"What's that?" Wufei asked from the doorway.
"I don't know," Trowa replied reaching behind himself and dropping the volume into his backpack. "I'm done. I'm going home, now."
"Sure," Wufei said stepping back to allow Trowa passage. "I'll tell them that you left."
"Thanks," Trowa mumbled concentrating more on the feel and sound of his shoes on the dense wood floor than what he said, as if he wanted to make sure that it was all there, that it was all real. Walking down the crescent stairs, he couldn't shake the vague fear that they would suddenly become immaterial and send him plummeting to the yawning abyss below.
At the foot of the stairs he had a last look around. He thought that he could see phantom shapes flitting in the half darkness of the unlit corners, but that, he attributed to the anxiousness that his earlier encounter had stirred.
"Goodbye," he whispered.
November 15, 1774
It is coming soon. The strings of rebellion are braiding together, creating a stronger, more centralized ideal. The epitome of our time that will define generations to come. Britain is turning her eyes steadily westward. She sees Massachusetts in the target of her turrets. The presence of British soldiers is on the rise in large cities but has managed to leave this little spot of Virginia untainted, though the land here is sewing the seeds of dissent reigning in higher yields with each political injustice that fans on the ears of the common man.
I furnished Thaddeus, this morning, with considerable funds from my personal allowance to acquire arms. Some smithies are able to strike a gun and fashion bullets, but at a considerable price that places our flowering resistance at a grievous disadvantage to our British counterparts. I have established an informant within the forces of an influential British general, henceforth, "seventy-twenty." He has agreed to deal us British arms at a more favorable price than our own gunsmiths. We've decided to invest in stockpiling these things, basic materials for facing this kind of conflict that seems all but imminent, right now.
Like the momentum of a wave gaining force and speed as it nears the shore, I feel the feeling of this nation hastening towards the shore to crash against the rocks in an explosion of foam, scattering pebbles and shells. Like that, our order will be made and rearranged to suit us as a nation. I strongly believe in that.
Trowa set the book down. It seemed void of personal notes or anything non-political. From what Trowa was able to gather so far was that: the owner of the journal was going against his father's wishes and getting involved in the contemporarily known American Revolution, he was a key logistical strategist and financier, and that he planned to serve as an American battle strategist when the revolution would finally begin. Considering his language, he didn't seem to look forward to the coming conflict, but, nor did he shy from it. More so than anything, he seemed resolute to protect his fellow countrymen and establish a government that conformed to common American sentiment, which sounded reasonable and innocent, enough.
He closed his eyes and imagined the specter that he'd seen once more. Each time he tried to recall that apparition's form, it grew less and less definite. He knew the rudimentary features: blond, blue eyes, short, thin, pale, and nice. His mind, however, was incapable of processing that information into a full image. He remembered that face, but when he visualized it, it didn't seem perfect enough. It seemed as if his mind was working miserably with an etch-a-sketch to try to recollect something for him that it was simply unable to supply. He wanted to see that person again, to ask his name.
He leaned back in his chair bracing his palms against the desk to tip him back at an angle so that he could see outside. Snow was coming down slowly reminding him vaguely of Fantasia and the sugar plum fairies, enchanting.
The fibers that made up his being slowly wove back together. That boy's invasion into his space had sent ripples into him and muddled his image. The more as one his being became, the worse he felt.
Nauseating self-consciousness rolled over his head and made his heart flounder. No one had seen him for such a long time. He couldn't remember what he looked like. He couldn't recall whether he was pleasing to see. What color were his eyes? His hair? Things that he hadn't thought about in centuries.
That person, though, he was nice to see. His eyes, struck like ivy green darts into his soul and paralyzed him, rid him of coherent thought. He'd never had that feeling before. Just remembering it made him shiver.
He paced the room like a caged wolf eyeing the window as if it were a poacher.
He willed his hand to have form and struck at the glass. It only rattled while his semi-tangible fist passed through it almost clear to the other side before he threw himself down to arrest his momentum. The infuriating idea that the only place of existence for him was within the confines of his father's house haunted him even through his short episodes when he craved oblivion.
Quatre rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes, then he had a thought.
He picked himself up onto his knees and willed his fingers to have form. In the undisturbed portions of the dusty floor, he began to write.
At the bust stop the next morning, everything was as it had been before they had entered the house. Duo was up to his antics and Heero and Wufei were back to subtly goading him on. They were all back to normal.
Ofcourse, they hadn't seen what Trowa had seen.
