((Whew! Nano is over!!! I'm FREE!!! And I did it! Hee hee. So to celebrate and get myself back on track, I'm doing this which has been in my head for months now. It's a sequel to "Seeking Rain" and another song fic. Hee hee. Dunno, I'm not much for song fics, and of course the song is at the end, but it's definitely inspired just like "Seeking Rain" by a beautiful and sad song.
Warning: There are hints of male/male and male/female… not romantic, but as a matter of course.
Relena and somehow, all of the rest of us when we know someone just doesn't feel the same way as we do. It's is hard, and yet we manage, don't we? So will she. And she'll be more beautiful and wonderful for it.))
Feeling Something
Sitting there, as he was, I'm not sure even he knew what was wrong half of the time. I certainly didn't. The thunder coming off of the hills and rolling down to touch the sides of the home a distant memory. I think back to that time and realize that it had been the turning point, the moment when everything began to go away, to dissipate. What little shreds I'd held in my hands, clinging to them with all of the wonder and hope of a child, were alive and like living creatures, refused to be held.
I turn from my view of the sea and listen to footsteps moving down the hall. My body clenches around the emptiness in my fingers and I look back to the vast waves.
I am like the sea, like the ocean. I allow hurt and pain and living to wash through me. I tell myself this because I think it's the only way I'll keep myself from crying.
The white pennants fluttered behind him. I told him how beautiful he was in my mind, but didn't dare speak aloud. He didn't like to hear about emotions. But I told him time and time again in my imagination because I loved him so much it ached. He was beautiful, my perfect everything. They called him soldier but they were all wrong. He was so much more than that.
I thought that day, when the pennants rose and drifted in the slightest breeze, the silk of them catching every movement of the guests below, that walking down an aisle and wearing my dress and the words he had not said but that I'd imagined hearing from him, were enough. I had imagined that the words I'd already spoken for us, were words that would be forever. That because he could not show his love, could not speak his love, that I would just do it for us both.
I came behind him and touched his back. He'd already have known I was there. He always knew I was there and he stared out into the distance. I smiled and let my cheek drift to lay against his solid back, listening to the solid and true beat of his heart. He was alive and he'd told me he wanted me.
No, he never told me he wanted me, but he'd told me he would marry me. They were the same thing, weren't they? The flicker of white at the side of my eyes was the pennants and I'd always wanted them at my wedding.
"I can't believe we're doing this," I murmured, and in my imagination, he was bold enough to turn and take me into his arms and kiss me. He remained, however, silent, and the only indicator that he was alive was the beat of his heart under his shoulder blades, so strong and so distant. It sounded like a thunder and I felt again, the world move beneath my feet. I could love him enough for both of us.
He said nothing about what had just happened. I listened to his heart and forgot about the moments before when he'd looked into my eyes and I'd seen that sadness I thought I could dispel. His hands were warm and dry in mine. But they did not return the squeeze I gave them just after the band of gold was slipped over my finger. My heart leapt and I watched for a returning flare as his was put on. "I thee wed," I'd said and shone for us both because he did not know yet how to shine.
I would shine enough for us both.
I traced his shoulder and closed my eyes. The rest of the party was behind us. I knew they would expect a toast at some time. But right now, I had him and we had the silence.
He'd left the party right after entering. We sat down and he'd gotten up a few minutes after. When Wufei rose his glass to call out a toast, the room had gone silent and confused. Where was the newlywed? I knew. He never liked being at functions with so many and he would have hated being at the forefront of the festivities. He'd needed time and he'd taken it. He never had excuses for how he behaved, never tried to be anything that he wasn't. It was just up to the rest of us to recognize what it was he did, how he felt, and to help him grow from the silence of his soul. He would become human with all of us. We would love him and he would grow until he knew just as we did, what it meant to be alive.
So I stood and with a small curtsey, left the ballroom, seeking my new husband. Some would have felt aghast at having to do something so monumental as to find their husband less than an hour after wedding him. But I knew him. I knew the hurting child I saw in his eyes and the fact that he hadn't a voice. He didn't know he could speak yet, that child there. The soldier spoke but not the child and certainly not the man.
A hand on my arm made me stop and I looked to the side, finding the tallest of them standing next to me.
"Trowa," I smiled happily. "We didn't know you'd come. Heero will be so happy!"
He winced and I saw resignation there in his face. It had never been so strong before in anyone. It was like a great jacket he had flung over himself. But what it could possibly have kept him warm from, I do not know. My hand reached up and I took his and he curled his fingers around mine, seeking my warmth.
"I just wanted to say congratulations," he said so low I had to lean forward. He smelled like spices, orange and musk, and while it was not male, it was a smell so distinctive I would never have forgotten it. It lingered there, beside him, within him, and it made me wonder that he wasn't more alive than even I was. His eyes, greener than some deep sea, looked into mine with an honesty that frightened me, but I just clung to his hand more tightly.
