03-Jul-2000
(Disclaimer: The GW boys and Dorothy don't belong to me. But, tossing them into alternate reality situations really makes writing about them interesting. Catatonia wrote and sings Johnny Come Lately. They're definitely an Indy-pop band that channels Dorothy-inspired moments-even romance?)
/I'm sorry you couldn't make it
The dark veil that I'm wearing can only block so much of his paled face and does nothing to cease the wailing of the woman next to me. Her tears come out dry and wretched. I know she thinks that she cared for Trowa Barton, but where was she those two years that I knew him?
The minister is speaking about veils. The two sides of the veil. I wonder about the two sides of my own veil. I'm torn between wanting Trowa back and the secret dark joy that he's gone. I feel my carefree smirk threatening to cross my own pale features. But my countenance is typically fair. Trowa's used to be so ruddy and often smudged with dirt from when he tended his garden in the fields near our home.
Catherine sobs again, her throat catches in such a rush of emotion that the minister almost pauses. Her grief makes this service dreadful. I casually hand her my unused handkerchief which she takes with a greedy rush and hides her face with it.
*Oh well.* I think to myself, I had originally intended to lend my handkerchief to Quatre who would have stubbornly insisted that he didn't need one and who would gratefully accept my offer when he realized that I knew him better than he did. But, Quatre had surprised me. He wasn't here.
I glance down at the empty seat next to me, one in the front rows reserved for family. I think I might manage to feel somewhat better if only Quatre had come.
/You could have seen him, so weathered and dated
Some of Trowa's co-workers from the office had managed to close the business for a few hours to attend the funeral. Heero Yuy and Duo Maxwell are sitting behind me. Both dressed in the same suits they wore to work that morning and would probably wear for the remainder of the day.
We were the only people to see Trowa come out of his suit. And we're burying him in that suit now, aren't we? What are we pretending about Trowa? We should have left him in his old white t-shirt and cut off shorts that he loved to work in. With the smudges of earth fresh on his knees, just as we found him. Just as he was.
But-would Heero and Duo recognize Trowa like that? No, only us.
For two years he reordered our understanding of ourselves and the need we had for nature. And here Trowa's returning to his beloved earth, and where are you, Quatre?
I'm sure that Quatre didn't come because, quite simply, he was never going to be ready to let Trowa free again. Losing his childhood friend the first time almost tore Quatre's spirit from his delicate body. Funny, but it doesn't really bother me anymore to think that I was merely a filling fling while he waited for Trowa to return. But now that Trowa's gone forever?
Quatre should have come, and reality might have awaken him to the fact that, somehow, he's the only person that I have ever cared for.
/He was a Johnny Come Lately
I had met Quatre at a company party one New Year's Eve. He was the only one who could wear a white suit to a hedonistic occasion such as this was turning out to be, and when I met him I instantly knew why.
He was an angel.
I knew as soon as the thought crossed my mind how ridiculous and simple I was putting it. Quatre was honest in his cheerful smile and earnest in his thoughtful listening. When I was introduced to him, he gracefully took my hand, fulfilling his gentlemanly duties, and gave me my first kiss. For the evening. And after that, I never wanted anyone else to kiss me again.
And I wanted to be the only one to ever kiss him.
I'd flirted my way around my grandfather's business dating the executives and cruising around the elite parties with the vice-presidents. But this copy boy on his way up in the world was the person I wanted to experience life with. And I'd avoided real life for too long.
"Dorothy, is it?" He dropped my hand and studied my features with his attentive crystal eyes. Blue, like mine. "I'm not too comfortable coming to these parties, and it seems like I'm the only one wearing white... " His ears started to turn pink where they weren't covered by blond curls. Blond, like mine.
I chuckled politely but honestly. "Mr. Winner, you are the only person here who could wear that suit so well."
"Oh." He hesitated and recognized my interest. We became almost perfect mirrors of each other in looks as well as desires. Or close enough that I knew I was going to achieve exactly what I wanted, and I asked him to marry me six successful months later.