He looked anxiously at the house. He could swear to seeing faces in the windows, and puffs of breath fading and reappearing on the glass. The eyes that he felt shook his body and sapped the warmth from his very bones.
The house was all eyes.
When the bus arrived, Trowa nearly bowled over his companions to climb inside, to escape that thing.
That sentinel.
He walked with his friends as far as West Elm and Bailey. There, they all parted ways.
He watched them all leave before he turned back.
Trowa entered the house with some trepidation. It seemed to sigh when he took his first steps into the foyer.
"Don't psyche yourself out," Trowa reminded himself pressing his palm to his forehead. "It's just a house."
He picked his way through the hallways back to the same room he'd invaded just a day earlier. Empty, as he had expected. The internal disappointment that he felt was hard to surmount, and he just stood in the doorframe a few moments until his peripheral vision picked up the message on the floorboards.
Farie Stranger,
Please do not think me too forward when I tell you that I' am quite caught in admiration of your countenance.
If you would please grace me with your name, I would be most grateful.
Earnestly yours,
An admirer
Trowa paused a moment, then sat on his heels and wrote, Trowa.
He almost jumped out of his skin when the dust began to trace itself.
It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Trowa.
Trowa swallowed hard and scraped his index finger in the dust again, What are you?
I have submitted to the understanding that, I must be dead.
How did you die?
I don't remember.
That bad?
I do not know.
What is your name?
I don't remember.
Winner?
Is that my name?
Isn't it?
I don't remember.
Are there others like you in this house?
Yes.
How many?
Of that, I have no inkling.
Do you remember anything?
My memory since before yesterday is incomplete.
Trowa heaved a heavy sigh, Are you real? Or an ingenious personification of my idle mind?
It took a moment for the phantom to swirl its next words, I think…therefore, I am. I must be. However, if it were to be that I exist only as a figment of your imagination, I am content.
Trowa closed his eyes and considered for a moment before scribbling in the dust again, I've just had an idea. If you are able to write in the dust, I should be able to feel you. Since we've just met, lets shake hands. He stuck his hand out surprisingly steady for how drunken with dopamine and other coping mechanisms he felt.
At first it felt like static that slowly solidified into the feel of fingers that barely brushed his skin. He screwed his eyes closed and began to breath hard when he felt those fingers push past his skin.
He could only stand the strange sensation for so long before he jerked his hand back. "H-holy shit…" he said flexing his fingers. His bones still resonated with the electric hum of the ghost fingers' caress. "You're real."
A door slammed upstairs.
Already jittery to the point of utter hysteria, Trowa jumped to his feet like a startled cat and got the hell out of that house as fast as his legs would carry him.
Outside, the sun was already setting, and the moon could already be seen rising on the opposite side of the sky. Trowa stared at it a moment, and then looked back at the house he had so recently vacated. A smile seemed to trace across its front at having expunged him so quickly. He half expected to hear laughter from it.
It crossed his mind to say something, some verbal assurance to himself that he wasn't going crazy, but the only thing he could manage to get past his lips was a monosyllabic, "Shit."
The house shuddered in the wake of Trowa's hasty exit.
Papers shuffled and filed themselves in the study upstairs, and soft voices began to penetrate the gloom of the house.
Quatre settled his spirit at the windowsill and watched Trowa's retreating shadow.
"Fare thee well gentle stranger borne like a blessing into the night, nary from thy form my heart should waver, it is as constant as the sun…" Quatre improvised pressing his open palm against the glass. An unreasoning hope played upon the strings of his heart that, perhaps, if he wished hard enough, if his fingers pushed far enough through the window, he might be able to capture that boy. To stop him in his tracks and draw him near once more.
Gentle laughter from one of the upstairs rooms drew his attention. He gazed questioningly at the ceiling and thought that, for a moment, he could hear the footfalls of a young lady dancing.
"Welcome home," Catherine was barely able to say as Trowa entered through the front door before he was holed up inside his room.
He set his backpack down next to his bed, kicked off his shoes, and then sat. While he sat, he didn't think of anything in particular, though his face appeared pensive. Unconsciously, he ran his hands over each other as if trying to restore feeling in them.
After a while of sitting semi-comatose, he had what he thought to be an epiphany, but turned out to be hunger. Grudgingly, he hauled himself up and made for the kitchen. In the doorframe to his room, he turned to glance out the window. It wasn't snowing. The clouds hung in the sky dark and pregnant with precipitation. They stretched languidly from house to house, breaking from here to there allowing the moon to wink out from behind them.
