by cozzybob
Archived: On FFN and Kiyasama's Project Greenlight Fanfiction website all under cozzybob. If you like, you want, you ask, I'll say yes. ; Just tell me so that I can babble and put you up here. Please. (I'm a glory hog--I need my glory.)
Disclaimer: If it's recognizable at all, the universe of Gundam Wing and it's characters belong to Sunrise and other shareholders. Not me. I did not make any money borrowing them and do not plan to do so in the future. This, like all other fanfiction, was written for sheer pleasure alone. Plot, if it deserves the name, belongs to me.
Rated: PG-13
Pairs: Trowa and Heero
Warning: some spoilers, attempt at cannon, angst, suicidal thoughts
Note: For the gwjeopardy community on livejournal: table 2, row Trowa Barton, category "friends and lovers" for 1000 words.
He stands there on the ledge of this building and he does not move. One false step and he plummets to the ground sixty stories below, but I know Heero Yuy doesn't care about that. The man I saved from death does not care about dying and he did not give me thanks for the life that I resurrected him. He simply did what he had to do. As I did. No more, no less.
A breeze comes and I watch as he sways a little. I admit, I panic slightly, but Heero has impeccable balance--something that some believe I taught him, but I think he was simply trained to be that way. He shifts on the ledge, sighing lightly, and closes his eyes as the wind caresses his hair.
I say not a word. I wait, leaning against the door to the roof with my arms crossed before my chest as if standing guard, daring anyone to cross the path between us. I'm protecting him. Keeping watch for him. I will not save him should he decide to jump, but I will protect him should someone else push him off. I don't believe anyone has the right to hold another back from his own suicide. But I don't believe anyone has the right to do it carelessly either.
If you're going to kill yourself, you might as well do it with care, Captain had said to me once. It had been an unspoken agreement between all of us when I was growing up--you never step in between a man and his demons. Ever. After all, you never know when someone will come along and try to save you, make you whole again... only to rip you apart to savor in your agony.
I don't think I ever got over that. Over... her, I mean. I made that mistake and I didn't learn from it. It hurt.
But it doesn't matter now. Someone else wants me whole, and I'm starting to find that I have someone I want to see whole as well. I want to see Heero whole. I want to see what he is like when he is all that he can possibly be. I want to know who Heero Yuy is, because I don't know him, and I hate not knowing. When I don't know, I'm still able to make the same mistake I did before, and I never want to go through that ever again.
His voice takes me from my thoughts. It's rough but smooth. Sad, but indifferent. Disturbed... but sane.
"I'm not going to jump," he says.
I speak nothing.
He looks over his shoulder to me and I see that his eyes are wet. He hasn't shed a tear, but I know that inside, he's bleeding all over the place. I hold back a shudder, unable to face the horror on his face. I hate it. I hate his vulnerability.
He hates himself for what he did. I don't blame him, but still, I don't understand.
I didn't think it would hurt him this much. I didn't think at all.
He turns away to stare down at the streets so far below, where the ants crawl along cement paradise and tiny box cars cruise in circles, going no where. I hear him snort, I almost swear to know what he's thinking.
"I'm not going to jump," he says again, and this time I can hear the faint tremor in his voice. It's there, begging me in voiceless shrills. He wants me to ask him.
And so I do. "Why?"
"Because," he says simply, his voice almost silent. "I haven't grown any wings."
I arch an eyebrow. I don't understand.
I have never understood him... like Quatre or even Catherine, you could say. All of them. They intoxicate my world of clarity and understanding, my world of isolation and simplicity. They are chaos to me, everything I don't understand and don't want to face. I hate not knowing them, not understanding them. I almost hate them. Both of them. All of them.
Every single one of them.
But I don't. I only want to ask him--Heero Yuy--what he meant by the words he spoke. I only want to know, I want to understand. I need to. But I don't say anything.
I wait.
He steps down from the ledge and turns to me. He looks me in the eye, his wet blue orbs swirling with intense feeling and yet... nothing, and he sees something, and nods to himself.
I voicelessly ask him what he meant. What he saw. I want to know... I need to know...
He tilts his head for a moment in contemplation before turning his back to me to take one last look at the horizon. I notice the sun beginning to fall, and the only thought that comes to mind as that it is getting late, and we should return before nightfall. It's never good to walk a city at night. I know.
But he doesn't say anything. He just stands there like the slow, building chaos that he is and watches the world grow around him, distant, as it attracts to his spirit, to his delicious immortality, and chases him down like a lion to food, like Relena, Zechs, me, and the entire fate of humanity, everyone, resting on his slumped, shaken shoulders. And he accepts it. He does nothing.
I wait some more.
And finally, a voice comes in a whisper. "I need to find Sylvia Noventa," he tells me. "She will give me my wings. She'll show me how to fly."
I step aside from the door and he opens it and walks through. We are in the staircase before I ask him.
"Is she an angel?"
Heero shakes his head. "No. But her father is. I made him one."
"Then how will she tell you how to fly?"
There is a pause before, "I don't know."
I make him look at me and I stare into his bottomless blue eyes. "Why do you want to fly, Heero?"
He gaze is unwavering. His voice is firm, determined when he answers, "Because I want to know it feels like."
"To die?" To commit suicide? To have your body smashed into the pavement? To be nothing but a splatter of flesh and bone scraped off the sidewalk by local cleanup crew?
He shrugs slightly. "To live," he says slowly, as if voicing the words for the first time. "...in freedom. No more guilt, no more killing, no more murder... no more death."
Those are not wise words to behold in a war, but again, I say nothing. I can see it in the way his injured arm hangs down limply, wrapped in tight bandages that are already beginning to bleed through again. I can see it in his walk, in his shoulders, on the lines of his face and all around his damned blue eyes. He is tired. Exhausted. Old.
Should he fall asleep this very moment, I don't think he'll ever wake up again.
I say nothing.
He passes me on the stair, a cold brush against my side, and I catch the sweat beading against his thickly worried brows. His injured hand clenches tightly before relaxing and falls dead to his side. I watch as Heero Yuy slowly makes his way down forty flights of stairs, taxing his tired body to the brink of trauma because he knows no other way to live.
And so I wait and then I follow.
Someday, I think I will understand.
--Fini