Disclaimer: Usual applies.
I'm back! YEEEESSSS!
Moving right along - here's a fleshy chapter, fresh out of the works. Another's coming up in just a few days. Something very nice happened; we got a new family computer, so I get the OLD computer - too old for internet, but perfect to write when I want to. In my room. A computer. *0_0*(!!). Please, please review - I need to see how things stand with readers vs. this chapter (yes, it's been that long). I have confidence, though - things are really starting to move, as you'll see soon.....
Enjoy. - Becca-W
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Keira swallowed, the sound loud in the shuffling quiet around her. Thom glanced over his shoulder, miscalculated, but not misplaced fear and repulsion present in his expression.
"Don't cry. Just don't." Keira watched him grab for a sweater, then all his sweaters. She controlled the shudders she felt coming on, and the sobbing she knew would follow a door slammed in her face, shutting her out of her own apartment (now, anyways). She watched the curve of Thom's spine under his shirt as he leaned, still bent over the bed, to a set of drawers; yanking one by one open he retrieved all his other possessions - he didn't have much. Everything was stuffed into a scuffed-up suitcase. Keira had once tried to carry it; she was too small.
She stood squirming next to the doorway, waiting for him to snap the suitcase shut and turn around, so he would see her there, next to the exit, and perhaps feel some obligation to give a farewell, or give her a "Next time, I'll warn you in advance". A pat, a shoulder-squeeze, a friendly arm-swat. Keira's hands rose to curve around the base of her neck; he'd give her nothing. Her fingers slipped loosely around soft skin, looking on with wide, thrilled, scared eyes. Thom hastened, glancing furtively for anything he'd overlooked (he took longer packing than she, always had) then shutting the suitcase as carefully as he could while being swift about it. Keira gulped again, guilt immediately rising in her eyes and coloring her faded face as he stared at her with an impatient air of dislike, but even more so - this caused her to gulp again - pity.
"Oh, God..." He yanked the suitcase from the bed and set it on the floor, adjusting his grip on the handle. "Keira..." She shook her head, almost stubbornly, her mouth pursing.
"I won't cry. Just..." She shrugged. "Go?...."
"Yeah." Some sense of kharma or the like crept into his mind; Thom relaxed a little, his shoulders unhunching. "Uh, you'll be fine." Something in her hardened, a wisp of sarcasm curling around her tongue, threatening to act either as a tourniquet or a whip.
"Sure. Okay." She choked out, turning paler with her response.
Thom picked up his suitcase. Keira glanced at the doorhandle but didn't reach for it. When the door stood open, she stared at his shoes - nice, clean sneakers - and Thom at her head, the uneven part in her hair. With an unsettled, half-voiced grunt ("Gruh...uhm..."), he left. After a few minutes (who knows, right?....) Keira shut herself in the apartment. Her aimless wanderings led her through its three rooms (four, if you count a separate toilet) several times before she came to the den. She slouched on the floor and went through a pile of small discs, gulping repeatedly, determination offering the only spark in her expression as she was dead set against crying.
"Shoot." She muttered, sitting back. After further thought, she slowly added, "...fuck." All the discs in front of her - film discs, or FCs - belonged to her four-year-old sister, who had visited over the weekend six months ago. Delia (her sister) was very forgetful and her older sister just as much; no matter how much Delia cried for her collection of FCs over the phone, Keira hadn't sent them back (though she promised to, over and over again). After some consideration Keira leaned over and sifted through the pile.
She slipped a disc into the player; the connected screen lit up. Still gulping from time to time she leaned back into a furry beanbag. She yearned dramatically for the comfort of a guaranteed happy ending. Halfway through the film, in mid-gulp, she wondered at Delia's good taste; princess-prince, pink-and-blue, white for wedding - red for love, gooey-mushy, sweet-as-sweet-sixteen, mature-adolscent lo-o-ove action - and the prerequisite Happy Ending-package-deal, complete with faux-fur rabbits, golden-hooved animals with british accents and a melting-rainbow background.
When it was over it dawned on her that the day had aged; it was one in the afternoon. With a glance out the window Keira realized she needed to get out. Grabbing a jacket from the coat rack she left her small apartment, took the stairs three at a time out into the open. Once past the front entrance she glanced up, over her shoulder; the five-stories of its height loomed over her, a creamy white resulting of its facing the sun. Shaking her head clear of her disastrous morning, Keira hastened to a park across the street - a large, shady affair at least five blocks long.
Keira passed a dog and its owner on the way: a collie, its nose curved ever so lightly as it followed some odor, though its owner seemed impatient to leave.
The trees opened into a grassy plain void of everything but a few park benches; most of them were inhabited by people in twos and threes. One bench off to the right offered singular companionship in the shape of some young kid, the collar of his coat upturned, hands jammed into the pockets. She meandered over to that bench.
"Mind if I sit down?" She asked. He didn't react; she felt a little miffed at being disregarded and was about to walk away when the kid finally shrugged. She paused, mouth turned up in an undecided half-sneer. Still feeling the effects of the snubbing Keira sat at the far end of the bench, gazing out across the stretch of grass and neat shrubbery in front of them. Her side of the bench was cool, shadowed as it was, and glossy to the touch as though it had been painted recently. Despite herself and the obvious plea for privacy in her bench-companion, Keira felt curious. Unfamiliarity enticed her. Strangers made her bold. After only a few minutes Keira glanced over, at once blushing self-consciously as she looked him over, her stare open.