"Thank you, Trowa. Thank you so much. I'm sure we'll be very happy," I spoke for him. I was accustomed to speaking for men who had no voice.
"I'm certain you will, Relena." He paused, it was all that was required of him, but he paused and seemed as if he wanted to say more.
I held his hand more firmly and tilted my head to the side. "Yes? What is it, Trowa?" I was urging him like one would urge a child, asking them to tell of what frightened them. The resignation and grief, that was it, grief, were so strong I could almost taste them like a bitter wind and it made me shiver.
"Just," he paused again.
"Yes? It's okay. Please, tell me whatever you wish. You're very dear to us all. All of you boys are."
A tremble ran through him and he gripped my hand then lifted it, bending over it and pressing his lips to the back of it. His breath shook across the back of my hand and I stared at his bent head in shock. Was he in love with me? He held to my hand so tenderly, stroked the sides of it and just kept his lips there, without moving them, just pressing them in something chaste and desperate. I felt my tears begin to rise.
"Please Trowa, tell me. Some things are just too heavy to hide. What is it?"
Why did I want him to tell me he loved me? Why did I want him to tell me anything at all? I knew it was the bane of the silent, to never speak what they felt, what they thought. Even if it was something painful.
I fitted my fingers under his chin and lifted his head. He straightened and his eyes were like shining stars, touched at the edges with some perfect light, reflected again and again as if from a prism. His nose was already red, his eyes showing the same pink hue, and he was struggling mightily to keep the pain back. His entire face working around the sorrow.
I traced his face and sighed. "It is okay, Trowa. You are dear. Yes you are. And we love you very much and when you are ready, someone will be there for you." I don't know what I was talking about, but I spoke from my heart, hoping that it would reach into that dark dungeon he'd sequestered his heart within.
"Heero is…" he paused but I waited, not wanting to break the moment as he gathered courage. "He needs someone to love him. To love him until he knows what love is. I'm glad… I'm glad it's you. Because no one else I know can love in a way that is so strong, or so pure."
I almost cried then, knowing of all the things he wished he could tell me. He bowed to me, kissed my hand again, and with proud shoulders stooped by loss, danced his way out of our lives.
We'd always been perfect together. Not counting his trying to kill me the first time, of course. I knew, looking into those dead eyes, what I was placed on this earth for. To love someone who did not know what the word meant. But the triumph of that night was enough to make my heart soar and the reason for living to become more clear than it had ever been before.
The knock on my door was not unprecedented. He'd come over late often, sit down in the sitting room and watch the fire burn. I knew it was because he couldn't be alone, not after all of those years of death and destruction. And I'd sit beside him, becoming his safe place. But the water running down his face, in his hair, wetting his clothing, the rain pouring upon him, knew nothing of that pain. And like the floods over long cultivated fields, it washed away his defenses that night and his face was pale under the pain that rose so obviously upon his face.
"Heero!" I cried, all but having to catch him as he staggered inside. The rain he carried in him soaked into my night gown and made my skin shiver.
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" he mumbled into my skin as he clutched me there in the doorway, so tightly I could hardly breathe.
I held him back, crooning in his ear. "There, it's okay. Listen, go by the fire, I'll shut the door and bring you some coffee."
But he would not let me go and I had to work my way from within his arms. The words he was not saying, I exulted over them, words he could not say but which were obvious from the first. He clung to me, as tightly as a creature ravenous for food which it had been deprived of for years.
Neither would he let me sit him into a chair alone, but dragged me in after him. His face still buried in my shoulder, he shuddered silently. I touched his soaked hair, called for the servant to bring a blanket and leave us, and called his name softly. At the sound of my voice, he only clutched me closer.
"No, shh, it's okay. I'll not leave. You hold me as long as you want, it's okay." I whispered, leaning down and kissing the edge of his ear.
The kiss was what did it I think. I so rarely kissed him because he looked uncomfortable at the touch. But this time he sobbed like a child, so loud and with such pain, and gripped me closer, pulling my body against his until my heat warmed us both, his hoarse voice in my ear as he commanded me. "No- no words," and he lifted his head and hungrily devoured my mouth with his own. And I knew enough that words were his enemy and I stilled them for him.
Love making that night was desperate, as if he were reaching for something just beyond him, his eyes closed and his tears falling the entire while. He sobbed as he spilled himself within me and he cried as he brought me to completion. He knew what he was doing, no shivering school boy, this. His hunger made me hungry for him and I clung to his chilled body as it warmed by the fire, stroking my hand down his side and feeling him shudder at the sensation.
He drew away then, curling his arms around his powerful legs and staring into the fire as he had every night before this. Then with the silence stretching, he looked at me with his face filled with pain and that other emotion, the one I'd always seen but never knew, and he did not reach for me. Instead he looked back at the fire. "I suppose I will marry you," he said. It wasn't the most romantic proposition and I laughed in delight and tucked myself around him, though he tried for a time to get away. Then I gave myself to him again and he was tender, distant, and uncertain, and I was enough in love for the two of us.
