You should know none of this belongs to me.

Color of the flower

Has already faded away,

While in idle thoughts

My life passes vainly by,

As I watch the long rains fall.

"Ono no Knomachi"—Teika

Things of Beauty

It shouldn't have meant so much. A smile, and the world was washed in color where once presided only a dim spectrum of monotonous grays – my lonely vision. The shy dip of his head, the curve of his lips, and eyes like snow-shadows, like the last bit of blue on a darkening horizon. It amazed me, the way he could stand sallow-faced and swaying with fatigue, and still make that small offering of humanity, a furtive glimpse of the boy beneath the killer – the killer I had molded, with the assurance that it was all for a greater cause -- from that innocent child so many years ago.

He smiled as if he was sharing a great secret with me, a thing kept buried for lifetimes, and finally recovered for only myself to see, if only for a moment. I tried to memorize the way his face looked then, in those few, ethereal seconds, so I could keep it, salvage it in my mind. I wanted to tell him I was proud of him. I wanted to tell him I thought of him as my own son. I wanted, more than anything, to tell him I was sorry.

It's August and the modest refrigerator I've owned since the dawn of the Eve Wars has chosen today to shut down completely – this should not be at all unexpected, as this is certainly not the first time the over-sized relic has failed during the hot summer months. Then again, if my sorry excuse for a kitchen appliance is a relic, I wonder what that makes me? Ah, well, at least the incessant humming has ceased for the moment, not that the lack of charming background noise from an out-dated, dilapidated motor makes up for the food lost.

I hate grocery shopping. It's not the shopping as much as it is the looks people regard me with – horror, disgust, fear. I'd much prefer to be pointedly ignored, thank you very much. But then, if I had not the esteemed privilege of seeing the same, spectacle-adorned face and hunched figure each day -- an old, grizzled man with a scraggly beard and treacherous-looking stainless steel limbs where flesh should be -- I can understand their reactions. And I always have to remind myself to buy only half as much; the reality is the worst.

Not that I'm inclined to face such an overrated thing as reality. Even now, as I gingerly fish out rotting vegetables from the depths of the godforsaken pit that is my refrigerator, I have to force myself to ignore the very reasons why I could never bring myself to throw the incompetent machine out. Each one is burned into my memory: spindly, colorful scratches made on lined legal-pad pages, napkins, backs of leaflets. A severely ill-proportioned puppy runs on generic green grass, a moonscape in crayon and black marker, stick-figures of him, of me. To me, things of beauty.

Not soon after, he would stop drawing completely, a pack of low-grade C-4 in place of the set of Jumbo crayons I had purchased on a whim. I cherished the small pieces of him still surviving before his vision became as gray as my own, the light in his eyes swallowed in the machine I had created. The world needed –needs –heroes. I tell myself this, and try to believe that what I did was right.

Perhaps the one drawing that I spend the most time staring at, in pure perplexity, is a crudely-formed representation of what appears to be a family: a man and a woman, dark-haired and smiling with thin red mouths, standing behind two children. A blonde girl holds canary-yellow flowers and smiles demurely with coral-pink, wavering lips. But the thing that sticks out in my mind, the seemingly insignificant element of the scene that appears out-of-place, and at the same time, draws my eyes in the way an especially well-conveyed line emerges from a sea of words, is the face of the little boy. Or rather, the lack of a face.

I had always thought it was unfinished. However, looking back, I realize this was quite impossible; if anything, the boy had been mercilessly efficient. I, of all, people, should have realized this manually enforced attribute—this fatal flaw at the very seed of man's folly. That's how I had trained him. The image of an unnaturally serious little boy, messy hair falling into his eyes, pitting all his concentration on the action of manipulating a midnight-black crayon with careful, deliberate strokes—as only a child can be careful—to form the outline of his drawing: this is burned into my mind, licking like flames at the corners of my memory. The blue notebook lines run like perfect streams in a fallow field, crossing evenly over white space where peach-yellow should be. I wonder, is this your secret, boy?

I wince at the series of crunching pops issuing from my tortured kneecaps as I rise—carefully, mind you—to deposit the spoiled foodstuffs on the counter-top. It's still fairly early(a quick glance at the standard white clock on my generic white wall dignifies the time as shortly after 10:00), so there's no need to rush. I'm not particularly hungry, as it is, my metabolism having receded at a steady rate since the time I hit 30. I groan at the direction of my thoughts: reminiscing always leads to more of the same.

I don't have long to berate my wayward mind, however, as a the silence I have grown accustomed to is shattered with a short secession of muffled knocks at the door. When I don't rise from my spot immediately, thinking the unfamiliar noise a figment of my imagination (which has, by no direct cause of my own, taken a definite senile twist, as of late), a second, more insistent series of knocks follows. If the refrigerator had been churning with its usual mechanical chortle, I may not have heard them.

Nonetheless, I had heard them, and whether a figment of my aged imagination or not (and believe me, an imagination does not age as well as wine), my curiosity is piqued. My eyes rake over the sparse room in search of my industrial steel walking stick—for protection, if nothing else--but, with a sigh of resignation, I decide against it. If someone wants me dead, which is not quite as small a possibility as I would like, there would be few things I could do to stop them, short of intentionally falling on my assailant. "Stick with the tried and true"; a useful old scrap of information, if not likely to aid my survival.

Whistling tunelessly, I shuffle toward the door, giving the refrigerator a hearty thump on my way past the monstrosity; the worthless hunk of rejected scrap heap metal takes up half my kitchen space. The door slides heavily across the floor as I yank it with more torque than necessary from it's splintering frame, weather-eroded hinges protesting as I force the door open widely to reveal whatever may wait on the other side.

I had been expecting a bevy of police officers, a gun to my temple, or in the best case scenario(or the worst, depending on which way you look at it), a middle-aged census worker. The figure presented in the hazy yellow of spring--a dark, slender shadow against a background of lazily drifting cotton—is none of these, yet, if to be compared, closest to the gun. The dark head lifts, and I can see the corner of the mouth lifted in perfect semblance of a memory. The eyes are shadowed by a thick tumble of unkempt hair, but I can see their color in my mind's eye: thunderclouds on the brink.

As my eyes adjust to the sudden wash of light, I notice the shadow of my blinds slicing through the window, leaving strips of symmetrical lines running lengthwise across the angular face.

Looking at him now, the cheekbones are more defined than I remember, the childlike roundness lost and the prominence of heritage and age structuring the delicate bones. He shifts, and light spills across the planes of his face, chasing away imaginary ink lines and replacing the shadows darkening his eyes. The eyes, they are the same; the irises splinter in the choppy sunlight, and they are like pieces of blue glass in a kaleidoscope.

I am grinning like a fool, I know, and my breath escapes me, syllables rolling off my tongue in a voice rusty from misuse. "Heero."

Disarm you with a smile

And cut you like you want me to.

Cut that little child

Inside of me and such a part of you.

Oh, the years burn.

I used to be a little boy,

So old in my shoes,

And what I choose is my choice--

What's a boy supposed to do?

The killer in me is the killer in you,

My love,

I send this smile over to you…

"Disarm"--The Smashing Pumpkins

I had withdrawn in forest and my song

Was swallowed up in leaves that blew away;

And to the forest edge you came one day

(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long

But did not enter, though the wish was strong:

You shook your pensive head as who should say,

'I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray-

He must seek me would he undo the wrong.'

"A Dream Pang"—Robert Frost

Note: Yeah, I like poems. And songs. And using them in my stories.

But, anyway….Like? Didn't like? Please let me know what you think!

Ashi out--