15-May-2001
Standard Disclaimers. Not mine, yada yada. shojo ai,
shonen ai, angst.you know the drill.
NOTE: This is a revision and was previously archived as 'Wait and See'.
After being a Mobile Suit pilot, going back to high school was something of an anti-climax. After living on a permanent adrenaline high, sitting in some stuffy classroom listening to guy who ain't got a freaking clue is not something that I want to do. None of us does, really, but Lady Une managed basically force us to agree to this. I think she's looking at it as a way to rehabilitate. Not even her Worship, the high and mighty Relena Darlian Peacecraft, had the guts to tell the Lady no.
Lady Une managed to get all of the gundam pilots--Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre, and Wufei--to agree to go to this school she'd picked out. Then she harassed Dorothy Catalonia and me into going. I said I would simply to shut her up. It wasn't really fair; she ambushed me while I was still confined to a hospital bed. I heard she did the same to Quatre. Relena didn't even put up a fight, from what I gather. There are other students who were child pilots, like me, or child diplomats, like Sylvia. The rest of the students are either overwhelmed by awe or terror, because they don't mess with us.
So we're all this school together, trying to deal with our excessive emotional and psychological baggage while getting the traditional education. It's hard to focus on learning derivatives when combating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but somehow we manage.
That brings me to my roommate. The perfect blonde princess is apparently suffering from more psychological issues than you can shake a really big stick at, and she knows it. I just don't think she really cares any more. After watching her brother die, the life just went out of her. I'm not saying that she's a walking corpse or anything, but the fight in her is just gone. She not really interested in anything; it's like she's permanently bored.
She's staring out the window like the answers to all her problems are floating in those pretty puffy clouds. Sometimes I wonder what the world looks like to her now, and if it's changed a whole lot from what it used to be. Bet you she doesn't see things in pink any more.
"Hey, Rel," I call to her. She twitches a shoulder like she's heard me, but isn't going to respond. I grab my schoolbag and throw it over my shoulder. "Come on, we'll be late to class."
She stands up and smooths her skirt automatically. I have to admit she looks pretty cute in our uniform. We've got the entire Irish Catholic schoolgirl look going on: maroon plaid pleated skirts, white shirts, maroon sweaters, white socks, and Doc Martens. Both Relena and I wear the skirts short--barely within the school rules--with these freaking huge socks that reach our calves but are still bulky. I started the short skirt thing because I like it that way. Relena started the sock thing because she says it's warmer. I think it's because it makes her legs look like they go up to her ears. After the first two weeks the entire girl student body followed suit. Relena still has that effect on people.
Relena still wears her hair in those two braids pulled back on either side of her face, but with her now perpetually bored expression she doesn't look so prissy. Her sweater hangs low over her hips, making the skirt flare a little. She keeps the sleeves pushed up the way I do. She looks like the bad girl from a shojo manga. All she needs to do is chew gum.
I guess that makes me the cute perky one, except I'm the one with the mouth. And I'm not all that interested in being cute. More often than not we're together. Not because we're roommates, or because we've bonded over our experiences in the war--we don't even talk about them--but because we keep a united front. I don't know who we're against any more, but at first it was against everyone. I know I was so bitter about everything that I couldn't see straight. Lying in a hospital bed listening to your life drip next to you will do that. Relena... I think she was bitter about being tossed aside by everyone and everything. Trite, but true.
After the war Heero had made it perfectly clear to the Princess that he was not interested in her, would never be interested in her, and wanted nothing to do with her. He made it very clear and very public. Relena had just nodded her head, and never talked to him again. Duo and I didn't break up, mostly because there was nothing there to break. Commitment has never been a strong point for either of us, so we just sort of ended up apart and neither one us knows how or why.
Relena's soft footsteps snap me back to the present. She's holding her bag demurely before her, watching me with what might be an annoyed expression. It's damned hard to tell with her now.
"Hilde," Relena says. "We're already late."
