Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ To Speak to One's Self ❯ To Speak To One's Self ( Chapter 1 )

Title: To Speak to One's Self

Author: Lethanon

Archive: www.geocities.com/lethanon

Warnings: Duo POV, Angst

Notes: for the 1x2 LJ challenge posted by punk_kitteness

I was originally completely offended by this challenge for personal reasons, but then decided the best way to state my opinion was not to ignore it, but to submit to it. So here you go. Sorry it wasn't longer, but I didn't have much time….heh. School sucks, u'know.

It didn't really start and I doubt it will really end. It's just one of those things that is. It is, without a reason to be and it will be without being what it is. That's the way of such things. The way it has always been and the way it will always be. Such things do not change because those who own them don't want them to. And that's what it's all about in the end. Wanting things. Wanting them so badly you know you'll never have them. And if they come knocking, and you get the chance to own them, you'll want it so badly you won't take it because to take it…would destroy the dream. And no one wants their dream destroyed, do they?

I don't want my dreams to end, but when you wake up in the morning and all you hear is the thick buzzing of nothing in your ears and all you see is a darkness settled over any light, you start to wonder. What if they're already over? What if they never even began? What if so many things you'll never have an answer for, never know a truth to…never a lot of things. Just…a lot of things I guess.

I wonder a lot of things when I first wake up, and then I don't wonder anything at all. It's almost too easy to clear the mind, to cast off thought and wonder and accept. It's too easy to forget why you're here, what you're here to do, and the reason it's so easy? You never knew it to begin with. You'll never know, and you'll keep on forgetting, just like me.

So it's easy to force yourself out of bed, to stumble from the sanctuary of a bedroom to the cold, stark unreality that is a bathroom and to turn the tap that brings the water that is cold…so mind-numbingly, blissfully cold. And when you're standing there, under the spray, with nothing but ice in your veins you can almost see death, almost touch it; almost breathe it! Then a hand reaches out, turns off the tap and snatches it right out of your grip and the thing that terrifies you the most; the thing that drives you mad is the fact that its your own damn hand, your own damn living flesh and blood that betrays you every time. Just like everything else.

And that's what you think about, as you scrub your skin raw of water and death, and you drag on your clothes and try and haul yourself back into some semblance of normalcy. It's what you think about as your fingers brush the skin that's new and still slightly raised, and it's what you think about as you hide it all beneath the folds. Because you know this is the only time you can think about it. If you think about it later…later is too late. Always.

You think about betrayal as you put on your shoes; how every waking moment you want one thing and do another. We all do it; they're no different to us. They're all just going through the motions, wanting and not reaching, and hiding so far in their skin they no longer know themselves. Yet they think we know them. It's all lies, this life, this breath, this madness. All just a veil to hide the one single truth no one dares face. We're all nothing. We come from nothing and we will return to it. You can call it God, you can call it the devil, but they are just names and you've got a name all your own. But when those names are gone; when recognition of the word is gone then its just vacant breath with no one to breathe it and give it voice. It's nothing. All of it. Nothing.

"Duo?" You're nothing too. But I still look at you; I still raise my eyes to yours and let these words filter into me, through my mind and form coherent responses. I still walk beside you, all too aware of the way your t-shirt rubs against my sleeve and your jeans rustle softly as you stride…you stride. I don't like that. I don't like these sounds. I don't like the way you make that stupid sound in the back of your throat every time you go to speak. I don't like so many things, but what do I like? Nothing. You're no worse than every other evil in this world. I can't destroy you for that. Will you destroy me instead? Some days…some days when we walk like this I wish you would. It's just a walk to the kitchen, but does it ever end? Is there ever a day we don't walk this way, when we don't hear these things, or reply in this way. Is there ever a day more powerful than this immortal night that engulfs my soul?

I don't think you understand. I know it, in my bones. You can't see it. You're blinded by ideals and by the dream. When did you learn to dream, Heero Yuy? When did you learn anything? And where was I…

The kitchen is too bright. It hurts my eyes but you don't notice. No one ever does. Only those on the inside ever know it; the little voices in the blood that tell us to do it. The ones we listen to. They know it hurts. Technically, it's the lack of iron and the touches of metal in the blood from the tools of the trade…they combine to make you sensitive to light. Knowing that doesn't make it hurt any less. Nor does it help to do anything about it. So I sit, right by your side, your leg against mine, the denim of your jeans rough and coarse against my black cotton pants. Why do you always touch me? Why can't you stay away? Why a lot of things. I don't suppose I'll ever get any answers.

There are so many things you can only learn from the inside out and they teach you that nothing else matters. It's a drug far more potent than this bowl of mush your gaze makes me stick down my throat. The food doesn't taste; lacks the tang and the thickness of it all. The food doesn't fuel me. I don't really need it. I've gone without it most of my life. You can't take that away from me, you know…The past is the one thing you can't take.

"What's the mission?"

You don't even look up from your food. You don't have to because you think you already know what I look like. You see me smile once and you think that's the way I will look every time. You never stop and wonder if that's true; you never look up to check, but that's okay, because if you did…well, I would just smile for you, wouldn't I? This way saves me the trouble. And you the trouble, I guess…

"You already know. That's how you found me, remember?"

I found you? No, I found a ride. It just happened to be with you fool. Or am I the fool? That's what they all think, even you, isn't it? A fool with a scythe to take you all down with him. I don't mind that. Don't mind that at all. We could be fools together Heero Yuy…

Fools outside of paradise. Let's go. The rain is calling.

