Goldfish and Paracetamol
by Jillian Storm
(I was having a small case of writer's block when I thought I'd write something crazy to get my creative energy flowing again. Dorothy Catalonia and other GW characters do not belong to me. Catatonia is this super cool Indy Pop band from across the pond. Paracetamol is like asprin, in case you were wondering. This takes place years after Endless Waltz-I've actually not yet seen Dorothy's part translated into English-and I don't know Japanese-so if this resonates as "wrong" with you-just pretend it's alternate reality, okay?)
[edit 8-28-02: old formatting was making me seasick so I tried to make it a better to read. This is one of my oldest GW fanfics and I'm sort of fond of it. Thought I'd get it so it'll be easier on the eyes.]
*A dead loss, no songs*
*No fun, just glum*
I had enough money from my grandfather to live comfortably. And as much as I thought my name was well-known, it wasn't. I didn't even have to disguise myself. Since the Gundams had restored peace to earth and space, no one remembered the name Dorothy Catalonia. No one cared. I wasn't a threat and I was even less recognizable as a friend to them. But no one ever sought me out. I was alone.
And aloneness drained my energy. I distanced myself from the members of Romafeller who had cooperated with Relena and earned official pardons. Relena.
I remembered her patience and the blue eyes brimmed with frustration. I had loved to antagonize her. Watch her try to persuade me over to her Absolute Pacifism. Watched her try to persuade the Gundam Pilot over to her Absolute Pacifism. And where I had resisted, he had supplied the means for her mission.
Heero Yuy. I remember him. And I remember the other one who came to the Sank Kingdom at Relena's pleas.
*Lying next to someone*
I had dreams about the blond one. Duels with him in a wrecked space station that creaked with every step and swayed with every stoke of the blade. Only, in these dreams-he pierces *my* heart. And I'm the one left bleeding, floating in the cold atmosphere of icy death's grip.
I'm on a shuttle to some space colony. I'm not sure which in my hazy half- awake state. I had been dreaming again. And the destination did not concern me. My goal was anywhere but earth. The sunrises held glaring accusations of the evils I had yet to confess, and I didn't feel like relinquishing them just yet.
Without them, what was left of me?
I chuckle to myself. In the blur of transitioning to wakefulness, I'm almost sure that I'm seeing Heero Yuy.
"Heero." I purr, under my breath. Sometimes I do crazy things like that. And sometimes I imagine that I'm seeing things. Like ex-Gundam pilots. Like dark blue eyes narrowing.
The shuttle hums with artificially circulating air, but I can feel my lungs quicken to speed on the pace. Is this Heero? He's across the aisle and one row forward. I watch his fist tighten on the arm rest. His chin is set. Solid. His eyes, as I can see, are setting into sleep.
Perhaps my voice merely haunts him like the pale face of the young pilot haunts me. But I know I'm not worthy to haunt anyone anymore.
*Don't mention the War*
The attendants hand me the luggage I plan to live with for a while. On this colony. Which ever one they've deposited me on. L4. I've wrapped my hair back and I'm sporting the largest pair of sunglasses that I could find. At best I'm attracting attention to myself, and someone might think that I'm a retired movie star past her teenaged prime. I watch my pale fingers heft the handle of the luggage. The lines of age are crossing those fingers when I pause to look at them long enough.
That's why I left earth. I was aging too quickly there and I still hadn't found my redemption.
"Let me take that for you."
The voice is low and rough. I recognize it, but, not as I somewhat expected to hear it again-perhaps at the other end of some weapon-I surrender the satchel.
"Is this where I say 'thank you' sweetly and offer to make you king?" I chuckle, "You are so timely with your aid."
Heero does not respond beyond the muttered "Hn" that I recognize as having monopolized his characteristic speech.
"I'm site seeing. Not much else to do, now that you boys are no longer going to continue trying to kill each other." I try to make conversation as he escorts me to the street side where a cab might take me wherever I might be going. "What are you doing Mr. Yuy? Packing feather light, I notice."
Eyeing him up and down I notice that he has no luggage. He was simply dressed in a white shirt and jeans. Inappropriate for an ambassador from Relena's court. I wonder if he had managed to escape her. She did have a way of making one age prematurely if one was bought into her philosophy. A lifestyle choice that demanded complete devotion along with the absoluteness of the peace.
"I'm visiting Quatre."
His simple reply nudged the blade further into my heart, where it had remained for a number of years untended.
*So don't question where we stand*
"Where are you going, Dorothy?" He asks with more concern in the formality of the question than in the bass of his voice. He's taller, and the dark hair falls in a wilder pattern over his Japanese features. I wonder how I was able to recognize this uncaged soldier who had changed so much from the angry boy. We recognized each other, I imagined, as I pull back the strands of pale hair that fell from my disguise.
"oh." I say in the small voice that sometimes slipped out into the open. I had no place to go, really. And I was suddenly loathed to leave the curiosity from my history that manifested to hold my luggage.
"Do you have reservations?" Heero meets my off guard moment with a small challenge. "Or are you coming with me?"
"How delightfully convenient we might be going the same way!" He almost glares at me, but I have regained my easy smile that hinted to a confident interior. Why not find Quatre now? Why not see if he really speared my heart, or if I should become a stronger person without it? Alone and unburdened once more. Free.
*Or where we fall*
"It's so beautiful." I clasp my hands together in barely concealed, nonetheless exaggerated, enthusiasm. The cab rolls past the gate and around the circle drive to the front door of the country estate. Imagine that, country in a colony. Only Quatre could pull it off.
And I hesitate to believe that I know anything about this dangerous adversary. I might dream, but the last time I had faced Quatre Raberba Winner-I was the one who had impaled him with the rapier.
The gate was unattended. There were no guard dogs. And when Heero used the knocker, it was the master of the house who answered the door.
He was tall, but every aspect of his height radiated gentleness. Friendliness. Cheer. Love. "Who is this?" The voice coming from those lips was eager in the genuine fashion that I cannot even imitate.
"Doesn't your 'space spirit' tell you things like that?" Heero quips with a dark tone. But it only served to make Quatre's eyes shimmer with soft affection for the speaker.
I felt a small snarl growing in the farthest corner of my guts. I hated how unbelievably real this boy made friendship look. I wanted to remind him with the distaste of bitter animosity.
"Dorothy. Dorothy from Libra. Dorothy from the Sank Kingdom. Loves War. Loves Zechs. Loved Treize." The small voice threatens to interrupt my raging introduction. Treize. He was dead. Still dead.
"Dorothy?" Quatre tilts his head remembering. "Where have you been?"
*North, South, East where's best?*
The mansion is much too large for just Quatre, but he only has one helper, Anna, who cooks his meals. He gives us the tour after settling us into our rooms, which were effectively small apartments. Lightly he reflects on how he cannot completely rely on himself. "I need someone to feed me, alas." He shrugs as if he's said something humorous. I feel something akin to jealousy. I wonder if I murdered him would Anna notice.
"And who cleans all of this, dear Quatre?" I bat my eyes at him and feel some satisfaction when his cheeks were touched with a pink blush. While I aim for embarrassment, I hardly strike farther than honest humility in the poetic soul.
"I've hired a woman from town. She's managing a household of five children by herself. Her husband was a soldier for White Fang. He enlisted with enough time to sacrifice his life in the last battle." Quatre avoids our eyes.
