The Un-Series
Title: Un-Attainable
Fandom: Star Ocean 2
Pairing: Dias/Claude (if you squint)
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Remember when I said last time that I don't own it? Guess what, I still don't.
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Un-Attainable
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Sometimes, in the short time between sleeping and waking, or waking and sleeping, Claude will permit himself to remember home.
He remembers a house with tall windows on all sides, to let in light at the cost of privacy. He remembers the kitchen which looked homey but always smelled efficient and clean, except when changing housekeepers cooked changing meals; Mai Lin, Berta Fräneli, Miss van Schuyler - chop suey, cheese fondue, cooked codfish with boiled potatoes and mustard sauce.
He remembers the garden his father used to work in, and how he did it - carefully pulling out bad weeds with their roots, snipping and clipping at the edges of the rose bushes, patiently staking beans and tomatoes - as gardening was one of the few hobbies he had, and which he liked to indulge in when on leave, a brief respite from an otherwise technology-ridden world.
He remembers his room, kept in shades of cream and steel gray (not his choice), with the bedspread as one of the few hotspots of color in it (blue and green and red), dog-eared movie posters on the walls and toys hastily stuffed in trunks and closets, out of fear of his parents noticing that he still hasn't thrown the last of them away.
And he remembers his parents; the father who was always strict but only meant well, and the mother who was kind but always afraid she would be more mother than commander.
Claude is not sure why he lets himself remember, as the memories are painful, all the more so because they are fragmented, incomplete. He finds that he cannot recall his mother's favorite perfume, or his father's rare smile, or the street they all used to live in. It hurts to know that he is forgetting something, is forgetting more and more with each day that passes. Sometimes, he has difficulties recalling his parents' faces in detail - they become abstract, generic, more notions than actual people. That's when he becomes afraid that he will forget completely.
Maybe this is why he keeps the phase gun tucked away beneath his tunic, hidden at the small of his back. There is no benefit in keeping a tool that is broken, and although he will certainly not find anything like it anywhere on Expel, it is not like it is a thing of extreme value, with its synthetic smoothness and fried wires and gleaming barrel. Still, he keeps it clean, keeps it close, because - as poor a substitute as it is - the gun is still the only tie he has left to his home, the only reminder that his life up until here was real and not some bizarre dream from which he has trouble waking.
He is trying to let the past go and deal with what fate has handed him, he really is. He knows he will spend the rest of his life here, and that - compared to what awaited him in his old life - this will perhaps not be such a bad thing. Still, it is difficult to let go. He wishes he could share his thoughts with his companion, but knows the time is not yet right. He needs to cauterize the wound by himself before he can show it to another, even if that person is a trusted friend.
Yet, Claude also knows that he cannot let go completely on his own. He needs something to fill the space between sleep and waking, on the alternate occasions he used to reserve for reminiscence.
And this need, he doesn't mind sharing with Dias.
If Dias takes special notice of his unpredictable bouts of clinginess, when Claude goes to sleep with his cheek resting against Dias' shoulder, he never says anything.
Maybe because, like him, Dias can no longer return to the home he once knew.
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A/N: Ho-hum, getting into
Claude's head is surprisingly easy. Hope it wasn't a bad read.
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The names of the housekeepers... I made them up off the top of my
head. In case you were wondering, Berta Fräneli is supposed to
be Swiss, and Miss van Schuyler is supposed to be Danish/Dutch or
something to that effect. The things they are cooking are their
countries' national dishes. ;)
- Unfortunately, I don't have exact
data on Claude's mom. The Internet was not very helpful in that
respect, but I gathered she has the position of an officer within the
federation. Feel free to correct me, though.