A vermillion sunset spreads across the jagged boundary of the cityscape. Clouds, slit into lonely streaks of auburn, waver and pull towards the glaring orb. Flat rooftops, flooded in receding red, stack until the horizon swallows their blurry silhouettes. From up here, one can trace the drops and swells of the once fertile terrain, now laden with a voluminous metal crust, from which protrude the clunky products of a restless industry.
The noise of a busy eatery drifts onto the porch: dishes clattering, shoes shuffling against the stone floor, animated conversations, muffled music, laughter. Happiness. Harmony.
Or the mimicry thereof.
I stand with my back to the wall near the diner’s terrace entrance; arms folded behind me, thumbs absently rubbing the brick, memorizing its grainy texture. The honorable friend, for whom we’ve come here, is mumbling something—recollecting a story, recent news, a tired joke.
Inane. Irrelevant.
Slowly, lethargically, the one who’s requested the presence of this nonentity turns towards me. Practically in a trance, his hazy eyes gradually shift in my direction. Amused, his smiling lips pull apart a fraction more. He watches me for a time then tilts his head, also uncharacteristically slowly, mouth forming an ‘o’, as though to say, “oooh how scary you are.”
I bet I look it. And looks will turn to deeds, depending on how long the nonentity carries on.
As if reading my thoughts, his gaze clears and pins me from beneath two heavy lids. He looks like a statue of a malevolent deity, sporting such an expression, and doubly so as he’s hardly moved in more than an hour. He’s been leaning against the railing: front facing us and back opposite the setting sun, inviting a golden nimbus to trace his slim frame.
Dust floats through the air, catching on the little hairs that stray from his braid and bangs. The loose fibers quiver with a fleeting breeze. It’s warm again, early springtime.
Time passes—drags tediously; every minute lingers and clings to its evaporating instance, stalling the future. The important. The final trial and that which will follow. In just a few hours, in just a few…
I’m staring, bearing into at him. Nevermind the friend, nevermind those on the terrace, nevermind the diner, nevermind anything in existence but him. It hasn’t worked; it came out wrong: harsh, even violent. But tonight will be different; tonight…
It took far longer than I had anticipated. The diversion persisted well into the night, as if he knew and was purposefully delaying our confrontation. He toyed with his plaything and the latter, being unnervingly tireless, delighted in his host’s every whim. Followed him like an obedient dog, wagging his tail and squealing with joy. I, too, followed—like their grim shadow, which, to my ire, bothered neither.
Occasionally, and cloaked as accidents, Duo would brush his sleeve against mine. Intermittently, his fingers would twitch an inch too near and briefly connect with my own. The effect amplified my anxiety to a dangerous degree and he was perfectly aware of it. He would immediately withdraw, feigning a tacit apology, but the memory of his touch… it burned my skin and soon my entire being was aflame with indignation and a yearning for a resolution.
The more the tension thickened, the more blatant his sadistic nature became. I knew him to be dark, but not to this extent. The shock of it scrambled my reasoning and blocked my defenses. He saw this, my vulnerability, and consumed it. And I, like a satellite caught in his orbit, only drew closer; bearing my intent—my desire to aid him—with each rotation and disintegrating in the gall of his dispassionate retort.
This exchange was, of course, unspoken. Our interaction was nonexistent to an outsider, unlike the vulgar sexuality emanating from him that practically poured over the damned “friend”.
Still, despite his attempt to bewilder me, there was a moment in the night that vanquished all doubt. It was late and his excitement had almost diffused. He paused at a corner, staring into nothing, eyes clouded with… hate? Grief? A convoluted junction? I’ve seen the look during the war. It passed like an eclipse: a transient night of unmitigated emotion; all of it coiled, distorted, originating far beyond reason’s reach. He blinked and it was gone, but I’ve witnessed it nonetheless.
Dr. J was wrong. He isn’t ridden with anything as superficial as intolerance towards failure. What torments him is… indefinable. Something the doctors haven’t anticipated—in any of us. A side effect, a subsequent affliction. A scar our burdens left that, rather than mending, burrowed deeper and deeper until its source became obscured and it became us.
I recognize it now. I had forgotten—my shade of it. Maybe on purpose. How it devoured me until I’ve lost track, lost sight, lost control. But I’ve been shook awake, shook alive—by her—and tonight, I’ll do the same for him.
