29-Mar-2001
See prologue for any and all disclaimers, warnings, and whatnot.
As always: archived at http://www.gwaddiction.com, feedback to sparcck
AC 198
I had no idea how wrong I was, but that's a part of being human, too. I told Duo once that I fell in love with him because he was the only one who ever thought I was capable of making mistakes.
He responded by teasing me, of course, but he seemed to have given it thought that day, and he brought it up later, as we were falling asleep.
~/"You think you're not human, and that's what keeps you from really living."
I was silent, but he knew I wasn't asleep.
"People screw up, Heero. You screw up. You get hurt, you feel things." He made a tight sweeping gesture with his fingers. "Human. Just like that. Same as everyone else."
He turned his head to look at me, and smiled broadly. "Sucks, ne?"
That falling sensation came over me again and I reached out to take his hand and pull it to my chest, feeling his fingers moving ever so slightly against me. "No."/~
I made a mistake. Many mistakes. And I'm horrified to find myself sitting here, in the middle of the night, on a colony where my former lover is sleeping with his new lover and blissfully unaware of my presence, wondering which mistake was the worst.
How can I wonder if it was worth it?
The sight of a small, golden skinned hand on his chest, his hair loose, as it had once been only for me, his face relaxed and peaceful in sleep, comes to me, and for a moment I have to fight back the bile that rises in my throat.
How can I wonder? This is how. I am, right now, wishing I had never known Duo, because this pain is something I cannot even begin to catalogue.
I want to run to Duo's door, pound on it, demand that he tell me if this is normal, if I'm supposed to doubt myself, doubt us, this much. I want to beg him to tell me that I was wrong to leave, not wrong to have loved him.
To love him even now.
I ponder what it would have been like without him, to have been alone but never to have known the difference.
I never would have known his hands on my skin, his mouth on mine, his hair clutched in my fist. I never would have heard the words "I love you," never would have really understood what they meant. Or, better still, I never would have been able to say those words back to him, and mean them, and finally understand the one part of my own language that was eluding me.
Would that have been better than this?
I desperately try to hold onto these feelings, even as they have faded over the past three But the only real feeling I have now is this yawning hole in my chest, and now it hurts to breathe, and I don't know if this is normal or not...
I'm losing my grip.
What's wrong with me? Why do I feel suddenly warm and cold all at once? Why do my eyes feel like they're burning? I've never cried -- I have tried to force myself in the past, when J was teaching me to utilize my emotions, but I never could. And now I feel like I want to, like that's the normal thing to do.
/Zero, show me my future./
I hunch over and hitch my breath purposely, and I want the tears to come, dammit, I want them to.
/Duo, please, show me my future./
I mimic sobbing now, and still... Cry, damn you, why can't you cry?
Maybe Duo was wrong, not me. Maybe I'm not human after all. But I did make a mistake.
What was it again?
My chest hurts and I don't feel right. Certainly not how a soldier is supposed to feel.
Duo, if I go to you, will you tell me what's happening to me? Will you show me how to do this? Will you teach me again?
Maybe I *will* pound on your door, Duo, and then you can make me all right. At least assure me that I wasn't wrong to love you. Because I don't want to have been wrong about that. About anything else, but not that.
My eyes are still stinging, but they remain dry. The smell of his salvage yard reaches me, and I decide that I will go to see him. He will tell me what's wrong.
New feelings again. Indecision warring with resolve.
/Ninmu./
I've become a soldier, in these three years without him. I've gone back to what I said I would never do again, and I did it without even realizing it. I don't want this, now that I know what it's like to not be this. I don't want this anymore.
But I think I need it. I don't know what to do otherwise. So maybe I never really left it behind.
/Onegai. Ninmu./
So I stand, rooted in place, the wind whipping my hair around my face, and I wait for someone to come and tell me what to do. I wait for Duo to come and tell me to be human again.
End Part 11
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