Songfic
"You Sang to Me" by Marc Anthony
"Oblivion" fanfiction by: Icicle Raindream
Disclaimer: I own nothing of Gundam Wing or its creation, so I make no money off writing this.
Notes: Okay…don't laugh. I really love this song. It's so incredibly sweet and mellowing…when I heard it on the radio at ten o'clock this morning, I was thinking, "This could so be a fic!" And so I thought about it, and thought about it some more, and then this (below) just popped out. Forgive me but, tissue alert! (I hope, anyway…) I also hope that you guys enjoy…this is what happens when I spend an entire day watching depressing but excellent animes. (Hey, if you'd just watched Ai no Kusabi and then listened to this song, you'd be depressed, too!) Drop me a line! "^-^"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I can see it now…the way the clouds rolled by across the sky. Each and every white puff of condensed air in its own unique shape, wandering freely across the baby blue hue. The grass was all around me, up to my ears on either side of my head, underneath my back, pressing through my clothes, filling my nose with the earthy scent of soil and recent rainfall. My arms lay limply by my sides, my legs stretched out before me. The cool midday breeze shot by over my small form, caressing my hair with its tender strokes, making the dark locks fall across the bridge of my nose. I hardly noticed as I blinked at the sky, my thoughts filling my head and taking me over.
I just wanted you to comfort me
When I called you last night you see
I was falling into love
Yes, I was crashing into love
I stood on her doorstep, my hand on the back of my head as if it would extract the words from my brain and present them, if I held it out to her. The words that my bumbling mouth couldn't seem to say.
Fortunately, it didn't last long. Before I knew it, I was inside her house, sitting on the couch cushions with a blanket wrapped tightly around me and a pillow beneath my head. I can't recall what time I fell asleep, but when I woke up, her hands were smoothing back my hair and the house was dark around us. Her smile shone through the blackness of the room and her eyes glittered at me, as if they were trying to project her soul into mine. I blinked at her, still caught within my cocoon of covers, and she disappeared before I could say anything. I shouldn't have been expecting to be able to speak, anyway, not when it hadn't worked earlier.
A bird sung overhead, sitting on one of the highest branches of the tall oak tree to my left. A neighboring tree sounded an answer, a reply back to my left, and my vision was suddenly clouded with a flock of birds as they rose up over me and flew away into the sky, to join the cotton-like clouds that insisted on rolling by, singing sweetly to each other in the native language that only sounded like music to me.
I closed my eyes and found myself back there last night, before I had stumbled upon her doorstep. She sat next to me, with her honey-brown hair falling over her right shoulder and onto the seat, the locks tumbling gracefully as she shifted lightly in her sleep. My hand rested on the armrest, and I looked down at it as the heat covered my fingers. Relena's hand, on mine.
She obviously wasn't asleep, but her eyes weren't open. She knew I was wide awake; after all, what kind of escort would I be if I'd gotten her this far and then dropped unconscious? No, I forced myself to stay awake, and now that I think about it, I'm grateful.
Her slender fingers retracted from my hand for a moment, and I was disappointed, only to have that feeling taken away and replaced by something else. Her smooth skin ran over mine, tracing my half-curled fingers, the nail of her index finger sending tiny shockwaves through my hand. She opened her hand and captured my index finger, starting at the base where my finger met my hand, and sliding two of her fingers up to the tip, over my short fingernail. There, she tapped the end of my finger with hers, gently, rubbing across the tip. With that single, miniscule action, she brought me to life, and I closed my eyes and turned my head to the aisle. My hand held dead still as her fingers danced lightly over it and I fought to keep the shivers away. Biting my lip was the only answer. That and then focusing on the blue carpet of the shuttle floor as a passenger walked by. I couldn't even hear the sound of the footsteps over my beating heart.
The forest was oddly quiet as I lay on its floor, the birds now long gone and the sun not so high in the sky anymore. The breeze continued to blow and I opened my eyes, seeing that the once cloudy sky was empty. It was just baby blue all around, with the trunks of the trees raising their leaves to the heavens, surrounding me on all sides. The soil was damp underneath my body, changing the contour of its once-smooth surface, taking the shape of my body like an overused, worn-out mattress.
She spoke quietly after that, as it seemed like everyone on the shuttle was asleep but us, keeping her voice low as she stared at me, her head still resting on her own shoulder, her hands now, unfortunately for me, in her lap, clasped diplomatically together. And yet somehow she still pulled the illusion of a schoolgirl once upon a time off nicely, sending me occasional grins and kissing my ears with her giggles.