His roughly cut hair threw shadows over much of his face. A tan of old times took to his skin, paling as though he saw sunlight only at intervals. Other than that, all Keira could discern of her fellow benchwarmer was a set of long, near black eyelashes, part of eyes that never seemed to blink. He wore an oversized winter coat with the collar turned up until it brushed along his jaw bone. Through his slump she detected slender shoulders, the material of his clothes hanging on his gangly form. Stealing one more look at the unfamiliar presence she turned back around, losing her mind to the feel of her sneakered feet rubbing against her ankles, the way the grass grew only an inch and half, the long eyelashes of her unknowing companion...
She stuck her hands in the pockets of her jacket, going into a severe slump. She found some stale crumbs in one pocket. Pulling some out, she threw the scatterings onto the pavement. The figure next to her performed a small jerk at the movement - her arm languidly thrown to the side, flinging old cherry bread crumbs onto the pavement - and she caugh sight of his eyes - large with youth, a strangely innocent adolescence combatting the alarm in his expression, now hazy where they had been piercing and unseeing - he glanced at her with a wariness reminiscent of Thom.
"Uhm...hi, I...hi." His expression softened into vacancy - was she already losing his attention?!
"Erk....hello, hi - "
She absorbed his stare, feeling vaguely happy at looking straight into his face.
"Uhm - do you come here often?"
"No."
"Oh." The face turned to her not charmed with her efforts - there seemed little activity inciting an expression at all.
"I don't live around here." He offered dumbly.
"Oh....I do..." She pointed in the vague direction of her apartment complex. "Over there." She got the feeling he couldn't care in the least. She pushed her hands between her knees in an effort to keep them occupied but they wouldn't stay there. They tended to flutter when she talked, trying to hold a person's attention or - Heaven save her! - from a whole group of people. Conversations always made people vie for the lead role, the largest, most commanding presence, jumping their cues too early in what was not supposed to be a competition. She never felt at ease in a group when she offered some direction to the conversation; a flitting, mad little thought brought her back to the young man - 'Thom never liked my stuttering, either, he didn't understand to how help it...' Oh lord, her hands, wavering, shaping things in the air in front of her!
"My dad.." She cleared her throat. "My dad made me live there. He lives in the next neighborhood, and he wanted me nearby when I went to university." She nodded at the young man, feeling a little helpless. "Um, do you go to university?" He stared at her, not blinking, and she felt her face go hot under his unkind, constant look. Then he nodded curtly.
"I was, but I'm on leave."
"Oh. See, dad's a little protective." She laughed, a brittle sound that made her voice sound tinny. "He's even paying for my apartment! But I like it here. I like Maliengradh - that's the university on 54th and Hamen, you know? It's my first year - already second semester, though. They've got this incredible astronomy course - that's my major." She cleared her throat again. "What were you studying?"
"Mechanics and philosophy." He said after a pause. That made her laugh - this loud, abrupt sound that flared from her throat - and he shuddered in surprise. She swung one leg onto the bench and hooked an arm around it, propping her chin on her knee while she spoke.
"Why did you stop?" He shrugged. She felt a little guilty for pressing and tried a different approach. "It's an interesting mix. How far did you get before - ..."
"Six semesters." She cocked her head, astonished.
"What? But you look so young! How old are you?" He paused.
"Seventeen."
"What?! My God! That's amazing." She shook her head clear of the clutter in her mind. "I'm nearly twenty-six and I've got two years to go before finishing grad school. You see...hum." She grew embarrassed, first at what she had almost confessed to the kid, then at her prolonged, conspicuous silence. If one stared with enough concentration, one could identify the fibers of the woody material making up the bench - a synthetic stuff that looked like pine, but was naturally water-resistant and as steely as oak. (Another attempt at protecting natural resources that had finally succeeded with this new replacement for wood, now used in all outdoor commodities that once involved lumber).
Keira had once seen her reflection when she blushed. The tip of her nose grew pink; the flush spread out across her cheeks, stopping at her ears. It was a gradual process but one she could feel. She could feel it happening now.
Glancing up, though, confirmed something she had begun to suspect subconsciously, the feeling coming across in a trust that formed between herself and him. The very facts that made him a stranger to her made him a confidante of sorts. The feeling that he cared little had long flown from her mind; its absence unfettered her struggling tongue. Her speech became more fluent, nearly unbroken, as she related some of her story to him in an effort to connect their conversation to their very beings. The unusual, somehow flattering innocence she found in him made a compliant partner to his evident oddness, his coarse, unexperienced boyishness and his altogether startlingly refined mind. Only probing, unknowing fingers could have unwrapped that part, could have pulled the good from the well-cloaked being that was this character. Keira, despite the age difference separating them, was a most gullible, ignorant person - it was that exact ignorance that enabled her to find what she wanted.
Something that had been tugging at her for want of attention made Keira's eyes go round.
"Oh my God! I'm so sorry, I got caught up - my name's Keira." She held her hand out for him and he took it slowly. She gave a single shake, her hand steady. (Strong European accents in character, manner, physical features, reason: underlying German flush to her speech, a deepening of the 'r's in her words, the handshake. Child of a single parent, reason: she hasn't mentioned her mother or spouse).
"Heero." The boy introduced himself. Keira nodded. A developing line between her eyebrows deepened as she regarded him thoughtfully. A feeling of recklessness developed in her.
"Heero, do you have to be home by any certain time?" His eyebrows rose in what she took to be a bemused expression. He shrugged.
"Not really."
