24 Aug 2000
Notes: We're now somewhere between Eps 9 &10, if you're trying to keep track.
Pairings: 1+R
Warnings: Voyeurism, long-drawn-out introspection. Heero gets in touch with
nature. (This _is_ going somewhere, I promise!)
Disclaimer: I don't own these delightful people (Sunrise and the Sotsu
Agency do, and Bandai gets to pass them around), nor do I intend to infringe
upon the rights of their owners. I don't own the song, either, obviously.
/Sometimes, she shines
And I know
Beauty has her way
With her hooks and her grace
Beauty has her way/
When had things gotten so confusing?
Heero could not for the life of him figure out why she was there. She knew too much, that was certain, but what was she planning to do with what she knew? If she were the type to rattle off secrets for the sheer pleasure of gossip, he would already be dead. But if she was hoarding up those secrets, she could be an even greater threat.
He told himself that was why he had to watch her, why he'd had to work out where she was living (a rented villa a few kilometers from the school), and exactly which room was hers (second floor west, third and fourth windows from the left). A sycamore fronted her window; its branches allowed reasonably easy access to her balcony and too many nights, he found himself in that tree, watching as she moved around her lighted room.
She did her homework in the first-floor sitting room, but by nine o'clock or so she was usually on the floor at the foot of her bed, reading what he'd been able to determine were history books. The Sanc chronicles, accounts of the space colonies, treatises on foreign relations -- it was fitting preparation for a royal heir, even an exiled one, but there seemed to be more to it. He'd watched one night (a dangerously close perch, just outside the balcony's french doors) as she turned over the leaves of a long-banned text, pausing over a series of plates. A white-bearded king, a sad-eyed queen, two laughing golden children. Night after night she came back to those pages, until the book fell open obediently to the Peacecraft family portraits; she was putting together an identity, building a past to replace the one that had been shattered when Vice Foreign Minister Darlian was taken down. The watcher at her window noted all this, filing it away with his own late-night research into the persistent Darlian girl's real origins and possible connections.
Very interesting, but it didn't get him any closer to calculating the risks posed by her presence, her curiosity. He didn't even let himself consider the risk posed by his own presence in the sycamore, or his apparent need to watch her. Night after night he powered down his laptop at his desk, determined to go straight to bed -- and then he would decide he needed to check on Wing, or invent some other excuse for himself, and he would find himself outside her window again. Watching her. And eventually she'd put down the books, and take down her hair, and sit on her bed brushing it out -- rhythmically, soothingly.
The first night he had stayed that long, he had watched unsuspectingly as she set down the brush, went to the dresser -- and calmly took off her clothes, stepping into her pajamas. Throat suddenly dry, fingers digging painfully into the smooth bark, he couldn't stop watching. Totally unconcerned, she gathered up her clothes and moved out of his line of vision. Some part of him coolly took note of his elevated heart rate, the heat mounting to his face, and identified these reactions as interference. Not conducive to the completion of his mission. Probably counterproductive, in fact. But she was back, turning off the light and climbing into bed. Out in the starlit night, he was now more visible to her than she to him -- so he waited until she'd been still for a long time before risking the climb down.
If he'd thought too much about the whole episode -- if he'd reflected on it at all -- he'd have had to acknowledge the mindless stupidity of his repeated visits. Sometimes he stayed away for a whole night, sometimes two, but eventually he'd be back in that tree. An uncomfortable tree. It was not comfortable to watch her, either. It was -- something else, something more disturbing, something that left him restless and sleepless and generally at odds with himself. It reminded him of violet eyes in the dark, which was even more confusing.
When that something began to intrude upon his daily functioning as well, it got even more serious. Waking up aching and breathless was one thing -- finding his body determinedly uncooperative during class was another matter altogether. It was usually just a matter of finding the right relaxation technique to reroute his physical response, but his mind unexpectedly proved to be even more stubborn.
She wasn't in many of his courses, but she did share three classes with Maxwell and himself. He sat several rows over from her, and a few seats back, but still found his attention wandering during the already-familiar chemistry and physics lectures. And worst of all, he was pretty sure Maxwell had noticed. Time after time he'd drag his eyes away from her only to meet the other pilot's amused violet stare. Not always amused, though. Sometimes the gaze was more unreadable, as if something else moved just below the surface. This school thing had been a bad idea, he decided; all the entanglements of living with -- or just near -- other people were a definite hazard to his mission. But he kept going back to that tree, kept dreaming of the languid way she moved when she was asleep.
And Maxwell would <not> leave him alone.
Always at his door, hanging over his shoulder with some question, some story, those eyes demanding a response even in the rare moments when his mouth <wasn't> actually moving. Infuriating. Incomprehensible. His withdrawal wasn't entirely Maxwell's fault, though, and he knew it: Duo was a constant reminder of that earlier night, of his own loss of control. Maxwell didn't seem to be demanding a repeat performance, but even the casual contact that he seemed to associate with regular friendship was -- disturbing.
It wasn't as if the American pilot lacked friends, either. Like Relena, Maxwell was trailed by a flock of fans. The short trip from dorm to classroom building was a series of flirtations, back-slappings, and other ritual greetings -- and unlike Relena, Maxwell seemed to live for it, joining in as if he were one of them. Dangerous. That one was definitely dangerous. And both of them were entanglements he couldn't afford.
It was only a matter of shutting down the parts of him that cried out for entanglement.
End of Part 4
(:./lilias/beauty4)
