Past gren/vicious, angsty as fuck, written for my 20 Fandoms Challenge.
When Gren thinks about his past he cannot believe had had such a happy childhood. It feels unreal, the long and beautiful fields, the sunhat his mother use to take from her head and push down over his, the way she'd show him how to plant flowers. No one else on Callisto had that kind of bliss growing up; perhaps that is why no one on Callisto understands him. Or perhaps that has nothing to do with growing up with a good family, but because the kind of loss Gren has suffered has seeped into his every pore but never outside of him, and to others he is only the man with sad eyes and a saxophone.
He remembers his excitement at being drafted, because he did not yet know that his life was being bled out at the hands of politicians, that Titan was just another rock in space being contested for pride, that the men and women sent there were never intended to come back to make their mothers proud.
Grencia grew up in a world were few suffered and was sent to a cold planet where everyone did. Perhaps that was the reason he ended up the way he is. He wonders about his mother, wonders what they told her when he was imprisoned, what she thinks now that his bounty is being flashed across televisions across the galaxy. Does she wish him the best? Does she hate him? Does she want them to capture him, to kill him, to put him back behind bars where she must think he belongs? Does she still garden with a sunhat?
If you'd told him when he was a teenager that he'd end up living on a planet where only men lived, he would have grinned and asked if he meant heaven. But Gren no longer trusts anyone, let alone the coarse men he is surrounded by, and he cannot imagine baring his chest to them with anything but fear in his future. He supposes he is doomed to die alone in this planet, and he wishes he could use Vicious's music box to wind back the time and become the little boy who knew he was going to have a good life again, because he certainly doesn't think his life is heaven.
He thinks about being drafted as he plays the sax, wondering why he thought it was an honor in the first place, why he'd smiled so widely at his bunkmate, wondering if Vicious had picked him as a target even then. When had he decided that Gren was the one he would destroy? When he had decided that he would twist this young man into falling in love and then betray him with less care than he had for his damned sword?
Oh, and Gren had loved him, as much as he had ever loved anything. He plays the sax at bars for people who think of his music as background music and he thinks about Vicious and he thinks about the notes he is playing and he thinks about how when he was young he wanted to do this for a living anyway. Living on a planet with nothing but men and playing the saxophone to make his buck? Heaven, he would have proclaimed. Heaven.
But instead he fell for a man with a name that described who he was, a man whose sharp edges extended even to the way you called for him, the syllables that fell out of your mouth sounding ground up and harsh. It's Gren's fault, really, for falling for a man called Vicious. That's what he tells himself when he begins new plans to find the man and slit his throat for what he's done to Gren's future, to Gren's body, to Gren. It's his fault, because no matter what words came out of that coarse voice, he is the one who kissed him first.
Even Gren doesn't believe that, though, and he calls all the cruelty he sees these days vicious. If he cannot get payback at least he can have this. It doesn't feel like enough (it isn't, of course), but it is something. He plays the sax every night and he is nice to those he comes across to, kind even, with a smile for everyone, and soon the people of Callisto like him enough to never consider the loose shirts he wears, the way his expression falters when the others look away, the intensity with which he orders shots after his set every night. The latter is, after all, the pastime of the unfortunates who end up on Callisto.
Alcoholics, addicts, sex fiends, that's what his father would have called this denizens of this place. Which one would Gren fall into, he wonders? Any? All? In fairness, his simply father told him to be careful when he told him, wringing his hands, that he loved the boy next door the way his father loved his mother. A truly idyllic life he'd left behind. Forced to leave behind, even if he didn't realize it at the time.
Gren is floating, waiting for something, the chance to find a way out, or perhaps a change to find revenge. A chance, because that means hope, and Gren has not completely lost the idealism that lead him to let a man named Vicious tie him to a bed and fuck him until he didn't care that he always left when he was finished. He remembers the bruises so clearly. He remembers how he'd call them love-bites, as those love factored in his life at all. He remembers so much; he thinks of Julia's long fingers and sad eyes when she told him the truth about the music box and he aches.
He will find a way, something to act, if it is the end of him. He will not float forever. He refuses to…and eventually, the time comes, and he seizes his chance. It ends the way he expects it to.
When a police ship pulls alongside a battered little fighter craft, they make sure to inform his mother. She prays that he reached Heaven.