Disclaimer: Characters, Settings, Plot, do not belong to the author. GSD, by Sunrise (Director, Mitsuo Fukuda)
i.
Neo's shoulders tensed when he heard the light footsteps outside the door. She was back. By now, he could tell when it was her without even having to open his eyes to confirm it: he always felt something when she was around; it was hard to put it into words, but it felt like a premonition, like goose bumps, like standing on a threshold, like opening a new book, like bungee-jumping, like flying, like bleeding, all at once. It felt as horrifying as it felt exhilarating, and he hated it with all his soul. Yes, she was coming, but tonight would be different. Tonight, he was going to get himself back.
He waited in the dark for as long as it took her to decide she wanted to open the door. She did that every single night. Neo would feel her dainty steps approach his door and then stop for a while—sometimes a few seconds, sometimes many minutes altogether—until she finally punched the button and came in. Her hesitation soothed him. It meant that at least he had some power over her that he could count on for whenever he needed to use it, and perhaps it was about time he did. He was tired of the staring, tired of the talking, tired of having his decisions made for him, tired of being looked at without being seen, tired of fearing, and tired of dreading, and tired of her and her crying and her pretend sweetness and her smiles full of pity and her caressing words and her hypocrisy, but no more. He was putting up with that no more. She was going to regret the day she took him in.
The door finally slid open, and Neo's heart started hammering within his chest. She walked slowly to him—the same routine of every night: stand at the threshold, come in a few steps, stare, grab a chair, stare, sit down, stare, touch his hair, stare, let fingers hover over his fingers, stare, cover him with the blanket, stare, stare, stare—and the closer she came, the stronger his heart beat. His palms began to sweat and he felt hot, hot, hot… and it wasn't going away like most nights. He felt his jaw set. If he kept getting so physical, she would know he was awake.
She stood beside him. He could feel warmth radiating from her and knew exactly where she was, standing right by his thigh. He wanted to swallow. Saliva was fast accumulating in his mouth and he had to swallow—no, to gulp. She took a small step, another one—by his hip—then another one—his chest—and another one—his shoulder—and he couldn't take it anymore. He sat bolt upright and she gave out a small scream. Their eyes locked for long, uncomfortable seconds, before either of them spoke.
"I'm sorry," she said, taking a step back. "I did not think I would wake you."
Neo did not even attempt to fight back a laugh. It seemed to shock her; her eyes widened even more than they already were, her mouth opened further, her breathing became progressively more audible, and at last a small frown began to form in her face.
"Aren't you going to cry?" he asked. "You always do when you're around here."
"Is that why you are being so rude? Because you want to make me cry?" Her shock quickly vanished into an expression he had trouble reading, but when her shoulders slumped and her voice's pitch decreased, he felt a faint stab of guilt. "There are other ways to do that, you know," she continued, surprisingly glued to the floor. Neo thought he'd been harsh enough, but apparently it took more with her. It wasn't time to be soft.
"It's just so funny you should word it that way," he said. "Who's being rude?"
Her eyes could not get any wider, and his heart could not beat any faster. Something was about to happen; he felt it in every pump of his blood, in every cell of his being. If he did not break through her façade of kindness tonight, he might never do it but, be it as it may, he was not going to let her play with him any more.
She swallowed hard, let go of the chair she had been holding on to and sat, a few feet away from him, and for some unexplained reason he regretted the distance. It was too hard for him to understand why she would be so contradictory when he was concerned, and it was harder to explain why it should affect him so. Observing things objectively, he had no reason to be offended. He knew how the military treated their prisoners. To put it mildly, he was being treated like the captive son of a king.
He could not say he disliked her guts. Outwardly, she seemed quiet and collected, tender and almost weak, but everything she did screamed of a feisty, adventuresome, courageous woman—the sassy and dangerous kind. There were only a handful of girls in the world, if that many, that would openly defy the powers that be, live the life of an outlaw, risk their lives in an unclear crusade, obey orders coming from a kid, shelter enemies, hold on to dreams, break nails without cringing, stand eye to eye with soldiers and men, daily, still retaining all that womanly class. That, he had a problem with. He had to get away from those people before they reached Orb. He could not risk waiting too long to find out if her kindness was genuine.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, but she did not answer.