"No, we're not," I protest, and she points to the clock. 8 on the dot, which means the morning rush hour on the trains. We're late.
"Shit," I say.
"Pretty much," she says.
We live in Meguro-ku, which means we have to go through both Shibuya and Shinjuku to get to school. Hitting the two busiest stations at eight in the morning is pure hell; trust me. It's the start of the school year, which means it's spring in Tokyo-complete with sakura petals and heat. God, it's hot.
Shoved into a tiny, non-air-conditioned train car next to grope-happy businessmen is enough to put anyone in an evil frame of mind. I can feel my left eye start to twitch when I get 'bumped' and then 'bumped' again. I look up at Relena. Her eyes have narrowed, and she gives me the barest of nods. At the same time we both mutter just loud enough to be heard, "Hentai."
Suddenly we have personal space again. None of the businessmen will look us in the eye, nor will they look at anyone else. The older women glower at them in disapproval, and the schoolboys snicker. One guy a year older than us gives us a thumbs up. I shrug like it was nothing, and grin. Relena cocks her chin, and looks at him hard enough that he looks away.
"He was being nice," I mutter.
"Let him be nice to someone else," she replies without much emotion. Not that Relena shows much emotion one way or another these days. The shrinks think that she's repressing her grief, fear, and rage. They're calling it a coping mechanism: a reaction to having her life go through the cosmic grinder not once, not twice, but three times. She thinks they're full of shit.
"Oh, are you jealous of me?" I simper up at her. She flicks her eyes down at me, and then cocks one eyebrow.
"Sure," she says. She's the master of giving insults without actually saying anything at all. It is a rare and difficult art to master that she practices on Duo. Actually, I think she insults him because it's habit and it hasn't occurred to her not to do it any more.
"Gee, thanks," I say and roll my eyes. "What an ego booster."
"Glad to be of service," she says, caressing the word 'service' enough to make the boys clustered to our left blush. I grin up at her, and tilt my head to the side.
"Just what service would you like to perform, little girl?" I whisper in a teasingly low voice.
Her breath tickles my ear when she replies as we get squished together again. "What service do you want?"
Our stop comes and saves me from having to answer.
"Did the damned scientists put something in their water?" Gripes Sylvia as we walk to class in a little cluster. I've got my arms behind my head, my bag lightly clasped in both hands. Sylvia's swinging her bag like she's like to hit someone with it. Dorothy walks behind us next to Relena, laughing quietly; Relena's quiet, like always.
"Wouldn't be surprised," I reply.
"Is there a single straight one out of the bunch?" she wails.
"Wufei," Dorothy says in a sardonic tone, the irony is not lost on her.
"Great--the misogynist is the only straight one," Sylvia mutters.
"He's not so much a misogynist as he is conflicted," Relena states. She does that every once in a while; makes this amazingly on the mark comment, then she goes back to saying nothing.
"Conflicted about what?" Sylvia demands. Relena just shrugs one slender shoulder. It's a gesture that she's learned from Dorothy, another one of her ways of saying everything and nothing at once. You can see why the pair of them made good politicians.
"Who the fuck knows, and who wants to?" I ask before pushing open the door to our class. The teacher doesn't even glare at us, just gives this long-suffering sigh and gestures us to our seats. Relena and I both sit in the back of the class on the far left so I can see the door. Paranoia is a wonderful trait.
"You're late," Heero's voice is still nasal. Relena ignores him; I flip him off.
"Very mature, Hilde," Duo mockingly chides. I shrug.
"But deeply satisfying," I reply and smile sweetly.
"All that really matters," he says. We share a grin that's almost what it used to be. Relena stops at her desk, and waits for me to take my place next to her. She gives me a glance that might be annoyed, might be bored. It's hard to tell.