I might have figured as much. More Winner good-will. I quicken my pace with an annoyed click of my heels on the polished wooden floor. Somewhere, I would find a chink in Quatre's perfection.
*If I head left*
*It turns out directionless*
I took a few day trips into the cities. The entire colony was a city, except for the small stretch that held the countryside surrounding Quatre's estate. Sometimes Quatre came with, other times Heero. And I'm not sure why I stayed with them. In a passing fancy, I liked having someone to talk to. Someone who recognized some inkling of the influential power that I used to be. How I could turn the ear of the governing men.
Other times I enjoyed having someone to needle with the sassy remark that might come to mind. Too many years, I had wasted that sarcasm on strangers.
And when I went alone. I sipped my coffee wondering how the sun reflected off of Quatre's halo similar to Milliard's sunset locks. Or how Heero, like Treize, could command an army with one look. But, the phantasms from my history are taken from me. And I'm left with two of the truest hearts in space. Or so the waitress tells me.
"Quatre Winner?" she settles or more likely swoons opposite from me in the booth. I'd only wanted a simple, frank answer and she seems willing to spend her break daydreaming about the young aristocrat. "He's so gentle."
"Gee," I whisper harshly, "That's manly."
The waitress knits her brows against the accusation. "He *is* manly. He's a gentleman." And the half drugged pleasure brought by that thought smoothes out her features once more. "He rebuilt this colony, you know. And while he did settle here, he's letting his inheritance trickle across space to heal other colonies as well."
~Well.~ I think to myself. ~I've picked the most generous person in space to hate. Perhaps I can at least glean some profit from this.~ But my playful hunting was losing it's entertainment momentum. Quatre was everything good that he seemed to be.
And while I might have dwindled into a considerably less evil person than I was during the war. Truth be known, I was dull and useless.
*And needle point aside*
"Do you remember what I did to you?" I ask after dinner. Heero had left to meet someone. Perhaps another pilot from the war. It seemed rather exciting for both of them although I had missed the announcement with the daytrip of probing into Quatre's legacy.
"Which time?" He had settled into the library and was thumbing through a book that he was on a nearby table top.
Points for me. "So you do remember?"
"That won't jeopardize my hospitality toward you, Dorothy." Quatre didn't look up. "You are welcome here as much as any other survivor from that war."
"I wanted to kill you."
The pace of the turned pages falters a moment before continuing onward. "Now that the war is over, you're going to have to find something better to do with that aggression, Dorothy. What have you been doing all these years?"
He looks at me now. I'm standing a little ways off. Standing, but not uncomfortable because I am the one upright to challenge him. His eyes are eternally earnest and shadowed over with the longer length he has kept his hair trimmed at.
I side-step the question. Again. "Didn't that other boy have longer hair?"
"With the braid? Duo?" Quatre's face visibly brightens. "Duo." He repeats as memories reconnected with the utterance.
"No." I redirect him back toward the darkness I feel at that moment. "The other boy. The one who took you from Libra? The one who kept me from killing you? And I would have. Remember, or have you forgotten? I was killing you."
"Why are you saying these things?" Quatre asks, puzzled at my leaps in thought.
"Is he the one that's coming?" I ask fevered with my frustration. And how he sits so stilly and how his eyes are so . . . earnest. "React to me!" I stomp my foot and some mystery holds me back from tearing at his angelic features.
"Where have you been these past years, Dorothy?"
"Don't say my name!" I scream. His voice echoes about the caverns of my memories chasing me back to my childhood where another blond boy teases me. "Where have you been hiding, Dorothy? What did you hear?"
Without a sword to defend myself, I escape the sound of his voice the only way I knew how. I run.
*I always find*
They would play at war. And I would follow. Not that I imagined they would ever let me accompany them. But I could learn, and the role I played best was the one in the shadows. Just a step behind and with all of my senses alert to the attack or discovery.
So when those childhood heroes took their war to global levels in adulthood, I followed them in the shadows of Romafeller. Older men were amused by my strategy. I was known as a good luck charm for them to take to meetings. And then they started to actually heed what advice I could give them.
And then I had followed Milliard to space. And he had acknowledged me. He had given me command with the Zero System as my tool. With that power, I knew why I had waited, lingered in the shadows. War made me beautifully whole and took me out of the shadows. And when the sunlight of the battlefield touched my vision, it took the shape of Quatre's face. He was there waiting for me.
*Embroidery leaves me blind*
That's how it seems. Quatre tore me from the opportunity. He left the chasm called my heart, called my soul. And this eager look of his is all that he offers to patch those wounds.
But I remember that I wounded him. I was the one who pierced real flesh. And with that, I could claim some part of breaking his goodness. He must bear the scar of those moments. He must have felt the fear of that steel? And he must have some shadow that I reminded him of.
And as quickly as I fell into anger, I bottled it up for a special battle. Besides hiding, my other great talent is ignoring. And my elegant Dorothy came down the stairs with the sound of the knock. I might have been the lady of the house.
"D-dorothy?" Quatre seems somewhat surprised to see me reaching out to answer the door as he was doing the same. "I thought . . . ?"
"Thought what, gentle heart?" I peer down my graceful nose at him. Cooly I settle my hand over his, "I guess we might answer the door together." I feel out for anything uncomfortable in his spirit, but nothing appeared yet.
I still believe that I must cause him to shudder with memories of my violence as he fills me with dread of his unwarranted kindness. Therefore, my goal is to be as unsettling as possible.
No one moves however, and the knocker taps again in question. And Quatre opens the door. And I am immediately face to face with the pilot who had taken Quatre before I could defeat my enemy.
"This is who . . ." The absence of emotion on his face is filled with amusement? One eyebrow lifts to accentuate the question.
"Trowa!" Quatre grins and envelopes the lean man in an eager embrace. The eagerness bore no limit.
And the amusement of the other's face shifts into pleasure. "It's good to see you again as well, Quatre."
"How? How have you been?" Quatre's enthusiasm bubbles over his language. I'd tried to measure out some reaction from the golden-haired man with no success. And for this all Trowa has to do was arrive. "Are you? Are you well?" He stammers again. "Come in!"
Heero had returned as well. I was somewhat out numbered, and the fingers of doubt pressed against my skull. Why was I here? Why had I come? Why was I uncertain?
"Still here?" Heero asks as he stepped past me into the sunlit foyer.
"What do you expect?" Was my aloof reply, but I wonder at his answer.
"Find your peace and leave." Heero threatens over his shoulder following where Quatre enthusiastically pulled the Heavyarms pilot. "Or I will kill . . . I will kick you out."
I wince inwardly, but smeared contempt on my features. I could play these games, and all the better when they accommodated me. "Softening, little Prince?"
But I was left alone. Deciding, I leisurely followed them on another of Quatre's tours of the grounds.
*Cos I'm too weary to rest*
Trowa's addition to the unusual gathering by one dramatically shifted the atmosphere of the mansion. Heero had amused himself, coming and going as he please at all times. I had pretty much done the same, besides badgering Quatre and the townspeople in an attempt to unravel the aristocrat's mental disposition toward gentleness. Now, I could not find time to ask the questions because Quatre's attentions were on making Trowa happy.
He was that sort of host. Welcoming our comfort, allowing Heero to wander, me to explode, and Trowa to accompany. I heard music from the library and caught a glimpse of the narrow fingers curled around the neck of a violin. The duet was undoubtedly met in measure by the clown's own instrument.
