Through Your Eyes
CHAPTER FOUR: WHAT SILENCE CANNOT FATHOM
'Silence is the most powerful scream.'
-Unknown
Silence is who I am—those who know me know me for my silence and my cold, distant eyes. I see no use in speaking, and so the words I speak are short and meaningful.
But it is always the silent that see what no one else can, the little things that no one else thinks anything of.
I see through him, though he thinks he hides so well, thinks that no one can see through the mask he has built.
I stand here, silent, and watch as he struggles each day to keep his smile from shattering, his laughter from breaking. I can see all of the pain that he holds back, the loneliness and the emptiness.
We are very alike, he and I, though he is not aware of it. The others don't see the signs, the small nuances that I do.
The way he eats, as though he might starve the next moment, as though it may be taken away. The way he moves, wary and tense and graceful like a cat, as though he expects to be attacked. The way he speaks, as though he is constantly watching what he says, holding something back. Every now and then something slips through—a word, a phrase, a hint of some subtle accent that I can't place.
But mostly, the way he will not speak of his past, at all, save for some vague references to a Father and Sister that somehow, I don't think were of blood relation to him.
He never speaks of family. Never speaks of friends. Never of school. Never of home. Never of anything.
So I know. We are very alike; he and I—for neither of us ever had a childhood, or anything resembling stability. We grew up fighting for everything—our next meal, our next bed, our next day; our next moment, even.
I know that the others don't see, at least not the way I do. They know he hides. They know of the mask he wears. But none of them can see the broken teen that lies beneath it.
Sometimes that brokenness shows through, and I hear their whispers, thinking that maybe he finally gets it, that maybe he finally understands the seriousness of what we are doing, the war we are fighting.
But I know the truth—he was broken long before he ever met us, long before he ever set foot on the battlefield.
He doesn't know that I see through him. Because no matter how alike we are, one thing will always keep us apart—ironic, for it's the same thing that draws us together.
Our masks.
He wears a mask of laughter and happiness, while I revel in my silence. He smothers his pain with smiles and a bright personality, while I merely lock mine behind an impenetrable wall of silence, with nothing allowed past.
I understand why he wears a mask. I understand what he hides behind it. But there is one thing I'll never understand—how he, even with what he's been through, can laugh and joke and smile and pretend that he's okay, even when we both know that he's not.
And I—because of what I've been through—am trapped in a cage of my own creation, a cage built of memories, pain, and above all this broken, beautiful thing called silence.
This is the one that I was waiting to write from the beginning, because I planned from the beginning to have Trowa be the one who understood Duo the most. We have Heero, who like Trowa does not understand how Duo can laugh and smile and live, and barely realizes that it is a mask. We have Quatre, who realizes there is a mask and part of the reason for it. We have Wufei who refuses to see anything other than the mask presented to him. And we have Trowa who understands the existence of a mask, the need for a mask, and what lies behind said mask, but not how Duo can mask himself the way he does. Do I make any sense?
Either way, there's likely to be a small epilogue, probably another poem or a little drabble from Duo.
DISCLAIMER: I hold no claim to Gundam Wing or any related franchises. The quote belongs to whoever it belongs to—you know what belongs to me.