03-Jul-2000
(Disclaimer: I do not own the Gundam Wing boys, in fact, I don't know if their original creators would even recognize them beyond their names in this alternate reality fic. But, I credit them
for thinking up wonderful characters to toy with.
Expect the guys to be slightly OOC for creative purposes. For one of my fics, this is sort of
dark--beware I'm toying with angst.)
We hadn't planned on them catching us this quickly. And after I tasted blood for the second time that evening, I passed out.
Duo tells me not to go with his eyes. He calls me stupid and pulls my arm and then reminds me that he only cares about me. I'm convinced he mostly cares if I cook, that's why he doesn't like me running off with Heero and his ruffians.
"I don't like this." Duo would frown and chew on his lower lip in worry. I do that, chew on my lip. I'm pretty sure he picked up that habit from taking care of me these past few years. And then I met Heero, and I was perfectly willing to let Heero take care of me now. But I knew I'd miss Duo then.
Now I'm sitting in a dark room. It could be small or it could be a gigantic cavern. All I know it that it's as dark as tar. As thick as tar. And I can hear someone breathing all ragged like each molecule of air is being twisted through a maze of jagged caves. The oxygen being broken and beaten against the rocks before passing through the proper tunnels.
I'm a stupid girl. Duo was right.
The city was big enough to swallow a girl my age. In fact, several girls my age were gobbled up by one thing or another. Prostitution, a cheap job, death. Heck, they were all the same to me. Until Duo Maxwell picked me out of my best job ever as a truck stop waitress and put me on the train to straight living.
"What's your name?" He asked me as I poured his second cup of java that morning. It was morning rather than night by maybe two hours.
"Hilde, sugah." I stopped pouring the tar thick liquid just shy of spilling it over the brim. Duo's like that, he'll get you distracted all real quick and easy like. I tried not to seem as interested in him as I felt. He had this caramel or toffee colored hair. I thought of sticky foods because I thought of how nice it would be to run my fingers through them until they were real stuck and he'd have to take me with him where ever he went.
And his eyes were so blue I was almost knocked over by them, but my hands were stuck in his hair remember? Or I wanted them to be. But when those eyes lingered just a moment longer than even the most persistent of trucker's longing gazes I realized that he wasn't interested in a romp or in letting me whittle my fingers through his hair. His eyes were haunted.
I might have been a ghost to him.
"Hilde." He repeated, and turned to look deep into his java instead of peering at me with those creepy eyes. Not that he was creepy, mind you. Just that he was haunted by something terrible. And of course, I reminded him of that ghastly image that those eyes had seen before.
Of course, I didn't know that at the time, but I knew better than to be scared of him when I got off my shift and saw that he had parked his semi next to my bicycle.
It was sort of funny. I had stolen this little bike from a grocery store parking lot so that I didn't have to walk to work any more. Guys can't grab you as easy if you have some sort of wheels to carry you faster and farther. And here my stolen little bicycle was chained up to the light post. And Duo Maxwell was leaning up against the same pole, twirling the keys to his truck around one finger.
He was whistling as I came up, and, when he turned toward my approaching footsteps, the gaze he beamed on me wasn't with those haunted eyes. It was with genuine affection--if two cups of coffee and a generous tip can bring about anything genuine between people.
He offered to take me away, and I said yes.
I don't know what I was imagining, but I never expected Duo Maxwell. Oh yeah, he told me his name as we drove through the rest of the dark morning and into the dawn. It was like we were driving into the fire of our future. I was the rescued girl and my knight was taking me off to the castle for the stuff that came after the credits roll in the movie.
I didn't get what I was expecting. Not that what I got was bad. I got a bed and my own room. I got a chance to cook and then I realized that was the way Duo expected me to earn my stay. Not that cooking is hard or unreasonable. It wasn't even that he was sexist. Duo just couldn't cook, and neither could his roommate.
Trowa Barton was nice enough and just way too thin. Even when I started cooking enough for a small army and made sure Trowa ate his fair share- -nothing grew on that fellow. It troubled me. Something else was making Trowa sick. And his eyes were always haunted.
We lived in this small house on the corner of a neighborhood that was too poor to start trouble and too smart to bring any home with them. Duo and Trowa were good examples of the sort that lived there. They all had some sort of captured life that they sheltered in a small shell of grey flesh and bones. Like a community of hidden rainbows, only the rainbows weren't allowed out even when the raining was over.
I suppose I belonged there too, and that's why Duo brought me.
Things went well enough for us. Duo was the liveliest of us all. His grey flesh almost looked golden in the sunlight. "Hello. Hello." he would wave at all the neighbors and they would wave back. Everything was alright.
He even got Trowa to laugh once. I can't remember what the joke was and I can't remember what his laugh sounded like, but it happened. I wrote it down on the calendar.