The circus was where Trowa admitted to staying. He traveled from colony to colony with a smaller troop that intended to cheer the survivors. We had all grown far into our twenties, and these soldiers still felt responsible to measuring the well- being of the people in space.
*Since I noticed*
With Trowa's simple addition, I noticed a general warming towards me. Somehow, Quatre became a ~nicer~ person. Not only did he accept my outburst, he was willing to forgive my ignorance of it. And over it all, he extended an invitation to his small party. Quatre was reuniting the war veterans. That was why Heero was here. That was why Trowa had come.
That was why Heero thought I had come to L4.
But the invitation was handed to me from Quatre in person. Three days after my tantrum in the library.
"I don't know why you came, Dorothy." He starts and then smiles with a content confusion. "But, it seems appropriate. And I wanted to make your invitation official. So, you can come downstairs. During the party." His formality trails off.
During his little speech, I've stepped closer. And, as he had tolerated me before, he declines from stepping away. My breath must be a heavy intrusion over his words. I held his eyes with mine. And this is a battle that I will not lose.
"D-dorothy?" Quatre questions.
And I easily spin back into my room, content with the small ground I had gained. I knew I could make him stammer. And I could catch him off guard. I could make him uncomfortable, given a little more time.
"I'll come downstairs then, Quatre dear." I call over my shoulder as I shut the door to my inner bedroom.
I catch a glance of myself in the mirror. Stepping closer, I reassure myself that those eyes I saw were the ones that overwhelmed Quatre. I could still move someone. Life would be less dull.
*Coming second best is close to ideal*
I hear the party first. I'm standing in front of the mirror smoothing the folds on my gown. I had traveled into the city to find something spectacular. Something not black. I've been wearing too much black lately. Tonight, I was going to corrupt Quatre in front of everyone. Tonight, I would ease the boredom of defeat.
*What fools boredom breeds*
But getting to Quatre was harder than I had imagined. Physically.
Several of his sisters monopolized his time at first as they were the first guests to arrive. In fact, they came several hours early to help Quatre and Anna arrange everything. Trowa had offered to help and was shooed into a chair to watch instead. I hadn't offered. I wasn't shooed. Effectively, I was being ignored. Almost as if Quatre had asked them to give me peace if not truce.
I did not welcome this lightly. When the decoration was done, guests arrived. And Quatre stood at the door to greet them all. Greetings took no less time that ten minutes and most times longer. I shift to another shadow, still watching.
The Chinese pilot came in during a lull of the arrivals. He was comfortably dressed in slacks and a shirt that might not have been silk but looked very much like it. They speak at length in quiet voices, before Quatre shrugs and gently slaps Wufei with an affectionate direction towards the chair where Trowa was still occupying himself quietly.
Nearer this time, I was still effectively covered when Relena made her royal appearance. I obscured over any fascination I might have felt for her. Her life was more overcome than my own. Relena had responsibilities. Relena was held by responsibility. She was more captive than I was.
She was also closer to Quatre.
Relena had yet to let the blond angel from her hello embrace. She was feathering his cheek with a kiss. Her gloved hands squeezed his shoulders. Now she is looking onward into the party. I see her mouth the word, "Heero."
*So much to do*
When Relena leaves to claim another Gundam pilot, I step out next to mine. Hooking my hand under his arm and leaning close.
"Quatre, so elegantly you greet your guests." I finger his sleeve and glance at him with my best coy gaze from under darkened lashes.
"Dorothy." He is unchanged. He must have prepared himself for anything on my part after I challenged his invitation. He was challenging my invitations.
I purr with the most genuine lust I can muster, "And you don't ask for anything in return do you, beloved Quatre? You get by on pure goodness. Nothing to rely on. You've got it all."
"Enjoying yourself?" Quatre takes a deep breath and, once again eager, glances at the doorway. No one comes in.
He's ignoring me. I might as well not be there.
Saucily, I snuggle my hip around him. "I don't deserve to be here." I whisper close to his ear. "But you invited me. You've asked for me to come. Did you know what you were asking for?"
He looks at me, and judging from his narrowing eyes, he hadn't expected to find my lips so close. "Mingle?" He suggests. His voice was low, but never tipping to meanness. "I'm sure you can find someone else to talk to."
*So many goldfish to feed*
And I did. Mingle in a sort of drifting meander. My body tossed to and fro from conversation to dull conversation. Participating in none. "Do you have children? Mine are five." "Still working with them?" "Haven't seen you in a few decades, feels like."
"Who are you again?" Someone asks me. But I excuse myself, touching my head as a signal of distress. I decide that I hate parties where I'm not the principal interest.
*And paracetamol*
*I take them all*
I avoid Relena. I avoid Noin.
I see her nestled next to Milliard. Who I also avoid. For some reason, the heroic image of Zechs that I treasured in my childhood is terrifyingly variant from the daunting figure who laces his fingers with the dark haired woman.
"Dorothy?" I hear the voice and my stomach tightens letting the evening gown fit even closer to my curves. Turning slowly, I hope this person doesn't draw unwanted attention toward me.
His braid captures my attention just before I step back from the dark suited figure. His jeans are black, his jacket is black, the shirt is black.
"I'm Shinigami!" He chortles. And leans toward me with his hands placed on his hips. "You're Dorothy? Much smaller and less scarier than I imagined. Good thing that you didn't finish off Quatre or I would have hunted you down."
I sneer. "Shinigami? You don't know what you're talking about."
He steps closer to me. His cocky face grinning stupidly. "Playful with death, eh? Wanna dance?"
"No."
He pulls my hand rather ungentlemanly. And he's forceful. People are noticing me now. He spins me around and then snatches me close to him. I'm torn between matching his challenge and biting his face.
When I glare into his eyes, I'm infatuated with them. He's toying with me, no more. I step into his aggressive movements.
"Well, hello there Shinigami." I purr, and taking advantage of our momentum spin him around me. This dance is led by two people.
"Ha." He laughs as the braid spins out. His brown trophy is almost as long as my own.
"What ever are you doing here?" I smile at him with an unfriendly twist to my lip. I maneuver the direction again nearly colliding with another couple. We are moving much too quickly for meter of the string quartet.
"I was invited." He pulls me back into his pattern of footsteps. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh," I toss my head back. "Likewise, I suppose. Causing trouble."
"Figured out who I am yet?" He brushes me past the open window and the chill of the evening air spins against my naked back. Then as we rush past the fireplace his words burn, "I am a Gundam pilot."
While my body accepts the shock, I quickly quip, "Darling, Gundams were so yesterday. We're all here because the war is over."
Shinigami's eyes blaze with warning, "Then leave the war behind when you come to this party. Don't touch Quatre. Leave."
*They line my stomach wall* *With customary thirst*
More challenges. First Heero's. Then Trowa's subtle distraction. Now this other Gundam pilot. I was fit to meet them. But why was I here? For this?
I step free from his arms. The dance is over, but the music continues and the others still move in time. "I was invited." I state, simply. And step away.
Our wild movements attracted attention I wasn't welcoming. Relena met me first. She says my name while watching me with eyes that almost equal Quatre's in eagerness.
"You haven't forgiven me." I hiss. "Don't pretend that you have."
She reaches out for me. But by this time, Milliard has noticed his sister's conversation with me. Fortunately, he disguises his venom less well. Noin barely holds him back.