"It's late. Shouldn't the Captain try to sleep? You never know what's coming tomorrow. It's a crime against your crew to not be as rested as possible."
Again, silence.
"What's wrong, something on my face?" he asked. Her eyes narrowed at once and that made his smile widen. It was easy for him to tell the amount of passion she kept within through that single gesture. He rested his back on the wall and looked fully at her. "Haven't you tired of my scars yet?"
Her frown grew deeper, but still she did not reply.
"Why do you come? I never speak to you."
That brought a visible change in her. Her back straightened as if someone had been pulling a string through her and a blush stained her cheeks crimson. He knew it didn't mean that she was embarrassed.
"Is this the first time, or have you always heard me come in?" she asked, enunciating every word slowly.
"Always," he said. "Every single time. You missed one night, though, what happened? Cat bit your tongue, or had you already memorized my face?"
"Do not be disrespectful."
"Who's being disrespectful, Ma'am? I'm not the one who's making a spectacle of the prisoner—messing with his mind, trying to confuse him, keeping him like an animal on parade—"
"Are you confused?" The way the pitch of her voice rose so hopefully, stirred something inside of him that he could not explain. Had he not had his hands tied…
"Why does that make you happy? You are all such a self-righteous lot that you don't realize you are just like the rest of us."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Take it as you want. I've no intention of explaining things to you."
"Why?"
"What's the point? You wouldn't believe me anyway."
"I believe you!" she said, her voice rising so much that he was sure someone would burst in any second. She looked around, self-conscious. "How can you even doubt I would? Haven't I kept you alive? Haven't I fed you, clothed you, heard you, haven't I kept you away from prison?"
"Isn't this prison?" he said, tugging forcefully at the handcuffs that had kept him tied to the bed for weeks. "ISN'T THIS PRISON? In the world most of us live in, handcuffs are no good, sweetie pie. I may not be your typical George Glenn, but it has not escaped me that for all your talk of Mwu La Fllaga and how much I resemble him, you still have me chained to this bed."
"I like it no better than you do, but what other choice did I have? You show up fighting for the Earth Alliance, you attack us, repeatedly, you say you are someone else—"
"Someone else?"
"Until I understand what's happening, I cannot let you roam around. For your own safety, for all of us. I owe it to my crew, to the ideals I fight for, to what I'm trying to protect. I owe it to Mwu."
"You owe it to Mwu? What kind of—Why should I have to explain my allegiances to you? What difference does that make to you? What I do and who I fight for is my problem, not yours."
"But it is my problem! Don't you think it hurts me to see you like this?"
"Don't speak of hurt. You have no idea what that's like," he said.
"Don't lecture me on pain. Don't you lecture me on pain!"
When he realized she'd been advancing in on him, she was already so close that her scent clearly reached him. He'd felt it before, many times, but never so acutely as tonight. It was threatening to drown him, dulling his senses one by one. Cursed that woman! Why did she have it in her to overpower him so? He yanked at his cuffs and, when he couldn't move, he leaned forward towards her.
"Yes, you are an expert, aren't you?" he asked, doing all he could to look her in the eye. "Poor little Princess, she's suffered more than everyone else, lost more than everyone else, hasn't she? She's been forced to fight and hates it; she'd much rather be at home, doing her hair, wouldn't she?"
"You have no right—"
"Don't I?"
"I have lost much! Everything I held dear have I lost to this stupid war. There's not one thing I have not sacrificed already—"
"You haven't lost your life."
"I didn't have to, what you're doing to me is killing me already." When she realized what she had said she gasped and quickly covered her mouth with her hand. She began to shake her head as she retreated toward the door and away from him. Her hands were shaking. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
"Don't be a coward and tell me the truth!"