Duo had kept the same calendar for years by simply reusing it over and over again. He really had no confidence about the date other than what day of the week it was, but it was how he managed to keep a concept of time in the blur of living. I had to admit it beat carving notches in the tree or in the corner of my kitchen. Besides, he had the good fortune of recycling a calendar with pictures of various beaches around the world. Year after year it would seem like we had a chance to visit them all in their proper season.
Year after year. That stupid calendar over and over again. I must have seen it seven times. I must have lived in that time loop with them for seven years. And that stupid calendar was the only way I had of telling.
Seven years and we didn't get any closer really and I didn't learn why Duo's sweet hair was so long or why Trowa's pants came out of the laundry looking like twin toothpicks. I guess I could have asked. But I wasn't smart, remember?
They didn't ask me to do anything but cook while Duo drove his truck and Trowa went by train into the city to work for the factory. Doing the laundry was just something nice I suggested to fill the boring hours between Trowa's shifts and Duo's weekend trips.
And then I wondered why I was caging my sparks of life. I was going to leave this ho-hum living and earn some adventures. I couldn't believe I had sat through that calendar as long as I had. So I left a note and disappeared.
I figured they wouldn't starve. Duo could always shoot down another waitress with those blue canons he called eyes. So why was I leaving? A girl gets bored, y'know.
I was gone for a week. I shacked up with a guy from up north who thought that I was cute enough. It sort of was insulting, so I started back to Duo. He'd let me come back, I was sure.
It was when my bicycle was stolen from me that I started hitchhiking. And that's when I met Heero Yuy. He was a tight-lipped Japanese punk. He wasn't into anything or part of anything, but isolated and in himself, Heero Yuy was a country. "I am a rock. I am an island. Heero Yuy."
He might have been tight-lipped but that didn't keep him from sharing his dreams of becoming a world leader. He was ambitious. The terrible sweet flavor of his politics were like a melody of bitter chocolates.
I don't remember what he said as much as that whatever he said melted my heart. I loved him.
He must have loved me because he drove me all the way up to Duo Maxwell's front door. On the grass, I mean. That's either service or some sort of macho competition.
Duo managed to meander onto the porch and examine the damage to his lawn. He had this easy going smile on his face, one that barely betrayed the anxiety he must have felt for having his solace broken. "Oi, Hilde. You cut your hair."
I was beginning a new life I thought. Nothing completes that like a haircut. I was an all or nothing kind of girl. I didn't have any hair anymore. But, why had I come back to Duo?
"Maxwell." Heero snarled the name I had shared with him. It wasn't aggressive and I think all of us knew that. It was just how Heero communicated when he wasn't chewing his ambitious cud. Snarls, growls, and other primal indications of life unleashed from it's domestic cages.
His hair was ill kept except for the growing wind that wound it up in its invisible fingers and seemed to want to untangle it. It pulled up from two brilliant eyes. Both of which, I saw in a flash, we just as blue as Duo's that first day I met him. But then they were gone and he was the flashing and energetic creature that hypnotized my spirit. Heero was magnetic.
And he pulled Duo toward him.
I wanted to watch, but I felt compelled to go into the house instead. Perhaps my attraction to Duo was stronger than I thought it was. A drifting piece of metal never knows where she'll end up.
Trowa was resting on the couch with a worn green cloth covering his eyes and half of his face. One pencil arm hung off the edge of his resting place and brushed across the floor with a gentle stroke.
"Trowa?" I asked then, a bit nervous.
"Is that you, Hilde?" he asked. I had the feeling he knew it was me before I said his name, before he recognized my voice, before Duo told him who was coming up by the window. Trowa had this perception about him that seemed like the most amplified of his characteristics.
I said as much, "You're so perceptive, Trowa."
He pulled his narrow form together and shuddered. "No." He whispered.
I watched his lip pull down into the saddest expression I've ever seen. I loved Trowa then and rushed to his side. "Don't cry, Trowa, no. No. No tears for Trowa. He's okay."
I'm really bad at the comforting thing. But his visible lips straightened into their regular solemn arches. Now he lacked everything, even sorrow.
"You've got me, Trowa." I tried again. "Remember, Hilde who cooks and cleans? I left for a while, but now I'm bored again and want to take care of you."
"He needs people to stay with him." Duo murmured behind me. He must have come back in while I fretted over Trowa's sudden depression. "Enough people have left him as it is."
"What's that?" I asked, I hadn't quite forgotten about Heero Yuy and wondered why he hadn't come in as well. I had told him that he'd be welcome to stay with me in my room even if the boys were a little frustrated at first.