I stop listening to their words and take a cool back seat. Observation. His pale blond hair shaking with emotion. His eyes like the ocean, an unbridled offense of nature. Why couldn't I make Quatre look like that? Why didn't Quatre show anything but eagerness?
*I search a water glass*
*But gin hits first*
"I know that you can hear me." Milliard repeats. "Why are you here?"
My ears start to listen again. Unfeeling though. This man had rejected me before, and I had clung to his cloak tails too many times before. Never again. I was tougher now.
"She has as much right to be here." Quatre steps in, but his diplomatic back was to Milliard. Quatre's concern was directed toward me. His tone is far from offensive, and Milliard nods suddenly willing to move with Noin's arms now. Relena seems untroubled by the event of my presence.
Quatre scoops me away from the watching crowd. The music had never stopped. The dancers were still dancing. I hadn't ever caused enough stir to stop the festivities.
*Oh don't believe the hype*
*Expectancy will always spoil a party*
We stop in the library. I step in further and the heels on my shoes sink deeper into the thick carpet.
"Why don't you sit, Dorothy?" He asks.
I take his suggestion. I slip my feet out of the shoes that are almost hopelessly tangled in the floor. He hands me a glass.
"Is it alcoholic?" I mutter taking it anyway.
"Sure," he waits until he knows the drink is secure in my hand. I can see the age in my fingers. The slightest tremble. "We're old enough."
"Yeah." Breathes my little voice. The vulnerable one that is tired of quick-witted arguments.
I sink deeper into the chair, uncaring about the folds in my dress. The same color as the wine that warms my throat. Warms my skin better than the thread bare gown. Warms my skin faster than another human had ever been able. Had ever tried.
"Why are you having this party?" I ask, avoiding the obvious dilemmas and initiating the conversation that I know Quatre is looking for. "Why gather back these people who were blood covered warriors? Why remind them of their sins?"
He takes the other chair. The perfect match for my own and he sinks into it as well. I hear the stress whispered in a sigh.
"It is tiresome." Quatre admits staring into the fireplace.
Then nothing. A while longer I stare into the flames, tasting the fine drink that makes my restrictive clothing feel cozy.
"But I need them."
I'm startled. "What?" I blink at him. He's resting his cheek heavily against one supportive arm. Staring into the flames that touch his face with a warm golden glow.
"I need to remember why I was fighting. I need to remember that they are good. That I am good."
"Ha!" I laugh harshly, feeling the most amused I have in months. "You are good, Quatre. Quite infallibly good."
More quiet.
*It's tourniquet by crochet*
And when I realized that I had dozed off, I was awake again. Still in the chair. He hadn't touched me. But Quatre was gone. Perhaps he had gone back to the party. Perhaps the party was still going on. Perhaps the party was over. Perhaps Relena had lassoed Heero onto the dance floor once more. Or perhaps she had left unsettled and unsatisfied after our encounter.
But no one had come in to wake me. I was alone, but my legs were comfortably curled around me. My body was warm from the lasting fire. And solitude seemed better than the alternatives.
Sometimes I can hardly fathom my own behavior. But when I did work up the alertness to leave my solace, I went back to my apartment unhindered to begin unpacking my belongings.
They had sat folded and temporary for the duration of my visit so far. Now I let them breath on the hangers and ironed others to fill the cedar chest. I put my shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe. I put my vanities on the mirror table.
And once shielded by my night shift, I embraced the sheets of my own bed.
*It's tourniquet by crochet*
*My waters break*
He didn't ask why I stayed after the guests were long gone. He didn't ask why I stayed after Heero left to wander the stars. And Trowa sent me an amused look as he drove off on his motorcycle. Back to the circus.
I sit at the breakfast table and slowly eat the eggs that Anna sets before me with a curious glance. She never spoke to me. But I am sure that her serving habits are getting gentler, softening.
It was a big house. I could get lost in my own wing of it, and Quatre had a business to attend to as he single-handedly tried to save the world with kindness. I seldom saw him at length.
One late evening when I couldn't sleep, I had slipped into the library to taste the wine from which he had poured for me. The fingers of tender warmth touching me deep inside, and letting the true smiles come easier to my chiseled ice features. I was conservative with the measure, but the bottle leaked lower and lower. I knew that when it was empty, my welcome to stay there would be over.
Not that I knew where I could go. Or who else in this world could feel patience for the demons I carried around like a second skin. And when I was closer to the source, the pain in my heart was less.
I hear him come in today. I settle into my apartment, unwilling to check the library bottle and knowing what I would find. It was empty. If I was to be leaving the sunshine for the shadows, I might as well surrender an apology and leave as broken as I had come.
I stop by his room and the kitchen, thinking he might catch up on rest or meals first. But Anna gestures with her head to the far wall, and I know he is in the library.
Easing the wooded door open, I slowly peek into the room that granted me the most sympathy. The fire, the carpet, the chair, the bottle and Quatre.
"Dorothy?" He calls out, in what might have been surprise. I catch his glance toward the bottle. "I thought. . ."
"Hmm." I reflect, "Must have liked the stuff better than I though. Might have needed it more than I knew."
"We all like happy endings." Quatre smiles in what he hopes is humor, but his eyes are not their normal eager shine.
"I've been here too long." I chuckle, brushing my hair back nervously, "I mean,
Anna cooks and Carmen cleans. But I mostly just bum your booze. . ."
"That's okay." Quatre seems miles away from me although his words are encouraging. I don't step nearer and he's still on the other side of the library. It's easier. It reminds me less of how it felt to be close to him.
*Don't drive for pity's sake*
*Cos I'm to weary to rest*
"Dammit, Quatre!" I shout quietly. The soft voice dictating my language with genuine emotion. "I just came to hurt you. Admit it. And whatever I did to you." I laugh just as softly, "Whatever I though I could do to you. It was dirty. Nothing good. Nothing that I can offer you or leave with you."
"I never though . . ." he tries to lift my spirit from the distance of the room.
I laugh harshly once more. "I was ridiculous. I didn't even unnerve you. I'm pathetic evil."
"Evil?" He is still trying to interrupt my confessions.
"See?" I'm laughing bitterly again. "You didn't even notice." My eyes mist over the carpet. I remember that I don't cry. No one makes me cry. I never cry when the boys tell me to leave. I never cry when the boys leave me. Never for Treize, never for Milliard, never for grandfather.
"You're crying." Quatre somehow has closed the distance while I wasn't looking. "I've made you cry again."
I can hear him breathing so close. But he doesn't touch me. I feel water sliding over my face. Salty tears slip past my nose. Refreshing sea waters glide over my spirit. Touching me with whatever in water can cleanse the soul. Warmed by the ocean's waves. Warmed by something other than alcohol.
And I neglect the new sensation to realize that Quatre has caught me by surprise again. He's warming me. His face against my hair. His words close to my ear.
"You can go."
I tense.
"Or you can stay."
I hope.
"I can always find another bottle."
