The Gambler and the Goddess
by Jillian Storm
(Disclaimer: This is pseudo-Alternate Reality. I think that Duo and
Dorothy still had a lot of soul searching to do by the end of the
series. Well, maybe you could argue that Duo didn't. But I think he's
much more interesting if he does have a little angst to juggle. So
while bits of this will sound very familiar, the reconciliation is set
in an alternate universe--no Gundams here. Over the Rhine takes all
the credit for the lyrics.)
***
Jack's Valentine
Over the Rhine
***
*Help me. Spread my table. I've been tryin' but I'm just not able.
There's so much left inside, so very much I've been trying to hide.
Life gets pretty heavy and I wish it was light, but after all I love
the night.*
Gambling brings all sorts to the same small, sometimes green, table and
asks that the participants take a chance. Ruthlessly conquer. Toy
with fate. Play with destiny. Or turn the largest folly with their
sacrificial hope. It's the players that come with an earnest gleam in
their eye that always leave with the smallest purse, if they managed to
salvage any of their hard-worked earnings at all.
The players tonight were such a mix. The dealer came from out of
state. He was a Chinese man with little to say besides announcing the
levels of justice surrounding the play of the game. His slick, black
hair was pulled back from his face in a criss-cross design that
emphasized the sunset glow of his features. "Watch your cards,
American," he hissed.
The player opposite the Chinese man met the icy gaze with mock
innocence.
He shrugged, lifting not only his shoulders but the black, smooth shirt
that he wore. The American wore only black and all black, which made
him a rather interesting figure to watch in the dimmed lights of the
gambling room. Across the table, and through the smoke of several
cigars, the American's clearest feature was his disarming white grin.
A pure expression contrasted with the sinister costume. The American
pulled at the brim of his black hat. He looked like an experienced
mobster settled into a western saloon to ruthlessly collect the
farmer's property.
Tapping his cards, the American answered, "Winning cards." His voice
was playfully low, an octave that he would not normally speak in unless
he was being playfully sinister or playfully romantic. Nothing about
the American seemed less than light-hearted. "Got my eyes full of
winning cards."
"Let me see those." The Chinese man challenged moving more chips to
the center pool. The game didn't really matter. The truest
communication was between the American and the doll leaning against the
bar counter. She had silver-blond hair that curled at the ends--just
about the shoulders.
Moon-beams really. The light of the moon reflecting off the cascade
and reflecting off her silver-blue eyes. Her eyes were on the
American. They had never met before. She was new to the city and the
American had only lived in the neighborhood for a few weeks. They
recognized the distance they shared from the others. Almost as if they
had come together from the same distant haze that they were both trying
to forget.
Where he was black, she was silver. Her gown was a compromising dark
grey, short in fabric but practical for her surroundings. While her
every movement was beckoning, the men in the room were painfully aware
she was a goddess. A goddess intent on only the American.
It was hours before they spoke to each other, although they had been
memorizing the other's voice from the first moments of the evening.
Both the Goddess and the American trickster anticipated their demise
was wrapped in the existence of the other. Fate had played her cards
and they both had arrived to the same city, to the same saloon, on the
same evening. The American may as well have been playing dice. She
would have blown into his palm. And the numbers would have come up
exactly the same.
Death.
*And there's that word again. I still hear it every now and again.*
They lived together with the utmost of respect. Never touching, but
playfully intimate. No one in the city would have believed that they
were partners with such lofty ambitions. So they disguised themselves
as lovers, but viewed each other with admiration and mutual loathing.
Necessity overruled any other emotion.
The American's name was Duo Maxwell. He had the good fortune of naming
himself and had no obligation to any family nor any family to blame.
Because of that total isolation, Duo dressed himself in black, but he
robed his personality with jocularity. A tease and a reckless flirt,
people might wonder how Dorothy tolerated her roommate.
Dorothy Catalonia, for her own part, was cool and calculating in her
soul.
But she presented the world a silvery vixen with an overwhelming
ability to gain social status. She earned favor with the social elite
in life and gained the ear of several influential government officials.
Dorothy declined from having intimate company for any of the
gatherings, so several of the oblivious upper-crust were unaware that
she might seek out a companion. Dorothy never spoke of him.