Trowa didn't return to the house for some time.
Over the weekend, he didn't go anywhere near it.
On Sunday, he spent the day with Duo, Heero, and Wufei shooting empty bottles off fence-posts. He'd never discharged a firearm in his life before that day, but caught the hang of it quickly. He learned quickly to overcome the recoil and fire off rounds quickly, his accuracy proving with each round until he eventually hit all the bottles without error.
Duo was like a one-man cheerleading squad singing praises from behind and clapping with each burst bottle.
It would have been a lie to say that he didn't enjoy the attention. Trowa's aim improved partially due to the encouragement and the desire to surpass Heero and Wufei with their marksmanship. Duo was good, but, his preoccupation with showmanship made him miss a few times.
It was Trowa's last turn. Duo set the bottles, then took his place a considerable distance behind the shooter with Heero and Wufei.
Aim and fire, aim and fire, Trowa popped off slug after slug until he came to the last target, which made him jerk, and his last shot to go off in some other direction.
"What's wrong?" Duo called, but Trowa couldn't answer.
Not truthfully, in any case.
He could have sworn that he'd seen, in the crosshairs of his aim, the phantom cowering holding bloodied hands up in front of his face. After his misfire, the phantom disappeared, and he was left with his mouth ajar staring at a lone green bottle sitting squat on the fence.
"Whatever that was," Wufei began to say.
"It sucked," Heero finished.
No one was home when he got there. It was the first time since he'd moved to Virginia that Cathy wasn't there. It made things easier for him, though. He dragged a chair back from the kitchen table and parked himself in it.
He couldn't shake the image from his head.
He'd left the guys back there. He'd flipped the safety back on the gun and shoved it into Heero's hands before stalking off back in the general direction of home. At this point, they probably didn't need him to reveal to them his freaky ghost experiences for them to think that he was nuts.
He took a deep breath and drummed his fingers on the lacquered table setting his thoughts to a metronome.
Maybe when he'd left before, he'd left that ghost in some sort of peril. Did that mean he had to go back?
Outside the window, the last rays of the run were chasing the hills in the west. The house would be shrouded in shadow soon.
He'd have to take a generous shot of courage to go out as things were now.
His curiosity and mental well-being would have to be put off until tomorrow.
TBC
"I don't know," Trowa replied reaching behind himself and dropping the volume into his backpack. "I'm done. I'm going home, now."
"Sure," Wufei said stepping back to allow Trowa passage. "I'll tell them that you left."
"Thanks," Trowa mumbled concentrating more on the feel and sound of his shoes on the dense wood floor than what he said, as if he wanted to make sure that it was all there, that it was all real. Walking down the crescent stairs, he couldn't shake the vague fear that they would suddenly become immaterial and send him plummeting to the yawning abyss below.
At the foot of the stairs he had a last look around. He thought that he could see phantom shapes flitting in the half darkness of the unlit corners, but that, he attributed to the anxiousness that his earlier encounter had stirred.
"Goodbye," he whispered.
November 15, 1774
It is coming soon. The strings of rebellion are braiding together, creating a stronger, more centralized ideal. The epitome of our time that will define generations to come. Britain is turning her eyes steadily westward. She sees Massachusetts in the target of her turrets. The presence of British soldiers is on the rise in large cities but has managed to leave this little spot of Virginia untainted, though the land here is sewing the seeds of dissent reigning in higher yields with each political injustice that fans on the ears of the common man.
I furnished Thaddeus, this morning, with considerable funds from my personal allowance to acquire arms. Some smithies are able to strike a gun and fashion bullets, but at a considerable price that places our flowering resistance at a grievous disadvantage to our British counterparts. I have established an informant within the forces of an influential British general, henceforth, "seventy-twenty." He has agreed to deal us British arms at a more favorable price than our own gunsmiths. We've decided to invest in stockpiling these things, basic materials for facing this kind of conflict that seems all but imminent, right now.
Like the momentum of a wave gaining force and speed as it nears the shore, I feel the feeling of this nation hastening towards the shore to crash against the rocks in an explosion of foam, scattering pebbles and shells. Like that, our order will be made and rearranged to suit us as a nation. I strongly believe in that.
Trowa set the book down. It seemed void of personal notes or anything non-political. From what Trowa was able to gather so far was that: the owner of the journal was going against his father's wishes and getting involved in the contemporarily known American Revolution, he was a key logistical strategist and financier, and that he planned to serve as an American battle strategist when the revolution would finally begin. Considering his language, he didn't seem to look forward to the coming conflict, but, nor did he shy from it. More so than anything, he seemed resolute to protect his fellow countrymen and establish a government that conformed to common American sentiment, which sounded reasonable and innocent, enough.