*Since I noticed*
*Coming second best*
*Is close to idea*
the end
(Comments? Criticism? Did you mind reading *another* Dorothy fic? Why do I always seem to write Dorothy in first person? Like I said, I'm in this phase. She just makes me smile--kind of a scary smile--but still. You can find me at stormy812@hotmail.com)
Watch "Chungking Express"-cool movie. -free tip!
by Jillian Storm
(I was having a small case of writer's block when I thought I'd write something crazy to get my creative energy flowing again. Dorothy Catalonia and other GW characters do not belong to me. Catatonia is this super cool Indy Pop band from across the pond. Paracetamol is like asprin, in case you were wondering. This takes place years after Endless Waltz-I've actually not yet seen Dorothy's part translated into English-and I don't know Japanese-so if this resonates as "wrong" with you-just pretend it's alternate reality, okay?)
[edit 8-28-02: old formatting was making me seasick so I tried to make it a better to read. This is one of my oldest GW fanfics and I'm sort of fond of it. Thought I'd get it so it'll be easier on the eyes.]
*A dead loss, no songs*
*No fun, just glum*
I had enough money from my grandfather to live comfortably. And as much as I thought my name was well-known, it wasn't. I didn't even have to disguise myself. Since the Gundams had restored peace to earth and space, no one remembered the name Dorothy Catalonia. No one cared. I wasn't a threat and I was even less recognizable as a friend to them. But no one ever sought me out. I was alone.
And aloneness drained my energy. I distanced myself from the members of Romafeller who had cooperated with Relena and earned official pardons. Relena.
I remembered her patience and the blue eyes brimmed with frustration. I had loved to antagonize her. Watch her try to persuade me over to her Absolute Pacifism. Watched her try to persuade the Gundam Pilot over to her Absolute Pacifism. And where I had resisted, he had supplied the means for her mission.
Heero Yuy. I remember him. And I remember the other one who came to the Sank Kingdom at Relena's pleas.
*Lying next to someone*
I had dreams about the blond one. Duels with him in a wrecked space station that creaked with every step and swayed with every stoke of the blade. Only, in these dreams-he pierces *my* heart. And I'm the one left bleeding, floating in the cold atmosphere of icy death's grip.
I'm on a shuttle to some space colony. I'm not sure which in my hazy half- awake state. I had been dreaming again. And the destination did not concern me. My goal was anywhere but earth. The sunrises held glaring accusations of the evils I had yet to confess, and I didn't feel like relinquishing them just yet.
Without them, what was left of me?
I chuckle to myself. In the blur of transitioning to wakefulness, I'm almost sure that I'm seeing Heero Yuy.
"Heero." I purr, under my breath. Sometimes I do crazy things like that. And sometimes I imagine that I'm seeing things. Like ex-Gundam pilots. Like dark blue eyes narrowing.
The shuttle hums with artificially circulating air, but I can feel my lungs quicken to speed on the pace. Is this Heero? He's across the aisle and one row forward. I watch his fist tighten on the arm rest. His chin is set. Solid. His eyes, as I can see, are setting into sleep.
Perhaps my voice merely haunts him like the pale face of the young pilot haunts me. But I know I'm not worthy to haunt anyone anymore.
*Don't mention the War*
The attendants hand me the luggage I plan to live with for a while. On this colony. Which ever one they've deposited me on. L4. I've wrapped my hair back and I'm sporting the largest pair of sunglasses that I could find. At best I'm attracting attention to myself, and someone might think that I'm a retired movie star past her teenaged prime. I watch my pale fingers heft the handle of the luggage. The lines of age are crossing those fingers when I pause to look at them long enough.
That's why I left earth. I was aging too quickly there and I still hadn't found my redemption.
"Let me take that for you."
The voice is low and rough. I recognize it, but, not as I somewhat expected to hear it again-perhaps at the other end of some weapon-I surrender the satchel.
"Is this where I say 'thank you' sweetly and offer to make you king?" I chuckle, "You are so timely with your aid."
Heero does not respond beyond the muttered "Hn" that I recognize as having monopolized his characteristic speech.
"I'm site seeing. Not much else to do, now that you boys are no longer going to continue trying to kill each other." I try to make conversation as he escorts me to the street side where a cab might take me wherever I might be going. "What are you doing Mr. Yuy? Packing feather light, I notice."
Eyeing him up and down I notice that he has no luggage. He was simply dressed in a white shirt and jeans. Inappropriate for an ambassador from Relena's court. I wonder if he had managed to escape her. She did have a way of making one age prematurely if one was bought into her philosophy. A lifestyle choice that demanded complete devotion along with the absoluteness of the peace.
"I'm visiting Quatre."
His simple reply nudged the blade further into my heart, where it had remained for a number of years untended.
*So don't question where we stand*
"Where are you going, Dorothy?" He asks with more concern in the formality of the question than in the bass of his voice. He's taller, and the dark hair falls in a wilder pattern over his Japanese features. I wonder how I was able to recognize this uncaged soldier who had changed so much from the angry boy. We recognized each other, I imagined, as I pull back the strands of pale hair that fell from my disguise.
"oh." I say in the small voice that sometimes slipped out into the open. I had no place to go, really. And I was suddenly loathed to leave the curiosity from my history that manifested to hold my luggage.
"Do you have reservations?" Heero meets my off guard moment with a small challenge. "Or are you coming with me?"
"How delightfully convenient we might be going the same way!" He almost glares at me, but I have regained my easy smile that hinted to a confident interior. Why not find Quatre now? Why not see if he really speared my heart, or if I should become a stronger person without it? Alone and unburdened once more. Free.
*Or where we fall*
"It's so beautiful." I clasp my hands together in barely concealed, nonetheless exaggerated, enthusiasm. The cab rolls past the gate and around the circle drive to the front door of the country estate. Imagine that, country in a colony. Only Quatre could pull it off.
And I hesitate to believe that I know anything about this dangerous adversary. I might dream, but the last time I had faced Quatre Raberba Winner-I was the one who had impaled him with the rapier.
The gate was unattended. There were no guard dogs. And when Heero used the knocker, it was the master of the house who answered the door.
He was tall, but every aspect of his height radiated gentleness. Friendliness. Cheer. Love. "Who is this?" The voice coming from those lips was eager in the genuine fashion that I cannot even imitate.
"Doesn't your 'space spirit' tell you things like that?" Heero quips with a dark tone. But it only served to make Quatre's eyes shimmer with soft affection for the speaker.
I felt a small snarl growing in the farthest corner of my guts. I hated how unbelievably real this boy made friendship look. I wanted to remind him with the distaste of bitter animosity.
"Dorothy. Dorothy from Libra. Dorothy from the Sank Kingdom. Loves War. Loves Zechs. Loved Treize." The small voice threatens to interrupt my raging introduction. Treize. He was dead. Still dead.
"Dorothy?" Quatre tilts his head remembering. "Where have you been?"
*North, South, East where's best?*
The mansion is much too large for just Quatre, but he only has one helper, Anna, who cooks his meals. He gives us the tour after settling us into our rooms, which were effectively small apartments. Lightly he reflects on how he cannot completely rely on himself. "I need someone to feed me, alas." He shrugs as if he's said something humorous. I feel something akin to jealousy. I wonder if I murdered him would Anna notice.
"And who cleans all of this, dear Quatre?" I bat my eyes at him and feel some satisfaction when his cheeks were touched with a pink blush. While I aim for embarrassment, I hardly strike farther than honest humility in the poetic soul.
"I've hired a woman from town. She's managing a household of five children by herself. Her husband was a soldier for White Fang. He enlisted with enough time to sacrifice his life in the last battle." Quatre avoids our eyes.
