The Perfect Soldier
Chapter 16: Unfinished Missions
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He knew that he should get up, leave the room, check on Yokaze, then camp out on the couch until dawn. But Duo Maxwell was too tired to do more than think of the night's tasks that still remained undone. How many days had it been since he'd had a single, uninterrupted night's sleep? He wasn't sure; he was too tired to count.
Surely, he would be relieved of his vigil soon. Heero must be finishing his quest by now.
Heero. Duo smiled as he thought of his friend. He was nothing if he did not have a quest, a mission, a goal. He was always seeking, seeking, seeking. Duo wondered if, at last, he would see what was plainly in front of him.
Duo's dark eyes turned down onto the sleeping figure. The young girl's heart-shaped face, so like his own, was expressive, even deep in dreams. Beneath the nearly translucent skin of her eyelids, violet eyes, identical to his own, twitched to and fro.
Bisho. His sister. She was a miracle of chance and circumstance. Where only days ago they had been utterly alone, now they had each other. Two strangers who had become siblings.
Become siblings. He rolled the phrase over in his mind. Once, Duo had believed that one was born into and raised with a family. Once, he had believed that there was only one way to gain and retain one's membership in a family. But now, he understood the truth.
He and Bisho were siblings even though they hadn't been raised together, with the same parents, under the same roof. He was her big brother. And she was his little sister. And it had absolutely nothing to do with DNA.
In the silence of midnight, he looked in the direction of the window. Although the curtains had been drawn long ago, he imagined the darkened dome beyond, and further out, the eternal night of space itself. He imagined that he saw a star.
Understand what I've begun to realize, he told the night sky inside his eyes.
Perhaps it was a wish, perhaps a command. He was too exhausted to consider it carefully.
And as he thought of Heero, he also thought of the promise he'd made. He had to check on Yokaze. He could not fail in this simple task. He had to...
A figure clad in a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck slumped in the chair beside a sleeping girl's bed and closed his violet eyes.
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"Here is your answer, Mr Barton: I found your past because I could not fail to do otherwise."
Deep, inside of him, the words tumbled over and over. In that same, dark place, he shook his head in denial. That could not be the answer. It could not be. Over the days and weeks, he had considered many different, possible replies to his initial question. But all of those had made sense, been backed by logic, by reason, by a soldier's motive. But Yokaze's long-awaited response was none of those things. It was mysterious, mystic, impossible.
His green eyes narrowed as he sat alone, in the semi-darkness of his trailer. It was midnight and the circus's generators had been shut down long ago to conserve fuel; at this time of the night, if one wanted light, old-fashioned means were the only ones available. A single candle dripped in silence on the single table in the small trailer. The flame danced its sultry, mindless dance with a breeze only it could feel. Twin reflections of the gold-white spark danced across the surface of wary eyes.
As he studied the flame, he considered its symbolic resemblance to her justification. Who truly understood what fire was? Certainly, it was a chemical reaction, but there was more to it than that, was there not? No matter how many explanations physicists wrote of fire, it remained mysterious, mystic, impossible. It danced its secret dance, sometimes in silence, and sometimes with the voice of a thousand lions. It danced without discretion, sometimes leisurely, and sometimes with the rage of infinite loss.
He closed his eyes and remembered the impossible: the rage. He had been angry with her. Anger. It was so alien, so foreign, that he hadn't recognized it until it had gripped his entire being. When was the last time he had felt such an emotion and so strongly? He recalled a handful of occasions. Love and caring for Kathy. Concern and friendship for Quatre. But those emotions had accompanied people he had known for a length of time that was considerably longer than the few days he'd known Yokaze.
And yet, she had made him angry.
It was a miracle in and of itself. And he recognized it as one, objectively.
But, retreating further, into the memory of the anger, he marveled at his first thoughts. Once again, he traced the path of his fury down to a single declaration:
How dare she care for someone who has been no one his entire life.
He was nothing. Nothing to care about. Nothing to concern oneself with. And in that nothingness he had found his strength, his freedom.
But, slowly, over time, he had begun to relinquish that freedom. With others, he had come to share something, some part of living, with them. And that had developed into a kind of caring, of kinship. But he and Yokaze had shared nothing. And yet she professed to care. And her admission had stolen another piece of his freedom away. Why? Why had her words tied him even more fully to this life? To living?
It was illogical.
Irrational.
What connection did they share that would give her such an influence?
And then, in the following, waiting silence, he realized the one, true thing they did share:
No name.
But no, she had given his back to him. Out of caring for a stranger.
And yet she remained, nameless.
His hands fisted as a fresh wave of anger poured through him. It was clear to him that the only way for him to repay her was to do the same for her.
He must give her a name.
But he already had: Yokaze, the night wind.
But he had not given it to her out of caring. He had given it out of awe, of respect. And therein existed the source of his anger. To repay her, he must care for her.
It was impossible.
How dare she demand this of him, who, for so long, had been no one, nothing?
How dare she drag him into a new world of emotions, of pain, of possibility?
How dare she?
But she had dared.
He opened his eyes and stared at the flame as it danced on the thin string. Danced its silent, secret dance with an invisible breeze. So similar to and yet so different from the dance of a silent, young man and the night wind.
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The programmed, late afternoon light washed the L1 colony in golden light and green shadow. In the more romantic atmosphere, the dinginess of unkempt buildings and littered streets was easily overlooked. Once, this place had been as sparkling new as a freshly painted doll-house. But time, and the weight all things artificial bear—the weight of constantly striving to be identical to the real—had traveled roughly through this place. Where once a clean, straight billboard had announced itself, there now remained a sagging shadow. It was the same with all things here. Even the mail box squatting on the street corner had succumbed and its layers of paint were peeling away in scale-like chunks.
Heero Yuy examined all of this. Cobalt eyes took careful note of the changes that had taken place since his last return. And now, he had come for his final visit. The past few days' events had convinced him that there was no other course to take. No where else to go. He was destined to return here. One last time. For the only mission left unfinished.
Dark eyes narrowed, hands buried in jacket pockets, Heero Yuy stepped off of the abandoned street corner determined to complete this one, remaining task.
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~End of Chapter 16~