DISCLAIMER - I don't own these characters or make any money off of writing about them.
A/N - I guess I should just admit that I get A LOT of inspiration from music. I got the inspiration for this from 'Green Finch and Linnet Bird' from the Sweeney Todd soundtrack. A little inspiration came from the scene in the movie where the song is sung but this story is MUCH different. I'm thinking of writing a brother story using 'Johanna' as inspiration.
How Is It You Sing?
The room is dark around me, even with the curtains open. The window is dark and dusty, and outside it's raining. I watch strangers walk by my room daily, wishing for more than a walk down the hallway myself. My walls are pale blue, but they seem black as night after fifteen years.
I've never left the walls of this house.
There is a tweet tweet from across my room and I look to my pet bird. A lark. I've had it for two years and this is the first time I've ever heard its voice. My heart leaps as it tweets again. I set the book I was reading in the 'light' of the window on the sill, my eye catching on shining brown hair in the street below.
Another tweet pries my eyes from the stranger with the hair. My lark is jumping about in its cage and my heart leaps again, this time out of fear. Is my lark all right? It's never been this alive before.
Amidst the tapping of rain on my window, I hear something harder hit. My gaze shifts again to the street, looking for the reason behind the noise. I find myself scanning for the hair I saw earlier, finding it nowhere. Even with my face and hands pressed against the glass I can't see anything that would've caused such a noise.
Tap, tap, tap, ping! A pebble hits the window, directly in between my eyes, sending me back a foot in surprise. Catching my wits, I lean against the window again and look down. A boy stands on the street directly below my window, in my grass, the long brown hair I spotted earlier sagging from his temples from the rain.
He smiles cheerily, and waves. I hesitate to wave back, wondering if it could possibly be me that he's waving at. I don't even know him! But he nods with a reassuring smile up at me. I wave back and his smile grows fonder. Another leap of my heart, this time having nothing to do with my suspiciously quiet lark.
His hand raises and he points to himself and then to me, a question in his eyes. My blood is singing as it never had before. I can almost picture swirls of red pulsing through my body. Nodding, I answer his question and watch as he makes his way out of view, towards the walls of my… cage.
Brick, this… cage… is brick. He's climbing the brick to my window! Frantic, I look to the strangers on the street, wondering how any of them could not hear my blood sing at this mysterious boy climbing my walls. I'm not disheartened when a few of them notice.
A face appears at the bottom of my window, hands wrapping around the bars on the outside of it. His cheeks are pink from exhaustion and his shallow breaths fog against the glass. A smile appears on his handsome face, eyes alight with life even though his clothes had shown proof of wear. I can only stare.
When his head turns to look down at the crowd watching his climb, I lose my awe and reach for the latch that will open my window. It creaks open and he hears it, turning his head back at me.
"Hi!" He breathes, still smiling. I barely hear the crowd murmuring below him.
"Hi." My voice is breathless too.
"What's your name?"
"Heero." I answer, staring again. "Heero Yuy."
The door behind me bursts open, revealing my captors; all men, all older than I, and all with good intentions for me. I glance back at them quickly and then back to the boy in my window.
"Heero!" He calls to me. I take my one chance in a lifetime and lean forward quickly. My hands automatically grasp around his and my lips find his through the gaps in the bar. He kisses me back deeply and quickly as my captors yell at me to stop from behind me. He breaks away reluctantly and glances past me to my captors then back to me again.
"I'll steal you, Heero." He breathes out before hands pull me away from him. I watch from the many arms of my captors as he smiles wistfully before what I can only imagine is a scramble down the wall. Once sure that he's gone, my captors let me go and race down the hall, down the stairs and out the front door, leaving me gazing through the open window.
I'm up in time to see him drop to the ground and push through the crowd before dipping to grab a discarded sack and run away with a flick of his braid and one last glace back. Just in time to slip past my captors.
There's a slight splattering of rain against my face as I stand at the open window, my blood still singing of my first kiss. I don't remember my door closing, darkening my room a little.
Tweet tweet tweet my bird chirps from its cage. I look at him, jumping around and twitting like he knew all along. After walking over to his cage, I unlock the little door and reach in for him. I clasp him in between my hands carefully so as not to hurt him and walk back over to my still opened window. When I open my hands he steps calmly onto the sill before taking off into awaiting sky.
I watch him fly off, sad that I can't fly myself out of here before a small rocks thumps me on the chest and falls to the floor. I pick it up and unravel the paper that was scrunched around it. After reading it I grasp the bars of my window and look down onto the now deserted street below.
A braid flicks around the corner of the street and my heart leaps as I find myself gazing into bright eyes. He blinks twice before a noise startles him into running off.
Slowly, I close my window, my singing heart content knowing that even now he was in dark beside me.