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…"
"Tell me to my face! If you think I'm him, tell me to my face, but don't treat me like a child. Tell me the truth! Isn't that why you're keeping me here? Stop that garbage about humanitarian prisoner treatment; you're just keeping me here because you think I'm Mwu La Fllaga and you're trying to make me remember. Well, it won't help! Get it into your head—get it into your head right now. I am Neo Lorrnoke of the 81st Independent Mobile Squadron. If you want to be selfish then be selfish, but don't use kindness as your excuse. Don't use me as your excuse!"
She turned as if to leave, then suddenly began to pace. "What kind of a life do you think I've had?" she asked, hands shaking. "These past two years have been a struggle of a life, hiding who I am, hiding from the world, trying to stay afloat with what little I had to hold on to, clinging to what little I had to lose."
"You should have probably told that to La Fllaga before he threw away his life for you."
When the light in her eyes flickered and died, he knew he had gone too far. Tears began to fall unchecked and unheeded down her cheeks, but her expressions were otherwise unreadable to him. He had never seen her try so hard to steel herself before, and fail so miserably. A sudden despair fell upon him. He was afraid, very afraid—afraid as he had never been in his life. Afraid that she would never recover from this blow he had dealt her, afraid of being such a coward, afraid of the way his emotions flip-flopped when she was close to him, afraid that she would walk out of that door and never, never come back.
She must have noticed a change in his demeanor because her face changed too. There was pain in her eyes, pain, white and poignant, and so many other things that he could not tell one from the other. When she turned around to face the door, he felt an inexplicable rush of adrenaline and, before he knew it, all other thoughts had been wiped out from his mind leaving nothing but that woman and her suffocating, intoxicating scent filling the room. "Why do you always smell of gardenias?" he heard himself ask, but knew that was not what he had meant to say. He was panting.
They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. He could not remember ever feeling so ashamed, so guilty, so miserable, in his thirty years. He could hardly meet her eye, but a force outside his will compelled him to look at her. He would have been better off facing Court Marshall.
When she finally spoke again, she sounded like a completely different person. He knew it would take many lifetimes to forget the sound of her voice then, and what it made him feel.
"You are right," she said. "Not a day goes by that I don't curse myself for that, and until the day I die I will be cursing myself still. Mwu shouldn't have died, he shouldn't have suffered, and I did it. If that is not a hard burden to bear, I don't know what is."
She turned around, once more, to leave, but suddenly he could not let her.
"Gardenias! Why gardenias?"
"How do you know it is gardenias?"
The tinge of hopefulness in her voice was very feeble, but it was there, or was it his fancy? He tried to stand to keep her from leaving, but his cuffs wouldn't let him, and he almost screamed in desperation.
"Aren't you going to tell me that Mwu La Fllaga also thought you smelled of gardenias?"
The smile she gave him was filled with pity and tenderness so deep that he would have never thought they could coexist in a single gesture.
"No," she said. "Mwu always said I smelled of jasmine."
She turned around and walked away, leaving his room emptier than ever before.
Getting his life back… Ha! How come did it feel like he'd just lost it?
ii.
Neo did not sleep that night. It was really hard to, knowing that he'd probably killed a strong woman's heart. He wasn't a clean person. He'd stopped pretending that the things he did were done out of duty a long time ago, but he didn't go so far as to stab people so cruelly. His kills were always clean, professional battle-deaths, soldier deaths—not like this! He didn't pick on the sore like villains did. He'd always thought he was more… compassionate, more human.
At night, like in space, hours seem to run together in an endless current, like a river. He stayed up thinking of gardenias; winter-white gardenias with leaves as dark and fragrant as eucalyptus, growing in clusters at the Captain's feet. How did he just know that gardenias were native to tropical and subtropical climates, that the shrubs could grow as tall as 1 ½ meters, that their leaves were glossy and leathery, that flowering occurred from mid-spring to mid-summer, that the Captain enjoyed the scent and most likely had small pots of gardenias, daisies, hydrangeas, even jasmine—and no roses—, withering back at home? How? He didn't like flowers. He had never touched flowers before, but he knew he couldn't like them. They were beautiful but useless and way too frail. If he touched them carelessly he could break them, and sometimes he was careless without meaning to be. How he wished to tug at the ends of his hair, to rub his temples, to scratch his back and put pressure on his pained shoulder, but he was a prisoner tied to a bed… where had his miserable life brought him to… and why did he care?
