Title: Sayonara
Author: Genji
Category: Songfic/response to 91 fic Challenge
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, I don't own the song, which is by Alan Jackson
Pairing: 1 x R
Warnings: Angst, sympathetic Relena
Feedback: If you so chose
Notes:
Relena's POV
{A stark naked light bulb hangs over my head
There's one lonely pillow on my double bed
I've got a ceiling, a floor and four walls
Who says you can't have it all}
Heero. Oh, Heero, you just had to leave me last night, didn't you? Another mission to complete- another colony to save. I lie here on my bed- no, our bed, and reminisce about what happened. The cool sheets caress my skin. They've been like this more often than naught. Every time you come, you bring a night of intense joy, but the price is the promise of knowing that in the morning, I'll be left with a cold bed once more. You are unwilling to realize what you have done, and so you leave me, and so you return.
I am what keeps you human, for it is here where you let your façade drop, and passions rule. Each time the mask falls faster, and the impenetrable soldier leaves this world for a little while, and becomes a vulnerable human. It is the lure of being human that draws you to me, and I give all that I can offer.
You appeared last night in my room- our room. Quiet, tormented. Searching for an answer that didn't have a question. I hope I am part of the solution you seek. Perhaps, when you realize what is right and what is left, you will stay the entire night, and not always leave me, never knowing when you'll come back, but always certain that you will. Well, I used to be.
{My room's decorated with pictures of you
Your letters wallpaper this shrine to the blues
I've got precious memories at my beck and call
Who says you can't have it all}
I let my churning mind drift back to a locked closet in my room, the room I occupied before you appeared on my doorstep, battered. I still have to yell at Millard for what he did in Antarctica. I have yet to forgive you for almost giving me a heart attack.
The closet- it's the only proof I have that what has passed between us actually happened, and it's not an idle daydream, brought on by unrequited love and raging hormones. It's mostly security photographs, depicting you before and after. I tell myself that there's something different about your eyes, that they're less haunted in the 'after' pictures. I'd tell myself that the world was flat to make you love me.
There's letters in your tiny handwriting that I emulate countless times over. No- your letters are not the gushing love notes that every girl in her right mind wishes to receive. They're simply notes- never saying goodbye, never apologizing, never thanking, just notes of explanation that you had to go.
Aishiteiru. Amabo te. A ti, te quiero. I can say it in countless languages, I can write it in your minute script, and yet, from you, those words never come. Yet I delude myself, saying that the mission called, that you didn't have time, but you meant it. You meant to scream my name when I screamed yours, but you forgot and simply let your face screw up in the moonlight. You meant it, but you never said so.
I plastered the walls of that small walk in with your notes, my notes, and wistful thoughts. I tell myself that my letters are really yours, and that you will come back to me. You always come back to the one that makes you human.
One time you said something along those lines. You swept away my sweat soaked bangs, and whispered, "Itsuka (1)." I, not knowing the language, reached up to pull you down for one last kiss. Force. I should know by now it never works. You wrenched away, leaving me only to clutch at open air. I watched your back in the moonlight, and saw the shadows move across your face, demons of your past returning to nest and spawn in your cranium. I gazed until the fiend known as sleep enveloped me, and I was left with an empty bed in the morning.
My mind drifts back to last night, before the witching hour came down upon us, when we were still together, caught up in our passions. It had been the best of all those times you found me, alone in the room, as if it were an apology for all those times I've rolled over and found nothing but empty space where you had once lain. Afterwards, oh, I don't wish to remember it, but still the recollection trickles through me.
You waited until we had both calmed down before getting up and grabbing your clothes.
"Why?" I asked, confused that you didn't even make the pretense of spending the night.
"Ninmu."
Mission. I hate the word. It drags you from my arms, steals you from my bed, and tries to kill you at every turn. She is your mistress and I am your hapless wife. Yet, still, I hope that one day your affair, your endless dance with death, will finally peter out and the musician that plays the haunting tune will take his final bows and scurry off the stage.
"Sayonara." You said, standing in the doorway. It seems so final, the word dropping like a stone into a silent pool. Yet instead of harmless ripples, it creates a tsunami that destroys the life I know.
I may not be fluent in your language, but even I know that this is the end. You've never said goodbye before, even in your notes, you simply signed them 'H.' Now, all of a sudden, it's 'Sayonara'. I watched you standing there, for what seemed like eternity, and you walked away.
The world's not perfect. Knowing you has proven that beyond a reasonable doubt. If life were perfect, we'd still be innocents. You wouldn't be disturbed by demons in the night. All we'd worry about is whether or not we'd passed the biology test, or snagging a table in the crowded café. The only politics I'd be involved in would be of the student kind, and whether or not the vending machines are over priced. Yet, whenever you come, we lose our innocence, in the conventional sense. However, what passes between us is probably the most innocent thing that you do. How cruel life can be to those that love her enough to sacrifice her for others!
{I've got everything a broken heart needs
I'm doing fine don't you worry 'bout me
'Cause I'm lord and master
Of a fool's Taj Mahal
Who says you can't have it all}
I sigh, and let the memories play behind closed eyes.
Those that make you can be the key to your undoing...
I will survive- I have no doubt in my mind about that. I know how to take the part in the mind games, in the power plays. Mayhap, this time I might even win.
Those that make you...
Did I make you? Or did you make me? Or did we make each other in those lonely hours where nothing was quite right, yet nothing was quite wrong? When we reached for each other did we really mean it? Or were we just two desolate souls searching for answers, and by mistake finding each other?
I tell myself that you'll come back; I tell myself that you didn't mean it, but they're lies. Lies, lies, lies, lies. You never said anything you didn't mean; maybe that's why you don't talk unless mandated.
{Oh, who says you can't have it all}
Sayonara.
~OWARI~
(1) Some day
Sayonara-a very formal way of saying "good-bye"; can be said in the context of "We'll never meet again"