There must be blood, and this I knew.
I believe there must be wonders, too.
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- S.J. Tucker, 'Wonders'.
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Earlier, while in Romania, he'd hitched a ride on a truck where he could easily load his bike, so, for what would have been the most strenuous part of the mountain roads he was talking to his driver or staring out of the window.
As a result, in three hours he'd made it through the country, in half an hour he'd crossed the border (master forger that he was, he never had any kind of problems when it came to having his papers in order).
However, although he barely needed one hour to ride through the Hungarian countryside up to his destination in the town of Törökszentmiklós, crossing the border felt a bit like crossing between worlds. Upon arriving, he'd spent at least forty minutes trying to make the woman at the counter of the inn understand that he didn't know exactly how long he'd be there. Maybe two days.
And that he needed to put his bike away for the night.
All his goodwill and efforts had been met with the stoic repetition of 'ném értem. Én nem beszelek a nyelvet a cigányok'.
It'd tried him. It really had.
He'd made himself understood, though, eventually- and with the help of a questionable online translator. And in the end, he'd even been treated with some tolerable semblance of civility.
At the moment, he was lying on the bed, on his back, thinking of all he'd done until then, and how far he'd come (and far from home)... And how unlike him it was that he'd become so irked at the woman impassively staring at him, (not trying one bit to understand him at all!).
With clinical distance, he picked at his feelings. He found mostly confusion and annoyance- a slight note of reluctance, too, maybe.
He could pretend he didn't care, but he knew well that there was no point in trying to fool himself. His previous, inelegant loss of inner stability had had little to do with being hungry (hungry though he was), and much to do with what would… should… happen the following day.
It'd be time to cross the first item off The Task, and he found that the idea unbalanced him.
Although he did not fear it (not exactly, that he knew. He wasn't too familiar with being afraid), the prospect of a meeting between the coming, healed man and the lingering grim, silent child, stirred in him something acrid.
Törökszentmiklós was a city that had welcomed his heart with winter hands, and the spiky embrace of an Iron Lady.
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He slept in, the following morning, late enough to have missed breakfast.
So, he threw on his clothes (road-worn hiking boots, clear jeans and a white sweatshirt, a thick scarf, and his trusted jacket), aware that he'd need to have them washed pretty soon, and went out to the chilly morning to find a coffee shop.
Luckily for him, soon, he was sitting in a quiet park, reveling in the discovery of the awesomeness of Hungarian pastries.
Not many people walked around- after all, it was working hours.
He tugged the jacket a bit tighter around him- it'd been a gift from the circus crew a couple of years ago. They'd thought he'd like the fact that it looked a lot like a pilot's jacket. He wasn't sure he did like that, not when they'd given it to him, at least. It had reminded him of... things. But now, when he thought of himself (even when he remembered the war), his mind's eye always projected him wearing that jacket. And it was proving to be probably his best ally in this journey so far.
Up to now, I've been pretty lucky, Trowa thought, I accept it. I wonder if I deserve it, though.
If Catherine were there, she'd probably say something like "Jeez, you can be so gloomy sometimes!", or, "I've been hearing the same depressing talk for years now!"
She'd probably tell him that people always deserve what comes to them, good or bad.
I don't think 'deserve' is the right word, he'd probably counter, I'd say that they've got no other choice but to deal with it, be it good or bad.
In the hypothetical case that Catherine were there, she'd regard him with a thoughtful look and tell him that there's just some things in life you cannot be pragmatic about. Oftentimes he wondered if it was not actually she who was right about it.
"Anyhow," she'd say to him, probably, "Make the most of it. I believe you deserve it, and that should be enough for you!"
And, indeed, he thought- it should.
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His bike was heavy when he took it out of the inn's garage. It was not hard to figure out why, but it mattered little, because soon it'd return to its original weight.
Truth be told, despite the encumbrance, he'd been uncharacteristically proud to carry the 17 bottles of tzuica all the long way from eastern Romania to the Hungarian-middle-of-nowhere. He'd been proud because it'd somehow felt to him like a religious experience.
Now, Trowa was no religious man. But he knew about processions and services and prayers, just like anyone else.
So, yes, he'd bought specifically 17 bottles: 17 years ago, he'd been scarce kilometers away from where he stood, seeing mercenary after mercenary go down, to remain he himself alone on a smoking, dismal field.
He was not disgusted by the idea that he might be making an offering to the memory of the fallen. Nightmares, woven into the fabric that made him, took the shape of his earliest memories of war: those.
So, yes, maybe he did see those bottles as offerings. Maybe they'd not buy his redemption for all the lives he'd taken and those he had not mourned- but, maybe, they'd persuade his heart to finally lay the blame to rest.
He'd find out, soon, anyway.
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The merry light of the budding afternoon gave a peaceful aura to the countryside he drove through. Fields, ripe with wheat or freshly reaped, filled the air with the fresh scent of hay.
Following a way he'd set for the GPS in his phone, he had no trouble finding the field where his last battle as a mercenary on Earth had happened. The fence surrounding it was old and unkempt, and down in many places, so he just crossed it where it looked convenient, and thought little about trespassing.