He’s leaning against the wall perpendicular to the balcony, peering into the twilight through the glass door. Cool, crisp air seeps in through the slits around the doorframe. It’s 3:56 am: too late to sleep and too early to work. In another hour, dawn will lick the smog-stained blue with its rosy tongues and day will come: the same as always yet altogether new.
Neither of us has bothered to turn on the lights; it seems more appropriate this way. I find that I’m still clutching the keys to our apartment and deposit them on the counter. They jingle upon contact—a sound that startles him minutely. He doesn’t glance in my direction, but now I know that he’s alert and monitoring my movements.
I ought to instinctively detect and mirror his tension, his readiness to strike, yet I don’t. On the contrary, I’m serene as a moonlit lake—silently observing him: all the angles, all the planes; the fragile organism that comprises him. An unwavering certainty holds my heart. I have no queries regarding my intent: I simply must.
I blink, noting that I’ve somehow traveled across the room and am lingering directly opposite him. He’s surveying me, brows creased and eyes wide with apprehension. His mouth is slightly parted, drawing thin, uneasy breaths. Their cycles are rushed, as, I suspect, is his heartbeat. His lips… remind me of hers; paler, but almost the same shape: two pillowy crescents, the upper with a dip.
Hers taste of strawberries.
It was so many years ago. One ordinary evening, the two of us had fled one of her father’s unbearably dull dinner parties to hide in the corner of a vine-veiled balcony. She giggled and blushed from the thrill of it, tugging me on my sleeve as if to say, “Heero, we did it, we did it!” We huddled together in the only spot wide enough to conceal us from inquisitive stares. Her palms were on my shoulders and mine gently cupping her elbows. She trembled, but her eyes glistened with a defiance the world would later grow to recognize her for.
I don’t remember what I felt or whether I even had the chance to asses the situation prior to the kiss. It was abrupt and impulsive. A rush of warmth, balms, and flavors: her strawberry lip-gloss, the taste of champagne and cake in her mouth, the airy jasmine shampoo permeating her silky blonde hair, her rose perfume; all sealed with the tender touch of her flesh and the pressure of her body against mine. I dared not move, dared not reply; just stood there, inhaling the aroma until my head spun.
When she withdrew, her cheeks were flushed a naughty rouge and lips—their sparkly pink a fraction smudged—stretched in the widest grin I’ve ever seen her make. An embarrassed squeak later, she dashed off to her room, but the scent stayed. It stayed with me through the war and through every hindrance thereafter. It’s with me now, as I grasp his elbows—like I did hers—and lean forward to forge our future.
…
The kiss is hollow, yielding no heat and no breath. No hint of care, no sign of acknowledgement. No reaction. Nothing.
In shock, I pull back to discover his face impassive. It bears neither comfort nor disgust, abandoned by all emotion and, at once, severely colder than before. Suddenly, I’m in a soundless room, exhaling all the air in my lungs. He stares, unblinking, cleansed of his earlier anxiety—drained of anything that constitutes my ex-partner and my current roommate. An icy blank; a vacant shell in Duo’s form.
“Y-you…” I stutter.
“Isn’t this… what…” –you wanted?
“Isn’t… this…” –what you sought?
An excruciating silence. His stony gaze evaluates me for an instant.
“No.”
And I know that he understands my question. I see it. His whole being exudes it. He lets me see it—an indifference as infinite as the all-encompassing celestial void. Light years of stolid darkness. I envision that somewhere inside there is love, drifting on unreachable fringes in dwarfish clusters. Amidst them, there’s a tiny star where he stores his affection for me. It falters and dims on occasions of undecipherable significance. And now…
…it is extinguished.
In a baseless fury, I tighten my grip on his arms until it’s as fierce as an iron claw. He lasts as long as he can, but quickly, his unfeeling expression creases with pain. An anguished gasp escapes his throat as he slumps against the wall, rigidly writhing under my hold. I feel his erratic pulse thrashing, submerging his mind in panic. He risks a kick that I intercept midway, first deflecting his foot then striking his supporting leg at the shin. This extorts a cry. His torso caves and his head falls forward, grazing my chest. As he is now strains my reach, so I loosen my clutch to adjust—a stupid slip. He uses the opportunity to procure the knife hidden in his boot. A flash of metal later, I’m on the floor with its blade just below my clavicle. He straddles me, panting feverishly. His hands drop over my wrists to restrain me from retaliating.
