26-Apr-2003
Title: High
Author: Psyche ( psyche @ happyfangirl.org )
Warnings: angst, strange.
Pairings: only if you want to see them.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing &etc. = not mine. Used here without permission, for no profit.
Notes: Third person, limited to Quatre's POV. Takes place shortly after his arrival in Sanc.
Thought I'd take the 'Space Heart' for a spin...
It was a grey day. One didn't see days like this in the Colonies. Grey, dank and sickly... There was something distinctly *Earth* about inclement weather.
/Trowa was dead./
This was Sanc. A bright and sparkling place -- a glass bauble that made one feel one had no heart to be heavy and no skin to be pierced -- but today it felt rotten; as if all Quatre's thoughts had condensed at the kingdom's edges, and begun to grow mould. Perhaps it was because Relena was away; meeting with some leader or other, to discuss how best to face the threat posed by Romefellar.
The sky was choking with great lumps of cloud. Bright green leaves looked *too* green -- sickly -- and the sea raged and foamed as it crashed against walls of rock.
This was Sanc -- this was sanctuary! -- a kingdom rebuilt, to show the world that peace could be stronger than war. This was what Quatre wanted most in the world to protect; and this was what he could so easily shatter, /if he made a mistake.../
The wind pushed about the branches on the trees. A particularly strong gust came from the North, and the trees bowed down, so low that Quatre felt he was falling, just with the site of it. In a moment, everything calmed. Quatre clutched at a chair uneasily, and sat himself down.
He was in Relena's high office: a pinnacle of a place from which one could see in all directions. Quatre imagined that Relena would stand in this place and feel her hope spread out, all around her: keeping the kingdom together. That was her nature: to have ideas that would swell, and touch everything; until nothing remained exactly as it was. Perhaps she could even touch--
/Trowa was dead./
If one repeats a thing enough, one begins to believe it. So Quatre had been told.
He had had a good view of the explosion. It had been his doing -- it was his duty to watch. Heero had been defending the Colony. For Heero, it was always about the Colonies. Quatre had attacked a Colony, so Heero had attacked Quatre. Heero had known that Quatre needed to be killed. Heero was good at knowing when someone had been alive too long.
Trowa had interfered. Trowa had been supposed to help Heero kill Quatre, but had ended up giving his life to save the other two.
The blast from the buster rifle had hit Trowa's suit; Trowa had forgiven Quatre; Heero had *allowed* it... And Trowa was dead.
/Trowa was alive./
The wind disturbed the trees once again, this time gently: rustling their leaves and sending tiny shivers throughout the scene. Quatre wished Relena had hung a painting or two on her office wall. He needed something still upon which to focus, so that he could convince himself that the past was unchangeable; that he was mortal.
It began to rain.
Things would be easier, perhaps, had Trowa only been more reluctant to -- had Trowa made a less willing sacrifice of himself. To have killed an enemy -- even if the person in question should not have been an enemy -- that was a very different thing from having someone place himself, of his own volition, in front of your fire, for *your* sake.
The trees swung from side to side as the rain flew through the sky. Quatre listened to the sound of it -- the tapper-tapper and the howl of it -- and watched the sea grow increasingly more restless. He opened a window and forced himself not to shake as the freezing damp swirled inside. The Earth seemed very strong.
Quatre's lungs felt empty -- he could not fill them, no matter how much he breathed. He opened another window, and another.
His mind was cast up in the wind now. He felt everything; everything saturated him. The world was made up of tiny beads and they were all inside him and all tearing particles of him away with them.
He felt something sharp bite into him; and another; and another; and these were all *people* he realised and tried to gasp -- but the air was taken from him; swallowed and swallowed again by one of the many pinpricks of pain as he spun his way through them.
He found himself captured for a second as he tumbled into the steady panic that was Heero; and the Treize faction was now based in Luxembourg with a force of approximately 254 Leo and 558 Taurus suits, with 1,124 qualified pilots, and more expected, along with further weaponry, from-- Quatre flung himself away.
The world changed and he felt Relena. Her golden warmth and constant motion felt like screaming, and pushing everything inside out; and Quatre seemed for an instant joined with her; but something shattered and all around him were shards of glass and he slipped and he thought he was drowning.
And then he felt Wufei -- Wufei who was angry and bleeding -- and Duo, hurt in a similar way but with scabs instead of fresh wounds; and Quatre was each of them; and then he felt Trowa; Trowa who was dead; Trowa who was alive.
Quatre was not in pain. No, he was not in pain; no, this was nothing like pain.
He sank deeper into the thickness in which he had placed himself, and deeper; and he began to hear the world beating. It had a steady /kerthump/ -- it pulsated -- and with every beat it drew more inside and flushed more away. Quatre was tugged along in the current towards it -- unable to think of resistance. His surroundings began to fold in on themselves, and he thought of the rain. Existence was pummelling him. He felt something catch within him -- was there an 'within him' any more? -- and he felt everything that was himself shriek and burn white-hot; and he was suddenly awkward and slow. The beating was killing him.
It was killing him, and it came to him that he could stop it.
He came closer to the beating, he thought only about the beating, he felt it slow, and it slowed. He reached its centre. It stopped.
Quatre burned. Gradually -- so quickly that it occurred in less time than could be understood -- every cell of his self burnt away. Then he was swift, and surpassing the wind. Then he was gone.
Something slammed into Quatre's chest, and he opened his eyes to feel sensation pouring into his mind. Everything hurt. He spluttered and coughed, trying to get too much air into his lungs too fast. A blur that had been directly in front of him was suddenly off to the left, and he grabbed onto something soft and silky. A hand came into contact with his face, making his cheek sting, and surprising him so that he released whatever it was he had been holding. A face appeared before his, and Quatre realised he was lying on the floor in Relena's office, with one Dorothy Catalonia crouched over him.
He got to his feet and snarled at her. "You hit me!"
Dorothy lent back against the wall and shrugged. "You pulled my hair," she explained. "Or, do you mean before then, when I thumped your chest? That was because your heart had stopped beating."
"How long have you been here?" It came out sounding more like an accusation than a question. "What were you -- *Why* are you here?"
She laughed. "I wouldn't be too angry if I were you, Quatre Winner. You don't want to die now -- we're just getting to the interesting bit." Her voice was full of something terrible. It sounded like joy.
He stepped forward, as if to deal her a physical blow, and then stopped, hands held tightly by his sides. "Leave!"
She raised an eyebrow, and studied him for a while. He was about to -- he did not know what he was about to do -- when she nodded, smirking to herself, and made her way to the door.
"I'll see you at tea, I suppose," she called back, before disappearing down the stairs.
Quatre moved to the window, and looked out at the world. It was dry and bright. Sunlight sparkled across the surface of the calm blue sea, and there was not a cloud in sight. He brought his hands to his face and felt tears rolling down his cheeks.
He was alive.
Fin.
(:./psyche/high)