They had met as strangers, but left that first evening blissfully
interconnected. They met as Duo left the card game. He had lost,
terribly. The Chinese man played the entire second half of the game
with one eyebrow relentlessly arched as he scrutinized every passing
card. One had to wonder that he didn't hurt himself by such diligence.
He never troubled to breathe another word about injustice--as long as
Duo was losing.
The American walked to the bar. His walk was very important to him.
The silver Goddess was not one to slide up to, still he was too self-
proud to strut or simply gallivant. So, he adopted the worshipful step
of a priest.
A holy man who moved in the rhythm of the universe. Carefree, yet as
connected with reality as any mortal could hope for. That was how Duo
Maxwell walked.
The Goddess watched. As she saw how she was appropriately worshipped,
Dorothy spoke the first words. "I knew someone once, someone who
walked like you."
"Yeah," Duo breathed with the hints of laughter. Laughing like Loki,
the trickster. "This fellow? Is he with you?"
She let the silvery-gold strands slip like fingers down her shoulder
blades as she studied the ceiling. It was grey and distant and
cracked. So was her true story, but Dorothy merely said, "I've just
met him." She was lying. Lying usually happens when something
important hides. Duo knew this as well as Dorothy. They both had a
lot to hide. Smiles and charms conceal a thousand wounds to everyone
except their equal in motivation.
"Clever." Duo scolded with a chuckle in his voice. It was low and
playful when he continued, "We should know each other, since . . ."
"We are so much identical." Dorothy stopped studying the ceiling and
brought her head to gaze intently at the American next to her.
"Practically cut from the same cloth." Duo laughed, shrugging and then
swung his braid with the sway of his instinctual mirth. The braid was
something to mention. The American had hair the color of caramel and
almost stretched as long. The braid was neat and confined resting
against the dark costume. Brown on black. The color of shadows and
the hint of life. He hid his reasons for letting the hair grow.
"Siblings." Dorothy suggested.
"Lovers." He threw back his head and laughed like a fool before the
moon. Loki was laughing. The fool felt remorse. So strangers meet
sometimes and recognize a common thread. In this case, a thread of
loneliness and false charm. The words they spoke to each other were
more comfortable and more awkward than anything they had ever spoken in
the slyness of ordinary conversation.
*I breathe you 'cause you help me forget everything I don't know about
love yet. I need you 'cause you help me forget, yeah, you help me
forget.*
A new city meant a new start for each of them. And they both knew what
the other was looking for, rather, they knew that the other was
searching and why they were searching. Any answers would come with
time. Neither of them knew the answers. So they searched, and found a
companion in the other. Or that was their noblest intention. The
reader will notice that steel sharpens steel. And mischief conducts
mischief most readily with a like-minded spirit.
Duo Maxwell kept gambling. And Dorothy continued to lean against the
bar. They were Loki and the Goddess again. More empowered than before
with the other's determined disguise. Loki moved with disarming charm.
The Goddess earned her place with strategic wisdom. They established
their places in the new city, together.
They had forgotten why they had left for a new start. They neglected
the mistakes of the past. They sought out new beginnings in old
patterns. Comfortable patterns of self-destruction.
*I drink you 'cause you help me to see it's mostly myself that's
killin' me. I think I have to, to help me forget everything I don't
know about love yet.*
Duo Maxwell had a story. He felt an obligation beyond his name. It
was a duty he had to perform. Cheating, slyness, and cunning could not
save his soul from that debt. Financial debt would not haunt the dark-
dressed, priest-walking gambler. Destiny could.
He almost walks like a holy man, because he almost became one. He was
an orphan and thus earned the presumptuous privilege of naming himself.
He found himself becoming Duo Maxwell, after the name of the church in
which he found refuge. Father Maxwell's church. Sister Helen's
church. His church.
And he knew that he belonged there. He had committed his life to it.
The only problem was that the young boy had often confused the church
for God.
And when you're looking for God, sometimes the church is the last place
where you'll find him. He hadn't remembered Sister Helen gently
tucking his nine-year old body under the thin sheet and itchy wool
blanket. Saying as she gently made the covers the form of his shape,
"Find God, Duo Maxwell.
Remember, it's your heavenly Father that you're searching for when you
read that Bible. Know religion, find God."