/And I know that you would hate him
My grandfather's money and my preferences were able create the cathedral and the organ music that echoed up into the floral decorated rafters. Quatre was from a family with a small fortune, but he had refused to accept his inheritance due to some conflict with his father.
I had never guessed what that conflict was over, but on what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life the answer showed itself.
During the service, Quatre's face had transformed from intense joy to overwhelming sadness back to glowing cheer. I'd seen all of those expressions cross his golden features at one time or another, but never in such a thoughtful pattern in such a short amount of time. I dully repeated what the priest asked of me and watched Quatre's face with inquisitive and somewhat nervous glances.
"What is it, love?" I asked him as we stood in front of the cathedral and in the garden where we were going to receive our family and friends. All of Quatre's sisters had filled a good section of the guests with a sea of yellow hair. I took his hand and imagined creating blond nieces and nephews for them.
"Eh?" Quatre turned to look at me, his thoughts were drifting directly as his eyes swept across the rising sea of faces that poured out of the massive wooden doors to greet us. "Someone came who I had never expected to see again."
"How wonderful," I hooked myself through the arm that I claimed. The surprise that Quatre was feeling was a simple explanation to his behavior, but I had never expected the initiator of it all.
Quatre was still scanning the faces when we had relocated at the reception party. And his secrets worried me only until my grandfather took me through the first dance of the evening.
/If you'd seen his botanical leanings
/First prize exhibit and all down to good spirit
We're lowering his coffin into the ground. It's a quiet country graveyard with a few trees sheltering the borders. A grey day with a humid breeze as if all the world is mourning our loss and touching us with faint comforting kisses. Tear drops of rain caress the ground where we're leaving him.
Trowa belonged here as much as he belonged with us. I slide a finger over my nose, the veil rubbing across my skin like tears never would. No one's death has made me cry. And Trowa's death would be least of all, he belonged in the dirt. His touch shaped the earth, and the earth had molded him. He had sprung up from the ground the day of our wedding, and now he returns to it on the eve of our divorce.
I'm surprised how easily I can think that word. But if Quatre ever whispered its actuality out loud? I might as well join Trowa.
/He was a Johnny Come Lately
/And I know that you would hate me
As Quatre twirled me with an exuberant dance of his tangled feet, I laugh. The guests moved around us in a blur of colors, but the two of us were the only ones wearing white today. The color that suited Quatre best. And now I could wear it as well.
And as suddenly as he stole my heart, Quatre caught me up short and held me by my shoulders pressed up against him. But it wasn't so much an embrace as it was his power to pick me up and move me where he wanted to put me. And only Quatre could have such control over my body.
He took a step back and held me at arms length studying me face as intently as he had when we first met. "I love you, Dorothy." He said, then, instantly letting me go, he stepped around me to meet someone beyond where I was standing.
I turned with the sense that dread was to enter our new life on that very first day. Quatre had quickly walked over to the edge of the dance floor and had embraced someone else. Someone who held my husband by the shoulders as surely as he had a hold of me.
My world froze and I hated someone. I was sure of it. This stranger was tall and slender-which was accentuated by the dark brown suit he wore. From top to bottom, this man was the human embodiment of general creation.
I took a step toward them, when the picture changed. Quatre was in control again and pulling this newcomer by one hand toward me. The cosmos of my world began to crash in on itself as this new life re-ordered what was natural for us.
"Dorothy-love," he called me, "Come meet my dear friend, Trowa Barton."
"Trowa." I nodded then tilted my head to one side. My universe recovered her strength after the initial shock and I coyly extended my arm in greeting. I had spent most of my time as a predator, before I had met Quatre. I knew the rules of this game and I could play them before this Trowa Barton, because I had already won the challenge.
His grass colored eyes narrowed slightly, and he accepted my handshake. But he didn't release my hand either.