He closed his eyes and imagined the specter that he'd seen once more. Each time he tried to recall that apparition's form, it grew less and less definite. He knew the rudimentary features: blond, blue eyes, short, thin, pale, and nice. His mind, however, was incapable of processing that information into a full image. He remembered that face, but when he visualized it, it didn't seem perfect enough. It seemed as if his mind was working miserably with an etch-a-sketch to try to recollect something for him that it was simply unable to supply. He wanted to see that person again, to ask his name.
He leaned back in his chair bracing his palms against the desk to tip him back at an angle so that he could see outside. Snow was coming down slowly reminding him vaguely of Fantasia and the sugar plum fairies, enchanting.
The fibers that made up his being slowly wove back together. That boy's invasion into his space had sent ripples into him and muddled his image. The more as one his being became, the worse he felt.
Nauseating self-consciousness rolled over his head and made his heart flounder. No one had seen him for such a long time. He couldn't remember what he looked like. He couldn't recall whether he was pleasing to see. What color were his eyes? His hair? Things that he hadn't thought about in centuries.
That person, though, he was nice to see. His eyes, struck like ivy green darts into his soul and paralyzed him, rid him of coherent thought. He'd never had that feeling before. Just remembering it made him shiver.
He paced the room like a caged wolf eyeing the window as if it were a poacher.
He willed his hand to have form and struck at the glass. It only rattled while his semi-tangible fist passed through it almost clear to the other side before he threw himself down to arrest his momentum. The infuriating idea that the only place of existence for him was within the confines of his father's house haunted him even through his short episodes when he craved oblivion.
Quatre rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes, then he had a thought.
He picked himself up onto his knees and willed his fingers to have form. In the undisturbed portions of the dusty floor, he began to write.
At the bust stop the next morning, everything was as it had been before they had entered the house. Duo was up to his antics and Heero and Wufei were back to subtly goading him on. They were all back to normal.
Ofcourse, they hadn't seen what Trowa had seen.
He looked anxiously at the house. He could swear to seeing faces in the windows, and puffs of breath fading and reappearing on the glass. The eyes that he felt shook his body and sapped the warmth from his very bones.
The house was all eyes.
When the bus arrived, Trowa nearly bowled over his companions to climb inside, to escape that thing.
That sentinel.
He walked with his friends as far as West Elm and Bailey. There, they all parted ways.
He watched them all leave before he turned back.
Trowa entered the house with some trepidation. It seemed to sigh when he took his first steps into the foyer.
"Don't psyche yourself out," Trowa reminded himself pressing his palm to his forehead. "It's just a house."
He picked his way through the hallways back to the same room he'd invaded just a day earlier. Empty, as he had expected. The internal disappointment that he felt was hard to surmount, and he just stood in the doorframe a few moments until his peripheral vision picked up the message on the floorboards.
Farie Stranger,
Please do not think me too forward when I tell you that I' am quite caught in admiration of your countenance.
If you would please grace me with your name, I would be most grateful.
Earnestly yours,
An admirer
Trowa paused a moment, then sat on his heels and wrote, Trowa.
He almost jumped out of his skin when the dust began to trace itself.
It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Trowa.
Trowa swallowed hard and scraped his index finger in the dust again, What are you?
I have submitted to the understanding that, I must be dead.
How did you die?
I don't remember.
That bad?
I do not know.
What is your name?
I don't remember.
Winner?
Is that my name?
Isn't it?
I don't remember.
Are there others like you in this house?
Yes.
How many?
Of that, I have no inkling.
Do you remember anything?
My memory since before yesterday is incomplete.
Trowa heaved a heavy sigh, Are you real? Or an ingenious personification of my idle mind?
It took a moment for the phantom to swirl its next words, I think…therefore, I am. I must be. However, if it were to be that I exist only as a figment of your imagination, I am content.
Trowa closed his eyes and considered for a moment before scribbling in the dust again, I've just had an idea. If you are able to write in the dust, I should be able to feel you. Since we've just met, lets shake hands. He stuck his hand out surprisingly steady for how drunken with dopamine and other coping mechanisms he felt.
At first it felt like static that slowly solidified into the feel of fingers that barely brushed his skin. He screwed his eyes closed and began to breath hard when he felt those fingers push past his skin.
