Notes: Six weeks ago, I received from my mentor, my anam cara, my therearen'twordsforsomeonelikethat, a file with the fractured pieces of a story that wasn't finished. She said she was unable to finish it, so she asked me to fill in the blanks, make it readable and all. A day later I lost her forever. It's been a while for me to finish this but it's done now and I'm putting it up here as a tribute to her - the last time I got to work with her. So this is for you. Sleep well. I miss you.
Julie
Nightwingchaos@hotmail.com
Tell Me The Sun Will Rise
By: K.M.S.
Secondary author: Julie
Disclaimer: Don't own them. Not claiming too
Warnings: Deathfic, angst, alternate ending
"The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to his place where he arose."
Ecclesiastes 1:5
The installation was dark but then after so many years of blackouts and power losses from the war, we were getting used to darkness. The hall seemed longer than I remembered and I'd walked it so many times, carrying surgical tools, pushing patients, carrying blood soaked cloths from the operating room to the disposal. It was empty tonight, oddly so; my footsteps echoed loudly, sending shivers up my spine. It wasn't supposed to be this way.
The war was over, again. The fighting had stopped, the bodies were being buried, and the whole world was celebrating once again. But here we start our battles when the fighting stops, patching together the wounded, the almost dead, holding the hands of the dying. I couldn't help but feel we were all holding our breath, waiting for the sun to rise out of the ashes despite the fact that night had barely fallen.
I hesitated at the door. I didn't want to go in the room. I knew what was in there; I had assisted during the surgery, the desperate attempts to bind life back into the body, and I had been there during the coma, the long days and nights without a single sign of consciousness. It was the hardest case I'd ever worked.
He couldn't be more than seventeen. His heart had stopped four times over the past week. And he had saved the world.
He was a hero. He was supposed to be standing in the sunrise, by rights it should have been his sunrise. So where had things gone so dreadfully wrong? I opened the door.
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"'Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There's nothing to that.'"
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
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There was something about him, even swallowed by the white bed in the dark, windowless room, encased in the thick casts as he was, there was something about him. Something hard and vulnerable, contradictions I know but always when I saw him that was the first thing I thought. Relena Peacecraft had brought him here herself after the last battle and we were all struck by the sheer amount of damage that had been done to him. The doctors worked feverishly, trying to salvage what they could; the internal injuries were severe. He was so badly wounded, if he hadn't been in such good shape he never would have had a chance. But he was; body defined and shaped as it could only be from years of training and fighting. He's so beautiful, even now, broken and lying there, but there was something in his eyes...
Those eyes snapped open the instant I opened the door - ever the soldier. "It's only me." My voice sounded off to my own ears, the rhythm somehow stilted and softer than normal. Which I guess was good; there was nothing normal about this.
The sculpted lips parted and he tried to speak, his blue eyes staying focused on me as I moved closer, but only a harsh croak came out. His throat had been badly damaged in the aftermath of the battle. The smoke and fire he'd reigned down upon Mariemaia's villa working against him when he collapsed. The doctors said he wouldn't be able to speak much for weeks at best though that didn't seem to stop him from trying. I shook my head and held out the water from his bedside, letting him sip gently through the straw. The indignation of needing such assistance burned in his eyes but there was nothing he could do. His left hand was shattered and his right wrist cracked and more than a few tendons ripped. But with his wrist bound to a keyboard, he'd managed to make a few basic needs known to us, such stilted communication vital during those first few days.
But the first days had passed and I had watched him, the blue eyes dark with some deep emotion, the Japanese features fixed in rigid contemplation. I replaced the water on the table and brushed a streak of brown hair from his face, trying to ignore his flinch at simple human contact and biting my lip at the twist of pain in his features at the movement. "I'm sorry." I offered, suddenly unsure what I was apologizing for. I only knew that I felt such deep regret for him, his eyes were so deep, so dark, I wasn't sure they'd ever known how to smile.
His eyes crinkled, in acknowledgement if not acceptance and then they turned back to the screen. He'd been watching that screen since he'd awakened, looking for someone. He couldn't speak to tell me, but whoever they were, they meant a good deal to him. It was the hope of them that had brought him back.
I opened my mouth to ask him if he'd had any luck but he could feel me still standing above him and the flash of pain that went through his eyes was enough to erase the words on my lips. Whatever I did for him, to him, I did not want to cause him more pain.
"Alone." The word sounded harsh on the air, the vowels rounded by the Japanese accent and the sotto bass of his voice made lower and scratchier by his throat wounds.
