Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Sex, Substances, Sin, Salvation ❯ II - E - No Place Like Home - Trowa's ( Chapter 13 )

Sex, Substances, Sin, Salvation - a GW fanfiction manifested via madness

By Masamune Reforged

whenshootingstarsfall.com

Disclaimer: Don't own any of the characters, they are the property of Bandai, Sunrise or someone else, but not me. I use them for no-profit whatsoever, but for entertainment's gain.

Warnings: Yaoi (mainly 1x2 and 3x4, includes graphic sexual content in parts) cursing, drug use, violence, angst, insanity, cameos, AU, lunacy, sanity.

 

Part E of Page II: “Wonder Whats Next” in the s4 arc

There's no Place Like Home - Trowa's

Trowa's POV

 

I woke to the buzzing noise of a fly's wings. My eyes fluttered open. It was one of those high pitched zszsz sounds, the fly that is, not me, the ones from the tiny bugs that only really like to lay next to a halogen light. There were no lights on in my room. Thin strips of brightness were streaking from the space in-between the door and the wall, breaking in from the apartment complex hallway on the other side.

 

It was impossible to tell if it was light or dark outside. What day was it even? It didn't matter. Who cared what day it was? Or what time? If I couldn't remember, then it couldn't be that important. Just like whatever dream I had just had. It too was wiped gone clean, not even a tiny nothing remaining from the long rest I'd just gotten.

 

The red electric numbers on my bedside clock read 88:88 APM. The damn thing never worked. With that and the bed sheets covering the window, I always lost track of the time... The fly buzzed off.

 

I listened to it fly away, the soft buzzing my single focus. Shutting my eyes again, smothered under the heavy blankets, I remembered something like a warm summer night. The sound of buzzing gnats, chirping crickets and the soft flap of a balmy breeze. To my mind came the image of rolling hills, the dark waves of the corn field swaying in the wind; the fireflies, the stars and the full moon the only lights. I was eight again, hiding in the hay loft, peeping out of the cracks in the wood of the barn. I held my breath.

 

No wind tonight. No moon or stars neither. No lively animals or bold scents from any plants. The city was a dead place full of sleepwalking corpses, myself included.

 

Outside, a motorcycle let out an unearthly roar as its engine revved. It startled me like the sudden sound of father throwing open the barn door.

 

I let out the breath.

 

I reluctantly threw off the covers, trying to shake the sorriness from my soul. There was no point in trying to get there from here. It was too far. In fact, there was no point in even thinking bout it. Winter was for another nine weeks...

 

Fuck it. I just wanted to fall back asleep.

 

Back to living in the world the way it should be. Back to not living like this.

 

... a minute or whatever passed, and again, at the end of it, I wasn't any closer...

 

Fuck it. It wasn't going to happen.

 

So I forced my stiff legs to shake off the pins and dull heaviness and pulled myself out of bed with a silent yawn. There was a train coming up from Industrial Park in the southeast, coming from the old coal mining and refinery area where today MAKO Nuclear Reactor #7 cheerily plumed out radioactive waste into the air. The train's whistle blew once. Twice. Three times. Three o'clock?

 

I rubbed my face and looked around the room, eyes gradually adjusting to the dark. My hair was almost fully blocking both my eyes. I swept at it with my left hand, but most of the gnarled and unwashed strands sprung resiliently back into place over my left eye… God, I needed a haircut.

 

But first I needed something else.

 

I stepped around the two plastic containers where Sabin and Edgar slithered around, tongues flick-forking out as if to beg me for more baby white mice to feed them. I ducked under the folds of Terra, my baby lilac tree who was probably thirsty for some water. I finally found Mr. Locke sitting on a pile of dirty clothes, next to Cyan and Gau, the two cats that I hadn't been able to resist giving a saucer of milk to when they took shelter four stories below my apartment building awning, meowing and crying in the cold.

 

Well, Cyan, the white one with blue eyes, had been meowing. Gau... well, Gau didn't really know how to purr or meow or even how to use the litter box, or to even piss or shit consistently in any one part of my apartment. Gau just made a sort of gurgling moan of a `Meow' that sounded like `Gauu Gauu Gaugggau'. Gau wasn't right in the head, but he was a good cat. I loved him...

