The first thing Lela remembered thinking about Roselyn was an urge to turn around and run when this woman answered the door. Her hair was a brilliantly shade of resilient red, a dye which she believed could withstand a nuclear fallout. She'd teased it up into some kind of crazed bouffant, reminding Lela very vaguely of an archaic movie. Her eyes were squinty with bags double her size in a deep purple, drooping and melting into the taut, waxy skin of her cheekbones. She was terrifyingly skinny, a half-burnt cigarette dangling between two bony fingers. It appeared to Lela that the only things holding this woman together were industrial strength hairspray and residual cigarettes smoke molecules that had seeped through her skin.
"Hey you," she greeted, her voice reminiscent of hard-grain sandpaper. It reminded Lela of the antagonist in a cheesy, animated video. The creature from Vidal Sassoon jerked her aging neck towards Lela. "Thought you were gay." She extended the hand holding the cigarette until it pointed straight between Julian's eyes. "He yours?"
Duo laughed. "Nah. I'm still swingin' that way. This is Lela Donnelly; she's a friend of mine. Her son is Julian. He's like... what six months?"
"Five," Lela answered distractedly. She could not tear her wide eyes away from Roselyn. She was unlike any person that Lela had ever seen (or for that matter, wanted to see) in her lifetime. Instinctively, she tucked Julian's soft head against her shoulder, smoothing one hand over the light mop of black hair.
"Right. Hey, whatever happened with you and that other guy?"
"What guy?"
"I dunno. The one who lives with you and tried to pick the lock on my apartment door in order to get some files or something."
"Oh, right...Heero. Sorry about that, he thought you were from OZ."
"Eh," she replied, blowing smoke into Duo's face. The braided man didn't flinch, but Lela's nose wrinkled in slight disgust. "So, what can I do you for?"
"You remember that kid you were taking care of awhile back?"
"Oh, yeah... something, uh... Tommy? Timmy? Tammy? I don't know, I'm a little fuzzy on the details."
"Right... do you still have any of that stuff?"
"Oh, yeah, sure," she replied offhand, moving aside so that the three of them could venture deeper into the stinking lair of nicotine and destroyed ozone. "It's all around here somewhere. Something for her," drag, "rug rat?"
"Yeah. We're trying to get her and Julian settled in."
Settled in? Lela looked to Duo inquisitively, and he simply grinned in response. "Oh! Hey, what does this thing do?"
"It's a carrier," Lela answered without really thinking about it. She had learned all of this stuff when she thought that she would have money, after the war when Victor came back. After he died, the money ran out; they weren't legally bound, and the government was not about to take responsibility for them. Such is the way of bureaucracy.
"Coolness on a stick. I bet it's better than your poor little arm after a while, ne?"
"Yeah... it probably is." Lela didn't know. She'd never owned one. There was some kind of bizarre kindness radiating from Duo as he hunted through the excruciatingly disheveled apartment for more infant knick-knacks. Roselyn stood off to the side, still smoking heavily. Occasionally, the grit of her voice would call out a question to the avidly searching Duo, who would answer her from wherever he was. Lela wanted to help, but couldn't think of any use for herself, nor bring herself to delve any further into Roselyn's bizarre world. She appreciated Duo, though, more than he might ever know.
"My thought is that art expresses what's on your mind. If you plan out what you're going to do, then you're not being true to the art, the work itself, but rather to structure, the very thing that impedes art in modern society, y'know?" Duo said all of this as he was mixing rather large daubs of red and blue in a Tupperware lid. Lela nodded beside him as she brushed a strange hue of electric green across a few of the tiles. Julian was sitting, securely strapped in the carrier, atop the kitchen table. His chubby hands tightly clasped the ring of keys that he had pilfered from Duo's pocket, somehow, and shook them about wildly. Both of the grand artistes had their hair pulled back behind them with bandannas, on the advice of Megan Rose, who says that Latex paint does not come out for days, and it's best to avoid splattering any in your gorgeous, signature mane. The radio softly hummed some dance theme in the background, almost overshadowed by the jingling keys. Lela still wore Duo's clothes, having none of her own. Roselyn had offered her a sparkly top, which she had promptly declined on the grounds of it being 'too small.'
"Ah. So, what are you expressing?"
"Two things," Duo answered, smearing the gray-purple over four tiles. "First, my deep-seated hatred for the war." Lela nodded in understanding. "Second, my deep-seated love for Heero." She laughed to herself before dipping one finger in the red and painting little dots around her green smudges. "What about you?"
She shrugged in absent-minded reply. "Not sure. Probably... warmth."
"Warmth?" Duo questioned. His own arms were speckled with goose bumps from the chill that the super had been so happy to finally supply them with in the absolute dead of winter.
