[gw fic] File No. 168 (Trowa/Une, R)
File No. 168
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Rating: barely R
Ships: Trowa/Une, Une/Treize
Summary: One rainy night many years after the war's end, Trowa Barton shows up unexpectedly on Lady Une's doorstep, looking for answers to a 14-year-old mystery.
A/N: Approx. 6,800 words. This one came out of nowhere. I wanted to try a new pairing, so I put everyone's name into a hat and drew two. I'm pretty proud of this story.
“It's been a long time,” I say. The thin face staring back at me through the rain says nothing. I recognize him just enough to know that it HAS been a long time.
In the pale light from the door his eyes are like the rain-silver-grey and charged with a cold energy. Looking at him, I feel cold, and I'm safely on the dry doorstep, engulfed in a velvet robe. He's the one standing soaked in the rain.
“Come in,” I say. I don't know if I want this ghost in my house. I see nothing dangerous about his person, and if he's who I think he is, then I should have little to fear. But I am suddenly reminded of the old saying, that demons can't enter your house unless you invite them. But if I don't let him in, he is going to drown before my eyes. Or wash away. Already he seems to fade, his colors becoming muted and wispy, like a watercolor painting. And there's no one in my house for him to harm, except me, and what do I care about that? He can't be a demon, because don't demons fear running water? Cold iron, I remember, as well, and rowan berries. Having none of those at hand, I say again, “Come in,” putting a hand on his wrist. His skin is so cold.
“Are you sure you want that?” he says, finally, in a quiet voice that shivers through my bones. I do know that voice.
“You came here for a reason. If it's not to just spook me, come in and dry off.”
When I turn and step back into the house, he follows me. I close the door behind him, against the wind and rain, against whatever harried him all the way here. I look at him. In the bright hall light, his colors change. His eyes are not silver. They are green, like peridots, like glass, like rose leaves. The eyes, and the brown hair, dark and heavy with water, that clings to his thin, white face--I know him at once. Yes, it has been a long time.
Still I say, because I want to be sure, “Who are you?”
He smiles, without any light, without any humor. “I'm file number one-sixty-eight.”
“You are Trowa Barton.”
A look of pain crosses his face. “I'm not really,” he says, “but you may call me that, if you want.”
“If you're not Trowa, who are you?” Something in his tone, in his hard green eyes, chills me, makes me wish I had not opened the door, had pretended his knock was just the wind in the trees. Still, I am curious.
He does not answer my question. He looks at me for a long time. I can't read him at all. I never could. At last he says, “And you. Who are you? Lady Une, Colonel Une, Saint Une. So many Unes to choose from.”
“I'm Une,” I say. “Leave it at that.”
“How is Marie Maia?” he asks.
He is being polite, for some reason. I can't imagine he has any interest in the girl I call my daughter. “She's fine,” I tell him. This is true, to an extent. “She's not here,” I answer his unspoken question. “She's at Boarding school,” I go on. I feel the need to put words between us, like an invisible barrier. “She did not want to go, at first, but it's a very good school and close by, so she can come home whenever she wants. She used to, but now she has friends there, so she stays on most weekends.”
“She's...what? Fifteen years old, now?”
“She turned fifteen in April,” I say, wondering for a moment, how he knows this. But then I remember he knew her real family. He still wears her uncle's name like a ragged cloak. Did he know her mother, ever? “Is this about my daughter?” I ask, emphasizing the possessive pronoun. Whatever his connection to the Barton family, she is mine.
“No,” he says, then falls silent. I can feel the words behind his lips, but I can't imagine what they are. He does not seem to know how to utter them. I wonder if I should take his jacket, invite him into the parlor, offer him a drink. He might freeze to death before he can find what it is he's trying to say. Finally, he reaches into his pocket. For a weapon? I am not afraid. I can disarm him if I have to, if I want to.
Whatever he pulls out is not a weapon, unless it's a tiny one. I catch a metallic flicker between the fingers of his closed fist. I think of little knives, and bombs. A bomb would upset me. There's not much I can do against it, and there are things in this house I don't want destroyed. Why am I so certain he wants to kill me?
What else do people want when they show up on your doorstep on hellish nights like this one, after seven silent years? I can't remember what I might have done to earn his hatred, but that doesn't mean I did not do something. I hurt a lot of people without knowing it, when I was Colonel Une of OZ.
He opens his hand. It is not a weapon he holds, at least not at first glance.
It is a cross, tiny, battered, made of gold. A piece has broken off it, so that all its arms are the same length. The chain it is attached to is clearly not the original.
He says in the wisp of a voice, “Do you know this?”
A ghost wind blows pale gold hair across my memory. I close my eyes, and see hers, hazel like mine, but lighter, warmer. I hear the laughter, high and wild and desperate.
I open my eyes. “Yes, I know it.”
I see in his eyes that he knows this already.
We are in the parlor. I have not changed my clothing. He sits in a chair by the fireplace, shivering under a quilt. I have nothing else to offer him. He is too broad for anything of mine. Only his jacket was thoroughly soaked, anyway, and I left that to dry on the radiator in the bathroom.
I like this room best, of all the rooms in my house. It is the face I show to those I allow in, so it must be beautiful. But it must also be mine, so this is where I keep things I cherish, things that make me feel strong. I wonder what he thinks. Marie's piano stands in the corner. I miss her playing when she is away. She has become quite good over the years. It's a joy to hear her while I work in my office.
There are pictures on the walls, and on the mantel over the fireplace. Most of them are of Marie. The most recent was taken at her fifteenth birthday party. She does look fifteen and very mature, surrounded by her friends, with her marmalade-colored hair hanging loose over her shoulders, and her dark blue eyes bright. They are her father's eyes. I realize that Marie is now the same age as the Gundam pilots when I first encountered them. I am suddenly saddened by this, and I don't know why. There are a few pictures of her as a child, but I hung those only recently. For a long time she wanted no reminders of her childhood. I could not blame her. There are a few pictures of me when I was younger, and of the couple that raised me, Jean and Nicolette Mirabeux, and their children. There are none of my first family, my real family.
Nor are there any pictures of Treize Khushrenada in this room. That is not because they do not exist. There used to be many of them, but I gave them all to Marie, for her keeping, when she turned thirteen. They are hers by right, and I have to learn to let go. His sword still hangs over the mantel, though, and outside the French windows, his roses bow and shake in the wind and rain.
I like what the roses symbolize, with their beautiful, fragrant blossoms, and their thorns. And I like having a weapon present, still, after all these years. I feel like the sword, honed and sharp, even as I stand in this gentle, elegant room and pour mulled wine for the ghost I let in. Once his glass is filled I take my own and sit, crossing my legs. We watch each other over a low mahogany table, on which rests a basket of fresh-cut roses. We are both waiting. Who will make the first move, trust the wine isn't poisoned and take a sip? I am too tired for games. Before he came I was about to crawl into bed with my wine and a book. I drink. After a moment, so does he.
Presently he says, “Tell me about Middie Une.”
“You tell me about her,” I counter, lowering the glass. “You knew her after I did, clearly.”
“Is she related to you?”
“I had a younger sister, Madeleine, who we called Middie. I don't know if she is the girl you're talking about.”
“But the cross?”
