Ageless
Rau is six and he dreams of tall trees and white birds in blue skies that remind him of the pills he has to take. He doesn't know what would happen if he didn't take the pills, but he knows it's bad, so he takes them and doesn't ask questions.
He lives in a big house that feels like it will swallow him with its emptiness, white shutters snapping like angry teeth at the wind's beckoning, windows glaring fiercely in the sunset.
Rau lives with a woman he knows is not his mother and he doesn't know how he knows. Sometimes, a man in a suit visits him and it always feels wrong when Rau calls him "Father". He does, because it's what's expected of him, but he secretly and innately understands that he is lying as he says it.
When Rau is alone, he plays with toy soldiers and picks flowers, and when he scrapes his knee, he cries.
Rau is eight and he dreams of high windows and sweet-scented hair tickling his face. He can't remember the scent or the colour of the hair, but he smiles anyway.
He smiles when his teachers praise him and feeds off of the approval like a hungry cub suckling its mother's tit, always working harder, because in the end, it's the only thing that makes him feel defined.
One day, "Father" takes him into his large black car. The engine's purr and the whirr of wheels on gravel lull Rau to sleep and when he wakes up, they're in front of a house that dwarfs his own and the man is shaking his shoulder sternly. Lush green lawns surround the house, like the endless ocean stretching lazily around an island, red fish-flowers breaking the smooth surface in even patterns and neat rows.
In the house, Rau is left alone and told to sit still in a study, but Rau is eight and he wants to explore, if only just beyond one door. The first door leads to another, and that subsequently takes him to a third, behind which Rau comes face to face with another boy. They blink, studying each other with all the resolution of their young age.
They have no time to conclude the assessment however, as the door flies open and the man drags Rau out and ushers him into the car, before he can recover from his shock. The car ride is silent, just as it had been before, only this time the silence makes Rau itch uncomfortably.
At the door, as "Father" is about to leave, Rau asks about the pills, because he feels that the man owes him at least this much after tearing him away so abruptly from a potential friend. The man ignores him, but Rau expected that. Having decided to be difficult, he asks again, stomping his foot and pulling the man's sleeve, and when the man slaps him across the face, Rau cries.
Rau is nine and he dreams of empty houses and suffocating silence. The man has stopped visiting and the woman who lived with him has left. He is alone now, even when all the other children in his dormitory are sleeping around him. Rau sobs once, loudly, just to feel his own presence, and buries his face in the thin, itchy mattress of his bunk, crying because it's the only way he can fall asleep.
Rau is ten and he dreams of a new future as he watches the ravenous flames consume the immense house with the red flowers. The once-green sea surrounding it is painted orange by the blaze and the night is laden with the scream of sirens and the wail of the crowd. As Rau turns away, and towards his new life in the PLANTs, where he has been accepted by a prestigious academy, he is shocked to find no remorse within him, and that leaves him with a hollow, giddy feeling. He cries, because he wants to feel the pain.
Rau is twelve and he knows. Knows about the pills, knows about the lab, knows about himself, his purpose, and his flaw. It feels as though all of his knowledge is hanging above his head, a murder of ill-omened birds serving as a constant reminder of what he can never be.
All of Rau's mirrors are covered, because he doesn't like looking at himself. When he does, he sees a boy far too old for his age, his eyes even older, filled with so much self-loathing and bitterness, and so shiny with broken dreams and dead illusions, that he looks away, unable to bear the feverish flame that burns within them.
When he dreams, it is of the past, because he has no future to looks forward to.
Rau is eighteen and he thinks of himself as a gaping dark abyss, because the vacuum within is swallowing him up like a cancer. He doesn't dream, but when he does, it's nightmares of drowning in himself, the darkness slowly creeping up his body, enveloping him with its gentle arms and suffocating him with a lover's embrace.
Looking at himself, Rau sees a failure, a seed rejected by the fruit and by the soil. He sees the man and he sees himself and he can't stand it, so he wears a mask over the first, omnipresent mask.
When war breaks out between ZAFT and the Earth Alliance, Rau enrolls into the army, because he has no reason not to, and he excels, because he can.
In battle, he feels alive and in control at last, feels as if he finally has a purpose once more. He sees the white birds against the blue skies, sees the high windows and the grinning house, and he laughs, because he knows they are nothing more than a seductive mirage to his parched heart, and when he kills, he smiles, but only because his tears dried up an eternity ago.
Rau is ageless and he plays with toy soldiers and picks flowers, just as he did so long ago that it seems like a different life, only this time, the soldiers and the flowers die in agonizing screams at his hands, flesh charred and blackened by his ambition, eyes as empty as his own.
Rau has taken to wearing gloves, because he is afraid that his hands are stained forever in the red of his team's uniforms, and he doesn't think he could stand the sight of it, just as he can't stand the sight of their trusting eyes, turned to him for guidance, aflame with the hope of their youth.
As he goes into battle, Rau knows he can't win, knows that he is going to die, but tries anyway, because he wants to see how far he can go, and when he dies, he smiles, but only because he has no reason not to.
Author's note: Just a little something that has been floating in my head for a while and that I finally managed to put to paper. Poor Rau. He really doesn't get enough love, and I find him a very intriguing character. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed it and didn't find it too pretentious or anything.