Through a glass darkly
-o-
It's seven o'clock in the morning. But even though the sun is up, outside is perpetually dark.
Look out the window and see it shining out of the black in the far distance. It shines like the fabled Eastern Star in a desert of stars, but it heralds nothing. All light inside is artificial in an endless night. Only with the lights off, standing in a darkened hallway, can you see the pretense of a daybreak as the natural light of a billion far off suns through the bank of windows reflects off the metal panels of the floor. Until the ship turns, and then the shadows move those parallelograms of light farther up the walls, and finally devour them.
Back to the wall, face to the stars, he feels the rotation more than he sees it. In his eye is his own eye reflected in the glass, all the color drained out, like a clear winter sky. He stares, one hand pressed to the glass, as though asking himself what he is doing here, but even that assumes a certain amount of clarity. His thoughts are not so concrete as that. He only has a faint concept of why he feels guilt at this moment, when none of the reasons for it chance to come to the fore of his mind. Vaguely, as though from a steadily throbbing muscle pain, Quatre wonders why people hate.
In a dark room, an alarm buzzer goes off. The adolescent boy groans and tosses tangled in bedsheets and braid. His hand reaches out blindly, feeling for the particular shape of the snooze button and depressing it. It is reluctant to leave the warmth of the comforter. Trapped in a restless state of half-sleep, he doesn't notice the pile of clean clothes that someone has left folded on a chair. His body resists absolutely any attempt to raise it, his nightmare any attempt to be rid of it. Both are concentrating their efforts on staying warm. In his right mind, he wishes to be unborn from these times.
In the quiet of the cockpit, the hum of the ship's bodily functioning, like the pulse of a living thing, muffles even the small electric sounds emitted by various panels. The elderly man wakes the young woman dozing in an uncomfortable chair with a hand on her shoulder. She starts, but with no sense of alarm. Knowing instantly where she is, she stretches, and the one who woke her tells her to get some real sleep. She is no longer a Special of OZ. In civilian clothes, neither treats the other less naturally than if they had been on the same side all along.
In the hangar there is none of that quiet. Even nearly deserted, there is a constant bustling air that pervades the space. A few engineers have arrived to start their shift. The young man watches them from the scaffold like a leopard watching the various animals of the savanna start their day from the trees. He holds his coffee cup in his hands to warm them but doesn't drink. A warmed breakfast sandwich snagged from the ship's galley sits in its foil next to his folded legs, untouched since it was put there.
Instead he stares at the gigantic blank faces of the machines in front of him. The effect is like being brought to Ramses' chin level at Abu Simbel. The red one's stub of a pharaoh's beard sticks out in his direction. The white one has no beard; it doesn't have much of any face to speak of. Only a yellow square where a face would be, as impersonal as a Leo's—or a computer screen or a street lamp. It says nothing to him. Nor does he expect it to. Each is acquainted with the other already, and feels nothing. No gratitude, no contempt. It merely serves a purpose, the white Taurus. It coexists. Its right hand hangs at its side, gripping air. He threw its beam cannon away in the last battle. Now he isn't sure why.
Like the white Taurus, none of the other suits here will talk to him. Except the red one. It has fallen into a state of disrepair. And even though the ship's crew have been working non-stop during the arbitrary daytime hours, it shows no gratitude for their efforts. It looks back at him as though it expects him to do something, yet he knows not what, or why he should. He only knows that he should know. Like he should know the boy in the hall who seems to know him so well. If there is some revelation to grasp where either one is concerned, his mind refuses to grasp it. And for that he does feel sorry, even though he cannot apologize to either for not remembering what he doesn't know to remember. I don't even know what to call you, he thinks of the machine.
The machine in response is silent, impassive. Yet he wonders if this feeling of impatience is not entirely his own creation. He cannot deny the sense of recognition that nags at him like a sharp, shooting pain, the kind that keeps us in an awkward, half-bent shape, and has since he first saw the red suit's face. As if he had just seen someone he had been wanting to avoid. As though that someone understood him so well it frightened him.
As though that someone shared a bit of his own flesh and blood.
As though it were his own seed he spurned.
He is aware of the vibration of foot steps on the scaffold under his body. He doesn't look up, but hears the newcomer say, "Oh," as if he had just noticed someone sitting there.
At the tone of voice, he looks up and locks eyes with Quatre. "I didn't know you were—" Quatre cuts himself off. He looks at his feet. "I'm sorry," he mutters and turns to make a hasty retreat.