The teacher waits for us to settle ourselves with the patience of one who has suffered long and expects to suffer longer. I almost feel sorry for the poor bastard. I wouldn't want to teach us either. The way the class is arranged the girls are sort of in a cluster next to the windows, the gundam pilots spread around us like they're going to protect us from whatever comes charging through the doors. Which is ridiculous on a number of levels. One being the fact that most offensive attacks come through the windows, in which case we're more like a buffer zone. The second reason is that the pilots are largely indifferent to our existence; which is fine, since we're pretty much indifferent to our existence as well.
I shoot a covert glance at Relena as the lecture resumes. Her long hair pools on her desk across her notebook, in one hand she spins her pen idly. She's staring out the window again, watching the clouds pass overhead. Not a good sign, all in all.
Duo passes me a small note. 'How's the Princess?'
I'm not sure if it's actual concern, guilt, or something in-between, but Duo tends to express concern with Relena's well-being in a general sense. He doesn't care all that much, but he'd prefer she didn't off herself.
'Same as she always is,' I write back. 'I can't get at her.'
Duo nods his head a little as he reads my note like I was just confirming his suspicions. 'Walling herself up inside, eh?'
'Sort of like watching the reverse process of Heero," I reply. The Perfect Soldier is slowly coming out of his protective armor, but it is a rather painful process to watch. Both he and Duo have a whole host of issues to deal with, but at least they realize that there's something wrong and want to change it. Relena.... Well, Relena listens politely, and ignores us all.
'At least Heero was expected to go through all this shit. I just don't think he was planning on living through it,' Duo's note manages to convey a small amount of asperity with the current situation. Frustration with being stuck in the school, frustration with Relena and Heero who refuse to let anyone behind their walls, and probably frustration with us and the problems we don't talk about.
'We've been seeing the shrinks too fucking long,' I write. 'We're starting to sound like them.'
He reads that and starts to laugh. The laughter has that slightly maniacal edge to it that I've always associated with Duo/Shinigami, not Duo Maxwell. The teacher stops in the middle of the lecture, turning very slowly away from the blackboard to look at us. The students who actually chose to be here are very careful not to look at us. The tension settles in the room like rainwater in a barrel.
"Is there something that you wish to share with us, Mr. Maxwell?" the teacher asks with quiet dignity. I've never bothered to learn his name. Of course, this is only the first week of class, so maybe I have an excuse.
"Nah, not really," Duo says, eyes twinkling with good humor, or mania. With Duo it's always a toss up.
The teacher looks at us for a long time, and then goes back to the lecture without another word. He's learned not to press any of us for explanations. Sometimes I wonder what it's like to teach kids who have never been kids, and then I think I really don't want to know. Duo stretches back and drops a note on my desk.
'Now I know I'm fucked beyond all hope,' it says.
'"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,"' I write. When he reads that he turns around to face me, shrugs, and gives me a rueful half-smile.
Today was the day for our weekly 'tune-up.' Basically, everyone who had been 'negatively impacted by the Eve Wars'--which was just about everyone in the school, but in particular the Gundam pilots and us girls--had to sit through a session with one of the six shrinks working at the school.
Some of us do exactly that, just sit through the session. Relena just sits there and listens, or at least appears to listen, and then leaves. She never talks. I always talk, but I damned careful not to say anything. All in all, it's a fucking waste of my time.
The session starts out the same way every time, never any fucking variety. The shrink watches me with steely eyes that never give anything as I walk through the door. I give her the 'sweet and perky smile' as Sylvia has dubbed it and flop down into one of the cushy leather chairs. They're big enough, or I'm small enough, that I could sleep in them without any complaint.
"You're late, Hilde," the shrink says. Her voice is nicer than her eyes. I'm betting she practices the voice.
"Class got out a little late, so I'm late," I say, and shrug to demonstrate my helplessness in the matter. "Don't suppose I'm so late that we can just skip the entire appointment?"
She frowns in disappointment, and shakes her head slowly. I sigh dramatically, which causes me to sink a little too low in the chair. I squirm back up, and then rest my head on of the massive armrests. The only person who could possibly rest their arms on those things would be Rashid--Quatre's personal giant. "These appointments are very important."