My heart skipped a few beats and I tried to keep the pain I felt for him from my face. I know I failed. But I nodded for him as I made to leave. "I'll check on you later." And my voice was as scratchy as his.
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"'They're only dangerous when they're alone, or only two or three of them together...They only want to kill when they're alone. Of course, if you went in there you'd probably detach one of them from the herd, and he'd be dangerous.'"
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
******************************************************************************
The next time I walked down that hall, my footsteps weren't the only things echoing.
"You're with her!?" The words bounced off the walls violently, the voice climbing an octave over the course of the sentence.
I stopped, surprised. It wasn't his voice I'd heard. He must have found whoever he was looking for.
"You can't... This can't be... How could you?" The words were harsh, cut off, the accent on them thick in its distress.
My steps quickened on the floor, my heart beating strangely in my chest. He'd protected the world; I was more than willing to protect him.
"You lied." It was a hiss that snaked dangerously through the hall as I neared the door. Whoever the other boy was, his fury reached easily into his voice, along with tones of... regret? Hurt? I could never be sure. "You lied to me."
The words lanced through my heart. I didn't know much about the boy in that bed, but he didn't deserve the kind of pain that those words were waiting to inflict.
"Aren't you going to say anything to that?" The angry words burned on my skin as I reached for the door. "Then I guess there's nothing left to say."
"Wait!" The hoarse cry startled even me and the doorknob jangled as my hand jerked instinctively. "Not this way." There was confusion and frustration in those syllables but it was deep, buried beneath the harsh damaged voice so that the words sounded... almost cruel.
I stepped into the room unacknowledged for the first time, ignored by the occupant. He was half sitting in the bed, though the position must have hurt him; the flail ribs had taken the doctors more than two hours of surgery to even halfway fix. His face was neutral as always, but the muscles along his jaw were tight, and his eyes were wild with pain.
The boy in the screen said something, something so low that I didn't have a chance of hearing.
But I could see his face harden at the words, some decision made concrete by whatever had been said, the words that could never be taken back. "What would you give?" I saw only a tremor in his throat though I knew from the strain of the muscles it wanted to spasm. "Your life?" The words dripped deliberately out of his mouth and watching, I saw his chest jerk slightly.
This time I could hear the boy's response, resigned, hopeless, tinted with betrayal. "No, my soul. You had it."
There was a tint of something... bitterness perhaps? in his eyes though his face was carved from stone. "Take it back." He dragged in a breath that frightened me at the sound of it. "Ghosts aren't allowed to have..." he was forced to pause, his throat working desperately to form the words, "things so dear."
The words slammed into me as if they had the ability to destroy. It was in the air, the force of those words, as they rent something intangible and rendered it to pieces. But the boy in the screen couldn't feel the air here, couldn't see the stark white of the bandages, and couldn't see the fractured glass in those blue eyes. "So that's it."
"Don't..." He had to pause, air rasping into his lungs, as he tried to swallow to ease his throat and find more words.
I saw a fleck of red on the corner of one lip and knew he was swallowing blood. A cry came out of my mouth but he shook his head curtly and I caught a glimpse of violet eyes and chestnut hair before he pushed at the screen again.
"Not that way." He grated out stubbornly, and I could almost see his will as a tangible thing. My breath caught against my will; what would it be like to have a will like that? So iron strong and yet so inflexible, already bent so firmly to one cause that to bend it to something new was... impossible?
I heard a few deep shuddering breaths from the computer and my eyes widened. I'd never thought you could hear pain in a breath but the rhythm, the pulse of the breaths, they ached with the same pain... the same pain I saw in the boy before me.
His eyes were glued on the screen, and though the expression on his face never changed, it felt like he was reaching for something... hoping... But then the silent communication was over, whatever their eyes had telegraphed back and forth sank into him, dissolving his bones. I watched the soldier slide back against the bed, his spine not enough to hold him up anymore against the press of his chest. The brown head, the hair tousled in some kind of natural madness, nodded just once, curtly, almost a salute. And I saw his lips move even as I heard the words from the computer, "Until the sunrise."
A truce. At least that was how it sounded, a pause waiting for the dawn, like the rest of us. But he'd only shaped the words...
A flick of one long finger and the screen went dark. And so did his eyes. He didn't look at me but in some form of mercy he closed his eyes. Or maybe he just couldn't bear to keep them open. I stepped forward, wanting to comfort him, wanting to say something but what could I say? I didn't even know his name.
