Letters in the Sand

By Nanashi Tsurunaji

Warnings: Shonen-ai (literally, boy's love), angst (-ish), Heero POV, MAJOR fluffage at the end, um, I think that's it. If ya'll find any more, tell me, and I'll change these stupid things.

Pairings: 1+2


It's midnight here, but something keeps niggling at the back of my mind. Something that just won't leave me alone. I have, after all, been ignoring it for quite some time now, a little under a year now. Nothing seems to get it off my mind, so at 12:03 in the morning, I haul my heavy mind and heart out of bed and down to the beach for some quite time I can't get here, even if the only other person in the room is dead asleep.

Ever since I can remember, I have liked writing. Just don't tell the other guy, please? Any way, embarrassment aside, there is the fact that books can be lost and computers can be hacked. But here is a quiet place for me to write my thoughts. Down in the sand, where anything I write will be erased by little a little time. I pick up a stick, and hover over the silent sand. This will be the hardest part. How do I put down in words what I can barely explain to myself?

My hand moves of its own accord, flicking the stick over the top of the sand, not writing just yet. Thoughts flicker under the tip hovering half an inch off the ground, each one as alien as the next. Maybe I should think this through a little bit. After all, my roommate won't care if I come in late. He'll just tease me about sneaking off after lights out to see a certain princess. I know she is infatuated with me, but that does NOT mean that I love her. Holy hell, I hardly know what the word means! And there are so many different types of love!

Maybe that's where I should start. Relena has made it her mission to teach me how to love, but it has no logic. There is the love between parents and children, friends, family, neighbors. She wants me to know all this and show it to everyone. Yet, I don't grasp the meaning, yet. If I love anyone as a parent, it would be Dr. J. He has raised me as best as he knew how, taught me all I know, cared for me when I was in trouble (and I was in trouble more often than not. What? If you give a seven-year-old a machine of mass destruction to pilot, the results aren't going to be perfect). I think the only friends I have are the other Gundam pilots and Relena. I do not know any body else. Likewise, I've never had a neighbor that I wasn't trying to kill, until he showed up.

How annoying can one boy be? Of course, I'm referring to the same guy who is probably waiting for me in the dorm room with an uncouth comment on the princess of Sanq's upper torso. The same man who was, most likely, as oblivious to me as he was tormenting. That would be one Duo Maxwell. He runs, he hides, but he never tells a lie. That's Duo in a nutshell. He tells us that himself. When I know the basic schematics of how he operates, how can I be so lost when my mind turns to him. When I know so little about him, how can I figure him into the equation for love?

How can one who kills so many love, in any case? To my mind, love is reserved for the lovers, not the killers. As long as I remember I have been intimate with death. My own has always been with held. Maybe that is what he wants. I think Death has some grand plan for me. That's how I keep going. Even the Shinigami I know seems to be herding me at times into some grand master plan. If that's the case, I'll go along. Most likely it will lead to better understanding.

The twig keeps flickering over the sand, not touching. Like how I flutter around him. I never felt like that for anyone else. Like seeing him would numb the pain for a little while. Like if I touched him, I would go up in a burst of flames. I so badly wanted to burn, too. When he trails little flames over me when he brushes against me in a hall or as a friendly gesture, I want it. Is that the same as love? I don't know. I don't really think I can know yet.

I touch the stick firmly to the sand, and flick it around and down, left to right, three English words that would clear my mind for a moment. I dropped the stick like an underscore of the words my soul produced. There was no connection between any of them, but they were the same things I thought when I came out here where no one else could see. My feet take me back to where I can rest in peace, where no thoughts of Relena or Duo can deter me from my mission until I feel the need to burn again. I hope the next time will be as vague as this.


Duo Maxwell sat in the shadows, watching Heero Yuy flick a stick at a sand dune until he finally etched his warring thoughts in the sand. He stood and approached the lines his roommate had drawn. Stood in the same place that Heero had for over half an hour, and looked over the words that could only be from the hands of Heero.

There was nothing to be done about them, except for watch the writer very closely. There was something more to the mysterious half-Japanese youth than just the mission. Something deeper that caused him to write strange letters in the sand to people who would never read them. Duo scrutinized the words very carefully, looking for even the slightest shaking in that meticulous handwriting to indicate what was said wasn't meant. There was nothing he could find. He, too, left the shore of the white sanded beach, lit by the crescent moon, to see the man who etched words in the sand. He would pretend to be the same as always, pretend that he had never read the words on the beach, but there could be no erasing what was now etched into his heart.


And the soft moonlight laughed at the two men who saw the same words and saw two different messages. While one saw only the pain in each carefully written letter, each punctuation mark, and the other only saw hope. Hope and pain. That is what was on the sand that no one else was around to read.

Love? Death. Burn!

Those words, of hope or destruction, were the only testament to their passage. But even as I speak, the sands of time turn and the eastern wind shifts. The words of the soul wash away in one swift swell of an ocean wave.