Nine-year olds fall asleep before they comprehend much. Duo most of
all because he knew that hope intrinsically. It was when he grew older
that he forgot.
Seventeen began the backsliding. Nineteen had marked his entrance into
the seminary. When he was twenty he ran away. Duo refused to be
trapped by religion. He saw no God in it. No God that could explain
why Maxwell Church had been destroyed in a Christmas Eve bombing. For
Duo Maxwell, God had burned with the building on that holiday. Now he
had a fabricated name and a dark memory of it's origins, and he had no
one to blame except himself.
So he started gambling. At least then, he could blame the dealer.
And he became the trickster, Loki. A shining smile and a helpful card
in his boot. Untouchable and magic, with the ability to disappear one
moment and reappear with the winning hand. No one suspected him of
treachery, although everyone knew down deep that he was a sham. They
loved him for it. They loved how he made them feel about themselves.
They loved how he took their spirits and made them feel light for just
a moment. Loki spun them fabulous tales and they could almost imagine
that God did care from them.
Loki chuckled at the irony. And he continually paid toward his debts,
but he never had enough to find peace.
*Someone said these were the best days, best days of our life. I
suppose there could be worse ways, worse ways to learn to cry.*
She had a history. A history of being an upper crust damsel with
plenty of pampering and wit to gain her anything that pampering lacked.
Her weakness was a desire for attention. Any attention, as long as it
was the sort of recognition that she designed. The sophistication of
her approach matured, improved, with time. But when she was a young
teenager with grade-school cascades of endless hair and an elitist tilt
to her chin, Dorothy found herself with a tutor. A tutor with four
other pupils.
All boys. One of the young men was her older brother, Treize, who had
studied with the same instructor for several years. He'd poured
himself into books of philosophy and war in an attempt to understand
humanity. Two were her cousins, both with pale blond hair and blue
eyes. Quatre was an innocent miniature of his older brother, Zechs.
Here is the story. She was eighteen and she hated someone. His name
was Heero Yuy and he was the moody protégé of a doctor. The doctor was
amused by the idea of becoming an orphan's benefactor, so Heero Yuy
attended classes with the most educated of private tutors. Dorothy was
talented enough that her gender was a small obstacle into the class.
Heero was low class and had disreputable motives for his acceptance
into the program. They hated each other.
As she hated Heero, she bit her tongue in frustration not to show her
base disgrace. She should not admit that an enemy had shamed her into
hatred. Her brother and Zechs were watching. She knew they might be
aware of her, even if she sat quietly. She was certain that they
ignored her, but patiently awaited her fatal slip so that they could
exclude her before she could hope of their acceptance.
Boils of anger hissed through her ears, but her face was peaceful,
deliberate and calm. Her clear eyes were mischievous yet untroubled.
She sat silently counting the ways she could be rid of Heero Yuy. The
majority of points included his death.
Death.
Death moves people. Death takes them from here and puts them there.
Wherever there is. And yet, something that was them stays. Here.
Where living people are. So living people cry. Cry that what went
there was there. And that what was here wasn't enough to complete
them.
Dorothy didn't think much on the subject beyond this. She was too
young and distant to worry about death and the questions of an
afterlife. She simply knew that she wanted to hurry the dark boy
~there~ quickly.
"I would like you if you were a corpse." She wrote on the top of her
notes.
She peered at the loathsome boy under her lashes. He glared back. Six
weeks later, Quatre was taken to the hospital. He lay in a bed and
hovered between here and there. Dorothy had never thought much of him
before those moments of worry. And she did worry. She wasn't
motionless, she simply had more emotions that she could ever show on
her porcelain face.
And she knew that she would crack if Quatre should split, half here and
half there. Where ever there was. And she wondered about it. If
things had been different! But as it was, she sat in the silver room
and watched as Heero stepped in the doorway. She watched his mouth
form words and saw his eyes suddenly shift to the floor. His face
burned. Heero walked beyond her vision and fell to the floor in grief.
Unaware of anything beyond that room, Dorothy felt a great coldness
settle her heart. A bitterness. The silver glow of the room became
her sacred chamber, the chair she sat on was a throne and she was the
immortal Goddess.
She would never fear death. Silver tears cut a path on her statuesque
face, but her lips were soft, emotionless. Her eyes never blinked.
