets that serve as schoolyard trophies and badges of honour. One leans forward, one leans back. A small stone falls into another, waiting tray.
"The violence or the response?"
There is more than one border here. There is border between the grey of the slacks that the boy sitting on the mattress is wearing and the golden-brown of his skin, the border between the golden-brown of the skin, the white of the cloth, the near black of the stones. There is the border between the roughness of the schoolyard and the sharpness of the school medical room. What connects them across these borders.
"I don't know."
The cleaning of the wounds and cuts is finished and so he turns his back while the other dresses. It's a needless gesture, but then, most gestures were needless. He turns on the tap in the small sink and rinses out both basins. If possible, this is a more meticulous cleaning than that of the wounds. His fingers as they applied pressure on the needle and the cloth seemed to have spoken of memory and remembrance but now as they wipe away the last traces of moisture, they speak of erasing and undoing. The sound of the students moving to their next classes filters through the hallways, covering the whir of the electric fan. Both are more sensitive now.
The boy slides off the mattress, the white sheet now slightly speckled with black. As he turns to go, he pauses, pauses but continues, yet only to stop in the doorway. One hand - his right as it was his left side that was injured - rests upon the doorframe.
"Do you dream?"
"What?"
"Cities. A ring encircling the Earth. Green. The feeling of...anti-gravity." He can only describe the images using words. There are also the sensations and the thoughts; some kind of desperation, some kind of loss, some kind of resolution. He waits, but there is no answer. So he exits and joins the flow of the students.
In the medical room the small column of water still flows from the funnel to the sink basin. He washes his hands now. He thinks of how he had wrapped those long strips of bandages that the boy now wears beneath his uniform - closely and tightly, yet without once the contact of skin to skin despite their proximity. As if he wanted to attach or bind or restrict. Neither of them are skilled at subtleties beyond the instinctive. What Seiei should have asked Erde was "Do you still dream?"
They meet a last time at graduation. Perhaps it is because of the different atmosphere. Both are in formal suits, their hair sleeked back and shoes polished, they are in a hall resonant with the babble of hundreds of people. Or perhaps it is the knowledge of the last.
"Will you continue, Setsuna?"
"Yes." As taciturn as ever.
"This is my advice. Stop."
"Are you advising surrender?" Tieria pauses, looks doubtful. However, it is only brief.
"Don't believe that there is no other choice. There will come a point when you're not even sure of what you're looking for. But when you realise it, it's already pointless, impossible to stop. Does the ideal exist? For what ideal do you keep fighting for? Or has the ideal vanished long ago, and all that is carrying you forward is the weight of those who have already lost and the need to complete what was begun? You may or you may not finally leave it, but even if you do leave, it will have distorted you. What you dream of sleeping and weeking will ever have echoes, and even if you have sworn off it, sworn not to be involved again, you'll still find yourself drawn to wherever, however you can find the fight. And maybe it'll be a different kind of fight over different boundaries, but by now, you find fights everywhere like an addict scrambles for any scrap of his addiction. Except now, they'll mostly be with yourself. Sometimes it's dull, sometimes it's heavy, sometimes it's the opposite. Nothing changed, everything changed, you've changed, you can't change." Neither are skilled at subtleties beyond the instinctive, but subtleties are no longer necessary.
"Did you believe that there was no other choice?"
"Yes." It is Tieria now who answers.
"Would you have stopped if you were given a choice?"
"No."
"I don't think I'll see you again."
"No, I don't think so."
When Setsuna becomes the age that Tieria had been at their last meeting, he writes down what he can remember of what Tieria had said to him. He writes with his left hand - his right had been left largely paralysed - and addresses it to Tieria Erde, painstakingly selects the correct stamps, even though he knows that he will find it in his mail with "Return to Sender" a few weeks later. Wounds, boundaries, dreams, echoes.