"Do you mind if we dance?" Trowa turned his head to ask Quatre. The solemn voice that passed through his lips suggested that every word he spoke was weighted with the utmost importance.
"Of course," Quatre's eyes crinkled in an unconcerned smile. "I'm so glad you could come. I truly am. And I'd love for you to meet my Dorothy."
*my Dorothy* I was instantly relieved and instantly infuriated as my old personality had been revived to confront this newcomer.
Trowa's browned hand settled dark against the white folds of my dress and we moved away from our common interest and toward the center of the ocean of dancers. If I was space and he was terrestrial, then Quatre's ocean was our only compromise from a completely clashing war of the spheres.
"Do you love him, Dorothy?" He asked leading the dance with a subtle shift in his shoulders.
"Most naturally." I smiled. The darker-side of my personality leaking out at every moment. Quatre was the only patch to keep the violence of my emptiness filled.
"To love Quatre is natural." Trowa stated and my subtle resistance to his direction unwillingly bent with his guiding movements.
"You have?" I cruelly tease.
"I do." He answered.
Unsurprised, I continue to poke into his heart for information. "So where have you been then, Trowa, darling?"
"Gardening."
/If I envied the things that he spoke of
/How I envied the things that he thought of
Against my wishes, our honeymoon was postponed because of Trowa's unexpected and special visit. Quatre respected me, but somehow he managed to make me understand how important staying would be. And, somehow, I would do anything for Quatre. Even if it meant that inside me--my darkness was destroying all the bright stars that Quatre had fostered.
And the postponed honeymoon turned into a new gardener. Because he was in-between jobs and homes, Trowa now lived above the garage in a pleasant apartment that Quatre had furnished for him. But I grew restless.
"Quatre, love," I would whisper in bed. "When will we be alone? Simply to enjoy each other? What do you owe Trowa for him to stay here all of the time?"
But my angel was sleeping when I asked these things and, if he ever heard, he never answered.
Often, Trowa would be up early and in the kitchen. Cooking. The smell of sweetened toast and strong coffee would drift into the common dining area where Quatre would read his paper and drink tea. I sat at the opposite end of our table and felt horribly disconnected from my lover as Trowa's simple presence wafted in and out and around us.
And I had no knowledge of their past. Had they been lovers or only friends? Had Trowa simply leached off of Quatre's revitalizing spirit? Had this been connected to Quatre's disinheritance? And why? Why now had Trowa returned? Why now that I had finally found someone to make my spirit sparkle brightly did someone antagonize my sinister secrets?
/He was a Johnny Come Lately
And when I submitted to let my ominous intentions loose, I directed all of my hateful asteroids loose as far away from Quatre as I could.
Trowa was only in the house for breakfast, and he spent his mornings overseeing the mechanics in Quatre's branch of my grandfather's business. Not only did this free loafer need a place to stay near Quatre, he wanted to work with Quatre as well.
But in the afternoon, Trowa was always in the far corner of our spacious back lawn where he had begun a modest garden. It was lined with flowers at one end and, as one walked along the long edge, it blossomed into a fruitful variety of greens and other vegetables.
"Are you finally going to leave once these are ready to harvest?" I asked the kneeling form who was weeding the radishes. I wore a drooping straw hat to prevent the sun from touching my white skin. As a result I had to keep my head tilted back with an arrogant air to see the object of my abhorrence.
"Perhaps, I will." Trowa didn't look up at me. He continued, "I should stay until everything is well rooted."
"How long will that take?" I asked the venom dripping strongly with each word. "Look at me!" I hissed through tight lips. "Why are you here? Where were you before, eh? Why now?"
Trowa leaned back still sitting on his knees in the dirt. He wiped a dirty arm against a sweaty forehead. The movement didn't change his appearance, what had been a white t-shirt was irreversibly stained many times over.
