Name: Aldiara
Email:
LJ
Title: no man's world
Word count: 945
sometimes you look at me as though you knew me. which is funny, really, because nobody does. yeah, I know IÔŅĹm the one they get along with, but itÔŅĹs like one of those brain candy novels, youÔŅĹd pick it for a long and boring bus trip but it wouldnÔŅĹt be the single book youÔŅĹd take to a desert island. I know IÔŅĹm the first one who gets invited to evenings out when weÔŅĹre not on a mission, I know IÔŅĹm the one whoÔŅĹs easy to talk to, the one most of us would prefer to share a boring night shift with (though anything boring is fast running out, and thatÔŅĹs not a good thing). Quatre hugs me and Trowa shakes his head at my antics and smiles. I even get the odd grudging smile out of Wu Fei, since heÔŅĹs decided IÔŅĹm not just a fake.
but of course I am, and strangely enough itÔŅĹs you who seems to notice it. you are most likely to frown when I flash the irresistible grin, you are the one who turns without a word when I taunt you. the others tease when they see it, and IÔŅĹm sure Trowa or Quatre or both have taken you aside on occasion to tell you not to be so stuck-up, I mean only well. if they have, it didnÔŅĹt work. you still turn most easily from me when IÔŅĹm at my most ostentatiously buoyant.
it intrigues me, but there is no time to dwell on it, and those easy evenings out between the sounds of screeching metal and the distorted faces of the dying are becoming scarce. war has ever been a breeding place for romance, it is true, but it is the desperate kind, the wild spark more rooted in the knowledge of its own brevity than in the actualÔŅĹ ah, fuck. this is what you do to me. you get me thinking, when itÔŅĹs the last thing I want to do. why canÔŅĹt you just let me smile?
but itÔŅĹs in the moments like now, when the faint disapproval in your gaze across a room, the minute frown which says that is not you, and I donÔŅĹt like it, itÔŅĹs in these moments that I get even close. (I know I make no sense. hang on.) because IÔŅĹm the only one you even bother to disapprove of. makes me fucking special, huh? and still. itÔŅĹs in those little sometimes that I feel I might know you too. as someone more than the guy who doesnÔŅĹt talk.
you know? itÔŅĹs weird, the others tease you for that way you speak, that utterly neutral tone that doesnÔŅĹt give fuck away. damn it, Yuy, youÔŅĹre like a bloody robot. I think they worry, a little; I think you scare them. thatÔŅĹs why they turn to me, ÔŅĹcause if we were in a deck of tarot cards IÔŅĹd be the joker and you might be death. nicer to look at the grin even if itÔŅĹs frozen. but hey. you know what? it doesnÔŅĹt bother me. because your tonelessness, your soft, cold voice without pitch or inflection, is the matrix on which I can imprint a meaning of my own. I can make each sparse phrase you toss me something secret, something real, something for me. itÔŅĹs rather brilliant, I have a catalogue of meaning that you likely never dreamed of (or did you? itÔŅĹs in those bloody moments when you frown at my fakeness that I think you might).
IÔŅĹll go with Maxwell, he knows the code means I choose you.
shut up means let me listen to you breathe.
concentrate on the mission means later. donÔŅĹt get hurt. I need you.
status report is please tell me youÔŅĹre okay.
stop grinning means be yourself. I treasure that.
idiot is love.
I have a hundred of those. IÔŅĹm sure you donÔŅĹt know that you ever made a hundred different noises.
a line floats somewhere, I donÔŅĹt know from where. a song, a movie seen on L2, a thousand years ago, when I was as unblemished as I could be? ÔŅĹif this were the real world.ÔŅĹ it keeps coming back to me, without a tune to hum. it flutters by as I hit buttons to hurl missiles, itÔŅĹs louder than the music I turn on to kill. it hovers at my shoulder as you look at me, another dozens deaths behind your eyes. if this were the real world, I might not grin like a madman; I might step over there and offer a touch that you would not brush off. you might cling to me and hang on, damp lips against my ear, and say something desperate and sweet, like, I canÔŅĹt take this anymore, Duo, letÔŅĹs get out. but of course itÔŅĹs not. for once, because thatÔŅĹs not the way it works. for another, because weÔŅĹll die, of course. (yeah, I know IÔŅĹm scattered. what do you expect? give a guy a break). oh, probably not this week, or next weekÔŅĹs mission, and probably not all. but eventually. you, me, both, doesnÔŅĹt matter (though if it were me, I like to imagine that youÔŅĹd crack). thereÔŅĹs only so much luck and training, and in the end, you canÔŅĹt make death your ally, no matter what secret name you give yourself. at the end of the day, death is still the stranger.
so, we are in limbo. still here, but kinda not. still real, but, you know, whatÔŅĹs real anyway. we float in no manÔŅĹs world, waiting for luck to run out. and in the meantime?
if this were the real world, I wish youÔŅĹd make me stop grinning.