Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any characters in it. Gundam Wing belongs to Sotsu, Sunrise, ANB, and other rich people. I am not making any money off of this, and I have no money so don't sue me.
Warnings: 2+5. Simple musings, implied shounen ai, ok, we're going slightly beyond implied but there's still nothing explicit. More angst, lots of angst.
There was endless white and many dark trees. The trees were covered in snow and ice, but under that layer they were the color of her eyes. I glanced back at my Gundam, loving it and hating it, just like her.
I loved her. Every day of our marriage I loved her. But I hated her too. I hated her ignorance and unwomanly attitudes. I told her that, knowing full well I shouldn't. But still, I told her she was unwomanly.
She told me to get my head out of my ass, and my ass out of the Dark Ages. She told me I was a chauvinist and she was a free person. She was a person who could do what she wanted and say what she wanted. The one time she'd conformed, when she'd been forced to conform by chauvinist men like myself, was when she'd married me. She told me all of that and more.
She told me she regretted that day with every breath in her body. She told me she hated me with all her being. She told me she loathed being married to a weakling scholar who would never be able, or good enough, to defend our people from the depredations of OZ.
As I walk through the darkening woods and silent snow I can still hear her screams of fury, pure unadulterated rage, when I was chosen to train as our colony's Gundam pilot and she was not. I can still hear her words of scorn, the pure derision in her crystal voice, as she mocked me and mocked my weakness in my dislike of the task.
She laughed when I was punished for skipping lessons in favor of reading a new book. She scowled as darkly as the heavy clouds above me when I attempted to please her by going. And still, in my heart, I loved her. She forced me to learn something new, something that was not in my books new, everyday.
And then she got into a fight she could not win and died in my arms, cursing me for not being there to fight in defense of our people. For not fighting in defense of her when she fell. She cursed me for being in a library on my few hours off from the training I dreaded. She damned me for not training as hard as I should have.
I can still hear the vituperative words and hard tone of her weakening voice. Her shining, dark eyes were growing dull and her delicate body was losing strength. She was as limp as cut flowers in a vase. My hands were tangled in her fine black hair. I listened to her harsh words and I listened to her prophesize the doom of our people, the loss of our colony.
And she died. She became my demon. The demon that drove me on to learning how to pilot a Gundam properly. She drove me on to destroying OZ bases and OZ soldiers. She drove me on to hurting innocents and into forsaking the peaceful child I had been.
She demanded vengeance. She demanded justice. She never let me be.
And then he came into my life. Vibrant, happy, gorgeous. He laughs. He loves. He lives. He bounces through battles as though they're nothing. He skips through every safe-house cracking wild and dirty jokes at us. He teases us all, but especially me. He pokes at beliefs. He laughs at my manner, but not maliciously, not like her.
He sometimes even silences her. Makes her as quiet as the dead air around me. Quiet and cold, waiting, as it feels the whole world is waiting now. Although I do not know what it is waiting for. Perhaps for night to finish falling. Perhaps for the snow to stop, although it looks as though it won't for some time. But still, he silences her. No one else ever has.
He drags words out of me too. Not even she could do that. He drags out secrets of my past, secrets of her that I don't want to talk about. That I didn't want to tell anyone. And then he listens, never condemning.
Sometimes he gets too close and I try to drive him off. I curse him. I treat him coldly and belittle him, in the manner that she taught me. He draws back a little each time I do that and then he comes back to me warmer and more of a friend each time.
But he could never want me. Will never want me. No one could and no one should. She tells me that every hour of every day. She screams it at me during every mission. She was particularly loud and vocal during this last one.
She knows how close I am to loving him, to wanting him to love me back. How close I am to falling into his embrace, even though I know in my heart that he only wants to be friends. She doesn't want me to have even that. She thinks I should be alone and as cold as the snow that still falls cold and ghost-like around me.
She wails of my misdeeds and stands sentinel, tall and unbending as the trees around me.
I can't move on. I am tied to her, to my demon, with chains stronger than Gundanium. I am alone and no matter how much I could love him, how much I do love him, I will always be alone.
I am not worthy of him. Of his light, of his joy, or of his love. She nods, almost pleased.
I slog slowly through the wet snow banks, my tracks filling behind me. My heart is heavy and feeling its isolation. I approach the remote safehouse and as I reach for the door handle it is jerked out of my grasp.
He stands there in the doorway, framed with light. A bright smile sparkles in his eyes and a smile graces his lips. He is beautiful. He is laughing. He is joy.
And temporarily she is silenced.
Temporarily the demon is blinded.
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