I might have figured as much. More Winner good-will. I quicken my pace with an annoyed click of my heels on the polished wooden floor. Somewhere, I would find a chink in Quatre's perfection.
*If I head left*
*It turns out directionless*
I took a few day trips into the cities. The entire colony was a city, except for the small stretch that held the countryside surrounding Quatre's estate. Sometimes Quatre came with, other times Heero. And I'm not sure why I stayed with them. In a passing fancy, I liked having someone to talk to. Someone who recognized some inkling of the influential power that I used to be. How I could turn the ear of the governing men.
Other times I enjoyed having someone to needle with the sassy remark that might come to mind. Too many years, I had wasted that sarcasm on strangers.
And when I went alone. I sipped my coffee wondering how the sun reflected off of Quatre's halo similar to Milliard's sunset locks. Or how Heero, like Treize, could command an army with one look. But, the phantasms from my history are taken from me. And I'm left with two of the truest hearts in space. Or so the waitress tells me.
"Quatre Winner?" she settles or more likely swoons opposite from me in the booth. I'd only wanted a simple, frank answer and she seems willing to spend her break daydreaming about the young aristocrat. "He's so gentle."
"Gee," I whisper harshly, "That's manly."
The waitress knits her brows against the accusation. "He *is* manly. He's a gentleman." And the half drugged pleasure brought by that thought smoothes out her features once more. "He rebuilt this colony, you know. And while he did settle here, he's letting his inheritance trickle across space to heal other colonies as well."
~Well.~ I think to myself. ~I've picked the most generous person in space to hate. Perhaps I can at least glean some profit from this.~ But my playful hunting was losing it's entertainment momentum. Quatre was everything good that he seemed to be.
And while I might have dwindled into a considerably less evil person than I was during the war. Truth be known, I was dull and useless.
*And needle point aside*
"Do you remember what I did to you?" I ask after dinner. Heero had left to meet someone. Perhaps another pilot from the war. It seemed rather exciting for both of them although I had missed the announcement with the daytrip of probing into Quatre's legacy.
"Which time?" He had settled into the library and was thumbing through a book that he was on a nearby table top.
Points for me. "So you do remember?"
"That won't jeopardize my hospitality toward you, Dorothy." Quatre didn't look up. "You are welcome here as much as any other survivor from that war."
"I wanted to kill you."
The pace of the turned pages falters a moment before continuing onward. "Now that the war is over, you're going to have to find something better to do with that aggression, Dorothy. What have you been doing all these years?"
He looks at me now. I'm standing a little ways off. Standing, but not uncomfortable because I am the one upright to challenge him. His eyes are eternally earnest and shadowed over with the longer length he has kept his hair trimmed at.
I side-step the question. Again. "Didn't that other boy have longer hair?"
"With the braid? Duo?" Quatre's face visibly brightens. "Duo." He repeats as memories reconnected with the utterance.
"No." I redirect him back toward the darkness I feel at that moment. "The other boy. The one who took you from Libra? The one who kept me from killing you? And I would have. Remember, or have you forgotten? I was killing you."
"Why are you saying these things?" Quatre asks, puzzled at my leaps in thought.
"Is he the one that's coming?" I ask fevered with my frustration. And how he sits so stilly and how his eyes are so . . . earnest. "React to me!" I stomp my foot and some mystery holds me back from tearing at his angelic features.
"Where have you been these past years, Dorothy?"
"Don't say my name!" I scream. His voice echoes about the caverns of my memories chasing me back to my childhood where another blond boy teases me. "Where have you been hiding, Dorothy? What did you hear?"
Without a sword to defend myself, I escape the sound of his voice the only way I knew how. I run.
*I always find*
They would play at war. And I would follow. Not that I imagined they would ever let me accompany them. But I could learn, and the role I played best was the one in the shadows. Just a step behind and with all of my senses alert to the attack or discovery.
So when those childhood heroes took their war to global levels in adulthood, I followed them in the shadows of Romafeller. Older men were amused by my strategy. I was known as a good luck charm for them to take to meetings. And then they started to actually heed what advice I could give them.
And then I had followed Milliard to space. And he had acknowledged me. He had given me command with the Zero System as my tool. With that power, I knew why I had waited, lingered in the shadows. War made me beautifully whole and took me out of the shadows. And when the sunlight of the battlefield touched my vision, it took the shape of Quatre's face. He was there waiting for me.
*Embroidery leaves me blind*
That's how it seems. Quatre tore me from the opportunity. He left the chasm called my heart, called my soul. And this eager look of his is all that he offers to patch those wounds.
But I remember that I wounded him. I was the one who pierced real flesh. And with that, I could claim some part of breaking his goodness. He must bear the scar of those moments. He must have felt the fear of that steel? And he must have some shadow that I reminded him of.
And as quickly as I fell into anger, I bottled it up for a special battle. Besides hiding, my other great talent is ignoring. And my elegant Dorothy came down the stairs with the sound of the knock. I might have been the lady of the house.
"D-dorothy?" Quatre seems somewhat surprised to see me reaching out to answer the door as he was doing the same. "I thought . . . ?"
"Thought what, gentle heart?" I peer down my graceful nose at him. Cooly I settle my hand over his, "I guess we might answer the door together." I feel out for anything uncomfortable in his spirit, but nothing appeared yet.
I still believe that I must cause him to shudder with memories of my violence as he fills me with dread of his unwarranted kindness. Therefore, my goal is to be as unsettling as possible.
No one moves however, and the knocker taps again in question. And Quatre opens the door. And I am immediately face to face with the pilot who had taken Quatre before I could defeat my enemy.
"This is who . . ." The absence of emotion on his face is filled with amusement? One eyebrow lifts to accentuate the question.
"Trowa!" Quatre grins and envelopes the lean man in an eager embrace. The eagerness bore no limit.
And the amusement of the other's face shifts into pleasure. "It's good to see you again as well, Quatre."
"How? How have you been?" Quatre's enthusiasm bubbles over his language. I'd tried to measure out some reaction from the golden-haired man with no success. And for this all Trowa has to do was arrive. "Are you? Are you well?" He stammers again. "Come in!"
Heero had returned as well. I was somewhat out numbered, and the fingers of doubt pressed against my skull. Why was I here? Why had I come? Why was I uncertain?
"Still here?" Heero asks as he stepped past me into the sunlit foyer.
"What do you expect?" Was my aloof reply, but I wonder at his answer.
"Find your peace and leave." Heero threatens over his shoulder following where Quatre enthusiastically pulled the Heavyarms pilot. "Or I will kill . . . I will kick you out."
I wince inwardly, but smeared contempt on my features. I could play these games, and all the better when they accommodated me. "Softening, little Prince?"
But I was left alone. Deciding, I leisurely followed them on another of Quatre's tours of the grounds.
*Cos I'm too weary to rest*
Trowa's addition to the unusual gathering by one dramatically shifted the atmosphere of the mansion. Heero had amused himself, coming and going as he please at all times. I had pretty much done the same, besides badgering Quatre and the townspeople in an attempt to unravel the aristocrat's mental disposition toward gentleness. Now, I could not find time to ask the questions because Quatre's attentions were on making Trowa happy.
He was that sort of host. Welcoming our comfort, allowing Heero to wander, me to explode, and Trowa to accompany. I heard music from the library and caught a glimpse of the narrow fingers curled around the neck of a violin. The duet was undoubtedly met in measure by the clown's own instrument.