"Cool. See that shop with the pink lettering? Next to it is a cafe. 'Join me for some coffee?" The offer was casual and friendly but Heero felt himself balking at her efforts. An itch he couldn't reach far for had been making him jumpy all day. He pushed the irritation out of the way, accepted the offer for coffee. He hadn't had good coffee in a while. Did it have good coffee? Very good, we - I visit nearly daily. Wouldn't you believe it, my dad actually insists on an 'allowance'! Keira's gurgling laugh drew forth; he watched her tame it with a hand over her mouth.
She was a little taller than he was, the impression encouraged by the long stretch of neck she bared, her hair cut just below her chin, curling out at the sides, her torso as narrow as Heero's. (Practices dance, reason: position of shoulders and feet in walking). Outwardly she had some gradually intensifying nervousness, a display of nerves plucked raw. What natural poise she possessed was disrupted by a deepening sense of dependency, a confusion that wrought in her a constant state of anxiety. It creeped along the bones in her hand, apparent in the small twitches of shoulder and head.
The cafe was warm inside, built to have many private nooks for customers to settle into. The ceilings of these rooms were oval in shape, sometimes domed, with exaggerated furniture and carvings in the woodwork of the windows and door frames. Slender staircases led up to them, these connecting to each other at odd moments in the two-story building, two even crisscrossing over the heads of customers waiting for their orders. Rather than choose a nook Keira brought Heero to a sunken in part of the ground floor, occupied by second-hand leather couches a bright purple.
Sitting down, the lack of the light reminding Heero of a cavern, Keira faced him with a freshly determined expression setting her face. She had her mug poised on one knee, looking taller than she was in actuality due to the length of her limbs, gangly arms, somewhat spindly legs...Heero glanced at her face when she began speaking, her eyes engaging his in activity during the conversation.
"I know the owner, of this place. He asked the students from the carpentry classes to help in building a coffee house, a few years ago. Yentin - he graduated before me - got me involved. Once carpentry was involved the art students and someone who worked in a second hand furniture store pitched in - now we have this. It's a point of pride with us, though we're expected to get our coffee from here and only here. Mr. Janssen gets jealous if we don't." Though her words spoke of a ridiculous debt pride shown through her voice, lightening the leaden quality Heero had heard in it so far. "My boyfriend, he even helped..with - oh..ughhuh...." The cup on her knee drooped enough to spill and she quickly mopped the splash of coffee from her knee-socks.
Her face had fallen once her thoughts had returned to the coffeehouse's origins. In the thickening quiet of a stretching, awkward silence between the two her expression grew stricken, stiff around the mouth, her eyes a little wild. Heero noticed they were getting swollen, glassy with tears. After a moment more Keira set the mug on a nearby nightstand, stared at the opposite wall, chewed at the side of her mouth. She gulped, hasty, the sound thick and wadded in her throat.
Then she crumbled in front of Heero's eyes, arms suddenly thrust forward on her knees to prop her face up, shoulders shuddering in what was both the loudest and quietest sobbing he had ever been witness to. With her face pressed into the undersides of her wrists, she gave abrupt, partly-suppressed wails before suffocating the sound by biting her mouth (Heero could hear her teeth click sometimes).
Odd blubberings that Heero deciphered as "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" made its way inbetween her sobs now and then. It continued for several minutes Heero found most uncomfortable, minutes in which he didn't take any coffee, letting it cool past the point he liked, and in which he sat as stiff-jointed as she had just a turn ago. He let his thoughts pool, noting her former, slightly troubled behavior and his quiet, if unenthusiastic presence - clearly not enough to earn this type of reaction from anyone. He was yet undecided betweem leaving while she was unaware or staying and hoping she would stop - when she collected herself enough to sit up and wipe at her face.
"I'm sorry - oh, I cry so horribly - Thom never liked it, he always felt so useless when I cried, but I can't keep it down, it's a beast - aggh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, oh God, I don't even know you - just barely - oh God - Thom said he felt like a trapped - uggh, something, rabbit? - he broke up with me! He just - after three years - he just - three years! - a rabbit?! I made him feel like a rabbit in a beartrap, what? Oh God, he broke up with me!" She stifled the sobs Heero had been expecting; she grabbed for the napkin that had accompanied her coffee and pressed a dry, fibrous fold to her bottom eyelid. "Thom, oh - he - I guess - I was so - OH, he had a slow temper, but - I guess he had enough - how could he compare me with a beartrap?! Uggh, I hate this, I hate this I hate this I hate thi - oh-houuggh..." Dab dab, wipe. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I can't believe I'm unloading this on a stranger!" She gave a warbling, wet chuckle. "Look at me, floating in my tears! Brother, once I get started....."
She recovered a little only to wheeze with new-bred tears creeping from her eyes again.
"He - I - oh, how could I, it still cuts me - oh, Thom - but he stuck with me, I can't believe he stuck with me, even now - why'd he leave after all that, after sticking it out through both pregnancies, why would he leave? He must have gotten sick with me - I'm not depressed, he's the one on pills, but I cry more than anyone he knew (he said)! I - and now - Lord, I can't stop - it's like something wet bobbing its head up against my esophagus, you know? I - oh, uggh, Thom, just left, and he always packs things so neatly, his shirts were not folded like he likes them, he's going to be mad when he stops to check - how can I remember that? Why do I remember that? Uggh, I hate this!" Heero had the sense to exchange the soaked bit of tissue in her hand for the napkin he found under his own mug. He watched, grossly fascinated, his expression an astounded blank. She took it with a nod, the corners of her mouth wobbling between a smile of thanks and more half-formed sentences produced in a waterfall of tears.