“Oh, the cross is my family's. I recognized it at once. Did you get it from her?” Questions flash through my mind before he can answer. Was she alive when he got this from her? Did she give it willingly? Was it a piece she used to bargain with? Was it a gift? How old was she? Was she well? Was she with anyone? These questions and so many more have been building up behind a door in my mind for many years. I never expected the door to open, not ever. I left my family after my mother died, when I was eleven. Besides Middie I had a father and three younger brothers. I never saw any of them again.
He does not know how old he was when he met the girl who called herself Middie Une. He thinks it was probably fourteen years ago, but there are so many gaps in his memory, and he does not know how old he is now, so who knows?
If my sister were alive now she would be twenty-four. When I tell him this number, he shrugs. “I don't think in years,” he says.
I shiver. I don't know why. I take another sip of wine, and feel it warm my veins. I wish he would do the same. He just stares into the crackling fire. Its light flickers across his long lashes, seems to become entangled in them. I wonder what he means. I wonder why he is here. What can he care about my sister?
He stands quickly, startling me. I had forgotten how fast he could move. His body seems to ripple, and then it flows like water, onto its feet, and he is pacing in front of the fireplace, silhouetted against the flame. “I knew the cross wasn't mine,” he says. “My sister--Catherine, not my real sister--found it, when she was going through some old boxes we had at the circus, about a month ago. She's getting married in June, so she's getting ready to move in with her fiancé. She found this.” His hand squeezes around the broken cross. He took it back after showing it to me. I have not asked for it again. I am not sure I want to hold it in my hand, so I let him. He says, “She knew it wasn't hers. Cathy's family was Jewish.” He looks up at me, finally, and gives me an odd smile. It's hardly a smile at all. “So it had to be mine. I don't remember--I honestly don't--but I must have gone back for it, after I...” He trails off.
Watching him, I begin to understand what he means when he says he does not think in years. Seasons change for him, but I doubt he has any real concept of the passage of time. Years break around him like waves around a rock on a beach, while they seem to hit me straight on. He has changed little in the seven years since I last saw him. No, his body has changed. He is definitely a man, now, not a boy. He is taller and broader and yet, somehow, insubstantial. Light would pass through him. His face is thinner, I think, his mouth a little more troubled. His movements are the same as they were when he was fifteen, though. There is still that nervous, wary grace. And his eyes are the same. He never had the eyes of a fifteen-year-old, not even when he was fifteen. It is a little less frightening to see those ageless eyes on a grown man than it was to see them on a young boy, but not by much. Looking at his eyes, in those rare moments when he faces me, I think of the pale green trees on the outskirts of a forest, with the deeper green shadows seeping between them, hinting at a secret darkness beyond. I sip my wine again.
He does not seem to know how to go on, so I help him. “How did you get the cross?” I ask.
“She gave it to me. To thank me. I found her in the jungle on a routine scouting expedition, and brought her back to camp. I was with a troop of rebel mercenaries, then. She traveled with us for a few weeks, as a cook. And a spy for the Alliance.” Again that smile. He leans close to me, showing me the cross in his cupped hand. He points to the broken end. “There was a recording device planted right here. She wore a similar one around her neck, disguised as a kid's game. She was always around when the captain planned our next move. The Alliance always knew where to find us. It wasn't long before the troop was eliminated.”
“Except you.”
“Except me. And her. More than half the men turned traitor. I killed all of them.”
I wonder what he wants me to think. There is no emotion in his voice, no regret in his eyes. Has it been so long that the pain of executing his former comrades has dulled, or did he ever feel anything? I am curious, so I test him. “Do you blame her?”
He straightens, his hand folding over the cross. “No.” He turns back to the fire. “At least, now I don't. I did, though. The Alliance paid her enough to feed her father and three younger brothers. All she had to do was ladle soup for the men. It was my job to kill them.” I wonder what he sees in the flames. “Funny, when I killed them, I didn't feel anything. Just anger, at her. And I was angry for making me feel anger. Now, I wonder if I could have done that, today. And I'm not angry, anymore.”
I set my wine down. “You forgive her?”
“Yes.” He turns around, swift as a wave, and I see something new in his eyes. A light. “That's why I'm here. I want to tell her I forgive her. And I want to ask her forgiveness.”
“For what?” As strange as his stony countenance of a moment ago was, this light is stranger. I like it, and I don't. It does not belong in that pale, harried face. But it is what that face needs more than anything else.
“For abandoning her. I told her, when we first met, that we were the same. I denied it later, but I think I was telling the truth the first time. I should have understood why she did it. I was--jealous. She had a home to go back to and I didn't. I have too many unresolved relationships. I want to tell her I'm sorry. Can you tell me where she is?”
“I can't.” The room has dimmed around his brightness. I can hardly see it anymore.
“I'll find her, then, and tell her.”
“You can't.” I raise my head, meet his shining eyes. I almost have to squint. It hurts as I draw breath. “Middie--Madeleine Une--is dead. She was killed in the war ten years ago.”
The cross falls from his hand, the chain slithering after it, to the carpet. He turns away from me. I stare past him, at the wall, where his shadow shudders softly. He makes no sound. It is a long moment before I realize he is crying. I rise and go to him, put my hands on his tall shoulders, and make him sit. I'm glad he cries. I would not know what to do if his face had turned back to stone. I'm glad that even though he can not have what he wants, he is human enough to cry for it.
I pick up his forgotten glass and put it into his hands. He looks up at me, his eyes tear-filled. “How did you know?”
I keep my hand on his shoulder, feel the little shudders pass through his frame and into mine. “Treize. When we first met, I told him about my real family. He helped me find out what happened to them. It was a mobile suit battle. They were living in a tent village in northern France. They were caught in the crossfire. All of them.”
“I killed her,” he says softly.
I want to slap him. “Why?” I demand, as harshly as I please. “Did you pilot one of those suits?”
“No. Ten years ago I was already working as a mechanic at the Barton Foundation. But I still killed her. I should have looked out for her. She told me she loved me. She's the first person I can ever remember telling me they loved me. I should have kept her with me.”
“Don't be so self-righteous. Would she have stayed with you? Would you have gone with her? You might have been dead, too.” I pinch his shoulder between my fingers. I want a reaction, a real cry of pain. He never utters one. Instead, he says, in a whisper that chills me to my bones,
“There's no absolution, is there?”
I let go of his shoulder, shake my head, and smile sadly. “No, there isn't. It's just something you look for and never really find. Treize died to end the war, but did his death bring back the millions who were killed in his name?” He looks down and once again I feel the stirrings of warmth in my body. For some reason, I find myself thinking of Marie. “There's no absolution,” I tell him gently. “But there is forgiveness. And sometimes, if we're lucky, there is love.”
He had no where else to go, so I set him up in one of the guestrooms. He is there, now, asleep, I hope, unlike myself. I can't seem to get to sleep. Usually I like the rain pattering against the windows. Without it, the house feels too quiet when Marie is away. Now, it sounds like distant gunfire. All I can think of is his face, and the light that shone in it when he talked about redemption and apologizing to Middie.
I wonder if the gunfire that killed her sounded anything like the rain on my window.
Why did he have to come here? Why did he have to reopen that door? I thought I had finished grieving.
I remember Treize telling me my family was dead. He was so gentle with me, so careful with my feelings. He could not have stopped the pain of it, though, and in the end, all he could do was hold me while I cried. I asked him why I had been spared. He told me it was because I had a purpose to fulfill. “And my family didn't?” I had snapped.