But I won’t, Duo. It doesn’t matter anymore. I shouldn’t have attacked you. I shouldn’t have… done anything.
I’m sorry.
Blood snakes down my back, pooling beneath my shoulder blades. I don’t know how much time passes; all I can measure is the brutal burn of my wound. When my shudders abate and breaths calm, the weight on my chest lifts. Soft footsteps skim the apartment; nimble fingers collect gear, tools, and weapons.
An absurdly foolish part of me I never knew I had wonders if he took that brown t-shirt…
He left for L2. Not a word to anyone, no loose ends: untraceable. But I could infer from the items he took. No place in the charted universe requires an arsenal as thorough as the one he assembled. I checked our storage facility: all his junk, nothing of mine. None of it belonged on Earth anyway; corrupt as this dump is, it cannot compare to that colony of scrap metal.
A mission brought me there once. I saw it: its captives, how they crept through its rancid alleys, preying on one another. Killing to live, dying just the same. Blind, senseless. I recall musing that they must’ve been different once—before their descent. Before they surrendered to anarchy; before they permitted the erasure of their singularity and the already infinitesimal remnants of their existence; before the stifling of their vitality and humanity. Once subjugated, they hadn’t a chance. No one escapes L2. No loner and not in that state. A team, partners—maybe. The fact that he did, once, makes him extraordinary. Twice is a statistical impossibility. Is that his fate then? To be reabsorbed? To disintegrate in L2’s toxic maw?
You like living like this! You like your phony job with its phony missions!
That’s what you said, Duo. I dismissed it, but you meant it, didn’t you? “Phony”. Peace is peace, even at the price of freedom! In her world, I’m restricted to my limit, but I’m absolved!
What I do costs no lives.
Costs no blood! But you… you’d rather have war? You’d rather have death?
On cue, his accursed alias pierces me as painfully as did his blade. I curl up on our sofa, bringing a hand to my bandaged shoulder as it protests the shift in posture. It hurts and hurts. But worse is my self-directed interrogation. Countless questions—regarding my role and my failure—pry at me, reverberating ceaselessly, twisting my nerves, and I can’t shut this loop up. I can’t apply my logic to him, to what’s passed: he’s rendered me useless. I’ll lay here until I construe this calamity; until I see how I could have misread him so. Until I see how I could have been ignorant enough to have gone so far, so boldly. And for what? Could I have helped him? Did I honestly want to? Perhaps it was I who needed. Perhaps it was I who sought. And by selfishly attributing these repressed desires to his outbursts, I could steal a taste. A taste not meant for me.
It disorients and hurts me so deeply that I must physically squirm, aggravating my injury anew. But there’s no rest. My mind is hostage to doubt that desperately rummages my memory, plucking fragments of the past, sifting through them, searching—searching for something certain, for something true. But it keeps slipping away like a bead that’s too small for the hand to hold. I pick it up and over and over again, it falls, rolling into the murky corners of my consciousness.
In the end, the recall total is pitiful. A significant increment of my life reduced to just a few instances: there is today and several recent yesterdays fused into a hazy, redundant sequence. The two of us lunching, commuting, working; never too near, never too frank. By some unspoken agreement, we maintained a wall; a soundproof barrier to mute the protests to this monotonous state of detachment. We loathed yet preferred it, so it stayed. A year and a half of charades, a few ruptures, then…
…we’ve achieved just what we wanted. He: to leave, I: to… love.
Had I not meddled, had I refrained, there was a chance it could last, at least a bit longer. It’s been mere hours and already, I hate it like this; hate it without him.
I’m completely contorted. My cut re-opens and begins to bleed. It aches terribly, but not enough to drown the regret. I’m obliterated—my remainder is ash with one wish etched in it.
Do what you must on L2, Duo: descend, erase, kill time, kill, forget—forget me and forget this. But live. Live. As long as you do, it wasn’t meaningless.
Tangled in a half-embrace,
we turn in time to watch
an umbrella of silvery sparks
cascade earthward then
fade into the evening sky.