The city lights rose up when I found him on the balcony. I wound my arms around him and entered his silence with him for a time.
Then when a cough drew our attention, we paused in the silence to stare at Quatre. The blue eyes were so sad. Why was everyone sad? I'd thought of anyone, Quatre would be laughing in joy for he always seemed to have joy.
"The toast?" he murmured and looked at Heero as if he felt guilty of something.
"Yes, the toast," I echoed and reached for Heero's shoulders, turning him to me and kissing him. It did not surprise me that he did not kiss me back. "We have a toast and to cut the cake, the dance to do. It is customary, darling."
He nodded and then I looked up and something quavered inside of me. Without taking my eyes off of Heero I spoke, "We will be there in a moment, Quatre."
When the balcony door closed with a soft click and the sounds of pennants fluttering in the wind rose to my ear, I let my heart see what it had always refused to see. The deeper emotion, the desperation in it. I'd seen it only moments before but because it had been in a face which did not frighten me, did not hold my world in the cup of its glance, I had been more aware.
He watched me from eyes that were more expressive than I'd realized. It was a silence he carried with him and one that had been on Trowa's face and in Trowa's eyes. He stared down at me with that same resignation and I felt my world turn to ash.
The footsteps turn at the doorway and enter. He is not trying to hide his being there nor the heaviness to it all. I cannot turn to look at him. I can only cry once more. It seems that is all I've been doing for five years, weeping. Weeping and living in dreams that will never, can never be true.
How many times have I spoken words in my mind that he might have said if he'd loved me? How could we have lived so long and had his eyes never change toward me? They are so expressive, lighting in delight as Duo and Hilde enter, arms around one another, singing angry songs of delighted danger when he and Wufei do their practice fights in the training room, sighing in quiet sadness when Trowa is spoken of.
Trowa did not contact us again. The pain of whatever it was he carried was too much. I know now, because I know Heero in ways I never did before, that it was not me Trowa was crying over. I do not know why he was in such pain over his friend, but I know that the pain was too much and the very sight of Heero caused him to run away. I've heard he's gone back to school and that he's working as a lawyer of all things on L2, doing pro bono work for a non profit organization he and Duo and Hilde began. Duo and Hilde speak of him often and Heero misses him, watches for him, and never sees him. And the resignation in Heero's eyes grows deeper every day.
The night of the storm was the final straw. Hilde had come to speak to us about Trowa's newest case. A young man's mother. The young man, however, was the news. Two years younger than them, he and Trowa had come to begin a relationship. Everyone was ecstatic. Trowa had been alone all his life. Now he had someone just for him to love. He was showing signs of being happy again. Or being happy for the first time in his life. Quatre had laughed in delight at the news. "Finally. I thought he'd never get over…" and he stopped. And they all stopped. And the silence rang in my ears and I stood to go and get more wine before my mind would understand why they were all avoiding my eyes.
It's been worse since then. The hurt more obvious, more true. I've had nothing to offer him, to make him whole. I cannot be whole for us both and neither can he live on my shadow any longer. I've done my duty.
A touch on my shoulder and a kiss on my crown. He does not speak because it is not his way. I reach up and take his hand and a subtle, low thump tells me he's dropped his suitcase and he wraps his arms around me from behind. I bow my head and cry and I see, through the shining glimmer of tears, that one has fallen on his forearm. I will not brush it away because it is my last mark upon him.
So many questions I could ask him. Why did he let it go so far? Why didn't he tell me then? Why did he… why did he even reach for me? But he has no answers and perhaps I will have to find them myself. I can find them myself, in fact. Only I'm not sure I want to.
His warmth fades sometime after the bedroom door closes and I stare out of the window at the great ocean and feel myself one with waves so great and powerful and so weak and fragile that I know his leaving will no more break me than the cliffs can burst the entire waters. It is just my edges that are frayed.
-Owari-
Something
by Jaci Velasquez
Album: Unspoken
How I wonder why
Didn't you feel something?
Wasn't your heart jumping?
Didn't you have chills running down your spine?
Weren't you infatuated?
Weren't you illuminated?
Didn't you hear music playing?
I wonder why
I saw clouds breaking
Felt my whole world changing
So how could you just say it
"Goodbye"
Didn't it mean something
Surely you felt something
How could there be nothing
In your eyes
Come on and say something
Baby, you gotta do something
How could there be nothing
There inside
I wonder why
Footsteps down the hall
Another tear on my face
Words you'll never say
Race through my mind
Didn't it mean something
Surely you had to feel something
How could there be nothing
In your eyes
Come on and say something
Baby, you gotta do something
Don't leave me here all by myself
Didn't it mean something
Surely you had to feel something
How could there be nothing
In your eyes
I saw clouds breaking
Felt my whole world changing
So how could you be saying
"Goodbye"