Title: Wolves Don't Wear Collars 1/1
Author: CleverYoungThief
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Uh... unrequited love, language, angst
Pairings: R+1, 1+???? (who knows anymore...)
Genre: Romance/Angst/Drama
Timeline: During first war... (Libra)
Spoilers: Not that I can think of.
Feedback: Pretty please? *hee* ^_^
Disclaimer ~Don't own 'em.
Author's Note: This is yet another Relena fic from my pre-yaoi days, before I really hated her. This fic is like a *million* years old. Seriously. Maybe even my first fic.
Okay, it's not a million years old. But it is as old as the series.
So I think it's written pretty well, anyway. For a Relena fic. Of course, if I attempted a serious 1xR now, my yaoi biases would probably get in the way. (1x2 forever, woo hoo!) *shrug* But this one is okay. I may try and attempt some more Relena-type fics, just to get back in the practice of writing some straight romance for once. ^_^
To All Relena-haters: Before you flame me into a lump of human charcoal, go read my dozens of 1x2 angsty romances. Then you're free to flame away. Kay? ^_^
Under his spell. Held by his eyes, the sad eyes of a fallen angel. Somehow... they just didn't seem human.
I was under his spell, I knew that, and knowing that, I could fight him, resist him, even when he danced with me and touched me and I felt the power and strength that flowed from him, the power that was sometimes so cold and demanding and sometimes so warm, so right, so--
I tried to resist him. Yes, yes he had power and strength. Yes, he could reach me like no one else. But I was a free girl, free to say yes or no, free to make the calls as I saw them. I didn't have to fall in love with someone who pursued death so recklessly.
Yeah, right.
He was beautiful, Heero was, but it was more than that. In the normal world, I would have had a dozen names for it, more excuses than explanations, really, pretext for the depth of my feelings for him. I'd have said he was mysterious, seductive, that his impenetrable depth was fascinating, that we had chemistry.
But now, during the Colony Wars, the Endless Waltz, where all the rules are different, where nothing is what it had always been and yet is so often what it should be, here I knew the name of his power.
Purity of the soul. He could talk about how bloodied his past is all day and night--if he would ever do that--yet his soul would still be pure and untainted by it.
He was pure and rebellious and daring in a way that I could never be, and it was captivating. Yet I was a free girl. I was still Relena Peacecraft. Heero could not change that.
"I remember kissing you," I said. "I remember how it made me feel. Even with all that's happened, all the terrible things that we have both seen, I remember every detail of kissing you."
"Hn."
Silence for a few minutes. I could never figure out how to answer that indomitable sound.
"I remember it," he said, bluntly, with finality. I searched his face for emotion and found none. His eyes were void and dark as always. The fighting was over. That intense concentration that usually radiated from them was gone. Ninmu ryoukai.
We were hiding in the cargo bay, in almost pitch dark, facing each other, his legs crossed beneath him, my knees drawn up. A chill breeze from the air conditioning unit ruffled his hair, blew dark strands forward across his colbalt eyes. He stared through it, like a jungle animal peering through its wind-tossed mane.
I shivered. From fear. From exhaustion. From cold. From memory.
"Sit here," he said, as if it were his obligation to ask. "Sit by me, Relena."
I felt the need for him. For warmth. For softness. For his lips on mine, for the security that would soothe all my doubts away. I was cold inside and out. Sad and alone. The only knowledge I had was that I had not found a way to stop the war, to protect him. To protect all of us.
Us? Me and the pilots? Friends? No. Allies? Maybe, for Quatre at least. For the others... probably just an obstacle. Especially to Heero. Was I supposed to protect them, or were they supposed to protect me? I feel a strange need to comfort these isolated, friendless boys, to somehow help them fight for my ideals. I felt sympathy and affection for each of them, even those I hadn't met.
I don't love Heero Yuy. At least, it isn't that kind of love. He's like a wolf, majestic and feral and beautiful. You want to reach your hand out and pet him, but something disconcerting, something wild in his eyes makes you pull your hand back at the last second.
The truth: he scared the shit out of me. Cold as an iceberg, but with so much beneath the surface. What was going on behind those Prussian eyes?
I didn't want to love him. I didn't want to collar the wolf, to cage him, to break him. As if I ever could. Not very likely. He would probably kill me or himself before he allowed that to happen.