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"I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave something up and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good."
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
***********************************************************************************
It seemed like the night had crept into the corridor the next time I walked down it. So cold, or maybe it was just what I'd heard earlier that was chilling me. But I couldn't stay away from him. I couldn't leave him alone like that.
And so I return. To his room. To be whatever he needs of me. I don't know why, I just know I can't stay away.
He didn't even acknowledge me this time, his hand moving as quickly over the keys as his injuries would allow. The cast of his face was unchanged from when I'd seen him last - still set in stone, neutrality personified, any emotion buried.
"Are you all right?" I shouldn't have bothered asking. A curt military nod was my only answer, an answer I think I would have gotten even if he were still dying on the gurney. "May I stay awhile?"
His hand paused, and then he lifted his uninjured shoulder in a shrug before returning to his typing. "What... want?" He had been going for the whole phrase and a slight glare cast on his face when only the two words managed to choke out. Instead he typed the question out on a new screen and his eyes demanded I answer.
"Who are you?" I couldn't help but ask it. I knew he was a Gundam pilot. I knew he'd saved us. But he had to be more than just a pilot, just a soldier. He had to be.
Some dry vicious humor sparked in his eyes and his hand moved again. 'A terrorist.' The screen proclaimed in severe black and white.
Before he'd even finished the word I was shaking my head. "I don't believe that."
'What do you know?' the screen asked.
"I know you saved the world. I know you're a Gundam pilot."
'You don't know what a Gundam pilot is. And I have no Gundam' Wing Gundam had fallen in pieces from the sky.
The words took me aback until I realized he was right. I had no clue what a Gundam pilot did. Obviously they pilot a gundam but... "What do you mean?"
'I killed a little girl. Hundreds of little girls and puppies and soldiers who didn't know what they were fighting for.'
"You were fighting a war. You couldn't have... You did what was necessary." I believed it. My family was colony born; I knew where he came from.
'No.' And I could see the self-condemnation in his eyes.
"Why?" I couldn't form the whole question. I couldn't understand why he would hate so much what he did to save us all.
'I am a soldier. I was learning to be more but I am, always will be, a soldier. All I know is the fight. He was teaching me more but... I have been a soldier all my life. I did what I had to do, and more. My identity has been buried since I was born.'
It took me some time to understand what he was saying and when he did, I almost wish I hadn't asked. How much he must have done? To be doing this all his life? He was seventeen, younger than me... What had he given up for this? How much of his soul had he bartered away so that we could win?
"I..." Now I was the one who couldn't speak. "I'm so sorry."
He looked confused for a moment. Then his hand typed again though it must have been getting sore. 'Don't be. Sorry is for something you wouldn't repeat. Sorry is for things you would take back. I haven't lost. I was bred for war. The war is over. Now they can bury me.'
"But... what it must have cost you..." I was still in shock; I couldn't comprehend all his words. Suddenly my mind was recalling all the reports, all the stories we'd heard. A million pictures flashed through my head and my throat tightened up. I might never breathe again.
'Don't.' The clacking of the keys drew my attention back to the screen. 'I wasn't alone. There were... others. Friends. I even had a partner. That was... worth much.'
It didn't take me long to figure out this partner must have been the one on the screen earlier, the one whose words had meant so much to him. "Why were you arguing?"
His eyes drifted to the screen and I could almost see the words echo in the reflection. 'He believes I lied to him.'
"Did you?"
'Not then. Only when my mission demanded.'
"So why didn't you tell him?"
He didn't answer. Somehow I knew he wouldn't. There was something more here... something I hadn't yet grasped. And then it came to me. "You were pushing him away. Why?"
He inclined his head slightly, salute that I'd figured out at least that much, though I could see weariness creep into him. 'It was better that way.'
"Better? How could it be better? You were both hurting... I could hear it. How could that be better?"
'It's better for me. And for him. He can blame me. Doesn't matter.'
He was getting tired, I could tell. And I could see it was tearing him up; I suspected he never had to listen to his body much before. He'd lost so much in that last battle. You could only abuse your body for so long.
"All right." I said, feeling tired myself. "I won't push. But... will you go to him later? Prove to him that you weren't... Would he accept it?" Will you be able to find him again, was what I wanted to ask. Can you fix this? Would he let you?
'Yes. He would accept it.'
I sighed in relief. At least there was something he could still have. Smiling slightly I left, before I realized that he'd only answered one question.