Why did he care? Why did he have to care… about his past, about the people in this ship? Why did they make him feel like he was evil and corrupt, when they were handling things just as poorly? It was ridiculous. He had known he'd probably end like this some day, and he had never cared about it before. Why should he care now? If he didn't care about his death, why did he have to care so much about his life? The doctors stared at him like he was a disease they had never seen and, instead of wanting to experiment on it, they were afraid of getting too close; the kid was too self-indulgent and presumptuous; the mechanics were truly clueless as to how to react to him; the CIC redhead was smart, but she always looked at him with pity, and the Orb Representative seemed weak and unstable (she had to have been unstable to even fathom marrying Seiran). And the Captain… the Captain meant all kinds of trouble for him—trouble he had neither the time nor the energy to face. The worst part of it all was that he was perfectly aware that, had he fallen in with another crew, he would have been tortured and executed already, and that filled him with as much rage as dread.
Neo could no longer stay still, but he could not move from the bed, either. He sat up and pushed his back against the wall, tugging at the cuffs that kept him bound—a mere reflex; he knew he could only get out of that ship either as a man he was not, or as a dead man, and whatever conscience he had left would accept neither. He had lied before—many, many times. Why did he feel like he could not lie now? He was a soldier first and foremost, and he knew he was a dead man since the first time he put on his uniform. Why, then, did he feel like he could not die now?
After the longest night of his life, the bustle outside his room told him it had to be morning. That meant she would be up and about. She might even come to see him. She might even come to apologize. Hah! He really did have some nerve… But the morning wore off, and no Captain came. The doctors did, though, several times. They checked his heart pressure (and looked at him funny when they looked at the numbers, but didn't tell him why), checked his lungs for murmurs, took his temperature, drew more blood; they were being amazingly committed to the care of a man who would probably be tossed to the sharks after reaching Orb. Maybe that let them sleep better at night…
She had to come by any second now. Today's flight had seemed uneventful, as far as he could tell. She was bound to have time in her hands to come and fix what she'd broken last night, but she did not come.
Lunch came around and, still, no Captain.
Dinner… no Captain.
By the time night approached, he began to feel a sort of panic that he could only relate to what he'd felt as he fell over Berlin. He could not possibly go through a night like yesterday, again. How could she be so heartless? Why hadn't she come? And, why, in the world, did he have to say she smelled like gardenias? Why couldn't she ever fight him back? Why would she put up with his insolence? If one of his subordinates talked to him the way he talked to her, he would find himself facing Court Marshall for insubordination faster than a Lohengrin beam reached its target, but here he wasn't even a subordinate—he was the prisoner. He knew there were things she wanted to say, and though he was eager to hear them, he was also afraid. Why did he have to be so rude and unfeeling? He'd driven her away; he'd driven her away and now he realized that what he really wanted was for her to come back.
The noises outside his room subsided little by little, until he was left hearing only the soft rumble of the machines in the infirmary. His muscles were cramping due to lack of exercise and his neck felt stiff. He knew himself and he knew his temper and he knew it would not be long before something ugly happened. Either that, or they reached Orb sooner rather than later and who knew what then. Orb had been an ally to him, but now that the Representative was back, he knew the military would not be as well-disposed toward him. He could ask her, if she came, but a full day passed and she had not so much as walked near sick bay. He had never missed something so much as he missed the certainty that she would come.
There was no way he would sleep, so he sat on his bed, ready for whenever she decided to show and, when she did, he'd make sure she could not walk away.
iii.
Neo had just begun to dose off when she came, and felt like an idiot because of it. Soldiers were trained to go for nights without much sleep, but he couldn't even keep vigil for another night. He felt so… worn, physically and mentally, though he had not moved from his bed in weeks. It was too late, or maybe too early, or that strange interval in-between that is effectively neither. His head shot up on hearing the door sliding, and he turned to look at her.