"That's a load of shit, and we both know it," I say. "You can't force a person to get better."
"You're absolutely right, Hilde," she agrees with an infinitely reasonable tone, which is a bad sign. "So why do you not want to get better?"
I smile sweetly. "Sure, I want to get better, but 'better' would be the keyword. I don't want to be fixed."
"You think we're trying to fix you?" she asks me, playing like she's startled.
"You know you are."
Her eyes get big and round in earnest denial. I listen to her rant about how they're not trying to fix anyone, but help us for a while. Then I cock my head to the side and ask with false sweetness. "Do you really believe that shit?"
That stops her dead in mid-sentence. She looks at me, really looks at me, and I know for once she isn't seeing some high school girl too short for her age. She sees me, a person who can kill with very little thought, a person who has walled off their real emotions, someone who knows far more than any sixteen year old has the right to know. We stare at each other for a long time, listening to each other breathe.
"I don't know anymore," she looks away from me, confusion filling her eyes. It was then that I realized that she was very young for a shrink, not much over twenty-five. "I don't know."
I've never wanted to hurt anyone. I can't stand for her to look this hurt and lost when she's only been trying to reach out. I kneel at her feet, forcing her to look into my eyes. "I don't know either, and that's the bitch of the matter. No one knows what to do with us anymore. We're not kids, but we're not adults either." I offer her my hand. "If you want to help, fine. But just admit that you don't know what the hell you're supposed to be doing either."
She takes my hand, and laughs. It's watery, but strong. "Since that's as close to an apology as I'm going to get I'll take it." She closes her eyes for a moment. "I do want to help, to pay you all back for what you've done, but I don't know how and I'm supposed to."
"I don't think anyone knows how to help us," I say. "I don't know if anyone can."
I stare out the window off the train, rocking a little with its movements, but not saying anything. The meeting with the shrink has left me feeling bone-achingly tired. Normally I have all this angry tension running around in my body, needing to be let free, but today I just want to go to sleep. Relena catches my eyes in our reflection on the window. I give her a small smile.
"Are you all right?" she asks quietly, almost at a whisper--but in the crowded train car, you only need a whisper.
"Worried?" I ask, and bat my eyes. "Oh! Relena! You do love me!"
"Moron. I don't want to have to carry you home," she says with what might be affection; her voice is still that perfect politician polite. She could be telling you to go fuck roadkill and her voice would be in that impeccably polite tone.
I snap my fingers in mock dismay. "Damn."
"Are you all right?" she asks again. "You seem subdued."
I love her vocabulary. You can tell that she grew up with class just by her diction. It's not just money in her background, but class--and that's something that can't be defined by mere words. "Psycho-analyzing your shrink takes more work than it looks."
That earns me a long hard look from those deep blue eyes. "You analyzed the shrink?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"I asked a question that required her to actually think about what we were doing in that cramped little room--and, God forbid, she actually thought about it," I tell her.
"What did you ask her?" There's real honest-to-goodness curiosity in her voice. It makes her voice warm, sort of fuzzy like a new terrycloth towel. I like it.
"I asked her if she really believed in what she was saying to me," I say.
Relena whistles softly. "Never one for pulling your punches, were you?"
"No, I'm not."
"What did she do?"
"Sat there for a while, and then she said she didn't know if she believed in what she was saying or not."
"Then what?"
"We talked."
"Uh-huh." The contempt was rich in her tone. Contempt was something she was good at. She got a lot of practice with Duo.
"Actually, once she admitted that she didn't know what the hell she was doing either, things were better," I state, more than a little defensively.
"Did you actually say anything?" she asks me. Relena always knows which qustions need to be asked, and rarely hesitates to ask them if she sees the need. I like that about her, most of the time.
"Hell no," I say, and we both laugh. Even to me, the laughter sounds painful.
End Part 1
(:./dan/fragment1)