The circus was where Trowa admitted to staying. He traveled from colony to colony with a smaller troop that intended to cheer the survivors. We had all grown far into our twenties, and these soldiers still felt responsible to measuring the well- being of the people in space.
*Since I noticed*
With Trowa's simple addition, I noticed a general warming towards me. Somehow, Quatre became a ~nicer~ person. Not only did he accept my outburst, he was willing to forgive my ignorance of it. And over it all, he extended an invitation to his small party. Quatre was reuniting the war veterans. That was why Heero was here. That was why Trowa had come.
That was why Heero thought I had come to L4.
But the invitation was handed to me from Quatre in person. Three days after my tantrum in the library.
"I don't know why you came, Dorothy." He starts and then smiles with a content confusion. "But, it seems appropriate. And I wanted to make your invitation official. So, you can come downstairs. During the party." His formality trails off.
During his little speech, I've stepped closer. And, as he had tolerated me before, he declines from stepping away. My breath must be a heavy intrusion over his words. I held his eyes with mine. And this is a battle that I will not lose.
"D-dorothy?" Quatre questions.
And I easily spin back into my room, content with the small ground I had gained. I knew I could make him stammer. And I could catch him off guard. I could make him uncomfortable, given a little more time.
"I'll come downstairs then, Quatre dear." I call over my shoulder as I shut the door to my inner bedroom.
I catch a glance of myself in the mirror. Stepping closer, I reassure myself that those eyes I saw were the ones that overwhelmed Quatre. I could still move someone. Life would be less dull.
*Coming second best is close to ideal*
I hear the party first. I'm standing in front of the mirror smoothing the folds on my gown. I had traveled into the city to find something spectacular. Something not black. I've been wearing too much black lately. Tonight, I was going to corrupt Quatre in front of everyone. Tonight, I would ease the boredom of defeat.
*What fools boredom breeds*
But getting to Quatre was harder than I had imagined. Physically.
Several of his sisters monopolized his time at first as they were the first guests to arrive. In fact, they came several hours early to help Quatre and Anna arrange everything. Trowa had offered to help and was shooed into a chair to watch instead. I hadn't offered. I wasn't shooed. Effectively, I was being ignored. Almost as if Quatre had asked them to give me peace if not truce.
I did not welcome this lightly. When the decoration was done, guests arrived. And Quatre stood at the door to greet them all. Greetings took no less time that ten minutes and most times longer. I shift to another shadow, still watching.
The Chinese pilot came in during a lull of the arrivals. He was comfortably dressed in slacks and a shirt that might not have been silk but looked very much like it. They speak at length in quiet voices, before Quatre shrugs and gently slaps Wufei with an affectionate direction towards the chair where Trowa was still occupying himself quietly.
Nearer this time, I was still effectively covered when Relena made her royal appearance. I obscured over any fascination I might have felt for her. Her life was more overcome than my own. Relena had responsibilities. Relena was held by responsibility. She was more captive than I was.
She was also closer to Quatre.
Relena had yet to let the blond angel from her hello embrace. She was feathering his cheek with a kiss. Her gloved hands squeezed his shoulders. Now she is looking onward into the party. I see her mouth the word, "Heero."
*So much to do*
When Relena leaves to claim another Gundam pilot, I step out next to mine. Hooking my hand under his arm and leaning close.
"Quatre, so elegantly you greet your guests." I finger his sleeve and glance at him with my best coy gaze from under darkened lashes.
"Dorothy." He is unchanged. He must have prepared himself for anything on my part after I challenged his invitation. He was challenging my invitations.
I purr with the most genuine lust I can muster, "And you don't ask for anything in return do you, beloved Quatre? You get by on pure goodness. Nothing to rely on. You've got it all."
"Enjoying yourself?" Quatre takes a deep breath and, once again eager, glances at the doorway. No one comes in.
He's ignoring me. I might as well not be there.
Saucily, I snuggle my hip around him. "I don't deserve to be here." I whisper close to his ear. "But you invited me. You've asked for me to come. Did you know what you were asking for?"
He looks at me, and judging from his narrowing eyes, he hadn't expected to find my lips so close. "Mingle?" He suggests. His voice was low, but never tipping to meanness. "I'm sure you can find someone else to talk to."
*So many goldfish to feed*
And I did. Mingle in a sort of drifting meander. My body tossed to and fro from conversation to dull conversation. Participating in none. "Do you have children? Mine are five." "Still working with them?" "Haven't seen you in a few decades, feels like."
"Who are you again?" Someone asks me. But I excuse myself, touching my head as a signal of distress. I decide that I hate parties where I'm not the principal interest.
*And paracetamol*
*I take them all*
I avoid Relena. I avoid Noin.
I see her nestled next to Milliard. Who I also avoid. For some reason, the heroic image of Zechs that I treasured in my childhood is terrifyingly variant from the daunting figure who laces his fingers with the dark haired woman.
"Dorothy?" I hear the voice and my stomach tightens letting the evening gown fit even closer to my curves. Turning slowly, I hope this person doesn't draw unwanted attention toward me.
His braid captures my attention just before I step back from the dark suited figure. His jeans are black, his jacket is black, the shirt is black.
"I'm Shinigami!" He chortles. And leans toward me with his hands placed on his hips. "You're Dorothy? Much smaller and less scarier than I imagined. Good thing that you didn't finish off Quatre or I would have hunted you down."
I sneer. "Shinigami? You don't know what you're talking about."
He steps closer to me. His cocky face grinning stupidly. "Playful with death, eh? Wanna dance?"
"No."
He pulls my hand rather ungentlemanly. And he's forceful. People are noticing me now. He spins me around and then snatches me close to him. I'm torn between matching his challenge and biting his face.
When I glare into his eyes, I'm infatuated with them. He's toying with me, no more. I step into his aggressive movements.
"Well, hello there Shinigami." I purr, and taking advantage of our momentum spin him around me. This dance is led by two people.
"Ha." He laughs as the braid spins out. His brown trophy is almost as long as my own.
"What ever are you doing here?" I smile at him with an unfriendly twist to my lip. I maneuver the direction again nearly colliding with another couple. We are moving much too quickly for meter of the string quartet.
"I was invited." He pulls me back into his pattern of footsteps. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh," I toss my head back. "Likewise, I suppose. Causing trouble."
"Figured out who I am yet?" He brushes me past the open window and the chill of the evening air spins against my naked back. Then as we rush past the fireplace his words burn, "I am a Gundam pilot."
While my body accepts the shock, I quickly quip, "Darling, Gundams were so yesterday. We're all here because the war is over."
Shinigami's eyes blaze with warning, "Then leave the war behind when you come to this party. Don't touch Quatre. Leave."
*They line my stomach wall* *With customary thirst*
More challenges. First Heero's. Then Trowa's subtle distraction. Now this other Gundam pilot. I was fit to meet them. But why was I here? For this?
I step free from his arms. The dance is over, but the music continues and the others still move in time. "I was invited." I state, simply. And step away.
Our wild movements attracted attention I wasn't welcoming. Relena met me first. She says my name while watching me with eyes that almost equal Quatre's in eagerness.
"You haven't forgiven me." I hiss. "Don't pretend that you have."
She reaches out for me. But by this time, Milliard has noticed his sister's conversation with me. Fortunately, he disguises his venom less well. Noin barely holds him back.