"I - two years! He was so helpful, Heero, Thom was so patient - helpful - and - " She hiccoughed and pound her chest once. " - and I - we weren't so careful, see - just this morning, 'S'why I'm like this, I'm not always walking around sobbing on the shoulders of people I meet in the - just this morning! God, it feels much sooner!" She grabbed at the tissue as though fondling the pain in her own body, her eyes unseeing as they stared around recklessly through a wall of flowing tears. " - and - and - oh!"
Heero, meanwhile, had formulated several things to do that could act as solutions to this problem (was it a problem? A situation, a sticky situation even, but a problem?): he could excuse himself to the bathroom, thereby freeing himself up for at least a few minutes.
Or, he could excuse himself and just leave, go back to the Zero in whose company at least he - oh blast it all to hell, the Zero for company?!?
He could get his coffee warmed up, in so doing both freeing himself up for a few minutes as well as prepare responsibly for the onslaught in Keira he yet expected to surface.
He could....ha, instructive advice, him, instruction? With a quick sideglance he felt assured, all the instruction he could give would be to knock her over with some dull object and let her sleep it off.
He could offer support.....except he might find himself a sort of rebound fixture begging to be nailed, like some bull's eye for the aggrieved.
Any number of small-term solutions could be found by just spilling the near-full mug and going off to get cleaning help.
Inwardly, Heero began to grumble, momentarily clearing his mind and ear of Keira's issues. He felt responsible now that he was in her company, though he also felt as though he had been roped in selectively for this express purpose. But the strange mixture of guilt and not wanting to go the motel room he had booked resulted in his staying on, for the time being at least.
Now having made a decision - grumble grumble huff - he turned towards her, prepared to stun her with his listening ear and readily blank expression. It set her off, hopefully in a good way. A canvas to paint her history on, someone to meet only once, a rented crutch.
Being a rented crutch was, in the end, much preferrable to being the target dummy. At least he'd made his mind up about that, firmly.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
The window sill pressed into her forehead but it didn't bother her sleep, a deep, unrestful dose. The window itself was closed, its view of space denied the audience in the space shuttle. The few travelers in the shuttle - parts of Relena's team, now rounding up after their week-long break for the next step in their plans, as well as a few bureaucrats coming for the show - either slept or read. Bullman, a district attorney new to the group of people in support of Relena's practices and in search of furthering his career through their aquaintance, was looking over one of the colony newspapers. They offered several on board the shuttle flight, two of the three most widely read in space as well as a hefty newsletter from the ESUN.
Bullman scratched on itch behind his ear, the bristles of his short-cut hair brushing against his fingertips. He glanced at the nails of his hand in a moment of blank thought, their white, slightly jagged cuticles, the rough swells of the nails themselves. A diplomat he met two weeks ago - a conference in Berlin - had surprisingly well-groomed hands. He had been perceptive enough to note Bullman's interest in his hands and, keen on the other's own unkempt state, remarked, somewhat pointedly, that once one entered a public office grooming was most important. It created the difference between the politician and his counterparts in government.
"Have you ever gotten a manicure?" He asked with such stern demeanor Bullman took it to mean this was how he presented himself to all.
"Not in a few years." The man nodded gravely, the action comic but to which Bullman kept a straight, serious expression.
"It's what my PR agent suggested when I first ran for office. I've kept it up since then." He glanced at his nails, a very pale shell-pink, much like the nose of a newborn kitten. Bullman nodded, and he planned on taking up the habit. It hadn't happened yet, though.
He glanced to the pair at the back isle seats, Relena Darlian and her mother, Mrs. Darlian. The pair, though apparently not at all related, held some likeness to the other. The younger was slight in build with much the same, light olive skin tone as the older, though Mrs. Darlian had a heavier bone structure and Relena had thin bones. One read, the other gazed through half-opened eyes at the seat opposite. Her hands lay in her lap, dismissed, palms up.
Mrs. Darlian glanced at her daughter.
"Any thoughts?" Relena shifted to look her mother in the face.
"We're going to have a very long conference on colony reconstruction." She rubbed the flat of her palm against one eye to spurn away all thoughts of dozing. "Then I've got to attend to my other, regular duties - like rewriting the Contract of the Comity of Interspacial Nations over telecom with my counterparts on Earth and organizing a report to send to ESUN Vice President Colman about my efforts, list in comprehensible order all suggestions (and, in the margins, compromises) concerning aforementioned Project 'Colony Reconstruction', sum up arguments against the deforestation of war-ravaged environments in Cinq - "
"Did you enjoy your week at home, Relena?" Mrs. Darlian broke in, smiling complacently as though she hadn't heard a word Relena had uttered in the last few minutes.
"Yes, I had a wonderful time. Thank you." She shook her head. "I don't know if you'll be happy coming with me all over the place - it's such a tight schedule, I don't know how..."
"Relena, don't worry about me. I supported your father in all his pursuits from home and, in hindsight, that wasn't what he needed. I want to come, now, to help you." Mrs. Darlian smiled and Relena noticed again the fine lines crinkling at the edges of her mother's eyes. "I don't like to leave you so little leeway, Relena, but you're not going to have much time protesting my near presence. So don't." She brushed out imagined wrinkles in her suit. "Now then, when do we land?"
"Less than half an hour." Relena smoothed her mother's collar, slightly upturned. "Thanks. I really appreciate this."