He could only stand the strange sensation for so long before he jerked his hand back. "H-holy shit…" he said flexing his fingers. His bones still resonated with the electric hum of the ghost fingers' caress. "You're real."
A door slammed upstairs.
Already jittery to the point of utter hysteria, Trowa jumped to his feet like a startled cat and got the hell out of that house as fast as his legs would carry him.
Outside, the sun was already setting, and the moon could already be seen rising on the opposite side of the sky. Trowa stared at it a moment, and then looked back at the house he had so recently vacated. A smile seemed to trace across its front at having expunged him so quickly. He half expected to hear laughter from it.
It crossed his mind to say something, some verbal assurance to himself that he wasn't going crazy, but the only thing he could manage to get past his lips was a monosyllabic, "Shit."
The house shuddered in the wake of Trowa's hasty exit.
Papers shuffled and filed themselves in the study upstairs, and soft voices began to penetrate the gloom of the house.
Quatre settled his spirit at the windowsill and watched Trowa's retreating shadow.
"Fare thee well gentle stranger borne like a blessing into the night, nary from thy form my heart should waver, it is as constant as the sun…" Quatre improvised pressing his open palm against the glass. An unreasoning hope played upon the strings of his heart that, perhaps, if he wished hard enough, if his fingers pushed far enough through the window, he might be able to capture that boy. To stop him in his tracks and draw him near once more.
Gentle laughter from one of the upstairs rooms drew his attention. He gazed questioningly at the ceiling and thought that, for a moment, he could hear the footfalls of a young lady dancing.
"Welcome home," Catherine was barely able to say as Trowa entered through the front door before he was holed up inside his room.
He set his backpack down next to his bed, kicked off his shoes, and then sat. While he sat, he didn't think of anything in particular, though his face appeared pensive. Unconsciously, he ran his hands over each other as if trying to restore feeling in them.
After a while of sitting semi-comatose, he had what he thought to be an epiphany, but turned out to be hunger. Grudgingly, he hauled himself up and made for the kitchen. In the doorframe to his room, he turned to glance out the window. It wasn't snowing. The clouds hung in the sky dark and pregnant with precipitation. They stretched languidly from house to house, breaking from here to there allowing the moon to wink out from behind them.
Trowa didn't return to the house for some time.
Over the weekend, he didn't go anywhere near it.
On Sunday, he spent the day with Duo, Heero, and Wufei shooting empty bottles off fence-posts. He'd never discharged a firearm in his life before that day, but caught the hang of it quickly. He learned quickly to overcome the recoil and fire off rounds quickly, his accuracy proving with each round until he eventually hit all the bottles without error.
Duo was like a one-man cheerleading squad singing praises from behind and clapping with each burst bottle.
It would have been a lie to say that he didn't enjoy the attention. Trowa's aim improved partially due to the encouragement and the desire to surpass Heero and Wufei with their marksmanship. Duo was good, but, his preoccupation with showmanship made him miss a few times.
It was Trowa's last turn. Duo set the bottles, then took his place a considerable distance behind the shooter with Heero and Wufei.
Aim and fire, aim and fire, Trowa popped off slug after slug until he came to the last target, which made him jerk, and his last shot to go off in some other direction.
"What's wrong?" Duo called, but Trowa couldn't answer.
Not truthfully, in any case.
He could have sworn that he'd seen, in the crosshairs of his aim, the phantom cowering holding bloodied hands up in front of his face. After his misfire, the phantom disappeared, and he was left with his mouth ajar staring at a lone green bottle sitting squat on the fence.
"Whatever that was," Wufei began to say.
"It sucked," Heero finished.
No one was home when he got there. It was the first time since he'd moved to Virginia that Cathy wasn't there. It made things easier for him, though. He dragged a chair back from the kitchen table and parked himself in it.
He couldn't shake the image from his head.
He'd left the guys back there. He'd flipped the safety back on the gun and shoved it into Heero's hands before stalking off back in the general direction of home. At this point, they probably didn't need him to reveal to them his freaky ghost experiences for them to think that he was nuts.
He took a deep breath and drummed his fingers on the lacquered table setting his thoughts to a metronome.
Maybe when he'd left before, he'd left that ghost in some sort of peril. Did that mean he had to go back?
Outside the window, the last rays of the run were chasing the hills in the west. The house would be shrouded in shadow soon.
He'd have to take a generous shot of courage to go out as things were now.
His curiosity and mental well-being would have to be put off until tomorrow.
TBC