"Quatre and I have been friends since childhood." Trowa began. And then stopped as if he didn't want to begin there. "He's different around you than with anyone else, Dorothy. But, don't imagine that he's the solid angel that he appears to be. He needs you to be strong for him, but he's spending all of his time trying to repair your soul."
"What?!?" I shout, but the word comes out harshly soft. "And you think that you're here to patch Quatre up?" I threw my head back and laughed, but the broad brim of my hat didn't let the sun illuminate me. I was still coolly covered over with shadows. "I can care for Quatre alone. You haven't let us have a moment's peace since our wedding day! Pack up and leave, Trowa Barton. You aren't wanted here."
/And I know that you would hate me
They lowered him down and buried him. Trowa's going to fertilize this small corner of lonely flowerbeds for the dead. Without his constant approval of our small family, will our relationship wither?
I look around the grievers. Trowa had no family besides Catherine, and she has crumbled under the tender words of the minister. I'm distanced and beyond them. Heero and Duo have left flowers and drove off in the company car. The household staff from our home is standing still and somber with grey faces to match the atmosphere. Somehow, they all came to love the quiet gardener.
Even I had come. And I had little reason to love him.
Where are you, Quatre?
/If I told you that I made some time and stayed
/behind
/To find out how to make a garden grow
Trowa didn't leave after I confronted him. In fact, he continued to act as if nothing had been said between us. He always pretended that we didn't have hostile conversations. Not that we displayed any false pretenses to enjoy each other's company.
But what was mine was mine, and Trowa never stepped out of the breakfast kitchen to claim Quatre beyond letting his soiled smells permeate our mansion.
For that, my irritation bore a small amount of gratitude.
And I couldn't help but notice that I almost spoke more to Trowa than with my own Quatre. He would sit reading in the library. Lounged in a crimson recliner that he pulled closer to the warming flames in the fireplace.
At first, I would follow him there and kneel by his side, nervously glancing at the pages of the book which I was unable to see clearly enough to read myself. He never said anything then, but let one of his hands rest over top of mine until he needed it to turn the next page. Then I decided that this time was when I'd let Quatre sit alone. Not even Trowa's earthy aromas trailed Quatre there.
I simply walked past the open door and saw the lights of the fire flash over his reading glasses as if Quatre's spirit blazed inside his motionless form with the same intense speed and heat.
Quatre's smiles were everywhere but in this one room. The room where he escaped me. The room where I realized that Trowa might just be right. Quatre wasn't indefatigable.
/Where the sun no longer shines
I tried to think only of our happy moments, and there were many. But when Quatre left to quietly read in the library, I could hardly remember our candle lit dinners, our joking games in the swimming pool, and our quiet conversations watching the stars from the front porch.
I knew I loved him. I had asked him to marry me. But I suddenly doubted my angel.
/If I asked too many questions and stayed behind
/To find out how to make a garden grow
/But he never ever gave away the secret of this
/godforsaken soil
"Trowa?" I called up the staircase of the garage, knowing that the interloper was in his apartment and afraid that he wouldn't answer me.
"Yes, Dorothy?" He opened the door and the glow from the room made him a dark imposing figure. I hated admitting that I was scared and the only person I thought I could talk to was my rival.
"He doesn't love me, does he?" I ask, every vulnerable bit that Quatre created in me exposed from under the aggressive shell.
"I don't know." Trowa didn't move from the doorway and I didn't move from the bottom of the stairs.
Whatever I had expected him to say, I didn't want to hear this. My memories of happiness were lost and all I had was this aching sensation that I had been missing the real Quatre all along.
"How can I make him love me, Trowa?" My weaknesses falling across the floor like limp begging dolls asking for Trowa to pick them up and set them properly.
"I don't know." Trowa stepped back into his apartment and began to close the door. "Go back to him."
/He didn't need us, just tempted and teased us
/You could've been here, wishing you were here
I'm driving home. I always loved to drive in the country and often I surrendered the pilot's seat to Quatre just so that the two of us could roam through the deserted roads with the windows rolled down and the fresh air revitalizing our laughter.