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"'Oh, darling, please stay by me. Please stay by me and see me through this... I don't say it's right. It is right though for me, God knows, I've never felt such a bitch.'"
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
*********************************************************************************
Midnight had come and gone while I spoke to him, and the night was stretching its fingers into the small hours, still protesting the coming dawn. I could almost feel the night darkening in its final protest as I walked back to the main corridors.
As I got closer I could hear the doctors speaking, and when I realized they were speaking of him, I couldn't help but listen.
"That hand will never work right again."
"It could. Have you seen the rest of his injuries? He should be dead. But he's alive. He might be able to regain use of it."
"I doubt it. And that leg we reset? He'll limp for the rest of his life. Maybe he'll be able to get it down to just a hitch."
"He was a pilot right?"
"Not anymore."
Their laughter was cruel, or it sounded cruel to me. But their words struck me. What was he going to do now? What was left for him? As much as I hated to admit it, the doctors were right. He would never pilot again. The body he'd obviously maintained so rigorously would never be quite so perfect again. His words repeated suddenly in my mind, 'I am a soldier... I have been a soldier all my life.'
What would he do now?
My head spun and I rested lightly against the hallway, feeling that I'd missed something vital. And there were more voices from the room nearby... one of the women who had come with Relena Peacecraft. Lady Une?
"Relena has gone."
"I know." I couldn't recognize the second voice. It sounded like a child. "Has he been told?"
"He knows. He didn't seem too surprised."
"Was there something between them?"
"Something... But not what you think. They kept each other going. It was..."
"Like what was between you and my father."
That led to a pause. Whose child is this, I wondered, that could surprise Lady Une?
"Similar. In that respect at least. But he was never in love with her. He respected her, protected her, but love her? She wasn't what he could love anymore than she could love him. Besides, his heart was taken."
"So he didn't care when she left?"
"That I do not know."
My heart pounded in my chest as I put together what I'd heard, feeling as if they were slamming into place in my mind. I said he'd lost much, everyone knew how one of the gundam pilots had turned, betrayed their own, but I didn't know... The boy... he sounded so hurt... and he looked so tenderly at the screen... 'His heart was taken.' Could he have been his lover? But why push his partner away?
And how could he bear it?
His friend... his guide... his partner... his own ability... Like dominoes they fell from him. But it still didn't make sense.
'Alone.'
'Ghosts aren't allowed to have things so dear.'
'I killed a little girl.'
'I am a soldier.'
'He was teaching me more but... I have been a soldier all my life. I did what I had to do, and more.'
'He can blame me. Doesn't matter.'
'Now they can bury me.'
And the words that he'd mouthed but hadn't spoken... I'd thought because of his voice... but what if he hadn't wanted to make the promise. 'Until the sunrise.'
I was running before I realized it, tearing toward his room. He couldn't... I wouldn't let him.
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"They say it's always darkest before the dawn but what if the dawn never comes?"
unknown
*********************************************************************************
I was too late. I knew it as soon as I opened the door. I didn't have to see his body, limp on the bed, stained, easily proclaiming his choice. My knees trembled beneath me and I could see in my mind the words he had typed.
'Now they can bury me.'
He'd told me. He'd told me then what he was planning. And I hadn't realized. I should have known. But I didn't expect him... I hadn't thought he could be weak.
It was supposed to be his world! He was supposed to be free now. He could heal, rest, recover, and then go reclaim his lover, his partner. Maybe even his friends. He could have found a new life...
But even as I thought it, I knew I couldn't be sure. 'I am a soldier.' How does one overcome a lifetime?
Still the injustice of it burned in me as I placed my hands on his already cooling skin. The rhythm was still - no pulse throbbed beneath my fingers. Tears started to well up in my eyes as I glanced to the computer, the bindings that had held his wrist to the keyboard hanging limply from it. On the screen I saw a file and I read the black words quickly. He hadn't bothered to apologize, 'Sorry is for something you would take back', but he'd left a letter for his partner. Only if his partner came looking.
'It will be easier for him to believe this way. He can think I'm alive with her. He can blame me, hate me for all eternity. But he should be spared this. I am a soldier. And there is no need for soldier's anymore.' There was more but the tears clouded my eyes and I couldn't read it then. Later I would read it. Then I could barely believe. He'd saved the world. He couldn't be dead.
I understood now. He'd pushed his partner away because he didn't want him to blame himself for this. It would be too cruel. The tears spilled unnoticed from my eyes, dropping onto his still hand. There was nothing more I could do for him, to him... It was his choice... But it should have been his sun.