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Again, please review. ^ ^
I'm back! YEEEESSSS!
Moving right along - here's a fleshy chapter, fresh out of the works. Another's coming up in just a few days. Something very nice happened; we got a new family computer, so I get the OLD computer - too old for internet, but perfect to write when I want to. In my room. A computer. *0_0*(!!). Please, please review - I need to see how things stand with readers vs. this chapter (yes, it's been that long). I have confidence, though - things are really starting to move, as you'll see soon.....
Enjoy. - Becca-W
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Keira swallowed, the sound loud in the shuffling quiet around her. Thom glanced over his shoulder, miscalculated, but not misplaced fear and repulsion present in his expression.
"Don't cry. Just don't." Keira watched him grab for a sweater, then all his sweaters. She controlled the shudders she felt coming on, and the sobbing she knew would follow a door slammed in her face, shutting her out of her own apartment (now, anyways). She watched the curve of Thom's spine under his shirt as he leaned, still bent over the bed, to a set of drawers; yanking one by one open he retrieved all his other possessions - he didn't have much. Everything was stuffed into a scuffed-up suitcase. Keira had once tried to carry it; she was too small.
She stood squirming next to the doorway, waiting for him to snap the suitcase shut and turn around, so he would see her there, next to the exit, and perhaps feel some obligation to give a farewell, or give her a "Next time, I'll warn you in advance". A pat, a shoulder-squeeze, a friendly arm-swat. Keira's hands rose to curve around the base of her neck; he'd give her nothing. Her fingers slipped loosely around soft skin, looking on with wide, thrilled, scared eyes. Thom hastened, glancing furtively for anything he'd overlooked (he took longer packing than she, always had) then shutting the suitcase as carefully as he could while being swift about it. Keira gulped again, guilt immediately rising in her eyes and coloring her faded face as he stared at her with an impatient air of dislike, but even more so - this caused her to gulp again - pity.
"Oh, God..." He yanked the suitcase from the bed and set it on the floor, adjusting his grip on the handle. "Keira..." She shook her head, almost stubbornly, her mouth pursing.
"I won't cry. Just..." She shrugged. "Go?...."
"Yeah." Some sense of kharma or the like crept into his mind; Thom relaxed a little, his shoulders unhunching. "Uh, you'll be fine." Something in her hardened, a wisp of sarcasm curling around her tongue, threatening to act either as a tourniquet or a whip.
"Sure. Okay." She choked out, turning paler with her response.
Thom picked up his suitcase. Keira glanced at the doorhandle but didn't reach for it. When the door stood open, she stared at his shoes - nice, clean sneakers - and Thom at her head, the uneven part in her hair. With an unsettled, half-voiced grunt ("Gruh...uhm..."), he left. After a few minutes (who knows, right?....) Keira shut herself in the apartment. Her aimless wanderings led her through its three rooms (four, if you count a separate toilet) several times before she came to the den. She slouched on the floor and went through a pile of small discs, gulping repeatedly, determination offering the only spark in her expression as she was dead set against crying.
"Shoot." She muttered, sitting back. After further thought, she slowly added, "...fuck." All the discs in front of her - film discs, or FCs - belonged to her four-year-old sister, who had visited over the weekend six months ago. Delia (her sister) was very forgetful and her older sister just as much; no matter how much Delia cried for her collection of FCs over the phone, Keira hadn't sent them back (though she promised to, over and over again). After some consideration Keira leaned over and sifted through the pile.
She slipped a disc into the player; the connected screen lit up. Still gulping from time to time she leaned back into a furry beanbag. She yearned dramatically for the comfort of a guaranteed happy ending. Halfway through the film, in mid-gulp, she wondered at Delia's good taste; princess-prince, pink-and-blue, white for wedding - red for love, gooey-mushy, sweet-as-sweet-sixteen, mature-adolscent lo-o-ove action - and the prerequisite Happy Ending-package-deal, complete with faux-fur rabbits, golden-hooved animals with british accents and a melting-rainbow background.
When it was over it dawned on her that the day had aged; it was one in the afternoon. With a glance out the window Keira realized she needed to get out. Grabbing a jacket from the coat rack she left her small apartment, took the stairs three at a time out into the open. Once past the front entrance she glanced up, over her shoulder; the five-stories of its height loomed over her, a creamy white resulting of its facing the sun. Shaking her head clear of her disastrous morning, Keira hastened to a park across the street - a large, shady affair at least five blocks long.
Keira passed a dog and its owner on the way: a collie, its nose curved ever so lightly as it followed some odor, though its owner seemed impatient to leave.
The trees opened into a grassy plain void of everything but a few park benches; most of them were inhabited by people in twos and threes. One bench off to the right offered singular companionship in the shape of some young kid, the collar of his coat upturned, hands jammed into the pockets. She meandered over to that bench.
"Mind if I sit down?" She asked. He didn't react; she felt a little miffed at being disregarded and was about to walk away when the kid finally shrugged. She paused, mouth turned up in an undecided half-sneer. Still feeling the effects of the snubbing Keira sat at the far end of the bench, gazing out across the stretch of grass and neat shrubbery in front of them. Her side of the bench was cool, shadowed as it was, and glossy to the touch as though it had been painted recently. Despite herself and the obvious plea for privacy in her bench-companion, Keira felt curious. Unfamiliarity enticed her. Strangers made her bold. After only a few minutes Keira glanced over, at once blushing self-consciously as she looked him over, her stare open.