The gravel would kick up waves of dust if we drove fast enough and the choking sensation made us cough until we had to stop and with tears running down our faces he would entwine his fingers with mine and smile. Stopping was the best part, but it only came after a painful breakneck pace forced us to stop for a minute.
I forced my car to travel faster than it should with any safety. The windows firmly up and my knuckles whitening even more with my frustration increasing in accordance with the car's acceleration.
Nothing was better. Nothing had changed. Except, now, Trowa was gone. Finally gone. And my life was going to be the next fatality if Quatre was gone forever as well.
/This was a Johnny Come Lately
/And I know that you would hate me
As I left Trowa's apartment, I was sure, as my eyes were sore with dry tears than never came, that Trowa was simply trying to outlast me. He came for the wedding to see who had moved in on Quatre during some sort of forced separation. He nuzzled in on our life first by his reunion spoiling our never-happened honeymoon and by inhabiting our garage. No wonder Quatre was growing ever distant from me. My mirror reflection, my perfect match, was being slowly eroded away by Trowa's endurance.
/He was a Johnny Come Lately
/And I know that you would hate me
As I left Trowa's graveside, I was sure, as I sped along the roads to my home, that Trowa was simply trying to see us get a healthy start. But we had resisted. I had hated him. And then Quatre had hated me. And somehow, whatever Quatre had loved about Trowa hadn't been what came between us. And whatever Quatre loved about Trowa had surely been buried in that tomb. Never to come back.
/If I told you that I made some time and stayed
/behind
/To find out how to make a garden grow
/Where the sun no longer shines
And I had never learned how Trowa could help us, because as quickly as he had died I had only realized his hope for us. Not just his hope for you. He just didn't understand me as well to say more.
The mansion is abandoned. The servants and staff are gone for the day, mourning someone I never took the time to appreciate. I know they liked his small smile and quick wit. But I'd only seen it as a dangerous threat to losing my angel.
I had hated Trowa, and now I would simply never have the chance to change that. Except, instead of hating him now when I've lost Quatre, I wish he'd come back. I wish I could ask him where he thought Quatre might have gone. Where Quatre would go if he had lost someone that he loved.
Would Quatre come back? And how long would he mourn for Trowa? I wonder as a week passes. I've begun to sit in his crimson chair by the fire while curled into a small ball. I thumb through the books he had set out to read, but I'm uninterested in them. What they could tell me about Quatre, I'd rather learn from my angel himself.
The garden was slowly over growing. When one of the groundskeepers pointed that out, I immediately rushed out to it and began pulling at the invading, useless plants that hoped to choke out what Trowa had planted. I worked mindlessly for hours when I collapsed in the surrounding grass and the sun's harsh touch burned my bare skin.
It accused me of Trowa's death and Quatre's absence.
/He assured me that the seeds you sold were sound
/But I must have cast them all on stony ground
/And now the sun won't shine
Quatre's affections were the prize that I was hoping to collect since I first met him at the New Year's Eve party. We had stood on the veranda and Quatre had talked about the stars and space and how he loved to watch them. And I listened, sure that he was talking about me.
It always seemed that way. As if everything Quatre said or did was focused around me and the happiness he sought out in my company.
And now he was gone. And I hadn't pulled through for him. And now Trowa was gone, and the one person who was more concerned for Quatre than himself had left me to tend the garden. Completely unprepared for the sorrow.
/I must have asked too many questions
He must not have wanted to leave me without some sort of answer other that "I don't know." Because, Trowa sought me out the next morning. He held his coffee between two sturdy hands that would nurse the garden later as he nursed his caffeine now.
"I was alone for a long time." Trowa began. "I was a quiet boy who had a lot of difficult circumstances to live with." Somehow, his tone alone made me listen quietly even though I had been furious with him the night before. "I met Quatre when I was eleven. My foster parents were relieved that I had finally found a nice friend and actually encouraged me spending most of the daylight hours over at his house. He was my best friend and the affection that grew between us was unlike anything anyone had shared with me before.