It was dawn time now. All over the world people would be waking up, watching the sunrise, cheering for the end of war at last. But here... here the sun has not yet risen.
It never will.
This sun will never rise again.
Julie
Nightwingchaos@hotmail.com
Tell Me The Sun Will Rise
By: K.M.S.
Secondary author: Julie
Disclaimer: Don't own them. Not claiming too
Warnings: Deathfic, angst, alternate ending
"The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to his place where he arose."
Ecclesiastes 1:5
The installation was dark but then after so many years of blackouts and power losses from the war, we were getting used to darkness. The hall seemed longer than I remembered and I'd walked it so many times, carrying surgical tools, pushing patients, carrying blood soaked cloths from the operating room to the disposal. It was empty tonight, oddly so; my footsteps echoed loudly, sending shivers up my spine. It wasn't supposed to be this way.
The war was over, again. The fighting had stopped, the bodies were being buried, and the whole world was celebrating once again. But here we start our battles when the fighting stops, patching together the wounded, the almost dead, holding the hands of the dying. I couldn't help but feel we were all holding our breath, waiting for the sun to rise out of the ashes despite the fact that night had barely fallen.
I hesitated at the door. I didn't want to go in the room. I knew what was in there; I had assisted during the surgery, the desperate attempts to bind life back into the body, and I had been there during the coma, the long days and nights without a single sign of consciousness. It was the hardest case I'd ever worked.
He couldn't be more than seventeen. His heart had stopped four times over the past week. And he had saved the world.
He was a hero. He was supposed to be standing in the sunrise, by rights it should have been his sunrise. So where had things gone so dreadfully wrong? I opened the door.
*****************************************************************************
"'Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There's nothing to that.'"
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
*******************************************************************************
There was something about him, even swallowed by the white bed in the dark, windowless room, encased in the thick casts as he was, there was something about him. Something hard and vulnerable, contradictions I know but always when I saw him that was the first thing I thought. Relena Peacecraft had brought him here herself after the last battle and we were all struck by the sheer amount of damage that had been done to him. The doctors worked feverishly, trying to salvage what they could; the internal injuries were severe. He was so badly wounded, if he hadn't been in such good shape he never would have had a chance. But he was; body defined and shaped as it could only be from years of training and fighting. He's so beautiful, even now, broken and lying there, but there was something in his eyes...
Those eyes snapped open the instant I opened the door - ever the soldier. "It's only me." My voice sounded off to my own ears, the rhythm somehow stilted and softer than normal. Which I guess was good; there was nothing normal about this.
The sculpted lips parted and he tried to speak, his blue eyes staying focused on me as I moved closer, but only a harsh croak came out. His throat had been badly damaged in the aftermath of the battle. The smoke and fire he'd reigned down upon Mariemaia's villa working against him when he collapsed. The doctors said he wouldn't be able to speak much for weeks at best though that didn't seem to stop him from trying. I shook my head and held out the water from his bedside, letting him sip gently through the straw. The indignation of needing such assistance burned in his eyes but there was nothing he could do. His left hand was shattered and his right wrist cracked and more than a few tendons ripped. But with his wrist bound to a keyboard, he'd managed to make a few basic needs known to us, such stilted communication vital during those first few days.
But the first days had passed and I had watched him, the blue eyes dark with some deep emotion, the Japanese features fixed in rigid contemplation. I replaced the water on the table and brushed a streak of brown hair from his face, trying to ignore his flinch at simple human contact and biting my lip at the twist of pain in his features at the movement. "I'm sorry." I offered, suddenly unsure what I was apologizing for. I only knew that I felt such deep regret for him, his eyes were so deep, so dark, I wasn't sure they'd ever known how to smile.
His eyes crinkled, in acknowledgement if not acceptance and then they turned back to the screen. He'd been watching that screen since he'd awakened, looking for someone. He couldn't speak to tell me, but whoever they were, they meant a good deal to him. It was the hope of them that had brought him back.
I opened my mouth to ask him if he'd had any luck but he could feel me still standing above him and the flash of pain that went through his eyes was enough to erase the words on my lips. Whatever I did for him, to him, I did not want to cause him more pain.
"Alone." The word sounded harsh on the air, the vowels rounded by the Japanese accent and the sotto bass of his voice made lower and scratchier by his throat wounds.
My heart skipped a few beats and I tried to keep the pain I felt for him from my face. I know I failed. But I nodded for him as I made to leave. "I'll check on you later." And my voice was as scratchy as his.