And we go, slipping through time and space in a realm where only we exist, each in his own Gundanium prison and I wonder what you do there as I watch the hours flow by, as the minutes tick on. Do you leave it on the autopilot, trusting your machine that much because it is a part of yourself or can you not let go even that far. I can. I will and I do. I leave it that way, and I just sit, because my hands have something else to do.

It's easy to roll up a sleeve, to stare at all the shadowed markings there and it's almost funny to know they are not all made by me. How can that be? Am I not responsible for myself, for this flesh and what happens to it? Is not that hand that strikes me down akin to my own? We are the same, each one of us, each a part of a single one. That's what I've been taught and it's what I've learnt, and in hurting me you hurt yourself, and in hurting myself I hurt you…

Let it continue, because there is no known beginning and there will be no end. Carry on, and show me how much pain you can teach me, and I will compare it to the pain I teach myself.

"02?"

My hand pauses, fingers slick, skin numb. There is barely a moment's hesitation.

"01?" Are we really asking questions? What are they? I don't really want an answer you know…but you asked, so I should ask in return. That's the way the world works, isn't it?

"Turn on your coms. I need to discuss the mission."

No, you don't. You want to see me and can't even admit that to yourself, let alone me! But I don't want you to see Heero Yuy. I don't want you to see and I won't let you. Ever. Not…me.

"No."

"02…" Such a growl! You can talk about the mission as much as you like; you do not need to see to speak, nor I see to listen. Just speak to me and let that be enough. It has to be enough…

"02, open the damn com!"

"Just tell me what you want me to know 01!" I have a name…use it. Just once use it when you're not supposed to. It won't make any difference, you know. They don't care. We are who we are regardless of what label you put on us. We won't change just because you call us by something else and they won't do any different. Just use my name…mine…once.

"We will attack the base from the south."

You've already told me this. Do you think me that stupid? Do you think I have forgotten? How can I forget…when there's nothing here to make me. What would you say, if you could see my fingers now, tapping the slender steel between each slender limb? What would you think if all you could see was the grey and the red as they meshed and pooled and dripped and drooled? Do you think better thoughts than me, Heero Yuy? Is that it?

"You will provide a distraction on the ground and I shall take them out in the air…"

Simplifying things from last time, aren't we? Are you distracted Heero? Are you seeing what I'm seeing? I can almost…feel it…

I wonder. Do we not feel at all, or do we feel to such an extreme that we can no longer feel ourselves feeling because we feel too much. What do you think Heero? Can I feel my fingers, can I feel where steel meets skin, where the brightness wells? Or am I as dead on the outside as I am within?

"02, you better not mess this up!" Ah, and you cover it with anger. Such an old thing, anger. Is there any new emotion; anything that has not been felt? No? Then what good are emotions, Heero. What good is your anger against the emptiness behind it? You will be swallowed whole some day, and I might take the time to laugh when you do.

I grab a towel from my little box of supplies and swab myself clean and the tape that covers the dark stripes is too similar to the skin torn away. It all looks the same, as if nothing had ever taken place. The tape swallows my actions as surely as time, but underneath…I can almost feel it, the stinging. Or is it merely a memory of the sting? Is it memory telling me it should sting? Too hard to say, but it's almost there and with that almost I can almost be. Almost angry. Almost free. Almost me.

"Approaching." What, is my Gundam broken? You don't think I can hear all the little alarms telling me we're descending? You don't think I'll disengage the autopilot as we descend? You don't think I'll activate the cloak? Seems to me you don't think a lot of things Heero Yuy and one day I imagine they just might find you release. The kind of release I crave.

There's something rising in me, driving whatever small semblance of humanity out, and I'll let it. Because I can, and because I'm too tired to face what will be. I'll go to that emptiness now and let the death ride through.

And when we come out the other side…

You'll wish you had too…

Why…

What…

Where…

"What have you done…" You don't reply, you never do. I don't know if you ever will again. All I can see is the wreckage and there is a vague memory in me that it was you who pulled it all down out of the sky. That was what you said you would do. Tricked, we are, and will always be, but you seem to have not expected it. Is this what dreams do to you? Do they make such fools?

I'm glad I don't dream; glad I don't fight like you. Glad I just give in. I'm not a coward, Heero Yuy. Not the way you think I am. I'm braver than you all; I look at the world and I know its dark secrets and I face them every moment of every day. There is nothing I fear, nothing that excites, nothing that can destroy what is already destroyed. I don't dream because I don't need to.

And that's the difference between those who choose to fight the blade and those who give into it. We don't need. We don't want to need. We simply are and that's enough. We don't need the blade to bite too deep, nor do we keep it shallow. It bites as hard as it needs to remind us we're still here, and that's all. We don't need hopes, or ideas, or…dreams.

I watch you rush away to stop the disaster; to keep the impact zone small, within yourself. But you don't see it. You can't see that when you hurt yourself you hurt them all, and when they're all hurting you'll hurt along with them. We're all one, Heero, and you just can't see it. But I see it…and I can almost feel your pain.

But I don't know what to call it, I don't know what to say to it, and I don't feel the need to do anything about it. Even when I find you later, days, weeks, months and years later, when we're wound together so tightly there is no place where one ends and the next begins. Hell, especially then, because there is no such place. No, even then I will never comfort you, because you cannot comfort me in return, and so long as one of us resists…there shall be no comfort, not in all this world. Not as I know it, in my mind. And I can only see the world through my self, Heero, just like you.

Time passes, metal and skin grow closer, their time together colder, and we all suffer without knowing where the pain comes from. Because that is what it means to be alive, Heero. And when the blade kisses the skin…that's when the emptiness will speak to you. You to it. It to everything. Everything to you. You to yourself. Emptiness.