The last time I saw Middie, there was no anger between us, although there should have been. I suppose she was too young. I was the older sister, the privileged one, the one who made the rules now that our mother was dead. And I was going away. A couple named Mirabeux had recently lost a daughter, and so they had an extra set of identification papers. My father used to work for Jean Mirabeux, before the war ended his business. They offered to take me into their house. I confess that I wanted to go. Since the war began, life had become so difficult. I was always hungry, and there was no work for my father except as a soldier, and how could he fight when he was ill? I wanted new, pretty things, like I had before the war. I wanted friends my age. Can you blame me? I was only eleven.
I wanted Middie to be angry with me. I wanted someone to tell me what I was doing was wrong. But to her, then, injustice meant my scoop of ice cream was larger than hers, when we could find such things. She did not understand.
I cried so hard when Treize told me she was dead. I think I cried more for her than for my father and brothers. My brothers were so young; I hardly knew them. But Middie was my baby sister.
I don't know what to think of his story--Trowa's. File number one-sixty-eight. He lost more in the war than I did. He lost his family--and his name.
I can't cry, now. I think I used up all my tears a long time ago. Middie's cross lies on my night table. I pick it up and hold it tightly in my hand. What I expect to feel, holding it, I don't know. Warmth? Her warmth, from fourteen years ago? I finger the jagged edge, where the recording device was planted, which he shot off. Fourteen years ago. Strange how paths sometimes cross and then race away in opposite directions, only to come back together, a little, years later. I hold the battered cross against my heart.
Middie. The girl who always got into my things. The girl for whom I drew unicorns to color in because we had no coloring books and she couldn't draw. My sister.
And this one, this nameless ghost who breezed through my door one rainy night, when I never thought to see him again, what of him? Now that he can't take up her story, where does he go? His sister is getting married. Not his real sister, but a sister all the same. He has her. But now it seems he is losing her. I wonder, does he see the other pilots, ever? I can't imagine that he does. He would have to be wildly lonely to seek me out here. He did not join the Preventers as Chang Wufei did. I have heard Duo Maxwell still has his garage on an L-2 colony. Heero Yuy is a Minister of Defense for the World Nation. I meet with him and Relena Darlian several times a year. And Quatre Winner, married to some pediatrician who is reputedly as gentle as he is, heads his family's corporation on the L-4 Colony Cluster. He is frequently in the news. But of this one, the one lying just down the hall from me, I have heard nothing for seven years.
For some reason, the thought of him just down the hall makes me feel restless. I want to get up, tiptoe down the hall to his room, and look at him, see that he is still there. I don't want him to fade when my back is turned. It is irrational, but at three-thirty in the morning, what does rational have to do with anything?
I get up. I can't believe I am doing this. I wrap my robe around my body and walk out into the hall.
There is no moonlight, but I can see the corners of the doorframes, the molding of the ceiling, in different shades of darkness. I feel as though I am in one of those ancient movies that were filmed without color. The carpet runs under my feet like a long, dull grey river to a waterfall of stairs. For a moment I mistake him for another shadow, but he turns at the sound of my footfalls, and I see him sitting at the top of the stairs. His eyes are dark, shadowed. He looks so lonely sitting there, his knees tucked up to his chin, his arms hanging over them, limply. I want to go to him, put my arms around him. I don't really know why.
“Couldn't sleep, either?” he says. “There was something else I wanted to tell you, but I wasn't sure whether I should wake you or not.”
I sit down beside him on the stairs.
“I'm sorry.”
“Your apologies are no good to me,” I say.
“I made you sad.” His voice trembles, just a little. How young he sounds! Not twenty-four, if that is his real age. “I'm sorry for that. I wanted to tell you that there was another reason I came here.” He is silent for a long time. I wait. Presently, turns to me and says, “I can't believe she's dead. I can remember her exactly--and I have so much trouble remembering things from my past. Everything she said feels so real it's so hard to believe she's not there.” He shudders slightly. “We think we have all the time in the world, but we really don't. I keep telling myself I should have come sooner, but it wouldn't have made a difference. I guess I also--wanted to see how you were. You and Marie.”
What?
“The Bartons and the Khushrenadas,” he says, “they're the ones who kept the war going as long as it did. Or people like them, anyway. I wanted to make sure that--that the product, that Marie Maia, that she's not...”
“Marie Maia Khushrenada Barton is fine,” I tell him. “She leads a normal life. She is happy. At least, as happy as any fifteen-year-old girl is willing to admit to the woman she thinks of as her mother. She seems to have a lot of friends. She has a boyfriend. A nice boy.”
He says, so softly I can hardly hear him, “She's the age I was when I became a Gundam pilot.” I had this thought, before, but I shiver again. He frowns. “Are you cold?”
I shake my head, shake off his concern. But yes, I am cold. Physically, emotionally. I'm cold and I'm tired and sad and lonely. I want warmth. I want companionship. I want to wake up and not be so damn tired. He is sitting so close to me, and he is only wearing a thin blanket and his underwear, because I had nothing for him to wear. I can't see anything, but God, I'd have to be a frigid old cow not to be thinking about what's underneath that blanket. And I'm only wearing my robe. But he's colder than I am.
He looks away from me, out into nothing. I look at the grey slope of his neck. He says, “Sometimes I just find myself thinking about things, and I can't sleep. It always happens at night. Once I start thinking, I don't bother to try to forget things. I just make myself some tea and--and think.”
“Do you want me to make tea?” His skin is like marble in the coldness and darkness.
“I just want to know that you're all right.”
Me?
He wheels back to face me, abruptly. I am surprised. “I'm more concerned about you than I am about Marie Maia.”
“Why me?”
A flash in his eyes. Not color, and not really a light. Just shadows moving quickly. “We're the same.”
“Isn't that the line you used on Middie?”
“It's more true for us.”
“Tell me why that's true.”
He shrugs. The darkness slithers and hisses around us. He should grasp my wrist and hold my gaze intensely. That's the way such revelations are made. But he does not do that. “We were the ones who were used. The Khushrenadas and the Bartons--they both used us.” I don't contest this; I am too curious. He continues: “We were both tools. And at the same time--we weren't innocent. Neither of us. Never. Marie Maia and Middie. They were innocent. Not us.”
“Middie spied for the Alliance. She's the reason your troop died,” I remind him.
“But I'm the one who killed them.”
“If she had not given information to the Alliance regarding your whereabouts, your men might not have switched sides, and you would not have killed them.”
“She did it to feed her family. She regretted what she did. I didn't. I was empty. I had no remorse.”
“And I'm like you? No, don't answer that.” I hold up a hand. “I'm well aware of what I did during the war. But you're not empty now, are you?”
He lowers his lashes. “No.” The word rustles in his throat, barely escapes his lips.
“Why not now?” I am whispering, too. This is so odd, this talking in hushed voices in the dark, dark early morning. It is a little exciting.
“Because now--” He lifts his lashes. “Now there are still people I want to protect.”
Yes, I think. It's the same for me. Marie. Catherine. And maybe...someone else? So, not empty, anymore. Just lonely, and sad. Oh, Trowa. I realize that I am not cold, anymore. I tell him, gently, “We're the fossils of the war. We're what's left over, imprinted with what went on before. People can study us and piece together how it was. We've changed. We're not the same as we were, but it's all there. We're not exactly the victims, although in some ways we are. We were used by the people with power, and the people on the bottom were our victims. It's rough being in the middle.”
Very softly: “Yes.”