"Tell her." Trowa's voice came out of the small mouth with so few emotions. With the towel draped over his eyes, it was the only expression of which Trowa was capable.
Duo's eyes looked hurt now. More sorrow than he could contain in those illuminating objects. I pulled my heart back to safety and was ready to hear anything.
They told me about how they had met as young boys in a small gang in a city far away. It was a rather low key organization that let youngsters tag along if they wanted. Trowa and Duo had both been orphaned by some way or another. Duo had left his foster home and Trowa had come home from school to find his house empty. The story didn't explain either situation very well.
Then, Trowa had some sort of fancy for the son of a traveling parson. I wasn't sure exactly how Trowa had an affection for this blond Quatre, but during the story I could here him breathe, "my angel, my angel." Or something like that. The whole thing got rather confused and muddled when Trowa wanted to go with Quatre to the next stop on their circuit. Another punk in the street family decided to mess up Quatre's pretty face instead of letting Trowa and Duo go with him. Quatre had been killed and somehow immortalized in Trowa's confused thinking. Dead people seem to have a way about getting more and more beautiful to their loved ones. It's either that or they're simply forgotten.
Trowa had refused to believe that his angel could be destroyed and murdered a few people who were responsible.
I simply listened. I was ready for anything.
No wonder Trowa was sick all the time. He wasn't the sort that should be killing people. Here he killed a handful of bad ones years ago and he would never forgive himself.
His lips never moved. For all I knew, Trowa was dead himself.
"Ok." I said, feeling leftover sassy but trying to let my genuine sympathy slip out. "I know, something in everyone's past seems like an awful dream. And then you remember it's real." I wanted to scream something like "Life continues! Live already!" but what came out was something like, "I'm back for good. Can I cook you something special, Trowa love?"
I'm not perfect, so I'm not going to tell someone else what to do.
Trowa was haunted by a blond angel who died over seven years ago. So be it. It meant that he had had something worth having once in his life. Something worth missing that much. I wondered what that felt like.
More blood in my mouth. It tastes like a thick brew to get drunk on, to pass out with, but it makes me horribly awake right now. Nothing's where it belongs anymore.
I heard Trowa's story and knew why he looks like Gumby sideways. His clothes loosely hanging on him like they looked on the hanger. He was practically invisible, but we saw him. And Duo could make him laugh.
Our neighbor came over then. His name was Wufei Something-or-other and he sometimes barbequed with us on the back porch. Duo likes porches. He build one on the front with a screen, an open one on the back, and a small deck off his own room. He said he liked to have partial access to nature while still remaining in some sort of community with the civilization of the house. I said he was stupid, but I liked the porch swing he had picked up in the week that I was gone. I wondered if he was planning to sit out there on it and watch for me to come home.
Wufei wasn't interested in porches more than they were how he got to knock at the front door. He wasn't happy.
"You need help, Maxwell?" he offered with some spicy aggravation, "Who's tearing up your property now?" He glanced at me, I don't think he was suggesting that I was bad news, maybe he had just noticed that I was back again.
Duo laughed easily, you wouldn't believe that he had just told his best friend's entire life story that included a dark vision of a painful history. Trowa had sat up and nodded to Wufei in greeting. I took a moment to appreciate seeing his salty olive eyes. He might have been crying, or maybe the damp rag had been easing a completely different irritation.
"Is that a 'no'?" Wufei shrugged and slipped past Duo and into the front room. It was darker now and the sun must have been sinking itself while we spoke in memorial of a distant angel.
The Chinese man sat at the end of the couch when Trowa curled up his splintery legs. "You cut your hair, Hilde." our neighbor observed.
I slid my hand against the smooth scalp. I didn't miss it. But I had missed something, hadn't I? "Don't worry, Wufei. I'm going to tattoo something *brilliant* over this shiny globe." I teased.
Wufei didn't appreciate my idea of humor. I think Duo laughed to be polite. "Like what?" Wufei baited me, or maybe he was just trying to do his part to fill in the conversation.
"I dunno." I waltzed around the room, three pairs of eyes followed my jerky movements. Haunted eyes, dark eyes, and curiously alive eyes. I was sure Wufei had his own share of secrets if he would visit these two crazy guys. Anyone who spent any time with Duo and Trowa had to be crazy.
I also felt a bit put off suddenly. "I might have the face of my darling tattooed on there."
"Maxwell's mug on yo... " Wufei started when he recognized the words that I had spoken at the same time.
"Heero Yuy."
When Wufei stopped talking mid-thought, I made the sinking connection that Duo had been talking to Heero. That Duo had been having words with Heero outside all along. While I had worried over Trowa's thin lips, Duo had been outside. The entire time. Alone. Not alone, with Heero.
