23-Apr-2005
Title: Burn
Author: Sol 1056
Rated: PG-13 for violence, language
Pairing: none for now
Warnings: spoilers for the entire series
I'm alive.
I haven't decided whether this is a good thing, yet.
But I'm free.
Until that moment, I thought there could only be two people so stubborn as J: Relena and Duo. I've had to adjust my mental list to include Trowa. He's far more dangerous though, for being subtle in ways that would miss both of them.
He's also trapped.
His Gundam is too massive to hide for long, unless he keeps moving with the circus. Like me, the minute he's found--or someone in the circus finally gives him up--he'd be taken, along with the Gundam, tortured until all his skin is peeled back, revealing schematics and muscle, secrets and bone.
I can't talk him out of destroying his Gundam, because he's right. And I can't talk him out of destroying himself, too, because I've been there.
So I listen, and let him do what he will.
"It's the next exit," I tell him, frowning at the map.
We are tense, an uneasy silence born of miles on the empty road and an uncertainty between us; he still seems unhappy by the fact that Cathy could dissuade him. When he'd said a pretty girl's tears would not have stopped me, I didn't answer. I wanted to say: you don't know me. I wanted to say: no one has ever cried for me. I cannot know what I would do.
"Copy that." Trowa slows down, checking the empty road, before taking the ramp. "Should be another hour. Get some sleep."
I don't know, I want to say, but I imagine he's forgotten that conversation by now. I only know that he speaks in riddles, talking to me but not to me. "I slept for a month." I put the map away. It won't explain him to me, or me to him.
"Still, you're not completely healed yet."
I can hear the question hiding in his flat tone: how? I have no answer--none that I want to give, at least. Instead, I can't help but think of Duo's tortured, melodramatic groan when I set my thighbone. Duo, in Trowa's place, probably would have decked me for waking up after self-detonating and then surviving. And he would've made a lot of noise about it, too, disgusted and aggravated... I wonder what he's doing. I wonder if he got away safely.
I hope he's free, too.
Because really, I'm not... not for long, at least. I have one last thing I must do. I can't say I survived because I had something left unfinished; I'm not that much of a romantic. I'm not a romantic at all, I think. But perhaps, given Trowa's responses to my decision, maybe I am.
She was pretty, and she held the gun like she knew how to handle it, but she wouldn't shoot. Nor would any of the rest. I can't figure out why. I gave them weapons, I told them, I explained, and still... none would take the revenge owed them for my mistake.
"Watch the arm," Trowa mutters, and I shift, pulling my left arm so my forearm drapes across my lap. He grunts, and closes his eyes again, listening to the engine sounds as we fly low across the ocean.
Relena stopped Duo because she's innocent, and believes only in the best in people. She didn't want bloodshed. Duo helped me because he wanted something, though like Trowa he danced around the question, never asking but holding it, as if savoring a secret. I found it annoying, until I suppose I learned to accept that what he said and what he wanted and what he planned were mercurial on the surface, but under it all, it was all one thing: revenge.
I don't understand revenge. Trowa makes more sense to me: seeing the pain of our colonies, and knowing we were among the few with the ability to act. Not the power--that rests in others' hands--but we could pilot and fight. But on a personal level? No. Is my willingness to fight this man named Zechs something personal? Would that mean it's my own decision? I don't know.
I don't like so many unanswered questions. In that, Trowa is as much a balm as Duo. He's willing to decide, questions peripherally, but lets me follow. I don't want to think it's easier, but maybe it is. When I led, from house to town to person, I felt exhausted, feeling his shadow at my back. I did not want the responsibility of his company. I'm not sure I do now, but like Duo and Relena, he's yet to give me a choice. I can feel an almost-grin forming, and scowl to cover. Duo would laugh, I know.
I can come up with questions, he says in my head. What's your take on molecular electronics for ship infrastructures? And then I'd glare at him, and he'd shrug, because perhaps he didn't care anyway, but asked for some other reason I don't understand.
Trowa shifts; his eyes are open, examining Noin carefully. He's on edge around her, aggressive and foul-mouthed in a way that rivals Duo. She's busy with her men, discussing reports coming across encrypted channels, but I don't look at her when she glances our way. She's an impediment; idealistic and starry-eyed over this man named Zechs. He's rebuilt Wing, she says.
My Gundam. Wing.
I'm not sure whether to distrust her because of the insanity of rebuilding Wing, or because something inside me, deep down, does not want to fight in Wing again. For a moment, I had mourned at the gates of Mrs. Noventa's mansion, turned away, and couldn't see a future for the darkness behind me.
I don't see one now, either. But... to get back in my own Gundam and fight? Ignoring that I don't see reason to trust a machine essentially built from scratch--if to spec--from battered parts, and built by an enemy at that--there's some other reason I brood. Some other reason I'd rather let Trowa do the talking, while I watch and wait, and curse my arm and shoulder for being so shattered that seven weeks hasn't been enough to repair the damage.
Sometimes I think another person might tell me I should thank Trowa for saving me. First Relena, then Duo, now Trowa. But sometimes I think I hate him for it.
Just a little.
End Part 5
(:./sol/burn5)