Never betrayed a moment to here nor there.
*And if these should be the last days, the last days for you and I, I
suppose this is the best way, best way to say goodbye.*
Routine is nice and easy for two people who attract each other like
lonely, wandering magnets. Duo wore a white T-shirt once and Dorothy
clasped her hands in mock delight. Dorothy pulled her hair up in a
braid and Duo had insisted that they take pictures right then. Loki
and the Goddess. Braided twins.
As they watched each other wilt in the evening with unhappiness, they
were wise enough to wonder what it was they lacked. The absence of
something had to cause their sorrow, because they had everything else.
Mutually, Duo and Dorothy looked to the other for the mysterious
element. The missing puzzle piece.
The denial of disillusionment.
"What's missing?" Dorothy sat on one side of the candlelit table.
They were in the kitchen of their apartment. After meeting at the
saloon, they had pooled their resources to settle in a nicer home than
either could afford on their own. Now they were using candles until
they could afford lights.
Duo leaned back in his chair. He'd finished everything on his plate.
It hadn't been much, but Dorothy disguised chicken very well. They
hardly believed that they ate the same thing almost everyday when she
waved her hands over the kitchen preparations. After dinner, they both
almost felt full and content enough to discuss unhappiness.
"Dessert?" Duo smiled. It was a half-smile, he saved the fake
exertion for the gambling table.
"We tried that before." Dorothy held her porcelain face with her
cupped palms. She watched the flickering flames and wondered at them.
"I don't believe in God." His admission was blunt. And suddenly,
without moving an inch or sharing any other form of recognition, they
realized this was honesty.
"I'm hateful." Dorothy moved her hands from her chin to pull the blond
rainbow back from her face. "But, I think, I love you. That's
something like loving myself, isn't it?"
No one was answering questions tonight. Duo started to tip his chair
back in a thoughtful rocking motion. Muttering his incomplete
thoughts, "If God is love . . . if He is? If I can? Then do I?"
*It snows in here. It snows forever, but there's no Christmas
underneath this weather.*
How could they explain the transformation? Had they undergone some
trial together simply by living alone and watching the other's unspoken
unhappiness?
Peace is calm and it is relentless. Seeing it just out of their grasp,
Loki and the Goddess had let their beliefs become counterfeit. They
sat as the lofty gods of a bar and dreamed of humility in a cathedral.
*When it blows here and gets real cold, I wanna trip myself and fall
upon your fabulous sword and move here by the stained-glass window.
Forget about the inside ghetto. Down here on the hardwood floor, the
lines on the ceiling start to swim once more.*
"Why are we so unhappy?" The American sat forward so that the chair
cracked against the floor like a gunshot. "Isn't it Christmas Eve?
Don't y'all ever ~celebrate~ Christmas over here?"
Dorothy shrugged, broken from her musings of here and there. "I
suppose there are some services in town." She seemed open to the
possibilities.
"Anything in particular that you'd like to suggest? . . ."
Stepping up to the door, the twins shivered under their coats. It was
snowing, but the elements had never caused them to shudder as much as
the holy faces in the stain-glass windows.
"I grew up in a church built somewhat like this." Duo pulled his arms
tightly to himself. Then thinking better of it, he wrapped them around
Dorothy. He accidentally let an affectionate grin wash his face like
the evening snow.
She felt the warm glow of his body for the few seconds before they
slipped into the back rows of the congregation. Then the heat of the
worship brought life back to her dulled senses. Instead of the ever-
present and cool self-adoration, Dorothy recognized that this moment
was far bigger than herself.
Everyone, every one of them together, started to sing a carol. A hymn
for Christmas. She fumbled through the pages of the songbook. Duo
belted out the few words he remembered while she tried to find the
title. His voice hesitated on a few uncertain phrases, but the
trembling tenor of the quality remembered the passionate expression of
song. A holy song.
She studied the words and paired them with the musical notes. Her
quivering voice whispered under Duo's regained confidence. The melody
was familiar to her, but the verses went on and beyond what she had
learned. The words continued and the complete meaning became clear.
They went from here to there and were united with a new fullness.
Completeness.