 

Mr. Locke was a two foot, blue, purple and clear master of bong hits that I had stolen from a former tenant of the building after I had caught him trying to force himself on the young girl whose father owned the rundown apartment complex. I figured that was some sort of justice. Well, no, not really I guess, when I think about it.

 

Mr. Locke was a nice bong, but I usually only had the shittiest of shwaggy weed to smoke out of him, and today I barely had enough to pack a pinky's worth of pot. I rustled around in the darkness for a box of matches. I had gotten the idea from Quatre, that really wealthy, really very charming guy from the holdup. It didn't make the first hit of weed taste none better, but the scent from when you struck it and the lingering smoke of the burned out matchstick was a pleasant change from a room that usually stank of crappy herb and dirty laundry.

 

The flash of light from the match burned my eyes, making me squint instinctively. I barely opened them in time to see the flame struggle, struggle and burn desperately for one quick moment before it died. The smoke trailed up into the air, the spirit extinguished and drifting as it vanished up high above. I needed to hold the match so it fed on the wood gradually, not smother the flame perched atop the pinpoint or let it consume the entire length and singe my fingertips. I was still getting used to not using lighters.

 

I struck a match and quickly put it down into the bowl of Mr. Locke, breathing in for all I was worth. The pot crackled and sparked, the fire drawn onto it by my breath. The day-old water in the base bubbled and blurped as the smoke was pulled through, cooling it as good as room temperature bong water can. The transparent shaft of the bong turned a creamy white, or something that'd be white in any decent light. In the darkness it was just a ghostly gray. I pulled out the bowl, where the weed had stopped burning (a few pieces of orange peels in the bag keep it moist and preserve freshness, so the pot doesn't all burn up at once), I pulled it out the slide. I breathed in.

 

I held my breath for seven seconds.

 

1...

2...

3...

4...

5...

6...

 

It was just our dog Interceptor coming into the barn, chasing after a field mouse.

 

I smiled. Something deep in my chest caught and my head heavy and light all at once.

 

I started coughing violently, but the smile wouldn't go away.

 

A couple bong rips and coughs later I sneezed just as a loud knock came slamming on my door. KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. I stifled a second sneeze and tried to ask, “Th-who is it!? *cough cough*” all at the same time.

 

“Damn it, you little brat!” It was the landlord. That man really hated my guts, was always scheming to come up with ways to get me evicted or in trouble that his daughter wouldn't reprimand him for. “How many times do I have to tell you not to smoke pot in my building!? Huh!?”

 

A plane took off from Zeon Airport in the north. The landlord's words and the jet engines echoed loudly in my ears.

 

“Hang on a minute.” I had to get a tissue. And I become aware, as I stood and got slightly light headed from the lack of oxygen in my brain and getting up so suddenly, that it stank like weed in the room.

 

“You come out here right now, Barton!” the landlord, Kefka or Gestalh or something sinister like that was his name, roared. “I'm going to get your good for nothing ass out of my building today!”

 

I got to the closet-sized box that was my bathroom and nearly tripped over the frogs, Setzer and Celes, who had gotten tired of the now-dried up frying pan and were resting on the cool tile floor. I grabbed emptily at the tissue box. TP it was.

 

“You listening to me?!” Kefka yelled.

 

“Just one second!” And it dawned on me that it was probably best if I didn't talk to the building's owner with bad cheeba breath and the smell of smoke all over me. I blew my nose and tossed the booger-blasted toilet paper over my head, in a perfect arc into the trash bin. I splashed my face with water and grabbed my red and orange toothbrush and the small role of Crest.

 

“Barton, it's three in the afternoon!” I could hear Gestalh's enraged spit hit my door. So it was 3:00 PM, not 3:00 AM? “Kids are about to get home from school! It's trash like you that's destroying-“

 

“DADDY!!!”

 

I stopped brushing so furtively, turning the water pressure down just a tad to listen.

 

“Daddy! Stop picking on Trowa!” It was Catherine. I was saved. “He's never done anything wrong to you!”

 

“He uses drugs in my building!” Kefka roared.

 

“Daddy, do you really know what Trowa is smoking in there!?” Catherine was probably the only reason I hadn't been kicked out onto the streets yet. “For all you know it's just those new kind of cigarettes. You know smoking isn't prohibited on this floor.”

