31-Dec-2001
Title: Touch the Lightning
Author: RavynFyre (ravynfyre@hotmail.com)
Archive: GW Addiction, Darkflame
Category: Introspection
Pairings: 1+2
Standard Disclaimer: All parts of Gundam Wing are Not Mine. It's all Theirs. *sigh* Too bad, but otherwise, I guess I'd never get anything done *happy hentai thought*. Anyway, not makin' any money offa this so dun sue me. You'd only get some college debt, a few dogs, and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers anyway. Ya know. blood. Turnip. Do the math.
Rating: PG for language
Warning: none really
Spoiler: Takes place just after the events at Siberia
Notes: Just another little bit of my introspective Duo. I'm in an odd mood tonight.
He arrived in my life like a bolt of lightning, brilliant, deadly, and too quick to hold. It was like he was there one second, and in the next, gone, the thunder of his Gundam's engines the only mark of his passage.
Oh yeah. There was the bay full of scrap he left behind after ransacking my partner. Can't forget that.
But that's the nature of lightning, isn't it? To bluster in on a stormwind, be born, live, and die again, all in an instant, and should you venture too near its genesis, you pay the price. In blood and death. I was just lucky he chose parts instead.
From that first moment I saw him, I could tell he was no one to be fucked with. He was like a force of nature, all power and potential, rage and control packed into a tight little package, all set to explode and unleash all the force of Armageddon onto the world. Some may say his power lay in his Gundam, but I can tell you that's bullshit. All you had to do was look into his eyes, and you'd know.
I've seen eyes like that once before. When I was just a kid. I held my best friend in my arms as he died, and stared Death right in the face when She came for him. All the weight of the ages was in those eyes, and such a wealth of pain and compassion that you drowned in it, that your mind convinced itself that it was looking into the very heart of apathy because it couldn't comprehend the depth of that sorrow.
I felt Her touch my soul then, as she took Solo from me. I'll never forget that shock for as long as I live, and I thought I'd never feel its like again.
I was wrong about that. When he grudgingly leaned on me, trusting me as much as he was able to trust anyone, I felt it again. Like lightning, slamming through my soul and leaving a huge chunk of fulgurite in place of my heart.
It felt. like for the first time in my life, I'd found. home.
At first, I couldn't let him out of my sight. Like I knew that the moment I left him alone, She'd be back. For him. Or he'd just vanish, like the fading echo of thunder. After a little while, though, I knew even if that happened, we'd meet again. He'd be back.
Or I would.
One way or another, one of us would reap the other's soul, ride it into eternity, and dance to the music of the cascading rain.
I think She touched us both. I think She rides us both, only I'm the only one crazy enough to admit it. Or sane enough. Does it really matter? We'll both burn out before anyone can truly *see* us anyway. All we'll leave behind is a fading afterimage, not even the real image, just what everyone thought they saw.
Hero. Villain. Martyr. Terrorist. Saint. Devil. Messiah. Damned.
Just a reverse silhouette against history, flat, twisted, forgotten just as quickly as we came. Like lightning, swallowed by the storm.
I kissed him, you know. When he was trying to piece together the wreck of his machine, I snuck up and stole our first kiss. I think it scared him because he liked it so much. That's why he spent the rest of the night doing his damndest to ignore me. That old philosophy of "If I can't see it, it can't see me, and it can't hurt me." I figured I had to do it, though. Act fast, because who knew how long our brief flash of brilliance, our lives, would last.
Personally, I think that's why he ransacked Deathscythe for parts. Because I dared to kiss him.
Because I dared to touch the lightning.
I think he figured he'd never have to pay the consequences, knowing as well as I did how limited were the seconds of our lives before the thunder came along and obliterated everything but the afterimage.
So he self-detonated.
It was too late, though. I can still feel him, deep inside, in that place in my heart that burned when that shock passed between us. It still burns. I can feel him in there, like a steady beat that runs in counterpoint to my own pulse.
We'll meet again. Some day, some where, our paths will cross once more. And you know what?
I'll dare to touch the lightning, all over again.
~owari~
RavynFyre
Please send comments to: ravynfyre@hotmail.com