“So what do you propose we do?”
“I don't know.”
He is out of questions and concerns, even though I have answered and allayed neither. He is just another shadow, really. If I stood up and walked back to my room, then looked back while I was halfway down the hall, he would have melted into the darkness. I would never see him again. I know this. If he disappears now, he is gone. Maybe he feels the same way about me. This time our paths will diverge forever. I don't want that. I want to be warm. Not breathing, I reach out and touch his cheek with my fingertips. He moves slightly, a ripple. I thought his skin would be as cold and hard as it looks, but it's as soft as his voice.
“I think,” I say, “that we should do whatever we damn well please, and the hell with the people in power who used us.”
“You think,” he breathes, “we could use each other for a while? You think we should?”
“Who gives a damn about should? It's been a while since anyone except Marie got any use out of me. Why not you?” I've heard better come-ons in my life, and I've sure as hell heard worse. Maybe he has, too.
He smiles slightly. “We can't really get hurt, can we?”
“So what if we do? We're adults.” I lean in to kiss him. His lips are cool, but his mouth is warm. He kisses me back, shyly first, then desperately. His hands go to my waist and the sash of my robe. I put my hands on his, make him let go. I say, against his mouth, “Not on the stairs. If we're going to do this stupid thing, at least let's do it in comfort.” I rise, pulling him up with me.
We are quick. We're barely through the bedroom door before my robe and his underwear are on the floor. He lost his blanket back in the hall. I'm glad we're quick. If I stop to think about what we are doing, I will probably realize just how crazy it is, and stop it. And I don't want that. No, I don't. I've slept with a few men since Treize, but right from the start I know that this time will be different.
We are intense. I don't know why. Besides us, the house is empty. We have all the time in the world. But we act as though all the years of our lives we're still capable of doing this are slipping through our fingers. Treize and I always took our time, even though we both knew that I could be dead the next day. Tonight, we act as though we have no time to waste. Our chat on the stairs was all the foreplay we allow ourselves. I feel the wildness of his heartbeat against mine. It's louder than the rain against the window. He pushes me onto the bed and I pull him down on top of me. There are kisses and gasps, and we are together.
There is pain, but I don't want him to stop. Too fast, though. We have time, we have time. The world is only the size of this bed. It's ours. The sheets twist under me, my hands twist in his hair. I must have yanked hard, or cried out--I don't remember--because he slows, murmuring apologies against my throat. I let go of his hair and begin to stroke my way down his tense body.
He has done this before. He is too assured not to have. Strange, those pilots always seemed so innocent, so pure. I know how old he probably is, but the eyes he gives me now are the same as they were seven years ago. It is alarming that that part of him has not changed. I wonder how many women he has been with. I wonder, with an odd, dark thrill, how many men. I remember how slender and pretty he was. There's a ghost of that boy, still, in the man above me. He is a passionate lover, but mechanical. He tries to make love, but it is too much like fucking. He doesn't know the little tricks, the small, delicious things lovers do to win each other. This makes me sad. I want to teach him. There are things one should not go through life without knowing.
I roll us over so that I am on top, push him back against the pillows. My hair hangs down over his chest. I begin with his mouth, flicking the tip of my tongue out to trace his thin lips. He reaches for me, but I force his hands back down. Not yet. We DO have time. This first. Then that. I hold his wrists against the sheet a moment, while I kiss him. I know what I am doing. When I release him he moves his hands up to my thighs, lets one rest there. The other trails up my belly, to my breasts, stroking with light, cool fingers.
“You know,” he says, as he continues to thrust gently, “I think you're the first person I ever met who I didn't envy.”
He is still cold, his skin, his eyes. As I trace kisses along his jaw, down his neck to the hollow of his throat, I wonder, Who taught him how to fuck, but not how to make love?
In the end, I cry. In sadness, in joy, I don't know. Probably both. I think I cry for all of us, for him, for Middie, for Treize, for myself. For everything that brought us to this night. I thought I had no tears left. After we climax, he holds me, murmuring desperate apologies, while I cling to him, sobbing against his cheek.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "Lady, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." His voice shakes; I've frightened him. His voice, unlike his eyes, have an age that can be determined. In his fear and concern he sounds like such a young boy.
"It wasn't you," I choke. "I just need to-- It's not you." I tell him my real name. He whispers it back to me. I wish I knew his real name so I could tell it to him.
The rain stops shortly before my tears do. The grey recedes. Dawn is coming. The edges of the window in my bedroom are tinted with gold. The raindrops that cling to the glass glimmer softly. His skin seems almost to glow, very, very faintly as he strokes the tangled hair out of my eyes.
“I'm sorry about what I said, before.” His warm breath stirs my hair.
“It's all right. I would hate to think you ever envied me.”
“Are you sorry about...?” He trails off nervously, so he must mean the sex.
“God, no.” I wind my arms around him, holding him. I feel as though we were just in time for something. We barely made it. If he asked, I would hold him like this forever. He is nothing like Treize. Treize was so solid, so vital. I could never have imagined losing him. This one is thin, fragile for all the lean strength of him. I feel him vanishing even as I hold him against me. I close my eyes to sleep and find that I finally can.
When I wake some hours later, the sun is up, and he is gone. Somehow I knew he would be, but I can't help feeling disappointed. Maybe I was wrong to tell him it did not matter if we hurt each other. Well, I have had one very interesting one-night stand. And I can't say I regret it. To keep from thinking about it, I close my eyes again.
When I reopen them, time has passed. Last night does not seem real. Now that the sun has risen I am supposed to be rational, so I wonder if last night really happened at all. Maybe he was just a ghost, after all, or a dream.
When I slide out of bed, I see his underwear and my robe on the floor. I pick up the robe and hurry down the hall, wrapping it around me as I go. He is not in the bathroom. He is not in the parlor or the kitchen.
I stand in the middle of the downstairs hallway, bewildered, until I hear a splash. I walk to the patio. The blanket from the bed in the guestroom lies on the side of the pool, where he is swimming laps. In the sunlight and the shadows from the rosebushes that line the pool, his naked body is flecked with green and honey-gold. Are there such things as male naiads? He is not exactly masculine, with his beautiful face and slim, beautiful body. But he is definitely male. I don't call to him. I am enjoying watching him.
He sees me eventually, and swims over to me. He is smiling, but not like before. The corners of his lips turn upward, cautiously, as though he is nervous, but rather enjoying himself. If he were playing by the rules that accompany one-night stands, he should not still be here. And he should not be this cute. He wraps a wet hand around my ankle. I almost fall into the pool. “Come join me.”
“I take it,” I say, “that last night meant something to you.”
Well, so what if it did? So what if the sex last night was splendid, possibly the best either of us ever had, except for what we just did in the pool? I'm not in love with him, and I refuse to believe he has fallen in love with me. Still, handsome, gentle, screwed up twenty-four-year-olds don't just breeze into your life every night and it's even less often they offer to take you out for coffee and croissants the next morning. We found something to cling to last night, a way to stop feeling so lonely, and a way to make another person stop feeling lonely, which is better.
I should go. He is waiting for me downstairs, probably growing impatient. My hair isn't completely dry yet, but--oh, well.
I don't know what we will talk about over coffee. I don't know where all of this will lead. I just know that I like having him here and I hope that he will stay for a long time.
We're not fighting a war, anymore. We have time to find out what we want from our lives.
We have all the time in the world.