******************************************************************************
"'They're only dangerous when they're alone, or only two or three of them together...They only want to kill when they're alone. Of course, if you went in there you'd probably detach one of them from the herd, and he'd be dangerous.'"
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
******************************************************************************
The next time I walked down that hall, my footsteps weren't the only things echoing.
"You're with her!?" The words bounced off the walls violently, the voice climbing an octave over the course of the sentence.
I stopped, surprised. It wasn't his voice I'd heard. He must have found whoever he was looking for.
"You can't... This can't be... How could you?" The words were harsh, cut off, the accent on them thick in its distress.
My steps quickened on the floor, my heart beating strangely in my chest. He'd protected the world; I was more than willing to protect him.
"You lied." It was a hiss that snaked dangerously through the hall as I neared the door. Whoever the other boy was, his fury reached easily into his voice, along with tones of... regret? Hurt? I could never be sure. "You lied to me."
The words lanced through my heart. I didn't know much about the boy in that bed, but he didn't deserve the kind of pain that those words were waiting to inflict.
"Aren't you going to say anything to that?" The angry words burned on my skin as I reached for the door. "Then I guess there's nothing left to say."
"Wait!" The hoarse cry startled even me and the doorknob jangled as my hand jerked instinctively. "Not this way." There was confusion and frustration in those syllables but it was deep, buried beneath the harsh damaged voice so that the words sounded... almost cruel.
I stepped into the room unacknowledged for the first time, ignored by the occupant. He was half sitting in the bed, though the position must have hurt him; the flail ribs had taken the doctors more than two hours of surgery to even halfway fix. His face was neutral as always, but the muscles along his jaw were tight, and his eyes were wild with pain.
The boy in the screen said something, something so low that I didn't have a chance of hearing.
But I could see his face harden at the words, some decision made concrete by whatever had been said, the words that could never be taken back. "What would you give?" I saw only a tremor in his throat though I knew from the strain of the muscles it wanted to spasm. "Your life?" The words dripped deliberately out of his mouth and watching, I saw his chest jerk slightly.
This time I could hear the boy's response, resigned, hopeless, tinted with betrayal. "No, my soul. You had it."
There was a tint of something... bitterness perhaps? in his eyes though his face was carved from stone. "Take it back." He dragged in a breath that frightened me at the sound of it. "Ghosts aren't allowed to have..." he was forced to pause, his throat working desperately to form the words, "things so dear."
The words slammed into me as if they had the ability to destroy. It was in the air, the force of those words, as they rent something intangible and rendered it to pieces. But the boy in the screen couldn't feel the air here, couldn't see the stark white of the bandages, and couldn't see the fractured glass in those blue eyes. "So that's it."
"Don't..." He had to pause, air rasping into his lungs, as he tried to swallow to ease his throat and find more words.
I saw a fleck of red on the corner of one lip and knew he was swallowing blood. A cry came out of my mouth but he shook his head curtly and I caught a glimpse of violet eyes and chestnut hair before he pushed at the screen again.
"Not that way." He grated out stubbornly, and I could almost see his will as a tangible thing. My breath caught against my will; what would it be like to have a will like that? So iron strong and yet so inflexible, already bent so firmly to one cause that to bend it to something new was... impossible?
I heard a few deep shuddering breaths from the computer and my eyes widened. I'd never thought you could hear pain in a breath but the rhythm, the pulse of the breaths, they ached with the same pain... the same pain I saw in the boy before me.
His eyes were glued on the screen, and though the expression on his face never changed, it felt like he was reaching for something... hoping... But then the silent communication was over, whatever their eyes had telegraphed back and forth sank into him, dissolving his bones. I watched the soldier slide back against the bed, his spine not enough to hold him up anymore against the press of his chest. The brown head, the hair tousled in some kind of natural madness, nodded just once, curtly, almost a salute. And I saw his lips move even as I heard the words from the computer, "Until the sunrise."
A truce. At least that was how it sounded, a pause waiting for the dawn, like the rest of us. But he'd only shaped the words...
A flick of one long finger and the screen went dark. And so did his eyes. He didn't look at me but in some form of mercy he closed his eyes. Or maybe he just couldn't bear to keep them open. I stepped forward, wanting to comfort him, wanting to say something but what could I say? I didn't even know his name.
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"I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave something up and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good."
