15-Jul-2000
Title: Earth Doesn't Talk Back
Author: Kimmie (JaenKaeGW@hotmail.com)
Archive: GW Addiction.
Category: POV, angst, mildly dark
Pairings: None.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, I mean no harm, I have no money... Stuff like that. Yeah.
Rating: PG-13/R(?)
Warnings: None.
Spoilers: None.
Notes: Like so many of my fics, I don't know where this one came from... not from my usual vein, that's for sure. Duo POV.
He sat on the shores of an ocean that looked black under the new moon and the cloud-hidden stars and the lack of man-made light bulbs casting odd shadows on its surface. He breathed in the sea-salty air and drank in the noise of the waves lapping at the shore and each other.
"I killed a man tonight, y'know," he told the waves, an emotion akin to awe evident in his voice. "He was threatening to blow up a colony just to prove that it could be done when he used mobile dolls. He wanted to blow up the one I think I was born on." He trailed fingers along the sand and piled it up under his hands, absentmindedly making hills and valleys with those trembling hands, then flattening them in one mode of defeat or another. A seagull called in the distance and the waves lapped rhythmically up the beach, carrying driftwood and battered sheels.
"I couldn't let him do that, even if the place doesn't really mean more to me than any other colony. So, I shot him in the forehead." He paused, his wide blue eyes surrounding narrowed pupils that focused on black fabric-covered knees. "It was horrible. One minute he's racing toward me to try to get me out of the room, the next thing I know, he's lying face-down on the floor with the back of his head and a lot of his brains and blood all over everything behind him. I had an awful time getting out of the room... the doorknob was covered in blood and I was panicking. But, everything turned out to be okay. My braid and I are fine, though I think I lost half of a shoelace getting out of there." He looked over to the pair of black boots that sat on the sand a few feet away from him.
He clenched his knees. "I hate doing this... killing missions. If I was in my Gundam, I'd be fine. I can act like I didn't do anything. Y'know, pretend my hand wasn't on the trigger. When I run out of a building with forty guys in bulletproof vests shooting at me because I have blood on my hands that isn't my own and I have to claim that I did that as though it was something right and just... it starts to get to me."
The waves moved lazily up the shore in the silence that followed, just up until they caught his toes. "Ooo... that's a bit cold. Y'know, I always thought I would grow up to be some important person. But, I thought I'd be a movie star or something. Yeah, that would have been the life. Just talk all day, pre-approved things to say, make people believe what I said and I'd get paid and I'd get famous and everyone would know my name. Yeah. That would have been cool. But, they don't exactly go around to orphanages looking for actors, now do they?" He pulled his knees up to his chest and sighed, staring at the bubbles that frothed at the edges of the trailing waves.
"I don't mind it so much until I get blood on my hands. It takes a while to wash it off. The feeling, that is. The blood pretty much goes right away, but your hands stay a bit sticky and it's the *thought* that clings to them." His fingers wrote words in the sand that no one else should have read. The palms of his hands slid over the words until they were a memory like fresh blood on young hands.
Duo Maxwell, Gundam pilot and not-so-trained assasin, sat up and trailed his hands through the water again, shaking them off as he pulled them up and wiped the excess water on his shirt. "The great thing about Earth is that you feel comfortable talking to it... knowing that it won't talk back. Thanks for taking the blood off my hands... and my mind." He added silently, and hope I never have to have you make me forget again.
His shoes pulled on, the half shoelace hanging loose and limp while the other was tied, he stood and walked away, kicking at sea shells and untold conversations that the darkness only helped to mask.
Owari. -_-
Jenny&Kimmie
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