END FILE
(8/17/01)
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Rating: barely R
Ships: Trowa/Une, Une/Treize
Summary: One rainy night many years after the war's end, Trowa Barton shows up unexpectedly on Lady Une's doorstep, looking for answers to a 14-year-old mystery.
A/N: Approx. 6,800 words. This one came out of nowhere. I wanted to try a new pairing, so I put everyone's name into a hat and drew two. I'm pretty proud of this story.
“It's been a long time,” I say. The thin face staring back at me through the rain says nothing. I recognize him just enough to know that it HAS been a long time.
In the pale light from the door his eyes are like the rain-silver-grey and charged with a cold energy. Looking at him, I feel cold, and I'm safely on the dry doorstep, engulfed in a velvet robe. He's the one standing soaked in the rain.
“Come in,” I say. I don't know if I want this ghost in my house. I see nothing dangerous about his person, and if he's who I think he is, then I should have little to fear. But I am suddenly reminded of the old saying, that demons can't enter your house unless you invite them. But if I don't let him in, he is going to drown before my eyes. Or wash away. Already he seems to fade, his colors becoming muted and wispy, like a watercolor painting. And there's no one in my house for him to harm, except me, and what do I care about that? He can't be a demon, because don't demons fear running water? Cold iron, I remember, as well, and rowan berries. Having none of those at hand, I say again, “Come in,” putting a hand on his wrist. His skin is so cold.
“Are you sure you want that?” he says, finally, in a quiet voice that shivers through my bones. I do know that voice.
“You came here for a reason. If it's not to just spook me, come in and dry off.”
When I turn and step back into the house, he follows me. I close the door behind him, against the wind and rain, against whatever harried him all the way here. I look at him. In the bright hall light, his colors change. His eyes are not silver. They are green, like peridots, like glass, like rose leaves. The eyes, and the brown hair, dark and heavy with water, that clings to his thin, white face--I know him at once. Yes, it has been a long time.
Still I say, because I want to be sure, “Who are you?”
He smiles, without any light, without any humor. “I'm file number one-sixty-eight.”
“You are Trowa Barton.”
A look of pain crosses his face. “I'm not really,” he says, “but you may call me that, if you want.”
“If you're not Trowa, who are you?” Something in his tone, in his hard green eyes, chills me, makes me wish I had not opened the door, had pretended his knock was just the wind in the trees. Still, I am curious.
He does not answer my question. He looks at me for a long time. I can't read him at all. I never could. At last he says, “And you. Who are you? Lady Une, Colonel Une, Saint Une. So many Unes to choose from.”
“I'm Une,” I say. “Leave it at that.”
“How is Marie Maia?” he asks.
He is being polite, for some reason. I can't imagine he has any interest in the girl I call my daughter. “She's fine,” I tell him. This is true, to an extent. “She's not here,” I answer his unspoken question. “She's at Boarding school,” I go on. I feel the need to put words between us, like an invisible barrier. “She did not want to go, at first, but it's a very good school and close by, so she can come home whenever she wants. She used to, but now she has friends there, so she stays on most weekends.”
“She's...what? Fifteen years old, now?”
“She turned fifteen in April,” I say, wondering for a moment, how he knows this. But then I remember he knew her real family. He still wears her uncle's name like a ragged cloak. Did he know her mother, ever? “Is this about my daughter?” I ask, emphasizing the possessive pronoun. Whatever his connection to the Barton family, she is mine.
“No,” he says, then falls silent. I can feel the words behind his lips, but I can't imagine what they are. He does not seem to know how to utter them. I wonder if I should take his jacket, invite him into the parlor, offer him a drink. He might freeze to death before he can find what it is he's trying to say. Finally, he reaches into his pocket. For a weapon? I am not afraid. I can disarm him if I have to, if I want to.
Whatever he pulls out is not a weapon, unless it's a tiny one. I catch a metallic flicker between the fingers of his closed fist. I think of little knives, and bombs. A bomb would upset me. There's not much I can do against it, and there are things in this house I don't want destroyed. Why am I so certain he wants to kill me?
What else do people want when they show up on your doorstep on hellish nights like this one, after seven silent years? I can't remember what I might have done to earn his hatred, but that doesn't mean I did not do something. I hurt a lot of people without knowing it, when I was Colonel Une of OZ.
He opens his hand. It is not a weapon he holds, at least not at first glance.
It is a cross, tiny, battered, made of gold. A piece has broken off it, so that all its arms are the same length. The chain it is attached to is clearly not the original.
He says in the wisp of a voice, “Do you know this?”
A ghost wind blows pale gold hair across my memory. I close my eyes, and see hers, hazel like mine, but lighter, warmer. I hear the laughter, high and wild and desperate.
I open my eyes. “Yes, I know it.”
I see in his eyes that he knows this already.
We are in the parlor. I have not changed my clothing. He sits in a chair by the fireplace, shivering under a quilt. I have nothing else to offer him. He is too broad for anything of mine. Only his jacket was thoroughly soaked, anyway, and I left that to dry on the radiator in the bathroom.
I like this room best, of all the rooms in my house. It is the face I show to those I allow in, so it must be beautiful. But it must also be mine, so this is where I keep things I cherish, things that make me feel strong. I wonder what he thinks. Marie's piano stands in the corner. I miss her playing when she is away. She has become quite good over the years. It's a joy to hear her while I work in my office.
There are pictures on the walls, and on the mantel over the fireplace. Most of them are of Marie. The most recent was taken at her fifteenth birthday party. She does look fifteen and very mature, surrounded by her friends, with her marmalade-colored hair hanging loose over her shoulders, and her dark blue eyes bright. They are her father's eyes. I realize that Marie is now the same age as the Gundam pilots when I first encountered them. I am suddenly saddened by this, and I don't know why. There are a few pictures of her as a child, but I hung those only recently. For a long time she wanted no reminders of her childhood. I could not blame her. There are a few pictures of me when I was younger, and of the couple that raised me, Jean and Nicolette Mirabeux, and their children. There are none of my first family, my real family.
Nor are there any pictures of Treize Khushrenada in this room. That is not because they do not exist. There used to be many of them, but I gave them all to Marie, for her keeping, when she turned thirteen. They are hers by right, and I have to learn to let go. His sword still hangs over the mantel, though, and outside the French windows, his roses bow and shake in the wind and rain.
I like what the roses symbolize, with their beautiful, fragrant blossoms, and their thorns. And I like having a weapon present, still, after all these years. I feel like the sword, honed and sharp, even as I stand in this gentle, elegant room and pour mulled wine for the ghost I let in. Once his glass is filled I take my own and sit, crossing my legs. We watch each other over a low mahogany table, on which rests a basket of fresh-cut roses. We are both waiting. Who will make the first move, trust the wine isn't poisoned and take a sip? I am too tired for games. Before he came I was about to crawl into bed with my wine and a book. I drink. After a moment, so does he.
Presently he says, “Tell me about Middie Une.”
“You tell me about her,” I counter, lowering the glass. “You knew her after I did, clearly.”
“Is she related to you?”
“I had a younger sister, Madeleine, who we called Middie. I don't know if she is the girl you're talking about.”
“But the cross?”
