A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, e28 - write a fic that is M rated.
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Pink Phantom
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Rosmary is not pleased when he brings Kio the MS simulation system for one of his birthdays. And fair enough. His reasons, on the surface and buried close to his heart, are both the same and transparent.
Kio is an X-rounder as well. Kio will be swallowed up in this war against the Vagans as well. And, more than Asemu, Kio will be a key member of their front lines against them.
But his reasons are more and less than that. Family matters. The aching holes left by his mother's death, his son's disappearance – and does Rosmary really think he doesn't miss him, despite the equally deeply thrust stab of betrayal?
But why would they understand? You never told anyone. Not even Emily…
Though there was no way Emily hasn't put two and two together by that point. Still, the little necrosing bit of him lock inside doesn't really care. If he were a poetic man, he'd say something about how she and their children and grandchildren are the roses in the rose garden and he's the body buried under the soil that nurtures each and every one – but he doesn't do that, does he? He's both overly involved and overly distant and there's no balance to be found there and Emily, bless her, is always picking up his slack but never pushing him back – and, really, who aside from Desil can push him back?
Desil…
Desil who's the epitome of his hatred, and the hatred of the Vagans.
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Yurin is suddenly there, at the forefront of these ghosts that dance around them, and Grodek's stern and smirking face vanishes from view – and all the others too. He could name them all, once upon a time, see them all only seconds ago, but now he has eyes for only Yurin.
And Yurin has eyes for only him. Deep, rich pink eyes like rose petals, like the lipstick that used to be popular, like blood mixed in with all that water in the eyes that made them round and puffy and made them tear –
But funnily enough, there is no blood to augment that image this time. No helmet half-buried in her cheek. No lips spilling with blood. No whites of the eyes slowly turning pink as her skin turned grey. No red and black and copper-tanged fingers reaching for him, onto his chin, his lips, his mouth…
It's just Yurin. Yurin as he met her on Nora, and on Minsry.
'I'm here,' she whispers.
They drown out the sound of battle.
'You're here,' he responds.
This is their dream, not their nightmare, and reality has no place for it.
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'They're human too!'
I know they're human too…
Still, he can't listen to them. He can't listen because Yurin is screaming and crying in his memories, crying nonsensical words he takes to mean agony, and a desire for vengeance. Or maybe it's his desire for vengeance. He remembers Grodek and the Angel Colony and it's the same thing here, isn't it? Maybe he's slipped further under the man's wing than he thought.
Though it'll be nice if he doesn't wind up stabbed to death in an alley by Desil's love-child. Grodek didn't deserve a death like that, to die a disgrace when he'd gone to jail to save them from the same fate and left it hailed a hero.
Though, the way things are going, he'll probably wind up dead by Asemu's hands, instead.
Less satisfying will be a dead by the hands of the Vagan. The ultimate failure: helmet goring the muscle of his cheek and half his eyeball, and blood spilling out of his mouth before he can even register how deep it's gone. Because behind the eye is the brain and there's not a lot defending one when the other's gone. Just a thin sheet of bone, and the helmet's proven tougher than that with Yurin, and with any other pilot that's died in a mobile suit like the Gundam.
But he won't, because that will mean a failure he can't accept. Because that will mean bowing to the Vagans when he has to defeat them first, exterminate them all, rid them from this world so that Yurin can stop screaming from the shadows, so that he can stop screaming from the shadows…
But one never really stops screaming from shadows, do they?
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It takes years after the war begins for Flit and Emily to find themselves in bed together, and before that is just Flit and his phantoms and they're both painfully aware of it. It's why Emily finds herself cutting loose, being as vocal as she can manage because she doesn't want to hear who's name Flit is whispering under the sheets.