"Took you long enough," he said, allowing himself to look fully at her. She did not reply, but neither did she flinch—just what he had hoped a woman like her would do. He was glad, very glad of that; it meant that she did have spirit, after all, that he hadn't completely broken her.
She took a chair, set it next to his bed, sat, and looked at him, in that order. He had noticed, before, how big and bright her eyes were, but seeing them stare at him with such intensity made him, surprisingly, uncomfortable. Neither of them spoke until, finally, she looked down to her hands.
"Why'd you do that for?"
"Do what?"
"Why did you look away? You were doing well, what happened?"
"Were you trying to test me?" She asked, her voice reaching a pitch he had not heard yet. "Is that why you were looking at me like that?"
"Like what?"
"As if you were angry. As if you had never seen me before. As if you were… scared."
"Do you think you scare me?"
"I don't know," she said, looking briefly away. "That's why I am asking you. I hope not."
That made him smile. It was interesting… very interesting. She was interesting, interesting and aggravating—even more so than any of those therapists that visited him right after his accident. Ever since he woke up on sick bay in the Archangel, and saw her, he felt there was something about her that he wanted. Where he had always attempted to suppress his emotions, she seemed clearly unafraid to let them show, and it was one of her biggest flaws. What Captain could afford to be so open? But that did not seem to faze her, which could only mean that either she had courage and strength enough to match, or that she was incredibly dull-witted. But, that they had survived quite a few ordeals attested that she wasn't just an ordinary girl with an influential father who had landed her a huge promotion. The crew seemed to respect and even like her, which was probably what had put them all against him, because he had made her cry. He regretted that; he truly did. It was always disturbing to see a woman suffer, much more so if it was a woman like her. She was strong yet sensitive, intelligent yet sometimes insecure about the smallest things, proud yet quick to accept other people's ideas, tough yet caring. She was audacious despite the girly look, or girly despite the audacious look, and he was not sure which. She was a walking contradiction, and she intrigued him very much. He must have smiled or given another outward indication that his attention had shifted, because she looked at him, torn between a question and a glare.
"Which is it?" he asked, determined to be as aggravating as they had all been to him, and still unable to contain a small smile.
"Which is what?"
"Are you angry with me, or are you curious about me?"
After a second or two, she smiled back. The smile was a bit strained, but it was a far cry from that smile full of pity and wistfulness. He liked it.
"Can't it be both?" she asked as she made circles in her nails with her fingers.
"That sounds fine, as long as you keep up the spirit."
"What spirit?"
"The spirit that makes you come here, in the middle of the night, to look at me."
She blinked once. "I thought you didn't like that."
"Hmmm. That's just why. Nobody has ever been brave enough to stare so shamelessly at me as you have, every night, since I came, whatever your reason is for it."
"Well." She stopped just long enough to make him think she wasn't sure if she should get through with what she was going to say, but in the end she spoke again, with a smile and a very mellow tone of voice. "You look different now—now that you don't have the mask."
Neo felt his eyes and nose wrinkling.
"It couldn't have been pleasant," she said.
"No."
"And you wore it, why?"
"It's none of your business. I mean… it doesn't matter anymore. I'm not wearing it now."
"But you would, if I hadn't taken it, would you?"
He was pretty much done with the mask conversation and turned away, hoping she would catch on. They remained uncomfortably silent for a while, enough for Neo to get attuned to her breathing and how it picked up slightly. He turned around and saw how her hands gripped her thighs as she leaned forward. She was getting ready for it. He bit his lip.
"How did you know? How did you know it was gardenias?"
Neo felt his pulse rise. So he had made her curious, after all. Why, then, did it infuriate him so much that the only reason she'd come back was to compare him to Mwu la Fllaga?
"Gardenias are as good a flower as any," he said, struggling to remain expressionless.
She frowned. "That's not true. There was something different about you when you said it. Please, tell me why. I need to know."