His roughly cut hair threw shadows over much of his face. A tan of old times took to his skin, paling as though he saw sunlight only at intervals. Other than that, all Keira could discern of her fellow benchwarmer was a set of long, near black eyelashes, part of eyes that never seemed to blink. He wore an oversized winter coat with the collar turned up until it brushed along his jaw bone. Through his slump she detected slender shoulders, the material of his clothes hanging on his gangly form. Stealing one more look at the unfamiliar presence she turned back around, losing her mind to the feel of her sneakered feet rubbing against her ankles, the way the grass grew only an inch and half, the long eyelashes of her unknowing companion...
She stuck her hands in the pockets of her jacket, going into a severe slump. She found some stale crumbs in one pocket. Pulling some out, she threw the scatterings onto the pavement. The figure next to her performed a small jerk at the movement - her arm languidly thrown to the side, flinging old cherry bread crumbs onto the pavement - and she caugh sight of his eyes - large with youth, a strangely innocent adolescence combatting the alarm in his expression, now hazy where they had been piercing and unseeing - he glanced at her with a wariness reminiscent of Thom.
"Uhm...hi, I...hi." His expression softened into vacancy - was she already losing his attention?!
"Erk....hello, hi - "
She absorbed his stare, feeling vaguely happy at looking straight into his face.
"Uhm - do you come here often?"
"No."
"Oh." The face turned to her not charmed with her efforts - there seemed little activity inciting an expression at all.
"I don't live around here." He offered dumbly.
"Oh....I do..." She pointed in the vague direction of her apartment complex. "Over there." She got the feeling he couldn't care in the least. She pushed her hands between her knees in an effort to keep them occupied but they wouldn't stay there. They tended to flutter when she talked, trying to hold a person's attention or - Heaven save her! - from a whole group of people. Conversations always made people vie for the lead role, the largest, most commanding presence, jumping their cues too early in what was not supposed to be a competition. She never felt at ease in a group when she offered some direction to the conversation; a flitting, mad little thought brought her back to the young man - 'Thom never liked my stuttering, either, he didn't understand to how help it...' Oh lord, her hands, wavering, shaping things in the air in front of her!
"My dad.." She cleared her throat. "My dad made me live there. He lives in the next neighborhood, and he wanted me nearby when I went to university." She nodded at the young man, feeling a little helpless. "Um, do you go to university?" He stared at her, not blinking, and she felt her face go hot under his unkind, constant look. Then he nodded curtly.
"I was, but I'm on leave."
"Oh. See, dad's a little protective." She laughed, a brittle sound that made her voice sound tinny. "He's even paying for my apartment! But I like it here. I like Maliengradh - that's the university on 54th and Hamen, you know? It's my first year - already second semester, though. They've got this incredible astronomy course - that's my major." She cleared her throat again. "What were you studying?"
"Mechanics and philosophy." He said after a pause. That made her laugh - this loud, abrupt sound that flared from her throat - and he shuddered in surprise. She swung one leg onto the bench and hooked an arm around it, propping her chin on her knee while she spoke.
"Why did you stop?" He shrugged. She felt a little guilty for pressing and tried a different approach. "It's an interesting mix. How far did you get before - ..."
"Six semesters." She cocked her head, astonished.
"What? But you look so young! How old are you?" He paused.
"Seventeen."
"What?! My God! That's amazing." She shook her head clear of the clutter in her mind. "I'm nearly twenty-six and I've got two years to go before finishing grad school. You see...hum." She grew embarrassed, first at what she had almost confessed to the kid, then at her prolonged, conspicuous silence. If one stared with enough concentration, one could identify the fibers of the woody material making up the bench - a synthetic stuff that looked like pine, but was naturally water-resistant and as steely as oak. (Another attempt at protecting natural resources that had finally succeeded with this new replacement for wood, now used in all outdoor commodities that once involved lumber).
Keira had once seen her reflection when she blushed. The tip of her nose grew pink; the flush spread out across her cheeks, stopping at her ears. It was a gradual process but one she could feel. She could feel it happening now.
Glancing up, though, confirmed something she had begun to suspect subconsciously, the feeling coming across in a trust that formed between herself and him. The very facts that made him a stranger to her made him a confidante of sorts. The feeling that he cared little had long flown from her mind; its absence unfettered her struggling tongue. Her speech became more fluent, nearly unbroken, as she related some of her story to him in an effort to connect their conversation to their very beings. The unusual, somehow flattering innocence she found in him made a compliant partner to his evident oddness, his coarse, unexperienced boyishness and his altogether startlingly refined mind. Only probing, unknowing fingers could have unwrapped that part, could have pulled the good from the well-cloaked being that was this character. Keira, despite the age difference separating them, was a most gullible, ignorant person - it was that exact ignorance that enabled her to find what she wanted.
Something that had been tugging at her for want of attention made Keira's eyes go round.
"Oh my God! I'm so sorry, I got caught up - my name's Keira." She held her hand out for him and he took it slowly. She gave a single shake, her hand steady. (Strong European accents in character, manner, physical features, reason: underlying German flush to her speech, a deepening of the 'r's in her words, the handshake. Child of a single parent, reason: she hasn't mentioned her mother or spouse).
"Heero." The boy introduced himself. Keira nodded. A developing line between her eyebrows deepened as she regarded him thoughtfully. A feeling of recklessness developed in her.
"Heero, do you have to be home by any certain time?" His eyebrows rose in what she took to be a bemused expression. He shrugged.
"Not really."