"Wait."
Quatre stops, frozen in a gentle expression somewhere between politeness, horror, and curiosity. The young man raises himself to his feet, his movements gazelle-like, effortless in the lesser gravity. "Don't go on my account," he says. "You came to be with the mobile suits."
He sounds indifferent, but there is something in his green eyes that is sympathetic. Hesitantly, Quatre steps toward him, not acquiescing but not denying his claim neither. The young man watches as Quatre turns his gaze from him and leans on the railing overlooking the hangar. "It's something I prefer doing alone," he admits, and his cheeks redden faintly. Other than that, his face doesn't change with this admission. His shoulders remain impassively hunched.
The young man studies his posture and the profile of his face unabashedly. It isn't that he doesn't care whether he makes Quatre uncomfortable. There is something to grasp here that he knows is crucial. An embarrassed blush. Embarrassed by what? Ashamed by what? Speaking his mind? Maybe it would help if he said he shared Quatre's feeling, or acknowledged his apology—if that's what the admission was meant to be—but his tongue is tied on that matter.
"It's rude to stare, you know," Quatre says after a moment. He tries to be sarcastic, but it is overwhelmed by a propensity for politeness that cannot be completely suppressed, no matter how foul the mood. He glances out of the corner of his eye at his companion, forcing a smile.
"I'm sorry if it makes you uncomfortable," says the other flatly, but he does not move his eyes away. "I was just . . ."
"Trying to remember," Quatre fills in the words for him when he trails off. "Yeah, well, maybe you don't want to."
This doesn't make sense to the young man. "But you were the one who wanted me to so badly."
"I didn't change my mind or anything. I just—" Quatre looks away, as if something on the hangar floor has made him suddenly self-conscious. He faces his companion. "How do you know you'd be better off? I mean, how can you know, for sure, that it wouldn't be better to start over fresh, never knowing what happened?"
Because the young man recalls waking up on the couch in Cathrine's trailer, struggling to catch his breath because of the bad taste some dream has left in his mouth, the pounding in his head. The monotonous sound of his own breathing that fills his ears only broken when he holds it against the pain. Hoping she doesn't wake up and ask him the matter. Knowing it is all a reaction to something he saw in the dream of just a moment ago, but unable to remember what that trigger was. Not a minutia. Like a hole in his head, where something has been physically torn out, without any regard for what remains.
He feels that same way when he looks at Quatre, when he looks at the red suit, and instinctively knows that knowing would be better than that ragged hole. But he does not dare put it to words. Perhaps fearing the consequences, or perhaps because he is simply embarrassed to admit it.
At his silence, Quatre's confidence seems to falter. "I'm sorry, Trowa, I shouldn't have said so much," he says in a shrinking voice. "It's just envy speaking. Sandrock won't tell me anything."
He steps past Trowa, and so that he needn't be so mindful of his movements around the young man, pushes off and lets his momentum carry him to the hallway beyond the hangar. Leaving the cup of coffee and the cold breakfast sandwich, Trowa follows him. Out of curiosity, or a vague sense of kinship formed by Quatre's last comment, or out of duty to the hanging conversation, he doesn't know. It simply makes sense to him to reach some conclusion.
The door slides closed behind him. The small hallway is quiet and dark in comparison to the hangar. Space opens up outside the bank of windows. The look on Quatre's face is more resigned than anything when he turns to face Trowa. "What, are you going to stare at me all day?"
"That suit won't tell me anything either."
"Who, Sandrock?" Quatre asks. At Trowa's silent, intense stare he corrects himself. "Heavyarms."
Something clicks. Trowa nods.
"I get the feeling it wants to," he says, "but I won't listen. I can't. Or, I've forgotten how."
Quatre's brow furrows.
He says, "I keep telling myself there's a reason I'm doing this, that there's some kind of order in all this chaos and killing—that I have a responsibility. I have a hard time finding that reason, though, let alone holding onto it once I have. I guess I hoped it was something that could be told to us, rather than have to figure it out for myself. Then maybe I wouldn't have such trouble right now believing what we're doing is right."
"That isn't true."
"How would you know?"
"You told me you have to fight for the people who can't fight for themselves. Isn't that your reason?"
"Or is it just another excuse, another way to justify something inherently wrong?"