I started to move toward Heero. Leaned forward and on hands and knees crawled to him. I wanted him. I wanted him and his world to be real to me. I wanted that moment on the balcony of the St. Gabriel Academy when every cell of me had wanted him. It had been so uncomplicated then. Infatuation that was simply infatuation, and need that was only need. And love, maybe, yes, maybe love.
No. Not love, never love, not for either of us.
Still, I would have crawled to him then, too, crawled and pressed my body against his and my lips against his and held and touched and demanded. Would have had to demand. Because he would not give in. He would not bend to the will of anyone.
Now I crawled knowing there was no truth in it, knowing there would never be love, but crawling just the same because I was weak and he was strong and I wanted it to be that way. I had to go to him because I had to, that was all. Because he was where I had to be, because there was no going back, not from the beach, not from the colony where my father was assassinated and I learned the truth about myself. No going back. Never.
He welcomed me, in his own, stoic sort of way. By welcome I mean he didn't jerk away, didn't give me what Duo called the Death Glare, didn't tell me, frankly, quietly, "No," which, coming from him, is as loud as a growl. He let me settle beside him, let me lean back against his shoulder, let my cheek rest against him, let me breathe him, let me glow with the power that came from him, let me close my eyes and imagine him in a different world, with no OZ or White Fang or Alliance or rebels.
Rebels, huh? What would you say, Father, if you saw me now? Would you be proud that I've taken my position as head of the Cinq Kingdom and continue to fight for your ideals of peace? Or are you saddened by the fact that I am pursuing those goals simply because I sympathize with five radicals from outer space?
Before I found Heero that day, I had been so sheltered, so unknowing about what was going on, on Earth and in the stars. I was blind to their suffering for so long, and I hate that. I had my little academy, protected by big walls. I hadn't ever dared to look over them, to see the suffering beyond that. Maybe I just didn't want to know, didn't want to know about the sort of things that turn musicians into murderers and compassionate boys like Heero into...into wolves. Lone wolves. Pariahs. Renegades.
I don't know what happened to make him this way. Something that happened to him, or maybe something he did, he wouldn't tell me and I won't ask. Maybe I'm afraid to ask. I don't want to know what he did to tear the starlight from those wild eyes, to bury that soul beneath the corpses of his enemies.
It'd be better if he would just break, like normal people. Surely even the Perfect Soldier has a breaking point. I could walk up to him in the middle of class and slap him as hard as I could, in front of dozens of people, and he wouldn't even flinch. His eyes might narrow ever so slightly and tighten up at the corners in that way they have, but his face wouldn't change. He wouldn't even look around in embarrassment to see who else saw. He would just stare straight back at me, silently questioning.
Those colbalt orbs, dark instruments of power that had looked down on more deaths than I would care to know. Whenever he stares at me, it's like it creates an electrical current between us. Not the "oh my God, he's actually looking at me" kind of current. The kind that made me afraid of being electrocuted, and I would always look away first, like recoiling away from a live wire. It was like C-4 that hadn't been detonated yet, something not meant for civilians, something that could explode and blow me up. Looking into his steely blue eyes, I saw deep passionate emotions that never quite reached the surface: kindness, frustration, pain, suffering, and rage. The fury that is so barely held in check I have to look away. And a grave sadness, too, sometimes, grave and strange and distant. He was someone who longed for peace as much as I did, but wouldn't know what to do with it if he had it. The peace would be horrible for him, I think, because then he would have to think. He would have to deal with the nightmares, and the guilt, and having to reestablish himself into society itself. Maybe then he would find his breaking point.
That's why he doesn't believe in total pacifism. He doesn't want to believe in it. What will he do with himself if we do achieve total pacifism?
He leaned down, raised my head just a little, and kissed me, softly, chastely, and I thought, Ah, then he is scared, he is worried, he does need me still, maybe just for a while.
His lips withered my strength. His touch tightened the handcuffs. He had put the collar around my neck and held the leash in his hand.
I knew what he was unknowingly doing. I knew he was binding me closer to him. I felt the ruthlessness of his will, never doubting it, never being fooled, never believing their was a moment of real feeling for me, and yet, and yet--
I knew I had to choose. I could be pacifist, or back him always. He pushed me away, gently. I didn't resist. It was all part of the program. He wanted me to feel the sudden cold, the absence, the emptiness. He wanted me to feel how alone I was without him.
I felt it.
I felt.
~Owari
(:./cyt/wolves)