She nodded, and glanced at him. "Comfort. Safety. For now, I don't have to worry about where my next meal is coming from, or how I'm going to change Julian's diaper."
"Oh."
"When I was a kid," she added, painting a swath of orange that led to the stove.
"You still are a kid," Duo interrupted.
"Right, but when I was a younger kid, I used to dream about this transient, nomadic lifestyle, the kind of thing where you roam from town to town, living out of your car, and never holding down a job or staying in one place for a long period of time. I thought that it was, without doubt, the coolest thing I had ever heard of. I mean, when I was growing up, we always knew what was going to happen. We had the same dinners planned out for nights of the week. It was really a sick way to live, in my opinion, but no one else really seemed to have a huge problem with it. Still, I always wanted to get out. That all changed a couple of years ago." She wouldn't look at Duo, but he saw the clear drop of a tear splash onto the countertop. He moved his brush, still meshed with traces of the red and the blue that he'd used to make the purple. He could think, distinctly, of two questions that he would like to ask her as he made his ways towards mopping up her tear. The rest of his head was swimming in the confusion of the life this girl had led. He swabbed over the teardrop. Then finally brought himself to question,
"What happened?"
"Just... my mom. She got pissed about Julian," Lela replied. Her brush moved for the black paint. She leaned forward, lightly brushing across the tiles on the back wall, creating a henna-like design. "Kicked me out. I lived with Victor until he died and I got evicted. This was before Julian was even born."
"Right," Duo muttered, nodding. He was swirling the bright purple mixture over and over, throwing a more psychedelic fringe to their work. "Last question."
"Ask away," she replied distractedly.
"Your arms." Her brush stopped moving. He sensed that there was a very sensitive nerve underneath the scars on her skin and that he had just reached out his unclean fingers and plucked it. In his heart, he knew that he shouldn't keep prying with this poor, unfortunate girl, who he hadn't known for more than two days. And yet, there was a logical side to his brain, which told him that she was staying at his house, intrinsically entitling him to a rather vast amount of information regarding her, her past, her direction, addictions and any federal requests below her name. He reached out, extending his hand until his finger stroked the soft, scarred skin of her bicep. She accepted his touch for a moment; it was gentle, foreign and welcome to her. Then, she jerked her arm away, under the guise of adding more snaky black vines, but really just wishing to avoid the question. "What happened?"
"Well... back when I was a kid... even up till now, really." She looked away, away from Duo and away from her painting, as though it shamed her. Oh, God, she didn't want to say this. "I was big into... pain, I guess." Duo stared into her hair, for her eyes refused to meet his. He felt a very bizarre expected shock quell over him. "So, I was an experimental cutter, for a little while. Then... I was an addicted cutter." Her fingers gripped the edge of the countertop, turning white with some kind of rage and effort. "Then, I couldn't go a day without doing it. I would sit there for hours on end, watching blood flow down my arms and congeal in little blobs over the fresh wounds. It was like... this thing, I don't know. I needed it, couldn't live without it. It served as my freedom. But then, after the eviction, I gave up on it." Finally, she let herself look at him, relaxing her hands down by her sides. "Now, going without food is how I get my masochistic buzz."
Duo nodded at her. He didn't know what on earth he could say that would make her do much of anything. He had no idea what he'd meant to accomplish by asking her those questions, and felt a sudden urge to kick his own ass simply for doing it. It was fairly obvious by looking at the scars, their shape and direction, that she'd done it herself and that it was deliberate.
"I guess you'll have to give up on that now too, huh?" It was the only thing that Duo could think to ask her.
"Yeah... I... guess so." Clearly, he had upset her, and mused to himself as to whether or not an apology was in line at this point. At that moment, a few sniffles could be heard from the other side of the kitchen. Then, baby Julian's small red lips parted as he let out a very light wail, dropping the keys beside him. Quickly, Lela dropped her brush in the plastic cup of water before hurrying to the other end of the kitchen, near the table.
As she was maneuvering the boy out of his little plastic prison, Duo put his left arm behind him, gripping it around the back with his other hand, in hopes of hiding the distinct scar on the inside of his elbow, carved into the shape of the letter, 'H.'
A/n: Yeah, I know this one was kinda short. Oh well. Anyways, I'm getting all depressed b/c of the lacking in review. Thanks to Rasha, who always reviews hug and Sintari, who does all of my beta reading (which is no easy task.) At any rate, it's disheartening, and makes me want to not post. So yeah... reviews are good, though I do just enjoy writing the story.
Oh, by the way: If you've seen Emperor's New Groove, Roselyn looks a lot like Yzma. Just a fun little note there.