"It's what brought me here." It's what clicked. Trowa shrugs. "I was a mobile suit pilot once. I know that much, even if I don't have the memory of it. I don't remember the reasons I gave myself. I suppose if you're going to fight, your reasons are good enough."
"But they aren't enough! What difference does it make if everything we do is in vain? If they don't even care what you've done for them—"
Snapping his mouth shut, Quatre pushes away, bracing his back against the wall. He folds his arms around himself. Trowa doesn't ask what the problem is. It's none of his business. He could not even admit curiosity. But he remains receptive, patient. If Heavyarms won't tell him anything, perhaps he can glean something from this young man.
"My father died disappointed in me," Quatre says after a while. He lifts his eyes briefly. "Do you even know what that's like? I never even had a chance to apologize for letting him down—for ruining everything he had spent his life building. I never even had a chance to say I loved him."
"But you believed in what you were doing." It is a question, even if not stated as one.
"Yes. . . . I thought this was the right path to take."
"Then he must have been proud. Even if he never told you, a parent can't help but be proud of his child."
"But he wanted peace so badly—"
"And you don't? To tell the truth, I'm a little jealous."
"Of what?"
"That you had a father."
Quatre snorts half-heartedly. "Hardly."
"But you still had him. You shouldn't want to make those memories disappear, even if they are few in number. Even if they are painful. They're . . . proof, that that person existed. That there was some connection. We had a connection. That's why I want to remember. I want to remember what it was."
"Even though you'll just end up hating me?" Quatre looks down at the metal panels of the floor; meeting Trowa's gaze is just too difficult. "You remind me of him. I guess, maybe, I'm afraid. That when you find out what I did to you, it will be like I've betrayed you all over again. Or worse. Because you'll find out I'm not the person you think I am."
Trowa makes a small, indifferent movement like a shrug. "That's okay. I have a feeling I wasn't as good a person as you claim I was either. I could feel it in the Taurus. You came back for me, though. Doesn't that say enough?"
"I came back for you for selfish reasons."
"They didn't seem selfish at the time."
Trowa thinks of saying more, but some new thought tugs at him, and at a corner of his mouth, teasing a tender smile out of him that feels vaguely familiar. "I'm not trying to make you feel worse by saying this, because you shouldn't blame yourself for whatever happened, but I think I know how your father felt. He probably felt more like a traitor to you than you did to him."
Quatre looks up, startled. "Why do you say that?"
The door at the other end of the hall opens, cutting off any reply, and a trio of engineers comes through on their way to the hangar. Their voices echo off the walls with grating casualness. Quatre quickly moves out of the way of their hands, which brace the moving track following the length of the wall. The movement forces him next to Trowa. Avoiding eye contact, he leans against the windows that bow out toward space.
When the engineers have gone, Trowa explains softly: "He couldn't protect you."
"I couldn't protect him."
"That wasn't your job."
For once Quatre is unable to utter a comeback. He just opens his mouth, thinks better of it, and closes it tight. Though so far Trowa has found no key for himself, unwittingly he seems to have unlocked something inside Quatre with that simple conviction, and shattered his defenses raised in bullheadedness. Tears appear in Quatre's eyes, but still he tries to ignore them, hoping Trowa won't notice. Not wanting to look weak, he won't reach out for consolation even though he must want it. He shirks human contact, Trowa has noticed. Just like Trowa does himself.
He pulls Quatre to him and puts his arms around his shoulders before either of them can object like they naturally want to do, like magnets with the same charge naturally push apart. He won't let them. Eventually he feels Quatre's arms fold awkwardly around his body, full of hesitation, yet grateful. He feels alien to Trowa, but Trowa clings to the conviction that this is right, even if he can't understand it.
Sometime later, alone in the dark hallway, he turns to the window where his reflection hovers in the glass. By way of experiment, he lifts the hair out of his eyes with one hand. He looks deep into the face that meets his in the thick window glass. What stares back horrifies him. Not because it is ugly—it isn't—but because it is alien, this shadow, this vestige, this ghost with stars for freckles. To whom does this sad, empty reflection belong? To someone whom other people call Trowa Barton? Because it doesn't feel like his own.
"For now we see through a glass darkly, but soon face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I am known."
He recites this from the recesses of his memory, and the lips of the reflection repeat it back at him, soundlessly. Self-conscious under that scrutinizing gaze, he lets his hand drop, and smooths the hair back into place before leaving the hallway empty.