He left the bike in some shrubs, and stood still- indulging in a moment of weakness.
Truth be told, he remembered little of either the place or the battle- back then, reigning in his emotions had probably drained his ability to perceive the surrounding world. But the feeling of having made it there after so many years humbled him.
He remained a long time in silence, taking in silly details like the sunny scents in the wind, the vibrant, bright- green color of the parsley that now occupied the field, or the distant buzz of an engine.
Skirting the crops in silence, he made his way over to a corner of the field where he could stand without stepping on the parsley and ruining it.
He was surprised to find there a broken piece of mobile suit, presumably a piece of an arm, half-buried in the rich dark soil- although that explained why the farmer had decided not to sow any parsley there. Some stray seeds, however, had found their way to places of their liking, and some misplaced parsley plants grew in the earth-filled crevices where the rust had eaten the metal away.
Trowa wondered if the land owner had found the now-scrap metal too hard to move, or if he'd simply decided to leave it there as a memento.
He'd never know, and he didn't mind it.
He decided that, as far as his purpose went, that spot was as good as any to pay his respects; and, finding it easier to focus on the rusty machine-fragment than on the whole of the sleepy field, he saluted.
'Captain, fellow comrades,' he addressed the broken suit,
'This is No-name, going by the name Trowa Barton now. I have come to your resting place to apologize for not mourning you properly, like anyone with a spine should have done. Instead, I ran away to space. Since we last met, I've been a clown and a Gundam Pilot, and fought for and against the colonies, the Alliance, the Treize faction, and the Barton foundation- and none ever had my loyalty. It was the skills that I learnt with this army that got me alive through all of that, and for that I owe a debt to you I can never repay.
'If you were alive, we could drink to old times, and you could tell me I'm forgiven. But, seeing that you're dead, I'll offer this to your memory, and, by your leave, I'll hold myself forgiven.'
And so, Trowa uncorked and poured each of the 17 bottles of tzuica at the feet of the half-buried mobile suit arm, and took a generous draft from the last one. He decided to leave the bottles there, in an orderly pile, to serve as a memorial together with the rusting mobile suit arm.
'You'd be proud of me,' he whispered; and, taking out his silver flute, played to their memory the "Rainy Radu Jig".
When the last note escaped the flute with a jolly chime, he thought he could imagine the company of mercenaries, merry from drinking and dirty from the road, dancing to their hearts' content to the rhythm of his music, laughing.
He would have wanted to laugh with them, too- but, as luck would have it, he found himself crying instead.
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He'd broken down, and he fathomed it'd been long overdue.
He wiped the last tears in the backside of the jacket's arm, and stole a last look at the mobile suit arm, turned gravestone. He wished he could remember that forever- the dark ground, moistened with tzuica, the random parsley plants growing through the rust-consumed metal.
The intense green of the field, dotted with golden fallen leaves.
'I'll never return here again,' he realized, with detachment, yet the pang in his chest lasted until he gathered his bike and started for the road again.
The waning afternoon wrapping around him, and his thoughts wandered to what would come.
He fell back on the knowledge that ahead, wherever the road took him in the meanwhile, there waited a story to tell, and a stolen picture.
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Author's Note:
This chapter was tough to write. It's important, and I wanted to get it right. I might have cried, at some point, too.
Did you like it?
Where do you think he's going next?
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'Glossary':
'ném értem. Én nem beszelek a nyelvet a cigányok' : 'I don't understand. I don't speak the language of gypsies'.
I had fun with that.
Hungarians don't like Romanians too well, some of them at least.
My Hungarian is not perfect but I'm fairly confident in the okay-ness of that sentence xD
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As you see, I don't consider the mercenaries to have raised Trowa, like many do. I think they employed him like one more of them- like in the old days.
Maybe it's rough, but I've never heard of a crew raising a cabin boy like a son.
I also think that he never had a childhood. In the previous chapters, where he's alone in the nature and laughing and letting go, I think that's the first time he's ever done anything of the sort. He's not a character known for laughing, but I think that he might've been secretly waiting all his life to give it a go. And, who knows, maybe he'll be less insecure about it in the future :O
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A reply to Guest's review: I really liked your interpretation of T's dream. The throne could certainly be evocative of the Gundam's cockpit :O And no, he's not attracted to Catherine- even if he's going through a period of confusion now, she'll always feel like a sister to him. However, she's the person that he's spent most of his time around, and probably with whom he's shared the most in his life, so when he needs a 'second opinion' or a reassurance, he inevitably turns to her.
A reply to sallysally's review: Dracula? Well, he was in Romania, it could make sense. I'd definitely not thought of it like that when I wrote it- but I could imagine it perfectly when you said it. He's absolutely the most vampire-like pilot, hehehe.
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For Guest and Bryony (have lots of fun with Duo trying to coax everyone but Quatre into saying more than 'hm.'!) : www. 4shared (dotcom) /get/YGYEzGSh/timvoice. html