28-May-2001
Title: Spoiled
Category: yaoi, angst
Rating: None
Pairings: whomever you think it fits
Spoilers: None
WARNINGS: Angst. Questioning a common social? moral? value. Questioning the sanctity of "pairings". First person POV.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing characters and universe are the property of the copyright owners. Our stuff is ours. No money being made here.
Notes: I wrote this because I was sad. I'm not preaching, nor proselytizing. Everybody is entitled to like what they like, without benefit of my approval, lord knows I don't ask for anyone else's.
Feedback: I cried while writing this, so if you don't like it or have a problem with the subject matter, I'd rather not hear about it today. Gomen for that.
Okay, it's all my fault. Maybe I need to be punished or something, but there isn't a punishment they could come up with that would hurt the way this hurts.
You know, you taught me everything I know about love. People always say it must have been the other way around, because I'm the one who expresses it outwardly, sometimes too outwardly, and you are the quiet one, but people don't know anything. You taught me about love. I learned what it was by loving you. By finding someone I cared about more than I cared about myself. That took quite a bit of doing, you know. I'm a survivor, and you can't be that without being selfish, taking care of number one. I was cynical, I didn't trust people... don't get me wrong, I was also an idealist, or I'd never have accepted the mission and the Gundam, but my desire to help people and keep the Colonies free didn't prevent me from having jaded views about the human race as a whole.
I couldn't keep them, with you. Because you were different. Without trying to be, without setting yourself up that way, just another fallible human like the rest of us, if a bit more efficient... But I watched you look beyond where most people would stop. Push yourself further. Not accept the obvious answers. And I began loving you.
That by itself might not have changed so much... but as I learned to love, I began to trust. No, I don't mean blind trust, I mean a very particular kind of trust, eyes open, acknowledging the realities, but the better I came to understand you, the more I realized that I could trust you to be who you are. And in time, to accept who I am.
It was like a house of cards, or a domino effect or something. Love... then trust... devotion and commitment followed. Commitment... me. That's when it should have been obvious something really screwy was going on.
And it didn't matter. I wasn't scared. Oh maybe a little, but not the devouring, burning fear I'd always had when my independence was threatened, or when anyone tried to get too close to me. Because I sensed your commitment. I felt, it, I saw it. There wasn't a question.
That's when things were perfect.
You know, we shocked everybody. But when the shock faded, people seemed to adopt us or something. Latch onto what they were seeing, or sensing. People smiled at us - there's this funny smile people get when they see something that is too good to be true, but which somehow exists anyway. Like it gives 'em hope or something.
I didn't care about any of that. I was living whole for the first time in my life, because you taught me what love was.
And I thought I understood. I certainly felt it. Felt things open up in me... felt that love bringing out a better me, a me I'd only dared to imagine. I found myself seeing everything with new eyes, feeling so much more that I ever had.
I began to see the beauty in things around me that I never had been able to see before. And I began to see the beauty in people. At times I ached with it. And I saw you respond to people in a way that showed me you were seeing things too. Saw your heart, which was always far bigger than anyone else could see, open and admit one, then another, to a place there. And it made me love you even more. I understood that so many things you did, even in the war, were done out of a love that had no other expression.
And my own once-cynical, once so closely-guarded heart opened wider with every day that we were together.
One day I saw something beautiful, and yearned to express what I felt. I saw loneliness and pain, self-doubt, and ached with understanding. And I reached out with the love I had learned from you, the love created by you, the strength made possible by you, and offered a piece of my heart to someone worthy.
I brought them to you as an offering, I never had a doubt your heart would ache as mine had. Would open as I had seen it do. I brought him to you with my love, not reduced or divided, but multiplied, increased, with all the trust that had grown between us, brought you this soul who ached and needed and did not understand his own beauty, as I had not understood at first, before you taught me by letting me love you.
When you opened your arms, I wasn't surprised. My faith was perfect. And together we saw his doubts, and fears and his need to protect us from his perceived imperfections. We saw his heart open unbidden, seduced by the presence of trust and hope and faith. And we understood everything, the love, the doubt. Together we began the giving, and the taking. Knowing that if we loved, if we accepted love, the miracle would take root and grow.
And I thought, this is what love is, this is what it can do. The energy in my soul was golden, where darkness had ruled for so very long.
And then I noticed, quite by accident, an expression on some acquaintance's face. I didn't understand the disapproval but I chalked it up to their lack of understanding. It wasn't the last face I was to see it on.
Not long after, I heard a remark not meant for my ears. I brushed it off but when I heard it again from other lips, it stayed with me.
I didn't know, koibito. I didn't know there were limits to love. I didn't know that the miracle you taught me wasn't intended to be allowed to multiply. I only knew that loving you made it easier to love again. Trusting you made it possible to trust again. My commitment to you gave me a place from which to offer more of myself. I'd have never been able to offer that love if not for what we have.
I thought it was a boundless miracle.
But the looks and the whispers...
Now I understand.
I've spoiled it.
No... I'm lying. I don't really understand. What I feel for you is as pure as it ever was. I look into my heart and I see it, shining, and the light is no dimmer for the presence of another light, another love. If anything, it's stronger. But I guess it must be wrong, somehow. I should have known that if there was a wrong way to do this, I would find it.
I love you so much.
And now I know there is something wrong with my heart, because that love, which is so great that it fills me beyond hope of description, was supposed to shine brightly enough to blind me to all others, instead of showing me the world in such depth and detail. The commitment between us was supposed to be a fortress no one else could enter, not a foundation to build a house with as many mansions as we could. The perfection of our special times together were never intended to be shared. Our healing was not to be given to ease the pain you showed me how to see and feel in other hearts.
It should have been a shrine inviolate, not marred by the imperfection of an open heart.
And now I don't know what to do. I see you smile at me, oblivious. Perhaps you don't know either. Not yet, but you will. You must. Such an obvious, universal knowledge must be poised to crash down upon us, destroying three lives, and all because there is something wrong with my heart. Because you taught me to love, and I learned to love, and I didn't stop when I was supposed to, and never dreamed I was dishonoring what we have by allowing it to grow outside the limits I should have understood.
You taught me to love, to open the dark, closed confines of a heart so battered that it had to learn to trust. I didn't know, koibito. I didn't know miracles had limits.
They say it's spoiled.
Please feel free to direct feedback to the author!
bonnejeanne@yahoo.com