 

“I would know what he was up to if someone hadn't stolen the extra keys to his room…” Emperor Gestahl spat in frustration. That had been me. Well, you know, just in case I got locked out. And, well… it wasn't like the landlord would have let me on back into the apartment if I ever got locked out.

 

“He pays the rent and never bothers any of the neighbors!” Catherine jabbed again. “He even helped me move that heavy couch out to the street and stopped that burglar from taking all of old Mrs. Esther's things!”

 

“Pays late is what he does... And that burglar was probably one of his lowlife friends or...” The sound of the landlord's grousing faded and then vanished. I strained my ears to listen at the door. Was he gone?

 

“Trowa? Can you open the door Trowa?” It was Catherine. I unlocked the door. She pushed herself inside, locking it in case her father returned.

 

Immediately Catherine wrinkled up her nose, cupping a hand over her mouth and frowning. She shook her head, bumping into the clutter as she took another step into the unlit room.

 

“Trowa, it stinks in here!” she reprimanded me. I didn't even blink. I could care less. No, wait, that's wrong. I could not care less. That's how little I cared.

 

“One day you're going to get in- This place is such a mess, Trowa!”

 

Catherine was always trying to tell me how to improve myself, how to dress nicely, how to act in public, how to keep my room clean, how to quit my `dirty habit'. She meant well though...

 

“Honestly! What is all this stuff?”

 

But, she was never going to change me. In all honesty, she cared more about my well-being than I did. I just wanted to get to the next day, the next meal, the next quarter ounce of weed.

 

“And more animals, Trowa? You know they aren't allowed!”

 

To be truthful, I didn't even want the next day anymore, or the next bag of pot. I didn't want anything. I just did it because it was all I had ever done, habit.

 

“If father finds out!”

 

I was actually getting a little tired of it all.

 

“Trowa, are you listening to me?” Catherine demanded.

 

“Yes,” I lied. I couldn't remember a word of what she'd just said. Something about more animals? I already had over a dozen...

 

“Trowa...” Catherine's attitude changed instantly. Her spunk was lost, her sternness had fled. She still frowned at me, but her concerned eyes were, more than anything else, sad.

 

She closed the distance between us, crushing the plastic of an EZ-Mac package under her foot. She always wore sandals at home, and revealing tang tops with short-shorts. Her face was very close to mine. I always had the feeling that she wanted to kiss me, but was holding back, waiting for something. Her eyes sparkled. I could never identify that unique color in her eyes...

 

“What's wrong with you, Trowa?” She stroked my cheek like a mother consoling a crying child. “You're young, handsome. Why do you seem so sad?”

 

The glistening dew of forming tears twinkled in the corners of her eyes. Mine were dry. She was the one crying. I was...

 

Was I sad? Fuck it. Who cared anyway? Catherine... Why should she be sad over me? Me... Why should I be sad over myself?

 

“I'm fine Catherine,” I told her for the millionth time. She never believed me, although she really wanted to.

 

“Please, Trowa...” I hated when people cry. It's a worthless gesture, just weakness. “Please, you have to try! Please!”

 

“I will, Catherine,” I lied.

 

-end “There's no Place Like Home: Trowa's”

Part E of Act II in Sex, Substances, Sin, Salvation

 

Next: Bad Habits - Wufei's - Constantly Correcting others with Personal Opinions

 

ID Notes:

Trowa's pets (and bong) are named after Final Fantasy 6 characters. His family dog in the memory (Trowa will have a past, as this an AU fic and I can do as I please with those things, thank you very much) is the name of Shadow's dog in the same game.

 

Catherine is Catherine Bloom from Gundam Wing. As her past and possible relation to Trowa in Gundam Wing is quite sketchy already, I've done away with it altogether here. So, no, they are not related.

 

Catherine's father is not anyone from the Gundam Wing show. I just had to make up someone to be Trowa's landlord. Since Trowa can't seem to remember his name, he won't ever have one, but will be nicknamed after two of the villains from FF6.

 

Other notes: This is the first scene set in Metropolis, the western part of Metro City, so it has some new references. Again, see the map if you're ever confused or curious.