If I hadn't cut my hair, none of this would have happened. If I hadn't wanted the grass on the other side of the fence to munch on, maybe I would have stayed to cook for my boys. If I hadn't been born a complete fool, maybe I would have lived my life differently. My favorite word is "if."
In a careless phrase I had accidentally, and Almost completely , replaced my darling knight who had carried me off in his truck from the dark castle of the city and into the forest of this junkyard definition of a suburb.
Duo is more forgiving than anyone I know.
And I don't put the pieces of my life together until I'm sitting in the pitch black waters of near silence, with blood I can taste in my mouth, and the tragic whispers of someone who doesn't much enjoy breathing and still is hanging on to life.
I thought all he wanted was a cook. And he was simply never asking me to give more than I was willing. I was the one who insisted on being nothing more than a cook. I was the one who didn't care.
Now I care.
But then I felt torn between sneering and crying as Duo calmly told me that Heero Yuy was a gang member who they had fled from all those years ago when Trowa had lost his precious golden Quatre. They didn't deserve this sort of action in their life, and they were warning me away from the one most alive and fascinating man I had ever met.
Heero was controlled passion. He was collected humanity in one vessel. He had none of the depressing angst that these three fellows carried like garbage.
*Memories, Hilde.* I tell myself as I hear a shuffling of feet that seem miles away, down the track, and right next to me. *They carried treasured memories that slipped through those haunted eyes like jeweled tears.*
A light slips under the crack of a door that opens in and toward where I sit. I rub at my jaw and feel the slick of blood. It reminds me of the slick of my bare head. I wished I could have Duo's braid to cover my brash spirit.
I glance over to see that Heero is hurt much worse than I imagined. His eyes are forever squeezed shut in sorrow. And I know, he has memories too. A wealth of memories that he's buried deeper than anyone else.
I began to suspect Heero was trapped too. I left again. I left after I had promised Trowa. I had left after I had danced my jerky waltz to the tune of Heero Yuy's name which was tattooed on my brain anyway.
I was a crazy girl.
I left after Duo had forgiven my outburst. I left after he had forgiven me for betraying where they had lived safely and in comfort and with porches for years and years. I left after Duo had bought me a plane ticket to go with them to where ever they were going to go next.
Why did I leave, you ask? Well, Heero came back. He tapped on my window and gave me his devilish grin and had whispered to me of flavored delights as I had never imagined. Heero pampered the carnal delights of my smallest senses. While Duo made me feel like behaving, Heero made me like the way I wanted to behave.
I should have known better when we were speeding away from the confining grasp of Duo's neighborhood and his waiting porch swing. I asked him what he and Duo had talked about on the lawn. And, even while he didn't look at me, I knew that Heero's eyes had grown haunted. Deep down, those blue eyes were hiding their own salt tears.
Now I cry tears.
They mingle with the blood I earned that day. The blood that spills onto my hands with the fresh rivers of tears. My eyes are haunted, I can tell.
I'm being set free once again.
My angel has come.
Duo had found me. He had opened the door. I barely dared to believe it. Why had he found me? "my angel my angel" I mutter stupidly.
"Hilde? Heero?" his voice is light in volume, but carried with a quick tension from strain.
I don't know how he knew. I don't know how he found me. My angel.
Heero and I had been partners in petty crime for a short while before we finally saved enough to buy an apartment in the city. The one up north that called to me every day since I left that truck stop with Duo. For every humble responsibility that Duo had fostered in me, Heero had replaced it with a wild girl's joy.
I don't know who came after us, but they were in before I could say a word. Heero was leaving the gang, but not the lifestyle. It must have made us easier to locate.
Leaving must have been what Heero was trying to learn from Duo that evening on the lawn, but we had both refused to learn from Duo's successes. We were afraid of the process I guess. We were afraid of facing the tears that Trowa could find refuge in. We were afraid of balancing our passions with civilization like Duo's fascination with porches.
I remember hurting, but never as much physically as I hurt emotionally watching my barbaric knight fighting on my behalf. I had given up my champion in a clunkish truck for a wild soldier with sharp knives. Knives that brought trouble.
Heero tried, we were just leading each other around in circles while with reassuring glances telling each other that we were fine as we were. No need to change anything. Nope. We were unhinged, uncaged, wild children.
My angel came and brushed away my tears. He swept away my broken heart with that motion. And he took us away.
He took us back to Trowa who might not have been as thin as I remembered. His lips curled up more often than down.
Heero lived. And our relationship changed. His violent politics subsided and were replaced by a peaceful silence without excuses.
And I gave up on that stupid tattoo. My hair grows back so slowly, but it does grow back. I might even sit on the porch and watch the haunted glow of the sun set for a new day to begin.
The End
(well--how's that for something different? Let me know. Thanks!)
(:./jillian/haunted)
