Inscribed
I can't do anything anymore, without it reminding me of you. This part of me that I ignored, pushed aside and refused to believe existed keeps nudging into the foreground whenever I'm near you. It's been going on for so long that it now lingers wherever I am. Whatever I'm doing. Whether you're there or not. Little flickers of you colouring my vision of the world.
Your strength is vastly different to everything I've known, everything I've been taught, everything I've ever associated with strength at all. There's something about your quiet courage that makes everything I do almost meaningless. Almost.
I can relax now – something I've never had the luxury of being able to do before, but with you I can close my eyes, and worry about nothing for a few short moments. I used to be confused about how I feel - so foreign as it was to be unable to be purely calculating, purely excellent in what I do. Now I know it just adds depth to my awareness of the world. This emotion I feel for you - this thready vibration that I feel pulling at me all the time - it only heightens my decision-making, gives me insight where there previously would have only been facts.
It has also introduced fear – fear of you being hurt from me not coming back one day, or of me not being there to save you in time. But, again, you've shown me – often without words – how to be scared and still make the right choices, still do what needs to be done, and to do so unwaveringly. That is your courage, your strength. What I lacked and now benefit from.
It's also a split-second conscience, the slightest of hesitations, which some would say is detrimental but I argue is not only valid but vital for a soldier. The final sliver of a moment before I make a decision you're in the back of my mind, lending me balance and perspective. Helping me to see what I'm doing on levels above and beyond the strategic, beyond the rational or logical or even cognitive. It's a sense - a whisper of you in my mind.
No, you've snuck right in, through places I didn't even know needed defending until you had already breached them and settled in. And, oddly, I don't mind. Sometimes I think of you, feel you so strongly I think others surely must be able to see, too. A vague outline of you in the places where I've stood. Superimposed on my shadow. The way I see it I'm just acknowledging that part of me. That part of you that you're lending me made manifest.
Forever inscribed on me, your strength tempering mine.
...
Heero looked down at the tattoo artist's work, seeing Relena's name swirling up the inside edge of his trigger finger in dark ink, and smiled.
A/N: As always reviews are very much appreciated – thanks for reading!