Of all the words you said to me
About life, the truth, and being free
Yeah, you sang to me
Oh, how you sang to me
And if I concentrated enough now, if I focused my mind's eye on the events that had happened not too long ago, I could still hear her voice. The words all melted into one, combining into a sweet tune I couldn't seem to get out of my head. A tune I knew I didn't want to get out of my head.
I had seen her back to her limousine. I stood with my hands by my sides and just watched as she gleefully waved to Pagan and climbed into the backseat, her hair shining under the dim lights of the parking lot. I caught her eye as she turned to me, pressing her face close to the glass of the back window. She knew I was watching her and in light of that fact, she held the back of her hands up, hooking her thumbs together, in the shape of wings. She pushed the symbol onto the glass, its shape losing form as the car drove away from me. But she knew. She knew I had seen it perfectly and understood her meaning.
Fly. Fly away.
When everything is hard, and everything is over, fly away, Heero. Find your corner of the sky and fly away.
I had flown that night, but not the flying she had meant. I had climbed into Wing and pushed the button to activate bird-mode. I flew away into the midnight world, but it wasn't because of what she had said. It was because of my endless job, my everlasting duty, the position I had to fill in order to bring about the calm center everyone needed to find. I didn't know it at the time, but I needed that center more than anyone else did. And I had tried to explain it to her on her doorstep, but the words just didn't come for me.
And her picture stayed bright within my mind, even as I looked up at the Earth's ceiling, now dotted with numerous clumps of tiny clouds. I could still see her every feature, from the shuttle, from the porch, from the couch. I remembered everything exquisitely, her outline shining in the back of my head.
I stretched lazily now, bringing my hands up over my head, but I immediately recoiled and snapped back into my earlier position, my hand covering my left hip. Covering the gash over my left hip, the one I had just now reopened while being too preoccupied with past events. I mentally slapped myself and emitted a pitiful, "Itai…"
It hurt. Not so much the gash itself, but everything I knew now that I hadn't known a few hours before. Everything that had seemed so real to me was slowly diminishing in value, sliding down the walls of my insides, being sucked into the pit of my stomach to form the bile I could feel edging its way up into my throat.
My side stung more as the memory worked its way into my brain, nearly outshining the image of Relena with its nasty taste of shock and hurt. I hadn't known. I was a goddamn soldier and I hadn't known.
I leaned over him, slipping an arm beneath his body, lifting his torso up to me while carefully shaking him. His eyes opened, gleaming a crystal blue with hatred only supplied to Oz soldiers. Unfortunately, I hadn't been able to identify his expression until it was too late. My weak mumblings to jar him awake were halted in a fraction of a second as his elbow jabbed into my hip. I yelped and jumped away, grabbing at the slice in my skin as he climbed unsteadily to his feet and sneered at my hunched form. His fist came too fast at me and suddenly I found myself tasting dirt. His foot hooked underneath my body to catch onto my hand, the one that was still clutching at my recent knife wound. He kicked swiftly, my own hand making the pain burn through my side.
I rolled over only to watch as he raced toward Wing. I saw my own faithful machine invite an Oz soldier into the cockpit, and he took off. The sand blasted my eyes as Wing Zero left me behind on the Earth, lying on the ground with heat blazing through my injury and fallen bodies as company around me.
I turned to my side on the greenhouse floor, feeling as the grass shifted underneath me and cold strands stabbed playfully into my right cheek. I clenched my eyes shut, both hands now grabbing at my left hip, and the tears leaked out. No matter how I tried to stop them, I couldn't. The tears of a literal fallen soldier.
And I could still hear it, through my silent crying. Her voice, telling me to fly away. Telling me to sleep. Sleep, Heero. All you want to do is sleep. And I couldn't. I was unable to sleep, even though I'd been deprived for over forty-eight hours. And the night on the shuttle, over forty-eight hours. Sleep was incomprehensible to me as long as her voice sailed through my head. I was beginning to doubt whether or not I'd already fallen into fitful slumber.
But it went away. The breeze still blew as I flipped onto my back again, gingerly removing my hands from my wound. The tear-streaks across my face felt frozen, lining my skin coolly from my eyes to my cheek in the lopsided path they had taken to the grass. I was overwhelmed with the feeling of indestructibility.
Girl, I live for how you make me feel
So I question all this being real
Cause I'm not afraid to love
This day seems made for you and me
And you showed me what life needs to be
Yeah, you sang to me
I absently wondered if Relena thought about me. If she was thinking about me right now, and what she was thinking, and where she was thinking it. She was here with me whether she knew it or not, but I wanted to know if I was there, wherever she was, with her. And I wanted to know what she was thinking that night on the shuttle, even as she spilled her words to me, even as her fingers trailed over mine.