“Oh, the cross is my family's. I recognized it at once. Did you get it from her?” Questions flash through my mind before he can answer. Was she alive when he got this from her? Did she give it willingly? Was it a piece she used to bargain with? Was it a gift? How old was she? Was she well? Was she with anyone? These questions and so many more have been building up behind a door in my mind for many years. I never expected the door to open, not ever. I left my family after my mother died, when I was eleven. Besides Middie I had a father and three younger brothers. I never saw any of them again.
He does not know how old he was when he met the girl who called herself Middie Une. He thinks it was probably fourteen years ago, but there are so many gaps in his memory, and he does not know how old he is now, so who knows?
If my sister were alive now she would be twenty-four. When I tell him this number, he shrugs. “I don't think in years,” he says.
I shiver. I don't know why. I take another sip of wine, and feel it warm my veins. I wish he would do the same. He just stares into the crackling fire. Its light flickers across his long lashes, seems to become entangled in them. I wonder what he means. I wonder why he is here. What can he care about my sister?
He stands quickly, startling me. I had forgotten how fast he could move. His body seems to ripple, and then it flows like water, onto its feet, and he is pacing in front of the fireplace, silhouetted against the flame. “I knew the cross wasn't mine,” he says. “My sister--Catherine, not my real sister--found it, when she was going through some old boxes we had at the circus, about a month ago. She's getting married in June, so she's getting ready to move in with her fiancé. She found this.” His hand squeezes around the broken cross. He took it back after showing it to me. I have not asked for it again. I am not sure I want to hold it in my hand, so I let him. He says, “She knew it wasn't hers. Cathy's family was Jewish.” He looks up at me, finally, and gives me an odd smile. It's hardly a smile at all. “So it had to be mine. I don't remember--I honestly don't--but I must have gone back for it, after I...” He trails off.
Watching him, I begin to understand what he means when he says he does not think in years. Seasons change for him, but I doubt he has any real concept of the passage of time. Years break around him like waves around a rock on a beach, while they seem to hit me straight on. He has changed little in the seven years since I last saw him. No, his body has changed. He is definitely a man, now, not a boy. He is taller and broader and yet, somehow, insubstantial. Light would pass through him. His face is thinner, I think, his mouth a little more troubled. His movements are the same as they were when he was fifteen, though. There is still that nervous, wary grace. And his eyes are the same. He never had the eyes of a fifteen-year-old, not even when he was fifteen. It is a little less frightening to see those ageless eyes on a grown man than it was to see them on a young boy, but not by much. Looking at his eyes, in those rare moments when he faces me, I think of the pale green trees on the outskirts of a forest, with the deeper green shadows seeping between them, hinting at a secret darkness beyond. I sip my wine again.
He does not seem to know how to go on, so I help him. “How did you get the cross?” I ask.
“She gave it to me. To thank me. I found her in the jungle on a routine scouting expedition, and brought her back to camp. I was with a troop of rebel mercenaries, then. She traveled with us for a few weeks, as a cook. And a spy for the Alliance.” Again that smile. He leans close to me, showing me the cross in his cupped hand. He points to the broken end. “There was a recording device planted right here. She wore a similar one around her neck, disguised as a kid's game. She was always around when the captain planned our next move. The Alliance always knew where to find us. It wasn't long before the troop was eliminated.”
“Except you.”
“Except me. And her. More than half the men turned traitor. I killed all of them.”
I wonder what he wants me to think. There is no emotion in his voice, no regret in his eyes. Has it been so long that the pain of executing his former comrades has dulled, or did he ever feel anything? I am curious, so I test him. “Do you blame her?”
He straightens, his hand folding over the cross. “No.” He turns back to the fire. “At least, now I don't. I did, though. The Alliance paid her enough to feed her father and three younger brothers. All she had to do was ladle soup for the men. It was my job to kill them.” I wonder what he sees in the flames. “Funny, when I killed them, I didn't feel anything. Just anger, at her. And I was angry for making me feel anger. Now, I wonder if I could have done that, today. And I'm not angry, anymore.”
I set my wine down. “You forgive her?”
“Yes.” He turns around, swift as a wave, and I see something new in his eyes. A light. “That's why I'm here. I want to tell her I forgive her. And I want to ask her forgiveness.”
“For what?” As strange as his stony countenance of a moment ago was, this light is stranger. I like it, and I don't. It does not belong in that pale, harried face. But it is what that face needs more than anything else.
“For abandoning her. I told her, when we first met, that we were the same. I denied it later, but I think I was telling the truth the first time. I should have understood why she did it. I was--jealous. She had a home to go back to and I didn't. I have too many unresolved relationships. I want to tell her I'm sorry. Can you tell me where she is?”
“I can't.” The room has dimmed around his brightness. I can hardly see it anymore.
“I'll find her, then, and tell her.”
“You can't.” I raise my head, meet his shining eyes. I almost have to squint. It hurts as I draw breath. “Middie--Madeleine Une--is dead. She was killed in the war ten years ago.”
The cross falls from his hand, the chain slithering after it, to the carpet. He turns away from me. I stare past him, at the wall, where his shadow shudders softly. He makes no sound. It is a long moment before I realize he is crying. I rise and go to him, put my hands on his tall shoulders, and make him sit. I'm glad he cries. I would not know what to do if his face had turned back to stone. I'm glad that even though he can not have what he wants, he is human enough to cry for it.
I pick up his forgotten glass and put it into his hands. He looks up at me, his eyes tear-filled. “How did you know?”
I keep my hand on his shoulder, feel the little shudders pass through his frame and into mine. “Treize. When we first met, I told him about my real family. He helped me find out what happened to them. It was a mobile suit battle. They were living in a tent village in northern France. They were caught in the crossfire. All of them.”
“I killed her,” he says softly.
I want to slap him. “Why?” I demand, as harshly as I please. “Did you pilot one of those suits?”
“No. Ten years ago I was already working as a mechanic at the Barton Foundation. But I still killed her. I should have looked out for her. She told me she loved me. She's the first person I can ever remember telling me they loved me. I should have kept her with me.”
“Don't be so self-righteous. Would she have stayed with you? Would you have gone with her? You might have been dead, too.” I pinch his shoulder between my fingers. I want a reaction, a real cry of pain. He never utters one. Instead, he says, in a whisper that chills me to my bones,
“There's no absolution, is there?”
I let go of his shoulder, shake my head, and smile sadly. “No, there isn't. It's just something you look for and never really find. Treize died to end the war, but did his death bring back the millions who were killed in his name?” He looks down and once again I feel the stirrings of warmth in my body. For some reason, I find myself thinking of Marie. “There's no absolution,” I tell him gently. “But there is forgiveness. And sometimes, if we're lucky, there is love.”
He had no where else to go, so I set him up in one of the guestrooms. He is there, now, asleep, I hope, unlike myself. I can't seem to get to sleep. Usually I like the rain pattering against the windows. Without it, the house feels too quiet when Marie is away. Now, it sounds like distant gunfire. All I can think of is his face, and the light that shone in it when he talked about redemption and apologizing to Middie.
I wonder if the gunfire that killed her sounded anything like the rain on my window.
Why did he have to come here? Why did he have to reopen that door? I thought I had finished grieving.
I remember Treize telling me my family was dead. He was so gentle with me, so careful with my feelings. He could not have stopped the pain of it, though, and in the end, all he could do was hold me while I cried. I asked him why I had been spared. He told me it was because I had a purpose to fulfill. “And my family didn't?” I had snapped.