*I breath you. I need you.*
The two newcomers slipped out of the back before the rest. It was a
first brave step. Something they might find courage to continue
searching for . . . together.
the end.
by Jillian Storm
(Disclaimer: This is pseudo-Alternate Reality. I think that Duo and
Dorothy still had a lot of soul searching to do by the end of the
series. Well, maybe you could argue that Duo didn't. But I think he's
much more interesting if he does have a little angst to juggle. So
while bits of this will sound very familiar, the reconciliation is set
in an alternate universe--no Gundams here. Over the Rhine takes all
the credit for the lyrics.)
***
Jack's Valentine
Over the Rhine
***
*Help me. Spread my table. I've been tryin' but I'm just not able.
There's so much left inside, so very much I've been trying to hide.
Life gets pretty heavy and I wish it was light, but after all I love
the night.*
Gambling brings all sorts to the same small, sometimes green, table and
asks that the participants take a chance. Ruthlessly conquer. Toy
with fate. Play with destiny. Or turn the largest folly with their
sacrificial hope. It's the players that come with an earnest gleam in
their eye that always leave with the smallest purse, if they managed to
salvage any of their hard-worked earnings at all.
The players tonight were such a mix. The dealer came from out of
state. He was a Chinese man with little to say besides announcing the
levels of justice surrounding the play of the game. His slick, black
hair was pulled back from his face in a criss-cross design that
emphasized the sunset glow of his features. "Watch your cards,
American," he hissed.
The player opposite the Chinese man met the icy gaze with mock
innocence.
He shrugged, lifting not only his shoulders but the black, smooth shirt
that he wore. The American wore only black and all black, which made
him a rather interesting figure to watch in the dimmed lights of the
gambling room. Across the table, and through the smoke of several
cigars, the American's clearest feature was his disarming white grin.
A pure expression contrasted with the sinister costume. The American
pulled at the brim of his black hat. He looked like an experienced
mobster settled into a western saloon to ruthlessly collect the
farmer's property.
Tapping his cards, the American answered, "Winning cards." His voice
was playfully low, an octave that he would not normally speak in unless
he was being playfully sinister or playfully romantic. Nothing about
the American seemed less than light-hearted. "Got my eyes full of
winning cards."
"Let me see those." The Chinese man challenged moving more chips to
the center pool. The game didn't really matter. The truest
communication was between the American and the doll leaning against the
bar counter. She had silver-blond hair that curled at the ends--just
about the shoulders.
Moon-beams really. The light of the moon reflecting off the cascade
and reflecting off her silver-blue eyes. Her eyes were on the
American. They had never met before. She was new to the city and the
American had only lived in the neighborhood for a few weeks. They
recognized the distance they shared from the others. Almost as if they
had come together from the same distant haze that they were both trying
to forget.
Where he was black, she was silver. Her gown was a compromising dark
grey, short in fabric but practical for her surroundings. While her
every movement was beckoning, the men in the room were painfully aware
she was a goddess. A goddess intent on only the American.
It was hours before they spoke to each other, although they had been
memorizing the other's voice from the first moments of the evening.
Both the Goddess and the American trickster anticipated their demise
was wrapped in the existence of the other. Fate had played her cards
and they both had arrived to the same city, to the same saloon, on the
same evening. The American may as well have been playing dice. She
would have blown into his palm. And the numbers would have come up
exactly the same.
Death.
*And there's that word again. I still hear it every now and again.*
They lived together with the utmost of respect. Never touching, but
playfully intimate. No one in the city would have believed that they
were partners with such lofty ambitions. So they disguised themselves
as lovers, but viewed each other with admiration and mutual loathing.
Necessity overruled any other emotion.
The American's name was Duo Maxwell. He had the good fortune of naming
himself and had no obligation to any family nor any family to blame.
Because of that total isolation, Duo dressed himself in black, but he
robed his personality with jocularity. A tease and a reckless flirt,
people might wonder how Dorothy tolerated her roommate.
Dorothy Catalonia, for her own part, was cool and calculating in her
soul.
But she presented the world a silvery vixen with an overwhelming
ability to gain social status. She earned favor with the social elite
in life and gained the ear of several influential government officials.
Dorothy declined from having intimate company for any of the
gatherings, so several of the oblivious upper-crust were unaware that
she might seek out a companion. Dorothy never spoke of him.