"Quatre himself needed some attention, his sisters were all grown and moved away. His father kept tight reins on all of his children, but he was never around to make them loving restrictions.
"We so desperately needed each other that we became exclusive playmates and spent most of our time hiding from anyone else. This went on for years. We would play music or games, read to each other, and stay up late having conversation about how to sort out our troubled lives. We were closer than brothers." Trowa sighed, the past distanced enough from him that he could almost accept it. "But while my family was glad to have an obedient out-of-the-way son, Mr. Winner was disgusted with our outward signs of affection. We were only teenagers. Mr. Winner called separating us preventative."
Trowa was staring intently into his cup as if he could see a reflection of their younger selves.
"Worse that the prevention was the misconception of our friendship that it forged. Who knows what might have developed between Quatre and I, but he was sent away.
"And I felt the deepest loss of all."
/And stayed behind to find out how to make a garden
/grow
"And I knew what it meant to love someone and completely lose them."
I waited for him to continue. I had nothing to say to him. What could I say to something like that anyway?
"In the process," Trowa continued, "I learned how to live again. How to start over, to begin again, and my love of gardens reminded me of Quatre's sweet friendship. He had taken what was dark in me and taught it how to grow light. Quatre had taught me what it meant to learn from tragedy and to continue. Sometimes it takes a disaster to appreciate love for ourselves."
"Don't wait for a tragedy to repair your soul."
"Don't wait for a tragedy to learn how to love him."
"He's wanting to love you."
/But he never ever gave away the secret of this
/godforsaken soil
Then Trowa started back to his apartment. And died. It was a complete accident. Unexpected.
I didn't know how to tell Quatre given how intimate they had been in their youth. He would hate me. He would hate Trowa for dying. I had finally realized exactly how fragile Quatre could be. He would blame himself for not having the apartment construction investigated. He could never have predicted the leaking gas.
It seemed completely meaningless to me.
And I was left. Alone. My bed was empty at night and I crept into the library to sleep in that red chair. It was the only place left in the house where I could sense Quatre anymore.
"You're still here?" I imagine I hear him say to me. "I thought you would leave."
"How can I? I miss you. I miss Trowa, darn him. He reminded me of you. He won't let me forget."
I'm sure I'm dreaming when I hear him say, "I think I miss you, Dorothy. I can't lose anyone again."
"I think the garden is dying."
He chuckles softly. The echoed sound of heavenly bells. "We may learn how to mend it. Together."
Johnny Come Lately
I'm sorry you couldn't make it You could have seen him, so weathered and dated He was a Johnny Come Lately And I know that you would hate him
If you'd seen his botanical leanings First prize exhibit and all down to good spirit He was a Johnny Come Lately And I know that you would hate me
If I envied the things that he spoke of How I envied the things that he thought of He was a Johnny Come Lately And I know that you would hate me
If I told you that I made some time and stayed behind To find out how to make a garden grow Where the sun no longer shines
If I asked too many questions and stayed behind To find out how to make a garden grow But he never ever gave away the secret of this godforsaken soil
He didn't need us, just tempted and teased us You could've been here, wishing you were here This was a Johnny Come Lately And I know that you would hate me He was a Johnny Come Lately And I know that you would hate me
If I told you that I made some time and stayed behind To find out how to make a garden grow Where the sun no longer shines
He assured me that the seeds you sold were sound But I must have cast them all on stony ground And now the sun won't shine
I must have asked too many questions And stayed behind to find out how to make a garden grow
But he never ever gave away the secret of this godforsaken soil
The End
(Well, I haven't tried to romantically tie anyone up this much before. Any comments? Suggestions? Want to ask why I'm in a Dorothy-phase?
(:./jillian/johnny)
