by Raletha
PG : post-canon, drama, angst, yaoi whiff : light 3x4x3
Quatre turned his head to wipe the sweat from his eyes onto the shoulder of his grimy t-shirt. Its once pale blue was mottled with dark patches of perspiration and brownish grey stains made by dust from the bricks. His jeans were frayed at the knees and bore a generous smattering of mortar smears. This was the second pair of jeans he'd worn out this summer. His eyes burned with the sun and the sweat and the grit of this dusty, hot job. On the Washington DC mall in mid-August was an insane time to be laying bricks, but the Eve Wars Memorial was to be completed by mid September for the new Earthsphere Veterans' Day.
Even after two months, the others working on the monument didn't speak to him often. Perhaps it was due to his name, his age, and his reserved demeanor. It was likely a combination of all of those factors—and a few others. They were professional brick masons, with thick, callused fingers, squinty eyes, and leathery brown skin. They were uniformly big and muscled like a Maguanac. They drank beer and spat and loved grid iron. They talked about women in language that made Quatre blush, and they loved their dogs. They worked hard and took pride in their jobs, but they couldn't understand why this skinny pale (and known to be wealthy) teenager had insisted on helping to build their memorial.
That was how they thought of it at least; it was theirs. But Quatre knew better than they did, that it was in fact more his (and every other veteran's), but that it was not truly for anyone living. It was for the dead, and it was for the future.
Quatre had arranged his being here with the contractor, and only he knew Quatre's reasons for wanting to join the project. He'd organised the requested bricks in pallets for Quatre's use and had instructed the men to leave Quatre to the laying of those particular bricks himself. When he'd been challenged and asked about the decision, he'd simply told them that Quatre was working for him to pay a debt and that was the way it would be.
They accepted that and left Quatre alone, which suited his purposes. With each brick he laid, he read the name; he traced the grooved curves and lines of each letter with his gaze and with his gloved fingers. Sometimes he'd remove his gloves to touch the name with his bare hands. He'd feel the weight of the brick in his hands, feel the way it pulled at the tendons in his wrists, the way the muscles of his arms tensed, the way the muscles of his back and shoulders would ache at the end of the day, and this would be the tangible proxy for the physically weightless burden on his conscience. Each brick he would place with a silent apology to the person named, to their family, and to any higher powers who might be looking down upon him.
He would memorise the names laid that day and write them in his journal when he got home. Trowa would run a hot bath for him and make dinner while he soaked up the muscle-melting heat and thought about the war, about all the people whose lives he had ended. Every death for which he had been responsible he had—or he would—personally acknowledge with his hands, with his memory, and with his heart.
He picked up the last brick on the current pallet and winced at the raw pain of the blister that had formed (and subsequently torn) on the tender flesh between his thumb and forefinger. It felt like the band aid had come loose again. But when he turned over the brick in his hands, that pain was eclipsed. The name on the brick was familiar enough he didn't even need to read it. The shape of it was as familiar to him as his own face.
His father. The brick may well have read that: Quatre's Father. Quatre stared at it, afraid to move his eyes from the boldly chiseled first letter. It was a 'C' in a stately serif font, like all the others had been. He feared for a moment that he would drop the brick. In his mind he saw it shattering on the ground, the name broken. Again by his hands. His mother, his father, his sister.
Quatre closed his eyes and fell back from his squat to his backside, the brick gripped firmly between his leather-gloved hands. The sounds of traffic, of wind, of the work crew talking, the gritty grind of the bricks, the metal scrape of the trowel... it faded in the labouring rasp of his breath and the surging blood in his ears.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. The muscles of his throat spasmed around the words, and he swallowed hard. "Father," he said.
"Daddy," he said more softly. "I'm sorry."
Gently, with the same care he would take with a newborn kitten, Quatre set the brick at the base of the unfinished wall. He took a deep, stuttering breath and picked up his trowel. He swiped the mortar onto the brick as expertly as he knew how and placed it precisely in its designated gap. He smoothed the mortar into the joins and stood up. Then he read the brick, and then he took off his gloves to touch its warm, dry letters. Charles E. Winner had no grave. There had been no body to recover. His atoms were scattered to the solar winds, but his memory would always be here. Strange that it should be on Earth in a country his father had never even visited, and a country his father had regarded as his fiercest competition.
But perhaps that was perfect. It showed the world had been remade, even if the nascent changes were such small things.
Quatre stood for hours. The other men packed up their tools and left to return to their families, but Quatre stayed. Eventually he sat down again, sat cross-legged and put on his sunglasses. He looked at the bricks and recognised every name on every brick he had placed. It was a good job. He couldn't tell the difference between the work he had done and that of the professionals.
He fed the pigeons with crumbs left over from his lunch, and he watched the sun set behind the spire of the Washington Monument. When he stood again, he felt lighter. He cleaned up his tools and dug his cellphone out of his toolkit.
"Where are you?" Trowa answered the phone. It was not a demand but a sincere query of concern.
"I'm..." Quatre began, but didn't know how to finish.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm finished," he said.
the end