All the while you were in front of me
I never realized
I just can't believe I didn't see it in your eyes
I didn't see it
I can't believe it
I shuddered. There was a weight pressing into my stomach, the stomach that was already grumbling in protest while shunning any visitors. The warmth was unmistakable, spreading throughout my lap as I sat up, pressing into my lower abdomen, against my belly button. The steady breathing rippled the front of my shirt and I reached down in curiosity.
The golden-brown locks streamed through my fingers, thin and precious as silk. The shell out of the outer ear was delicate as I traced a finger over it and the cheek was warm with life, the eyelashes dark and long against it. Her mouth, a subtle red color, half-open with her breathing against my front. Her curled fingers up by her head…I slipped my hand into her palm, fitting each of her fingers in with one of my own, intertwining our hands. The gentle grasp sent all the pain in my side away.
"Fly away, Heero. When things get too tough, I want you to fly away."
The words were absorbed into the cotton of my shirt as they faded away, having lightly caressed my ears, and the heat and weight was lifted from my lap, folding into the air and zipping the image closed in front of me.
Oh, but I feel it
My lap still contained the illusion of her being there. I wanted to reach down again and stroke her forehead, but there was nothing there but my own legs. My tainted mind playing tricks on me as her voice came back again, singing the lullaby in high, soft octaves. The tears fell from my eyes again. I wish I could promise her. I wish she were here so I could promise her like I should have already done.
When you sing to me
How I long to hear you sing to me
Beneath the clear blue skies
And I promise you
This time I'll see it in your eyes
But she wasn't. She wasn't here, now was she, Heero? Huh? You stupid fool. You utterly stupid, dumbass fool. It was all for the mission, right? Everything you do is for the duty, correct? All you ever wanted to do was impress Doctor J by acting as his little creation when he stole your heart away.
But it wasn't entirely gone. Just because Doctor J had stolen my heart didn't mean he owned it. It didn't belong to him and it never would. Hell, the thing didn't even belong to me. I no longer had any control over it. It was in her hands now.
I can't believe it
Oh, but I feel it when you sing to me
Just to think you live inside of me
I had no idea how this could be
Now I'm crazy for you love
Can't believe I'm crazy for your love
Suddenly, the bile took a ferocious leap into my throat and I crawled onto my knees, hanging my head towards the flattened grass that had once been underneath my legs. I couldn't help it. The wave of sickness washed over me as my stomach contracted and gag reflex dominated the action. Whatever I had tried to get rid of lay invisibly before me with the stench of war and battle. Her hands rubbed soothing circles into my back as the heaving slowed to a stop.
I had a clear picture now. I knew my destiny. I knew how I had gotten away from that dead, empty village. The answer was simple. I ran. I ran into the woods and found myself lost within a maze of jungle trees. I didn't want to fight it any longer.
The words you said just sang to me
And showed me where I wanna be
You sang to me
Oh, you sang to me
I climbed drunkenly to my feet now and began to run. My legs pumped underneath me as fast as I could possibly make them go. Relena's voice still echoed in my head, singing louder over the snapping and popping of grass and twigs beneath me. I closed my eyes and ran faster, my lungs desperately reaching out for air as I cleared the forest trees. I saw my destiny come into view and I knew I couldn't back down now.
I kept speeding away towards it until there no longer was any earth underfoot. All I felt was the fresh air on my face and the sun beaming from the sky and the tweeting of the passing birds. Fly away, Heero, just fly away.
I'm sorry, Relena. Things just got too tough for me. I'm just taking your advice, after all. Can you blame a soldier for that?
I once told you I'd kill you. I laugh at the prospect now. You should realize, by this time, that it was worthless, those words. An empty threat and a broken promise all in one.
I spread my arms out and threw my head back, the smile growing larger as it spread across my features. The negative-G force of falling at such a high rate had no impact on my sickened stomach. The event just caused more glee as the world brushed its fingers through my hair and tugged at my clothes. The rocks that jutted out in odd angles below were a welcomed sight.
And then…oblivion. Darkness overtook the back of my mind and the gash in my side didn't hurt as much anymore. I smiled at myself as the image of Relena leaning over in her chair on the shuttle beamed radiantly into my head.
My last words were the only ones I could think of at the moment, what with Relena tainting my slowly dying dreams. I spoke them in a low, pitiful moan.
"Sing to me…"
Farewell, Relena. Till we meet again someday, on the other side of the world.