They had met as strangers, but left that first evening blissfully
interconnected. They met as Duo left the card game. He had lost,
terribly. The Chinese man played the entire second half of the game
with one eyebrow relentlessly arched as he scrutinized every passing
card. One had to wonder that he didn't hurt himself by such diligence.
He never troubled to breathe another word about injustice--as long as
Duo was losing.
The American walked to the bar. His walk was very important to him.
The silver Goddess was not one to slide up to, still he was too self-
proud to strut or simply gallivant. So, he adopted the worshipful step
of a priest.
A holy man who moved in the rhythm of the universe. Carefree, yet as
connected with reality as any mortal could hope for. That was how Duo
Maxwell walked.
The Goddess watched. As she saw how she was appropriately worshipped,
Dorothy spoke the first words. "I knew someone once, someone who
walked like you."
"Yeah," Duo breathed with the hints of laughter. Laughing like Loki,
the trickster. "This fellow? Is he with you?"
She let the silvery-gold strands slip like fingers down her shoulder
blades as she studied the ceiling. It was grey and distant and
cracked. So was her true story, but Dorothy merely said, "I've just
met him." She was lying. Lying usually happens when something
important hides. Duo knew this as well as Dorothy. They both had a
lot to hide. Smiles and charms conceal a thousand wounds to everyone
except their equal in motivation.
"Clever." Duo scolded with a chuckle in his voice. It was low and
playful when he continued, "We should know each other, since . . ."
"We are so much identical." Dorothy stopped studying the ceiling and
brought her head to gaze intently at the American next to her.
"Practically cut from the same cloth." Duo laughed, shrugging and then
swung his braid with the sway of his instinctual mirth. The braid was
something to mention. The American had hair the color of caramel and
almost stretched as long. The braid was neat and confined resting
against the dark costume. Brown on black. The color of shadows and
the hint of life. He hid his reasons for letting the hair grow.
"Siblings." Dorothy suggested.
"Lovers." He threw back his head and laughed like a fool before the
moon. Loki was laughing. The fool felt remorse. So strangers meet
sometimes and recognize a common thread. In this case, a thread of
loneliness and false charm. The words they spoke to each other were
more comfortable and more awkward than anything they had ever spoken in
the slyness of ordinary conversation.
*I breathe you 'cause you help me forget everything I don't know about
love yet. I need you 'cause you help me forget, yeah, you help me
forget.*
A new city meant a new start for each of them. And they both knew what
the other was looking for, rather, they knew that the other was
searching and why they were searching. Any answers would come with
time. Neither of them knew the answers. So they searched, and found a
companion in the other. Or that was their noblest intention. The
reader will notice that steel sharpens steel. And mischief conducts
mischief most readily with a like-minded spirit.
Duo Maxwell kept gambling. And Dorothy continued to lean against the
bar. They were Loki and the Goddess again. More empowered than before
with the other's determined disguise. Loki moved with disarming charm.
The Goddess earned her place with strategic wisdom. They established
their places in the new city, together.
They had forgotten why they had left for a new start. They neglected
the mistakes of the past. They sought out new beginnings in old
patterns. Comfortable patterns of self-destruction.
*I drink you 'cause you help me to see it's mostly myself that's
killin' me. I think I have to, to help me forget everything I don't
know about love yet.*
Duo Maxwell had a story. He felt an obligation beyond his name. It
was a duty he had to perform. Cheating, slyness, and cunning could not
save his soul from that debt. Financial debt would not haunt the dark-
dressed, priest-walking gambler. Destiny could.
He almost walks like a holy man, because he almost became one. He was
an orphan and thus earned the presumptuous privilege of naming himself.
He found himself becoming Duo Maxwell, after the name of the church in
which he found refuge. Father Maxwell's church. Sister Helen's
church. His church.
And he knew that he belonged there. He had committed his life to it.
The only problem was that the young boy had often confused the church
for God.
And when you're looking for God, sometimes the church is the last place
where you'll find him. He hadn't remembered Sister Helen gently
tucking his nine-year old body under the thin sheet and itchy wool
blanket. Saying as she gently made the covers the form of his shape,
"Find God, Duo Maxwell.
Remember, it's your heavenly Father that you're searching for when you
read that Bible. Know religion, find God."
