9 March 2001
Category: Drama? (I have no idea, honestly)
Pairing: None, really.
Rating: G
Warnings: Vague spoilers for the early episodes of GW;
myth-ification of events, heavy-handed symbolism.
Disclaimer: I don't own GW--Sunrise and the Sotsu Agency do,
and Bandai gets to distribute the goods--nor do I intend to infringe
upon its owners' rights.
Notes: mostly at end of fic--but I should say here that for the
purposes of this story, it would probably be helpful to imagine
angels not so much as fluffy-winged cute/pretty things, but as
the rather scary warriors they originally were.
This is for Sachie, just because.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who wanted to know things. She lived in a house full of secrets; some of them belonged to her father, who carried them to work and back in a brown briefcase that she must never touch. Some of them belonged to her mother, who sometimes looked at the little girl with very sad eyes, but would never say why. Some of them seemed to belong to the house itself, which had many odd corners and mysterious cabinets that little girls weren't supposed to rummage in.
All of which was very puzzling for a little girl with no secrets of her own. Always being told not to listen, not to look, not to ask, even when the secrets around her sought to press her flat against the floor with their sheer whispering weight. It was very frustrating.
Maybe the secrets would come when she was old enough? That seemed to be the way of things--grownups spoke in secrets as if they were a magical language that only adults could share--but it was hard to wait.
And while she was waiting, the world ended; or perhaps a new world began. It is sometimes hard to tell the difference.
Out of a clear blue sky, an angel fell--she knew him for an angel by his eyes, which were like nothing else in the world. And by his secret, which was more bright and terrible than anything hidden in the corners of an old house, more enticing than the glances of a sad-eyed mother. It was like a golden fruit, shining with its own mysterious light, and he held it fiercely to himself.
The little girl wanted--she didn't know what she wanted. She wanted the golden secret, very much--because it was beautiful, and because he was beautiful. But even more than that, she wanted to show that she too could hold secrets, could carry them inside herself and speak them only at the time of greatest need. She wanted to be an adult, like her father and her mother and the angel (though he looked no older than herself, she knew enough to tell the difference). And the secret was the key.
In fact, as she was rather surprised to learn, the secret didn't belong to the angel alone--it was as big as the world, or bigger. It spilled out of her father's briefcase, was carried in urgent conversations over the telephone in his office, arched across the sky in the frosty trails left by high-flying fighter planes. And bit by bit, she came closer and closer to understanding--though the angel hissed like a serpent, and lashed out like a serpent, when she came too close. Her father neither hissed nor bit, but only smiled vaguely and patted her on the head. She decided that she preferred the hissing--at least the angel was taking her seriously. And perhaps, if she could find the words to convince him of her trustworthiness, he might let her carry the secret with him for a little while. Perhaps.
And while she was edging closer, trying one set of words and then another, the world ended. Or perhaps it began. Or perhaps it did neither of these things, but merely spun dully on in its place.
The girl (not feeling quite so little any more, since she had come so close to holding a secret in her hands) went up into space with her father, who found her quite useful as a traveling companion; because she was only a little girl (as he thought, not knowing about her and the secret), she could be counted on not to understand the conversations happening around her. And she could be a distraction for those who sought to break her father's power, since her presence deflected attention from his true purpose.
This time, though, it didn't work. He was found, and found out, and everything he had been ended in a rush of sound and light. The air shattered, leaping into shards like glass, and her father shattered with it. She bent over him to ask--she didn't know what to ask, and there was no time.
"Father," she said. And then, through tears, "Papa?"
Her father looked at her as if, at last, he was ready to give her one of his secrets. His eyes and his whisper were urgent, and she listened as hard as she could to a scattering of words that made no sense. Those words hung in the air between them, smooth and shimmering like his eyes--the secret was a round, golden fruit, like the angel's secret. And now it was hers. All hers.
The knowledge itself was beautiful. Her father's trust was beautiful. But oh, the fruit was bitter, and its juice burned in her mouth like the acid taste of unshed tears. It burned all the way down her throat, scorching through her stomach, filling every vein with its bitterness, its fire. Changing everything inside her, even as he slipped away like wine from a broken jar.
When she finally stood, and let them lead her from that place, there was not much left of the little girl she had been.
The change seemed to be visible from the outside; it was as if she bore the mark of that burning on her forehead, or perhaps in her eyes, and the inhabitants of her father's shadowy world were able to recognize her as one of their own. People she had never met before seemed suddenly willing to speak to her in the forbidden language. And she listened, though the pain of the knowledge she had swallowed wasn't eased by the weight of more whispers; though a strange old man's trust was not an even exchange for her father's presence. For his life.
And then she came back down to the house where she had been a little girl for so long; its secrets made way for her, no longer wreathing around her or beckoning from corners. Even her mother made way, stepping aside as if this changeling child of hers had become something terrible, as if she could see the burning, too.
The girl was so emptied of herself, so filled with her secret, that she almost forgot to look for the angel. When she did come back at last to where he was, she saw that he was both more and less than the angel she had thought him to be: still something larger than life, and yet only a boy. Just as she was at once the vessel for her father's legacy, and only a girl. The boy-who-had-been-an-angel looked at her, and saw the burning as the others had done--and he nodded, saying very simply, "Now you know."
And so she did.
Once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted to know things, more than she wanted anything else in the world. Until the world ended, and everything she had been, everything she had wanted, was burned away by the act of knowing. And then--and then--
She began to want to do things.
And then the world began.
-end-
Yet More Notes: This is what happens when a person spends waaay too much of her time obsessed with Eve, Pandora, and their various incarnations (though believe it or not, that's what I'm supposed to be working on! >_<). And yup, Heero is sort of Gabriel (the angel who was guarding the Garden) and the serpent and the apple, all at once. And there are other bits that were probably unnecessarily murky, but I'm going to hush anyway. ^_^;;
(:./lilias/fable)