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
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It seemed like the night had crept into the corridor the next time I walked down it. So cold, or maybe it was just what I'd heard earlier that was chilling me. But I couldn't stay away from him. I couldn't leave him alone like that.
And so I return. To his room. To be whatever he needs of me. I don't know why, I just know I can't stay away.
He didn't even acknowledge me this time, his hand moving as quickly over the keys as his injuries would allow. The cast of his face was unchanged from when I'd seen him last - still set in stone, neutrality personified, any emotion buried.
"Are you all right?" I shouldn't have bothered asking. A curt military nod was my only answer, an answer I think I would have gotten even if he were still dying on the gurney. "May I stay awhile?"
His hand paused, and then he lifted his uninjured shoulder in a shrug before returning to his typing. "What... want?" He had been going for the whole phrase and a slight glare cast on his face when only the two words managed to choke out. Instead he typed the question out on a new screen and his eyes demanded I answer.
"Who are you?" I couldn't help but ask it. I knew he was a Gundam pilot. I knew he'd saved us. But he had to be more than just a pilot, just a soldier. He had to be.
Some dry vicious humor sparked in his eyes and his hand moved again. 'A terrorist.' The screen proclaimed in severe black and white.
Before he'd even finished the word I was shaking my head. "I don't believe that."
'What do you know?' the screen asked.
"I know you saved the world. I know you're a Gundam pilot."
'You don't know what a Gundam pilot is. And I have no Gundam' Wing Gundam had fallen in pieces from the sky.
The words took me aback until I realized he was right. I had no clue what a Gundam pilot did. Obviously they pilot a gundam but... "What do you mean?"
'I killed a little girl. Hundreds of little girls and puppies and soldiers who didn't know what they were fighting for.'
"You were fighting a war. You couldn't have... You did what was necessary." I believed it. My family was colony born; I knew where he came from.
'No.' And I could see the self-condemnation in his eyes.
"Why?" I couldn't form the whole question. I couldn't understand why he would hate so much what he did to save us all.
'I am a soldier. I was learning to be more but I am, always will be, a soldier. All I know is the fight. He was teaching me more but... I have been a soldier all my life. I did what I had to do, and more. My identity has been buried since I was born.'
It took me some time to understand what he was saying and when he did, I almost wish I hadn't asked. How much he must have done? To be doing this all his life? He was seventeen, younger than me... What had he given up for this? How much of his soul had he bartered away so that we could win?
"I..." Now I was the one who couldn't speak. "I'm so sorry."
He looked confused for a moment. Then his hand typed again though it must have been getting sore. 'Don't be. Sorry is for something you wouldn't repeat. Sorry is for things you would take back. I haven't lost. I was bred for war. The war is over. Now they can bury me.'
"But... what it must have cost you..." I was still in shock; I couldn't comprehend all his words. Suddenly my mind was recalling all the reports, all the stories we'd heard. A million pictures flashed through my head and my throat tightened up. I might never breathe again.
'Don't.' The clacking of the keys drew my attention back to the screen. 'I wasn't alone. There were... others. Friends. I even had a partner. That was... worth much.'
It didn't take me long to figure out this partner must have been the one on the screen earlier, the one whose words had meant so much to him. "Why were you arguing?"
His eyes drifted to the screen and I could almost see the words echo in the reflection. 'He believes I lied to him.'
"Did you?"
'Not then. Only when my mission demanded.'
"So why didn't you tell him?"
He didn't answer. Somehow I knew he wouldn't. There was something more here... something I hadn't yet grasped. And then it came to me. "You were pushing him away. Why?"
He inclined his head slightly, salute that I'd figured out at least that much, though I could see weariness creep into him. 'It was better that way.'
"Better? How could it be better? You were both hurting... I could hear it. How could that be better?"
'It's better for me. And for him. He can blame me. Doesn't matter.'
He was getting tired, I could tell. And I could see it was tearing him up; I suspected he never had to listen to his body much before. He'd lost so much in that last battle. You could only abuse your body for so long.
"All right." I said, feeling tired myself. "I won't push. But... will you go to him later? Prove to him that you weren't... Would he accept it?" Will you be able to find him again, was what I wanted to ask. Can you fix this? Would he let you?
'Yes. He would accept it.'
I sighed in relief. At least there was something he could still have. Smiling slightly I left, before I realized that he'd only answered one question.
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"'Oh, darling, please stay by me. Please stay by me and see me through this... I don't say it's right. It is right though for me, God knows, I've never felt such a bitch.'"