"Why? So you would have another reason to deny my existence and indulge yourself in that delusion that I'm La Fllaga come back to life?"
"I just asked you to please tell me how you knew if, as you say, you have never seen gardenias. How would you know?"
He thought her jaw quivered a bit, but it could just as easily have been with rage. He hoped that was it; it made things easier.
"Ma'am, you don't have to ask me for things. I'm your prisoner and I'm at your mercy. Demand it of me and I will have to tell you, but don't act like you care."
"But I do care!"
"Yes, you do, but not for me."
She could not have been more shocked if he had physically hurt her. Her eyes widened and her cheeks paled and her breathing became so uneven that he could not pretend not to notice. Her hands were trembling, and so was her jaw, but she did not cry, and he wondered why she was fighting it so hard. This was only one of the many bad things he had done, but it made him feel filthier than he had ever felt, even after taking in Stellar and the other Extended children. The Captain made him feel things… things that he knew was better not to feel, and he hated it, hated her, and hated himself and his weakness and his incompetence, and this ship, and that kid, and the nurse that sucked his blood out every day, and his genes, and the war, and the—
"It's gardenias. It has always been gardenias," she said, staring at the back of her hands, "and I would have changed it to jasmine if I had not known that Mwu knew well it was gardenias all along." She then looked at him, full of longing, and for that brief moment he wished, as he had never wished for anything before, that it were for him. It was such a strong feeling he saw in her eyes that he could almost touch it, could almost feel it reaching him. Cursed that La Fllaga!
He answered not, because, what could he say? He tugged at his cuffs and the reminder of his true nature seemed sharp enough for her to recover herself. Her hands stopped shaking and she wiped them against her skirt.
"When you said it was gardenias, what made you say it?"
"You get close enough for me to feel it," he murmured.
"What does it remind you of?"
Without thinking he said, "Warmth," but he realized his mistake when she smiled. "Why do you suppose he insisted on your scent being jasmine if he knew well what it was?"
"You don't know flower language, do you?"
"What use would that be on a war?"
Her smile, full of pity, came back and he could not stand it. He felt his frown deepen and his fists clench.
"Mwu's father was a very wealthy man," she said, slowly. He knew her intention was to try to trigger a memory, and he would not let her play with him. He looked away. "He had servants to cater to his every whim, but he would not let them touch his private garden. When he was little, Mwu was allowed to help, and it meant the world to him. Perhaps he had happier memories by the jasmine than the gardenias, was what I thought when he kept insisting. Maybe I was right, maybe not."
"And why are you telling all of this to me for? I am not going to remember things I have not lived, and maybe you should do better to forget. You can't trust me, and though I appreciate you keeping me alive, I don't see how this charade does anyone any good."
That something that made her come alive flickered in her eyes. She rose and came an inch from his face. It was funny how he turned to her and obeyed without her putting a single finger on him.
"You can say whatever you want," she said, "but don't you tell me how to feel about you. I know you are not saying what you really think and I know that this ship has changed you. I see it every day when I come by. I know that mask is not who you are; I feel it when you look at me."
His heart hammered so loud that she had to have felt it. For the second time in 24 hours, there was nothing but her and her eyes and her scent in the world and all he had to do was reach… but his cuffs held him forcefully back and jarred him into his world, a universe apart from where she was.
"I will stop telling you what to feel when you stop leading me along, Miss," he said. "That La Fllaga is better off without you lot."
A small gasp escaped her and she moved away. He knew the conversation was over, and he knew, as well as a man knows when he has found his match in battle, that she would not come back. He watched her walk away with as much hunger as hate, and was unprepared to see her stop at the threshold.
"Gardenias say secret love, joy, refinement," she said, "but white Jasmine says 'I desire a return of my affection.' A gardener would know, wouldn't he? Just as he would not confuse the scent of gardenias, nor forget it." She turned on her heels and closed the door.
For the first time, he realized he had wanted to apologize, but didn't.
For the first time, he felt grateful for being tied to the bed. He didn't know what he would have done had he been free.