Nine-year olds fall asleep before they comprehend much. Duo most of
all because he knew that hope intrinsically. It was when he grew older
that he forgot.
Seventeen began the backsliding. Nineteen had marked his entrance into
the seminary. When he was twenty he ran away. Duo refused to be
trapped by religion. He saw no God in it. No God that could explain
why Maxwell Church had been destroyed in a Christmas Eve bombing. For
Duo Maxwell, God had burned with the building on that holiday. Now he
had a fabricated name and a dark memory of it's origins, and he had no
one to blame except himself.
So he started gambling. At least then, he could blame the dealer.
And he became the trickster, Loki. A shining smile and a helpful card
in his boot. Untouchable and magic, with the ability to disappear one
moment and reappear with the winning hand. No one suspected him of
treachery, although everyone knew down deep that he was a sham. They
loved him for it. They loved how he made them feel about themselves.
They loved how he took their spirits and made them feel light for just
a moment. Loki spun them fabulous tales and they could almost imagine
that God did care from them.
Loki chuckled at the irony. And he continually paid toward his debts,
but he never had enough to find peace.
*Someone said these were the best days, best days of our life. I
suppose there could be worse ways, worse ways to learn to cry.*
She had a history. A history of being an upper crust damsel with
plenty of pampering and wit to gain her anything that pampering lacked.
Her weakness was a desire for attention. Any attention, as long as it
was the sort of recognition that she designed. The sophistication of
her approach matured, improved, with time. But when she was a young
teenager with grade-school cascades of endless hair and an elitist tilt
to her chin, Dorothy found herself with a tutor. A tutor with four
other pupils.
All boys. One of the young men was her older brother, Treize, who had
studied with the same instructor for several years. He'd poured
himself into books of philosophy and war in an attempt to understand
humanity. Two were her cousins, both with pale blond hair and blue
eyes. Quatre was an innocent miniature of his older brother, Zechs.
Here is the story. She was eighteen and she hated someone. His name
was Heero Yuy and he was the moody protégé of a doctor. The doctor was
amused by the idea of becoming an orphan's benefactor, so Heero Yuy
attended classes with the most educated of private tutors. Dorothy was
talented enough that her gender was a small obstacle into the class.
Heero was low class and had disreputable motives for his acceptance
into the program. They hated each other.
As she hated Heero, she bit her tongue in frustration not to show her
base disgrace. She should not admit that an enemy had shamed her into
hatred. Her brother and Zechs were watching. She knew they might be
aware of her, even if she sat quietly. She was certain that they
ignored her, but patiently awaited her fatal slip so that they could
exclude her before she could hope of their acceptance.
Boils of anger hissed through her ears, but her face was peaceful,
deliberate and calm. Her clear eyes were mischievous yet untroubled.
She sat silently counting the ways she could be rid of Heero Yuy. The
majority of points included his death.
Death.
Death moves people. Death takes them from here and puts them there.
Wherever there is. And yet, something that was them stays. Here.
Where living people are. So living people cry. Cry that what went
there was there. And that what was here wasn't enough to complete
them.
Dorothy didn't think much on the subject beyond this. She was too
young and distant to worry about death and the questions of an
afterlife. She simply knew that she wanted to hurry the dark boy
~there~ quickly.
"I would like you if you were a corpse." She wrote on the top of her
notes.
She peered at the loathsome boy under her lashes. He glared back. Six
weeks later, Quatre was taken to the hospital. He lay in a bed and
hovered between here and there. Dorothy had never thought much of him
before those moments of worry. And she did worry. She wasn't
motionless, she simply had more emotions that she could ever show on
her porcelain face.
And she knew that she would crack if Quatre should split, half here and
half there. Where ever there was. And she wondered about it. If
things had been different! But as it was, she sat in the silver room
and watched as Heero stepped in the doorway. She watched his mouth
form words and saw his eyes suddenly shift to the floor. His face
burned. Heero walked beyond her vision and fell to the floor in grief.
Unaware of anything beyond that room, Dorothy felt a great coldness
settle her heart. A bitterness. The silver glow of the room became
her sacred chamber, the chair she sat on was a throne and she was the
immortal Goddess.
She would never fear death. Silver tears cut a path on her statuesque
face, but her lips were soft, emotionless. Her eyes never blinked.