I stop listening to their words and take a cool back seat. Observation. His pale blond hair shaking with emotion. His eyes like the ocean, an unbridled offense of nature. Why couldn't I make Quatre look like that? Why didn't Quatre show anything but eagerness?
*I search a water glass*
*But gin hits first*
"I know that you can hear me." Milliard repeats. "Why are you here?"
My ears start to listen again. Unfeeling though. This man had rejected me before, and I had clung to his cloak tails too many times before. Never again. I was tougher now.
"She has as much right to be here." Quatre steps in, but his diplomatic back was to Milliard. Quatre's concern was directed toward me. His tone is far from offensive, and Milliard nods suddenly willing to move with Noin's arms now. Relena seems untroubled by the event of my presence.
Quatre scoops me away from the watching crowd. The music had never stopped. The dancers were still dancing. I hadn't ever caused enough stir to stop the festivities.
*Oh don't believe the hype*
*Expectancy will always spoil a party*
We stop in the library. I step in further and the heels on my shoes sink deeper into the thick carpet.
"Why don't you sit, Dorothy?" He asks.
I take his suggestion. I slip my feet out of the shoes that are almost hopelessly tangled in the floor. He hands me a glass.
"Is it alcoholic?" I mutter taking it anyway.
"Sure," he waits until he knows the drink is secure in my hand. I can see the age in my fingers. The slightest tremble. "We're old enough."
"Yeah." Breathes my little voice. The vulnerable one that is tired of quick-witted arguments.
I sink deeper into the chair, uncaring about the folds in my dress. The same color as the wine that warms my throat. Warms my skin better than the thread bare gown. Warms my skin faster than another human had ever been able. Had ever tried.
"Why are you having this party?" I ask, avoiding the obvious dilemmas and initiating the conversation that I know Quatre is looking for. "Why gather back these people who were blood covered warriors? Why remind them of their sins?"
He takes the other chair. The perfect match for my own and he sinks into it as well. I hear the stress whispered in a sigh.
"It is tiresome." Quatre admits staring into the fireplace.
Then nothing. A while longer I stare into the flames, tasting the fine drink that makes my restrictive clothing feel cozy.
"But I need them."
I'm startled. "What?" I blink at him. He's resting his cheek heavily against one supportive arm. Staring into the flames that touch his face with a warm golden glow.
"I need to remember why I was fighting. I need to remember that they are good. That I am good."
"Ha!" I laugh harshly, feeling the most amused I have in months. "You are good, Quatre. Quite infallibly good."
More quiet.
*It's tourniquet by crochet*
And when I realized that I had dozed off, I was awake again. Still in the chair. He hadn't touched me. But Quatre was gone. Perhaps he had gone back to the party. Perhaps the party was still going on. Perhaps the party was over. Perhaps Relena had lassoed Heero onto the dance floor once more. Or perhaps she had left unsettled and unsatisfied after our encounter.
But no one had come in to wake me. I was alone, but my legs were comfortably curled around me. My body was warm from the lasting fire. And solitude seemed better than the alternatives.
Sometimes I can hardly fathom my own behavior. But when I did work up the alertness to leave my solace, I went back to my apartment unhindered to begin unpacking my belongings.
They had sat folded and temporary for the duration of my visit so far. Now I let them breath on the hangers and ironed others to fill the cedar chest. I put my shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe. I put my vanities on the mirror table.
And once shielded by my night shift, I embraced the sheets of my own bed.
*It's tourniquet by crochet*
*My waters break*
He didn't ask why I stayed after the guests were long gone. He didn't ask why I stayed after Heero left to wander the stars. And Trowa sent me an amused look as he drove off on his motorcycle. Back to the circus.
I sit at the breakfast table and slowly eat the eggs that Anna sets before me with a curious glance. She never spoke to me. But I am sure that her serving habits are getting gentler, softening.
It was a big house. I could get lost in my own wing of it, and Quatre had a business to attend to as he single-handedly tried to save the world with kindness. I seldom saw him at length.
One late evening when I couldn't sleep, I had slipped into the library to taste the wine from which he had poured for me. The fingers of tender warmth touching me deep inside, and letting the true smiles come easier to my chiseled ice features. I was conservative with the measure, but the bottle leaked lower and lower. I knew that when it was empty, my welcome to stay there would be over.
Not that I knew where I could go. Or who else in this world could feel patience for the demons I carried around like a second skin. And when I was closer to the source, the pain in my heart was less.
I hear him come in today. I settle into my apartment, unwilling to check the library bottle and knowing what I would find. It was empty. If I was to be leaving the sunshine for the shadows, I might as well surrender an apology and leave as broken as I had come.
I stop by his room and the kitchen, thinking he might catch up on rest or meals first. But Anna gestures with her head to the far wall, and I know he is in the library.
Easing the wooded door open, I slowly peek into the room that granted me the most sympathy. The fire, the carpet, the chair, the bottle and Quatre.
"Dorothy?" He calls out, in what might have been surprise. I catch his glance toward the bottle. "I thought. . ."
"Hmm." I reflect, "Must have liked the stuff better than I though. Might have needed it more than I knew."
"We all like happy endings." Quatre smiles in what he hopes is humor, but his eyes are not their normal eager shine.
"I've been here too long." I chuckle, brushing my hair back nervously, "I mean,
Anna cooks and Carmen cleans. But I mostly just bum your booze. . ."
"That's okay." Quatre seems miles away from me although his words are encouraging. I don't step nearer and he's still on the other side of the library. It's easier. It reminds me less of how it felt to be close to him.
*Don't drive for pity's sake*
*Cos I'm to weary to rest*
"Dammit, Quatre!" I shout quietly. The soft voice dictating my language with genuine emotion. "I just came to hurt you. Admit it. And whatever I did to you." I laugh just as softly, "Whatever I though I could do to you. It was dirty. Nothing good. Nothing that I can offer you or leave with you."
"I never though . . ." he tries to lift my spirit from the distance of the room.
I laugh harshly once more. "I was ridiculous. I didn't even unnerve you. I'm pathetic evil."
"Evil?" He is still trying to interrupt my confessions.
"See?" I'm laughing bitterly again. "You didn't even notice." My eyes mist over the carpet. I remember that I don't cry. No one makes me cry. I never cry when the boys tell me to leave. I never cry when the boys leave me. Never for Treize, never for Milliard, never for grandfather.
"You're crying." Quatre somehow has closed the distance while I wasn't looking. "I've made you cry again."
I can hear him breathing so close. But he doesn't touch me. I feel water sliding over my face. Salty tears slip past my nose. Refreshing sea waters glide over my spirit. Touching me with whatever in water can cleanse the soul. Warmed by the ocean's waves. Warmed by something other than alcohol.
And I neglect the new sensation to realize that Quatre has caught me by surprise again. He's warming me. His face against my hair. His words close to my ear.
"You can go."
I tense.
"Or you can stay."
I hope.
"I can always find another bottle."
*Since I noticed*
*Coming second best*
*Is close to idea*
the end
(Comments? Criticism? Did you mind reading *another* Dorothy fic? Why do I always seem to write Dorothy in first person? Like I said, I'm in this phase. She just makes me smile--kind of a scary smile--but still. You can find me at stormy812@hotmail.com)
Watch "Chungking Express"-cool movie. -free tip!