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
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Midnight had come and gone while I spoke to him, and the night was stretching its fingers into the small hours, still protesting the coming dawn. I could almost feel the night darkening in its final protest as I walked back to the main corridors.
As I got closer I could hear the doctors speaking, and when I realized they were speaking of him, I couldn't help but listen.
"That hand will never work right again."
"It could. Have you seen the rest of his injuries? He should be dead. But he's alive. He might be able to regain use of it."
"I doubt it. And that leg we reset? He'll limp for the rest of his life. Maybe he'll be able to get it down to just a hitch."
"He was a pilot right?"
"Not anymore."
Their laughter was cruel, or it sounded cruel to me. But their words struck me. What was he going to do now? What was left for him? As much as I hated to admit it, the doctors were right. He would never pilot again. The body he'd obviously maintained so rigorously would never be quite so perfect again. His words repeated suddenly in my mind, 'I am a soldier... I have been a soldier all my life.'
What would he do now?
My head spun and I rested lightly against the hallway, feeling that I'd missed something vital. And there were more voices from the room nearby... one of the women who had come with Relena Peacecraft. Lady Une?
"Relena has gone."
"I know." I couldn't recognize the second voice. It sounded like a child. "Has he been told?"
"He knows. He didn't seem too surprised."
"Was there something between them?"
"Something... But not what you think. They kept each other going. It was..."
"Like what was between you and my father."
That led to a pause. Whose child is this, I wondered, that could surprise Lady Une?
"Similar. In that respect at least. But he was never in love with her. He respected her, protected her, but love her? She wasn't what he could love anymore than she could love him. Besides, his heart was taken."
"So he didn't care when she left?"
"That I do not know."
My heart pounded in my chest as I put together what I'd heard, feeling as if they were slamming into place in my mind. I said he'd lost much, everyone knew how one of the gundam pilots had turned, betrayed their own, but I didn't know... The boy... he sounded so hurt... and he looked so tenderly at the screen... 'His heart was taken.' Could he have been his lover? But why push his partner away?
And how could he bear it?
His friend... his guide... his partner... his own ability... Like dominoes they fell from him. But it still didn't make sense.
'Alone.'
'Ghosts aren't allowed to have things so dear.'
'I killed a little girl.'
'I am a soldier.'
'He was teaching me more but... I have been a soldier all my life. I did what I had to do, and more.'
'He can blame me. Doesn't matter.'
'Now they can bury me.'
And the words that he'd mouthed but hadn't spoken... I'd thought because of his voice... but what if he hadn't wanted to make the promise. 'Until the sunrise.'
I was running before I realized it, tearing toward his room. He couldn't... I wouldn't let him.
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"They say it's always darkest before the dawn but what if the dawn never comes?"
unknown
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I was too late. I knew it as soon as I opened the door. I didn't have to see his body, limp on the bed, stained, easily proclaiming his choice. My knees trembled beneath me and I could see in my mind the words he had typed.
'Now they can bury me.'
He'd told me. He'd told me then what he was planning. And I hadn't realized. I should have known. But I didn't expect him... I hadn't thought he could be weak.
It was supposed to be his world! He was supposed to be free now. He could heal, rest, recover, and then go reclaim his lover, his partner. Maybe even his friends. He could have found a new life...
But even as I thought it, I knew I couldn't be sure. 'I am a soldier.' How does one overcome a lifetime?
Still the injustice of it burned in me as I placed my hands on his already cooling skin. The rhythm was still - no pulse throbbed beneath my fingers. Tears started to well up in my eyes as I glanced to the computer, the bindings that had held his wrist to the keyboard hanging limply from it. On the screen I saw a file and I read the black words quickly. He hadn't bothered to apologize, 'Sorry is for something you would take back', but he'd left a letter for his partner. Only if his partner came looking.
'It will be easier for him to believe this way. He can think I'm alive with her. He can blame me, hate me for all eternity. But he should be spared this. I am a soldier. And there is no need for soldier's anymore.' There was more but the tears clouded my eyes and I couldn't read it then. Later I would read it. Then I could barely believe. He'd saved the world. He couldn't be dead.
I understood now. He'd pushed his partner away because he didn't want him to blame himself for this. It would be too cruel. The tears spilled unnoticed from my eyes, dropping onto his still hand. There was nothing more I could do for him, to him... It was his choice... But it should have been his sun.
It was dawn time now. All over the world people would be waking up, watching the sunrise, cheering for the end of war at last. But here... here the sun has not yet risen.
It never will.
This sun will never rise again.