"Cool. See that shop with the pink lettering? Next to it is a cafe. 'Join me for some coffee?" The offer was casual and friendly but Heero felt himself balking at her efforts. An itch he couldn't reach far for had been making him jumpy all day. He pushed the irritation out of the way, accepted the offer for coffee. He hadn't had good coffee in a while. Did it have good coffee? Very good, we - I visit nearly daily. Wouldn't you believe it, my dad actually insists on an 'allowance'! Keira's gurgling laugh drew forth; he watched her tame it with a hand over her mouth.
She was a little taller than he was, the impression encouraged by the long stretch of neck she bared, her hair cut just below her chin, curling out at the sides, her torso as narrow as Heero's. (Practices dance, reason: position of shoulders and feet in walking). Outwardly she had some gradually intensifying nervousness, a display of nerves plucked raw. What natural poise she possessed was disrupted by a deepening sense of dependency, a confusion that wrought in her a constant state of anxiety. It creeped along the bones in her hand, apparent in the small twitches of shoulder and head.
The cafe was warm inside, built to have many private nooks for customers to settle into. The ceilings of these rooms were oval in shape, sometimes domed, with exaggerated furniture and carvings in the woodwork of the windows and door frames. Slender staircases led up to them, these connecting to each other at odd moments in the two-story building, two even crisscrossing over the heads of customers waiting for their orders. Rather than choose a nook Keira brought Heero to a sunken in part of the ground floor, occupied by second-hand leather couches a bright purple.
Sitting down, the lack of the light reminding Heero of a cavern, Keira faced him with a freshly determined expression setting her face. She had her mug poised on one knee, looking taller than she was in actuality due to the length of her limbs, gangly arms, somewhat spindly legs...Heero glanced at her face when she began speaking, her eyes engaging his in activity during the conversation.
"I know the owner, of this place. He asked the students from the carpentry classes to help in building a coffee house, a few years ago. Yentin - he graduated before me - got me involved. Once carpentry was involved the art students and someone who worked in a second hand furniture store pitched in - now we have this. It's a point of pride with us, though we're expected to get our coffee from here and only here. Mr. Janssen gets jealous if we don't." Though her words spoke of a ridiculous debt pride shown through her voice, lightening the leaden quality Heero had heard in it so far. "My boyfriend, he even helped..with - oh..ughhuh...." The cup on her knee drooped enough to spill and she quickly mopped the splash of coffee from her knee-socks.
Her face had fallen once her thoughts had returned to the coffeehouse's origins. In the thickening quiet of a stretching, awkward silence between the two her expression grew stricken, stiff around the mouth, her eyes a little wild. Heero noticed they were getting swollen, glassy with tears. After a moment more Keira set the mug on a nearby nightstand, stared at the opposite wall, chewed at the side of her mouth. She gulped, hasty, the sound thick and wadded in her throat.
Then she crumbled in front of Heero's eyes, arms suddenly thrust forward on her knees to prop her face up, shoulders shuddering in what was both the loudest and quietest sobbing he had ever been witness to. With her face pressed into the undersides of her wrists, she gave abrupt, partly-suppressed wails before suffocating the sound by biting her mouth (Heero could hear her teeth click sometimes).
Odd blubberings that Heero deciphered as "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" made its way inbetween her sobs now and then. It continued for several minutes Heero found most uncomfortable, minutes in which he didn't take any coffee, letting it cool past the point he liked, and in which he sat as stiff-jointed as she had just a turn ago. He let his thoughts pool, noting her former, slightly troubled behavior and his quiet, if unenthusiastic presence - clearly not enough to earn this type of reaction from anyone. He was yet undecided betweem leaving while she was unaware or staying and hoping she would stop - when she collected herself enough to sit up and wipe at her face.
"I'm sorry - oh, I cry so horribly - Thom never liked it, he always felt so useless when I cried, but I can't keep it down, it's a beast - aggh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, oh God, I don't even know you - just barely - oh God - Thom said he felt like a trapped - uggh, something, rabbit? - he broke up with me! He just - after three years - he just - three years! - a rabbit?! I made him feel like a rabbit in a beartrap, what? Oh God, he broke up with me!" She stifled the sobs Heero had been expecting; she grabbed for the napkin that had accompanied her coffee and pressed a dry, fibrous fold to her bottom eyelid. "Thom, oh - he - I guess - I was so - OH, he had a slow temper, but - I guess he had enough - how could he compare me with a beartrap?! Uggh, I hate this, I hate this I hate this I hate thi - oh-houuggh..." Dab dab, wipe. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I can't believe I'm unloading this on a stranger!" She gave a warbling, wet chuckle. "Look at me, floating in my tears! Brother, once I get started....."
She recovered a little only to wheeze with new-bred tears creeping from her eyes again.
"He - I - oh, how could I, it still cuts me - oh, Thom - but he stuck with me, I can't believe he stuck with me, even now - why'd he leave after all that, after sticking it out through both pregnancies, why would he leave? He must have gotten sick with me - I'm not depressed, he's the one on pills, but I cry more than anyone he knew (he said)! I - and now - Lord, I can't stop - it's like something wet bobbing its head up against my esophagus, you know? I - oh, uggh, Thom, just left, and he always packs things so neatly, his shirts were not folded like he likes them, he's going to be mad when he stops to check - how can I remember that? Why do I remember that? Uggh, I hate this!" Heero had the sense to exchange the soaked bit of tissue in her hand for the napkin he found under his own mug. He watched, grossly fascinated, his expression an astounded blank. She took it with a nod, the corners of her mouth wobbling between a smile of thanks and more half-formed sentences produced in a waterfall of tears.