The others on the Diva tease them as though they're a new young couple and nobody seems to see, nobody seems to realise, that they're just the farce of one. Oh, Flit likes Emily and Emily likes Flit, but there's Yurin too and Yurin's phantom lurking everywhere: her touch on his palm, her blood-coated finger on her lips and it creates those odd quirks of Flit lapping up Emily's palm, licking her finger until she doesn't bother swiping lubricant from medical or the mechanics anymore because they never seem to need it anymore, with the way he coats her digits with saliva as though he's trying to reach a deeper taste – or mask a surface one.
She doesn't ask though. She doesn't ask because that's their relationship and they like each other and are childhood friends and could probably live in a house together but that doesn't mean they're in love with each other and that's the only way they can do this, and pretend they are in love. Because Yurin who Flit loves is dead and just a ghost whose skin she sometimes wears, and the old sweet friendly Flit is dead as well.
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Yurin is afraid when they first meet. Beautiful and afraid.
It's because she's never seen a Gundam before. A weapon like that, and others so similar are tearing her world apart and why shouldn't she be afraid? But she comes with him into the safety of its cockpit anyway, because he offers a hand to her and she accepts it.
And then they resonate together, when her palm covers his and her voice whispers advice to his ears which save them twice on their flight back to the Diva and to a more lasting safety. They leave an impression on each other, enough so for Yurin to give him her ribbon as a memento and for a moment it seems like such a silly thing because isn't the guy supposed to give the girl something on their first date? But they're fighting battle after battle and she's a civilian and there's not much he can give her or even promise her except an effort towards his safety, so he does that.
Later, he regrets his fourteen year old mind and body and wishes he could have given her more.
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Yurin is close enough to touch but that's the fingers of his Gundam and her's and not their flesh. But her purple pilot suit or as much as he can see of it is already darkening, and the patches grow like spider naevi and a stray part of his mind wanders, years later, if he could have simply touched her and made them blanch –
But she's too thoroughly broken for such stray thoughts to hold any value, any substance.
The helmet's cracked and broken and digging into her cheek and her pink eyes are crying an even darker pink, but darker than all of that are the stains on her purple pilot suit, spreading until they touch each other, until they overrun each other and he can't think how many splinters of Farsia's frame are buried in her body right them, how many have ripped her apart on the inside while her pilot suit keeps up the farce of her unbroken form.
He's an X-rounder. He can see beyond that: faster, deeper – He can see the individual cells of blood rushing to each wound, too many wounds, trying to plug those wounds but spilling out instead and nothing will staunch those wounds.
Even when the Farsia explodes and takes her body with it, he can see her blood desperately trying to save her, and killing her instead.
And that blood spills into his eyes, his heart, his fingers. Colours the battlefield red until all he can see is Desil and his own agony and rage.
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Yurin is a ghost in his memories and his nightmares and he knows this, but he can't help but be enthralled every night. The others know. Surely the others now because their quarters upon the Diva are so small and the walls so thin in space that every moment is seen, every moment is heard. But they respect privacy beyond that, and no-one ever speaks.
Or maybe it's just that no-one manages to put two and two together. They think he's in love with her ghost, that the hands ghosting his own flesh are a mimicry of what he'd wanted to do with her, only they'd never had the time together – and some of them aren't even aware of the "never" part, think she's safe on another colony like the other civilians from Nora they'd rescued but he knows the truth. And part of those ghosting hands is cleaning away all that blood and eye fluid and saliva from cut parotid ducts and whatever else is spilling out from under her purple pilot suit. And he just says whatever because he doesn't want to think about what they are. He can see them all too clearly, and his nightmares and waking dreams are all too real because of it.
So now he laps up the blood on her face so he can find the smile underneath, licks the blood off her coated fingers so she can caress his cheeks, and suck the saliva off her lips so they can meet his own with nothing else in between –
And later, his body aches from the never-reciprocated touch, and his vision reddens. It's rage against Desil and the Vagan. that consumes him now, and his hands and tongue and body don't yearn for Yurin now, but for his Gundam.
Desil… Vagans…
Yurin…
I hate you.
I love you.