Never betrayed a moment to here nor there.
*And if these should be the last days, the last days for you and I, I
suppose this is the best way, best way to say goodbye.*
Routine is nice and easy for two people who attract each other like
lonely, wandering magnets. Duo wore a white T-shirt once and Dorothy
clasped her hands in mock delight. Dorothy pulled her hair up in a
braid and Duo had insisted that they take pictures right then. Loki
and the Goddess. Braided twins.
As they watched each other wilt in the evening with unhappiness, they
were wise enough to wonder what it was they lacked. The absence of
something had to cause their sorrow, because they had everything else.
Mutually, Duo and Dorothy looked to the other for the mysterious
element. The missing puzzle piece.
The denial of disillusionment.
"What's missing?" Dorothy sat on one side of the candlelit table.
They were in the kitchen of their apartment. After meeting at the
saloon, they had pooled their resources to settle in a nicer home than
either could afford on their own. Now they were using candles until
they could afford lights.
Duo leaned back in his chair. He'd finished everything on his plate.
It hadn't been much, but Dorothy disguised chicken very well. They
hardly believed that they ate the same thing almost everyday when she
waved her hands over the kitchen preparations. After dinner, they both
almost felt full and content enough to discuss unhappiness.
"Dessert?" Duo smiled. It was a half-smile, he saved the fake
exertion for the gambling table.
"We tried that before." Dorothy held her porcelain face with her
cupped palms. She watched the flickering flames and wondered at them.
"I don't believe in God." His admission was blunt. And suddenly,
without moving an inch or sharing any other form of recognition, they
realized this was honesty.
"I'm hateful." Dorothy moved her hands from her chin to pull the blond
rainbow back from her face. "But, I think, I love you. That's
something like loving myself, isn't it?"
No one was answering questions tonight. Duo started to tip his chair
back in a thoughtful rocking motion. Muttering his incomplete
thoughts, "If God is love . . . if He is? If I can? Then do I?"
*It snows in here. It snows forever, but there's no Christmas
underneath this weather.*
How could they explain the transformation? Had they undergone some
trial together simply by living alone and watching the other's unspoken
unhappiness?
Peace is calm and it is relentless. Seeing it just out of their grasp,
Loki and the Goddess had let their beliefs become counterfeit. They
sat as the lofty gods of a bar and dreamed of humility in a cathedral.
*When it blows here and gets real cold, I wanna trip myself and fall
upon your fabulous sword and move here by the stained-glass window.
Forget about the inside ghetto. Down here on the hardwood floor, the
lines on the ceiling start to swim once more.*
"Why are we so unhappy?" The American sat forward so that the chair
cracked against the floor like a gunshot. "Isn't it Christmas Eve?
Don't y'all ever ~celebrate~ Christmas over here?"
Dorothy shrugged, broken from her musings of here and there. "I
suppose there are some services in town." She seemed open to the
possibilities.
"Anything in particular that you'd like to suggest? . . ."
Stepping up to the door, the twins shivered under their coats. It was
snowing, but the elements had never caused them to shudder as much as
the holy faces in the stain-glass windows.
"I grew up in a church built somewhat like this." Duo pulled his arms
tightly to himself. Then thinking better of it, he wrapped them around
Dorothy. He accidentally let an affectionate grin wash his face like
the evening snow.
She felt the warm glow of his body for the few seconds before they
slipped into the back rows of the congregation. Then the heat of the
worship brought life back to her dulled senses. Instead of the ever-
present and cool self-adoration, Dorothy recognized that this moment
was far bigger than herself.
Everyone, every one of them together, started to sing a carol. A hymn
for Christmas. She fumbled through the pages of the songbook. Duo
belted out the few words he remembered while she tried to find the
title. His voice hesitated on a few uncertain phrases, but the
trembling tenor of the quality remembered the passionate expression of
song. A holy song.
She studied the words and paired them with the musical notes. Her
quivering voice whispered under Duo's regained confidence. The melody
was familiar to her, but the verses went on and beyond what she had
learned. The words continued and the complete meaning became clear.
They went from here to there and were united with a new fullness.
Completeness.
*I breath you. I need you.*
The two newcomers slipped out of the back before the rest. It was a
first brave step. Something they might find courage to continue
searching for . . . together.
the end.