"I - two years! He was so helpful, Heero, Thom was so patient - helpful - and - " She hiccoughed and pound her chest once. " - and I - we weren't so careful, see - just this morning, 'S'why I'm like this, I'm not always walking around sobbing on the shoulders of people I meet in the - just this morning! God, it feels much sooner!" She grabbed at the tissue as though fondling the pain in her own body, her eyes unseeing as they stared around recklessly through a wall of flowing tears. " - and - and - oh!"
Heero, meanwhile, had formulated several things to do that could act as solutions to this problem (was it a problem? A situation, a sticky situation even, but a problem?): he could excuse himself to the bathroom, thereby freeing himself up for at least a few minutes.
Or, he could excuse himself and just leave, go back to the Zero in whose company at least he - oh blast it all to hell, the Zero for company?!?
He could get his coffee warmed up, in so doing both freeing himself up for a few minutes as well as prepare responsibly for the onslaught in Keira he yet expected to surface.
He could....ha, instructive advice, him, instruction? With a quick sideglance he felt assured, all the instruction he could give would be to knock her over with some dull object and let her sleep it off.
He could offer support.....except he might find himself a sort of rebound fixture begging to be nailed, like some bull's eye for the aggrieved.
Any number of small-term solutions could be found by just spilling the near-full mug and going off to get cleaning help.
Inwardly, Heero began to grumble, momentarily clearing his mind and ear of Keira's issues. He felt responsible now that he was in her company, though he also felt as though he had been roped in selectively for this express purpose. But the strange mixture of guilt and not wanting to go the motel room he had booked resulted in his staying on, for the time being at least.
Now having made a decision - grumble grumble huff - he turned towards her, prepared to stun her with his listening ear and readily blank expression. It set her off, hopefully in a good way. A canvas to paint her history on, someone to meet only once, a rented crutch.
Being a rented crutch was, in the end, much preferrable to being the target dummy. At least he'd made his mind up about that, firmly.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
The window sill pressed into her forehead but it didn't bother her sleep, a deep, unrestful dose. The window itself was closed, its view of space denied the audience in the space shuttle. The few travelers in the shuttle - parts of Relena's team, now rounding up after their week-long break for the next step in their plans, as well as a few bureaucrats coming for the show - either slept or read. Bullman, a district attorney new to the group of people in support of Relena's practices and in search of furthering his career through their aquaintance, was looking over one of the colony newspapers. They offered several on board the shuttle flight, two of the three most widely read in space as well as a hefty newsletter from the ESUN.
Bullman scratched on itch behind his ear, the bristles of his short-cut hair brushing against his fingertips. He glanced at the nails of his hand in a moment of blank thought, their white, slightly jagged cuticles, the rough swells of the nails themselves. A diplomat he met two weeks ago - a conference in Berlin - had surprisingly well-groomed hands. He had been perceptive enough to note Bullman's interest in his hands and, keen on the other's own unkempt state, remarked, somewhat pointedly, that once one entered a public office grooming was most important. It created the difference between the politician and his counterparts in government.
"Have you ever gotten a manicure?" He asked with such stern demeanor Bullman took it to mean this was how he presented himself to all.
"Not in a few years." The man nodded gravely, the action comic but to which Bullman kept a straight, serious expression.
"It's what my PR agent suggested when I first ran for office. I've kept it up since then." He glanced at his nails, a very pale shell-pink, much like the nose of a newborn kitten. Bullman nodded, and he planned on taking up the habit. It hadn't happened yet, though.
He glanced to the pair at the back isle seats, Relena Darlian and her mother, Mrs. Darlian. The pair, though apparently not at all related, held some likeness to the other. The younger was slight in build with much the same, light olive skin tone as the older, though Mrs. Darlian had a heavier bone structure and Relena had thin bones. One read, the other gazed through half-opened eyes at the seat opposite. Her hands lay in her lap, dismissed, palms up.
Mrs. Darlian glanced at her daughter.
"Any thoughts?" Relena shifted to look her mother in the face.
"We're going to have a very long conference on colony reconstruction." She rubbed the flat of her palm against one eye to spurn away all thoughts of dozing. "Then I've got to attend to my other, regular duties - like rewriting the Contract of the Comity of Interspacial Nations over telecom with my counterparts on Earth and organizing a report to send to ESUN Vice President Colman about my efforts, list in comprehensible order all suggestions (and, in the margins, compromises) concerning aforementioned Project 'Colony Reconstruction', sum up arguments against the deforestation of war-ravaged environments in Cinq - "
"Did you enjoy your week at home, Relena?" Mrs. Darlian broke in, smiling complacently as though she hadn't heard a word Relena had uttered in the last few minutes.
"Yes, I had a wonderful time. Thank you." She shook her head. "I don't know if you'll be happy coming with me all over the place - it's such a tight schedule, I don't know how..."
"Relena, don't worry about me. I supported your father in all his pursuits from home and, in hindsight, that wasn't what he needed. I want to come, now, to help you." Mrs. Darlian smiled and Relena noticed again the fine lines crinkling at the edges of her mother's eyes. "I don't like to leave you so little leeway, Relena, but you're not going to have much time protesting my near presence. So don't." She brushed out imagined wrinkles in her suit. "Now then, when do we land?"
"Less than half an hour." Relena smoothed her mother's collar, slightly upturned. "Thanks. I really appreciate this."
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Again, please review. ^ ^