The last time I saw Middie, there was no anger between us, although there should have been. I suppose she was too young. I was the older sister, the privileged one, the one who made the rules now that our mother was dead. And I was going away. A couple named Mirabeux had recently lost a daughter, and so they had an extra set of identification papers. My father used to work for Jean Mirabeux, before the war ended his business. They offered to take me into their house. I confess that I wanted to go. Since the war began, life had become so difficult. I was always hungry, and there was no work for my father except as a soldier, and how could he fight when he was ill? I wanted new, pretty things, like I had before the war. I wanted friends my age. Can you blame me? I was only eleven.
I wanted Middie to be angry with me. I wanted someone to tell me what I was doing was wrong. But to her, then, injustice meant my scoop of ice cream was larger than hers, when we could find such things. She did not understand.
I cried so hard when Treize told me she was dead. I think I cried more for her than for my father and brothers. My brothers were so young; I hardly knew them. But Middie was my baby sister.
I don't know what to think of his story--Trowa's. File number one-sixty-eight. He lost more in the war than I did. He lost his family--and his name.
I can't cry, now. I think I used up all my tears a long time ago. Middie's cross lies on my night table. I pick it up and hold it tightly in my hand. What I expect to feel, holding it, I don't know. Warmth? Her warmth, from fourteen years ago? I finger the jagged edge, where the recording device was planted, which he shot off. Fourteen years ago. Strange how paths sometimes cross and then race away in opposite directions, only to come back together, a little, years later. I hold the battered cross against my heart.
Middie. The girl who always got into my things. The girl for whom I drew unicorns to color in because we had no coloring books and she couldn't draw. My sister.
And this one, this nameless ghost who breezed through my door one rainy night, when I never thought to see him again, what of him? Now that he can't take up her story, where does he go? His sister is getting married. Not his real sister, but a sister all the same. He has her. But now it seems he is losing her. I wonder, does he see the other pilots, ever? I can't imagine that he does. He would have to be wildly lonely to seek me out here. He did not join the Preventers as Chang Wufei did. I have heard Duo Maxwell still has his garage on an L-2 colony. Heero Yuy is a Minister of Defense for the World Nation. I meet with him and Relena Darlian several times a year. And Quatre Winner, married to some pediatrician who is reputedly as gentle as he is, heads his family's corporation on the L-4 Colony Cluster. He is frequently in the news. But of this one, the one lying just down the hall from me, I have heard nothing for seven years.
For some reason, the thought of him just down the hall makes me feel restless. I want to get up, tiptoe down the hall to his room, and look at him, see that he is still there. I don't want him to fade when my back is turned. It is irrational, but at three-thirty in the morning, what does rational have to do with anything?
I get up. I can't believe I am doing this. I wrap my robe around my body and walk out into the hall.
There is no moonlight, but I can see the corners of the doorframes, the molding of the ceiling, in different shades of darkness. I feel as though I am in one of those ancient movies that were filmed without color. The carpet runs under my feet like a long, dull grey river to a waterfall of stairs. For a moment I mistake him for another shadow, but he turns at the sound of my footfalls, and I see him sitting at the top of the stairs. His eyes are dark, shadowed. He looks so lonely sitting there, his knees tucked up to his chin, his arms hanging over them, limply. I want to go to him, put my arms around him. I don't really know why.
“Couldn't sleep, either?” he says. “There was something else I wanted to tell you, but I wasn't sure whether I should wake you or not.”
I sit down beside him on the stairs.
“I'm sorry.”
“Your apologies are no good to me,” I say.
“I made you sad.” His voice trembles, just a little. How young he sounds! Not twenty-four, if that is his real age. “I'm sorry for that. I wanted to tell you that there was another reason I came here.” He is silent for a long time. I wait. Presently, turns to me and says, “I can't believe she's dead. I can remember her exactly--and I have so much trouble remembering things from my past. Everything she said feels so real it's so hard to believe she's not there.” He shudders slightly. “We think we have all the time in the world, but we really don't. I keep telling myself I should have come sooner, but it wouldn't have made a difference. I guess I also--wanted to see how you were. You and Marie.”
What?
“The Bartons and the Khushrenadas,” he says, “they're the ones who kept the war going as long as it did. Or people like them, anyway. I wanted to make sure that--that the product, that Marie Maia, that she's not...”
“Marie Maia Khushrenada Barton is fine,” I tell him. “She leads a normal life. She is happy. At least, as happy as any fifteen-year-old girl is willing to admit to the woman she thinks of as her mother. She seems to have a lot of friends. She has a boyfriend. A nice boy.”
He says, so softly I can hardly hear him, “She's the age I was when I became a Gundam pilot.” I had this thought, before, but I shiver again. He frowns. “Are you cold?”
I shake my head, shake off his concern. But yes, I am cold. Physically, emotionally. I'm cold and I'm tired and sad and lonely. I want warmth. I want companionship. I want to wake up and not be so damn tired. He is sitting so close to me, and he is only wearing a thin blanket and his underwear, because I had nothing for him to wear. I can't see anything, but God, I'd have to be a frigid old cow not to be thinking about what's underneath that blanket. And I'm only wearing my robe. But he's colder than I am.
He looks away from me, out into nothing. I look at the grey slope of his neck. He says, “Sometimes I just find myself thinking about things, and I can't sleep. It always happens at night. Once I start thinking, I don't bother to try to forget things. I just make myself some tea and--and think.”
“Do you want me to make tea?” His skin is like marble in the coldness and darkness.
“I just want to know that you're all right.”
Me?
He wheels back to face me, abruptly. I am surprised. “I'm more concerned about you than I am about Marie Maia.”
“Why me?”
A flash in his eyes. Not color, and not really a light. Just shadows moving quickly. “We're the same.”
“Isn't that the line you used on Middie?”
“It's more true for us.”
“Tell me why that's true.”
He shrugs. The darkness slithers and hisses around us. He should grasp my wrist and hold my gaze intensely. That's the way such revelations are made. But he does not do that. “We were the ones who were used. The Khushrenadas and the Bartons--they both used us.” I don't contest this; I am too curious. He continues: “We were both tools. And at the same time--we weren't innocent. Neither of us. Never. Marie Maia and Middie. They were innocent. Not us.”
“Middie spied for the Alliance. She's the reason your troop died,” I remind him.
“But I'm the one who killed them.”
“If she had not given information to the Alliance regarding your whereabouts, your men might not have switched sides, and you would not have killed them.”
“She did it to feed her family. She regretted what she did. I didn't. I was empty. I had no remorse.”
“And I'm like you? No, don't answer that.” I hold up a hand. “I'm well aware of what I did during the war. But you're not empty now, are you?”
He lowers his lashes. “No.” The word rustles in his throat, barely escapes his lips.
“Why not now?” I am whispering, too. This is so odd, this talking in hushed voices in the dark, dark early morning. It is a little exciting.
“Because now--” He lifts his lashes. “Now there are still people I want to protect.”
Yes, I think. It's the same for me. Marie. Catherine. And maybe...someone else? So, not empty, anymore. Just lonely, and sad. Oh, Trowa. I realize that I am not cold, anymore. I tell him, gently, “We're the fossils of the war. We're what's left over, imprinted with what went on before. People can study us and piece together how it was. We've changed. We're not the same as we were, but it's all there. We're not exactly the victims, although in some ways we are. We were used by the people with power, and the people on the bottom were our victims. It's rough being in the middle.”
Very softly: “Yes.”
“So what do you propose we do?”
