Everyone says, "Poor Claes. She is alone."
But I say, "I am beautiful alone."
Gunslinger Girl
Beautiful Alone
Disclaimer: Gunslinger Girl is Yu Aida's. I worship her.
Description: This story is a Claes-centric fic. It happens towards the end of the Gunslinger Girl anime, and precedes my previous fics Life Goes On and Her Prince Charming.
Dedication: To Freda Claes Johansson. For the wonder that she is.
As far as I can remember, I have always been alone. Not physically. Not outwardly. I share rooms with Triela. Work with her and Henrietta on my vegetable garden. Discuss our lives' latest travails and trials over tea and biscuits. Even go on missions with them, now that I'm cleared for it.
But I am alone. Definitely alone.
Alone. An adjective, it means apart from or to the exclusion of other persons or things. Similar words are solitary and single.
It fits me like a glove. Triela once described me as aloof, cold as a cucumber at times. I agree. I am her exact opposite. I am not an outgoing person by nature. I do not like crowds and noise. And though I am not anti-social, though I am honestly friendly with the people I am familiar with, I tend to reflexively keep even them at arm's length. As if getting too close to a person would weaken me in some unknown way.
But that does not cover everything, I think. There is more to the matter than just this. Dictionary definitions are insufficient to describe what I feel– what I am.
After all, not every twelve year old girl in Italy is mostly impervious to bullets.
And perhaps that is the core of my issue. My being what I am: a Gunslinger Girl, a child given a mechanical body by the Social Welfare Service/Section Two.
What does it mean for one of Section Two's mechanical body to be alone?
It means that you have no Fratello. No adult officer assigned to handle you. No one to give you orders, take responsibility for your actions and keep an eye on you.
No one to give you purpose.
I am the only mechanical body without a partner. I have no Fratello. As far as I know, I never had one. And from what I have been told, I can never have one.
I wonder. Why this unfair situation is so. Why I have to be meaningless. Without purpose. Without a reason to exist– to live.
I wonder why I have to be alone.
Everyday I watch my friends interact with their handlers. Henrietta and Giuseppe go shopping. Rico trains under Jean's supervision. Next to them, Liesel and Altheus take a breather. Triela and Hirscher, engaged in their latest disagreement. Marco wheeling Angelica into the sunshine, while nearby Elsa stands as Lauro's shadow.
I watch them. Watch them fall in love. Watch them love and be loved (or even not) in return.
I envy them.
They have their handlers. Their relations. Their lovers.
They have someone else.
I have no one.
No one but myself.
Sometimes, I force myself to become lonely. I withdraw from the world at large. Lose myself in the pages of my latest obsession. Ignore everyone and everything else. Even Triela cannot reach me when I am like this. No one can.
In my denials, I only deepen my hurts.
I feel like there is someone who could reach me. My father? I don't know. But he is long gone, I think, never to return.
I wish he would.
Everyone pities me. Feels sorry for me. Shake their heads in disbelief at how I can keep on going like this. They do not see my strength for what it truly is. They can only see what I lack.
Henrietta once told me, on our way to my garden, that she could not understand how I could continue to exist by myself, without a partner. "If I lost Giuseppe," she told me, "I don't think I can go on living."
I lost my temper, snapping at her defensively, angry at her for being such a child and at myself for being alone.
"Silly little girl. I choose to be like this. I choose to be lonely."
Everyone says, "Poor Claes. She is alone."
But I say, "I am beautiful alone."
And yet on cold and lonely nights, huddled in my blankets, Triela below asleep like a log, scattered thoughts and old eyeglasses my only inadequate company, I realize the sad truth of my life.
I realize just how lonely I am.
I am alone.
I don't want to be alone.
End