Morning Ritual
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Gundam SEED. If I did, the fandom wouldn't want to punch the writers so much.
The alarm goes off at six fifty-five AM.
Of course, he's already awake. He's been awake for hours because he can barely sleep anymore, sitting on the edge of the bed gripping that edge with both hands, gripping as hard as he can until the ache of his muscles' protests almost, almost drowns out the way his entire body is screaming. Sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the blank wall and trying not to stare at the clock and watch the digital display crawl through the minutes through the curtain of his hair.
Trying. Failing.
The alarm goes off at six fifty-five AM, and he relaxes a little and doesn't gasp at the sudden flare of pain shooting down his spine to every nerve; no, he just reaches over to the bedside table and turns the alarm off so that its shrill sound won't give him even more of a headache.
Then he stands up and heads into the little cubicle of his washroom and opens the left-hand drawer on the vanity with hands that are not shaking, thank you very much.
(He should really throw out the empty bottles, except that it doesn't really matter because they'll just pile up again and if all goes well he won't have to bother with them soon anyway. But shuffling through them looking for the ones that aren't empty costs precious seconds of pain, so maybe he will clean up this drawer.)
Three of the bi-colored caplets. (He should speak to someone with a background in pharmacology about changing this to four; they don't seem to be working as well these days.) Two of the white chalky pills, and five of the thin red tablets. He could dry-swallow them if he had to, but he doesn't like that; doesn't need the jagged feeling in his throat while he's waiting for a respite from his thrice-damned constant agony. Besides, they dissolve more quickly if they're taken in water.
Quite the early-morning cocktail.
He closes that drawer and opens the right-hand one, slips the cord loosely around his left arm, and slips a clean needle into place, slips that needle into the tiny bottle, turns it upside down and pulls the plunger back. The injections are new enough that he still hates the taste of the rubber as he pulls the cord tight in his teeth, but routine enough that the burn of the serum entering his vein barely makes him blink.
He puts the bottles, cord, and syringe back; he throws the used needle into the wastebasket. And tries hard not to think about it as he does, because the more he thinks about it the more he wonders how he can keep this up when the cost of lasting another day, every day is so incredibly exhausting.
(Three separate drugs, three, to keep the pain in check while the last is meant to chain his body to his mind instead of letting it run free, sprinting ahead of him to an earlier early death. Maybe more soon—it's early each night when the pain returns and he's forced to shift every few moments, searching for some kind of sleeping posture where the right kind of pressure on his back will alleviate it just for a few seconds, for God's fucking sake. And drugs or no drugs, his body is breaking down, inevitably and inexorably, the wreck of a bullet train on fast forward.)
His hands twitch more than shake. And then they truly do shake.
(Whether it's in fear, or in hatred—the mad wish to wrap those fingers around the old bastard's throat—)
He plants them on either side of the sink to hold them still, and stands unevenly. Slowly, he looks up into his reflection—tangled white-blond hair, haunted blue eyes with deep purple shadows beneath them, cracked lips and ashen skin—and curls his right hand into a fist.
And more out of studied rage than petulance, swings it forward, shattering the mirror in a cacophony of raining silver glass.