“I don't know.”
He is out of questions and concerns, even though I have answered and allayed neither. He is just another shadow, really. If I stood up and walked back to my room, then looked back while I was halfway down the hall, he would have melted into the darkness. I would never see him again. I know this. If he disappears now, he is gone. Maybe he feels the same way about me. This time our paths will diverge forever. I don't want that. I want to be warm. Not breathing, I reach out and touch his cheek with my fingertips. He moves slightly, a ripple. I thought his skin would be as cold and hard as it looks, but it's as soft as his voice.
“I think,” I say, “that we should do whatever we damn well please, and the hell with the people in power who used us.”
“You think,” he breathes, “we could use each other for a while? You think we should?”
“Who gives a damn about should? It's been a while since anyone except Marie got any use out of me. Why not you?” I've heard better come-ons in my life, and I've sure as hell heard worse. Maybe he has, too.
He smiles slightly. “We can't really get hurt, can we?”
“So what if we do? We're adults.” I lean in to kiss him. His lips are cool, but his mouth is warm. He kisses me back, shyly first, then desperately. His hands go to my waist and the sash of my robe. I put my hands on his, make him let go. I say, against his mouth, “Not on the stairs. If we're going to do this stupid thing, at least let's do it in comfort.” I rise, pulling him up with me.
We are quick. We're barely through the bedroom door before my robe and his underwear are on the floor. He lost his blanket back in the hall. I'm glad we're quick. If I stop to think about what we are doing, I will probably realize just how crazy it is, and stop it. And I don't want that. No, I don't. I've slept with a few men since Treize, but right from the start I know that this time will be different.
We are intense. I don't know why. Besides us, the house is empty. We have all the time in the world. But we act as though all the years of our lives we're still capable of doing this are slipping through our fingers. Treize and I always took our time, even though we both knew that I could be dead the next day. Tonight, we act as though we have no time to waste. Our chat on the stairs was all the foreplay we allow ourselves. I feel the wildness of his heartbeat against mine. It's louder than the rain against the window. He pushes me onto the bed and I pull him down on top of me. There are kisses and gasps, and we are together.
There is pain, but I don't want him to stop. Too fast, though. We have time, we have time. The world is only the size of this bed. It's ours. The sheets twist under me, my hands twist in his hair. I must have yanked hard, or cried out--I don't remember--because he slows, murmuring apologies against my throat. I let go of his hair and begin to stroke my way down his tense body.
He has done this before. He is too assured not to have. Strange, those pilots always seemed so innocent, so pure. I know how old he probably is, but the eyes he gives me now are the same as they were seven years ago. It is alarming that that part of him has not changed. I wonder how many women he has been with. I wonder, with an odd, dark thrill, how many men. I remember how slender and pretty he was. There's a ghost of that boy, still, in the man above me. He is a passionate lover, but mechanical. He tries to make love, but it is too much like fucking. He doesn't know the little tricks, the small, delicious things lovers do to win each other. This makes me sad. I want to teach him. There are things one should not go through life without knowing.
I roll us over so that I am on top, push him back against the pillows. My hair hangs down over his chest. I begin with his mouth, flicking the tip of my tongue out to trace his thin lips. He reaches for me, but I force his hands back down. Not yet. We DO have time. This first. Then that. I hold his wrists against the sheet a moment, while I kiss him. I know what I am doing. When I release him he moves his hands up to my thighs, lets one rest there. The other trails up my belly, to my breasts, stroking with light, cool fingers.
“You know,” he says, as he continues to thrust gently, “I think you're the first person I ever met who I didn't envy.”
He is still cold, his skin, his eyes. As I trace kisses along his jaw, down his neck to the hollow of his throat, I wonder, Who taught him how to fuck, but not how to make love?
In the end, I cry. In sadness, in joy, I don't know. Probably both. I think I cry for all of us, for him, for Middie, for Treize, for myself. For everything that brought us to this night. I thought I had no tears left. After we climax, he holds me, murmuring desperate apologies, while I cling to him, sobbing against his cheek.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "Lady, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." His voice shakes; I've frightened him. His voice, unlike his eyes, have an age that can be determined. In his fear and concern he sounds like such a young boy.
"It wasn't you," I choke. "I just need to-- It's not you." I tell him my real name. He whispers it back to me. I wish I knew his real name so I could tell it to him.
The rain stops shortly before my tears do. The grey recedes. Dawn is coming. The edges of the window in my bedroom are tinted with gold. The raindrops that cling to the glass glimmer softly. His skin seems almost to glow, very, very faintly as he strokes the tangled hair out of my eyes.
“I'm sorry about what I said, before.” His warm breath stirs my hair.
“It's all right. I would hate to think you ever envied me.”
“Are you sorry about...?” He trails off nervously, so he must mean the sex.
“God, no.” I wind my arms around him, holding him. I feel as though we were just in time for something. We barely made it. If he asked, I would hold him like this forever. He is nothing like Treize. Treize was so solid, so vital. I could never have imagined losing him. This one is thin, fragile for all the lean strength of him. I feel him vanishing even as I hold him against me. I close my eyes to sleep and find that I finally can.
When I wake some hours later, the sun is up, and he is gone. Somehow I knew he would be, but I can't help feeling disappointed. Maybe I was wrong to tell him it did not matter if we hurt each other. Well, I have had one very interesting one-night stand. And I can't say I regret it. To keep from thinking about it, I close my eyes again.
When I reopen them, time has passed. Last night does not seem real. Now that the sun has risen I am supposed to be rational, so I wonder if last night really happened at all. Maybe he was just a ghost, after all, or a dream.
When I slide out of bed, I see his underwear and my robe on the floor. I pick up the robe and hurry down the hall, wrapping it around me as I go. He is not in the bathroom. He is not in the parlor or the kitchen.
I stand in the middle of the downstairs hallway, bewildered, until I hear a splash. I walk to the patio. The blanket from the bed in the guestroom lies on the side of the pool, where he is swimming laps. In the sunlight and the shadows from the rosebushes that line the pool, his naked body is flecked with green and honey-gold. Are there such things as male naiads? He is not exactly masculine, with his beautiful face and slim, beautiful body. But he is definitely male. I don't call to him. I am enjoying watching him.
He sees me eventually, and swims over to me. He is smiling, but not like before. The corners of his lips turn upward, cautiously, as though he is nervous, but rather enjoying himself. If he were playing by the rules that accompany one-night stands, he should not still be here. And he should not be this cute. He wraps a wet hand around my ankle. I almost fall into the pool. “Come join me.”
“I take it,” I say, “that last night meant something to you.”
Well, so what if it did? So what if the sex last night was splendid, possibly the best either of us ever had, except for what we just did in the pool? I'm not in love with him, and I refuse to believe he has fallen in love with me. Still, handsome, gentle, screwed up twenty-four-year-olds don't just breeze into your life every night and it's even less often they offer to take you out for coffee and croissants the next morning. We found something to cling to last night, a way to stop feeling so lonely, and a way to make another person stop feeling lonely, which is better.
I should go. He is waiting for me downstairs, probably growing impatient. My hair isn't completely dry yet, but--oh, well.
I don't know what we will talk about over coffee. I don't know where all of this will lead. I just know that I like having him here and I hope that he will stay for a long time.
We're not fighting a war, anymore. We have time to find out what we want from our lives.
We have all the time in the world.
END FILE
(8/17/01)