THE
GRAVE OF LIVE THINGS
By: Hilary Fox
Rest
your cheek for a moment,
on this drunken cheek.
Let me forget the war and cruelty inside
myself.
-
from Jilaluddin Rami’s, “The War Inside”-
If
you swim in blood long enough, you can drown it in. Every part of
yourself- your name, who you are, your
emotions... they sink into those crimson depths and usually stay gone for a good
long time, if they ever return at all. And you, struggling to stay afloat, find
that the loss of these things is welcome because it’s less you have to carry
around as you tread blood, trying to keep your head above it.
Eventually,
you forget everything that’s not essential to survival- or the mission, if the
mission is more important than your life. If it doesn’t involve fighting or
staying alive to fight some more, it isn’t vital and just gets in the way. So
you figure you’re better off without them.
There’s
no room for emotion in war, or to wonder what the other man is
feeling as you cut him down. I think perhaps
that’s why they built all those mobile suits with that one big, glaring eye,
like a Cyclops eye- so it doesn’t seem so much like you’re fighting the men
hidden inside those things. Instead, it seems like you’re fighting a big,
moving piece of metal. Of course, if you’ve spent your entire life killing,
destroying a big, moving piece of metal isn’t all that difficult.
War
now is impersonal, maybe even more so than the twentieth century when mankind
first used the words ‘machine gun’ and ‘nuclear bomb’ and
‘biological warfare.’ You don’t see the
face of your enemy anymore- you see an empty yellow square staring back at
you.
But
then how do you explain the Gundams, why they were built... the way they were
built? Maybe those five scientists wanted to give a human face to war, or to the
colonies maybe, to set the Gundams apart from the rest of the mobile suits out
there. Maybe it was to give us five pilots something in the way of our own
humanity... our own uniqueness, to reinforce our pride. Sometimes when I’m
doing maintenance work on Heavyarms I wonder if that’s not a scowl on his
face, like he’s staring down an enemy I can’t see.
Anyway.
Imagining
things like that has no place in war either- right next to
emotion and trust. Both of them don’t lead
anywhere, except maybe an
early grave. I’ve lived most of my life
believing these things and that belief has served me well. Really, I can’t
even begin to count how many people have died because of me and I know I don’t
want to.
But
lately things have started happening. I find myself thinking on things I
probably shouldn’t be thinking about. Things like the human face of war.
Things like the concept of ‘allies’- I’ve never had one of those before
and never really cared to, because calling a person an ally is just a nice way
of saying they might turn their back on you later.
When
Quatre and I fought at Corsica and he jumped out of Sandrock, barrelling out of
his Gundam's hatch to tell me what we were doing was wrong, I could have
finished him right then. I knew I could have- one good kick or shove and the
enemy would have gone down.
But
I didn't do that. I went out instead, stood on the gangplank of Heavyarms just
like him and even though he told me to put my hands down, I kept them up. He
didn't surrender... he called a truce- I surrendered. Surrendered to the idea of
trusting someone else and accepting their help.
That
was more than enough for me, for the time being, but that was the first step
along a strange path and I found myself taking even stranger roads for the short
time we were together. Pulling out that flute... God, I don't even know how long
it had been since I'd had time to play one, let alone the spirit to do so.
I
left because being with him was too dangerous and it seemed that I was in danger
of racking up a considerable debt. The Maganacs fixed Heavyarms. I played a duet
with Quatre and rediscovered music. What next? Far better to just leave.
When
Quatre found me just outside San Francisco and asked that we work
together, I couldn’t believe it.
Us?
Work together? Me and this bright-eyed, excessively earnest kid? Never minding,
of course, that we’re the same age and never minding that we'd battled
already.
Huh.
Yeah. Right. Now that I know Duo, I can almost hear his response:
“What-EV-uhr!”
At
the time, it was pretty easy to dismiss him- when you look at Quatre, the words
‘Gundam pilot’ don’t immediately spring to mind. Looking back, that was
probably unfair of me because none of us look very formidable at all, but I know
he would have undergone the same training all of us have and he has to have a
grip of iron to wrestle Sandrock around.
Still,
if you look at Heero and Wufei, you can tell; something in their eyes tells you.
Duo... anyone with that half-crazed expression he has should be thought to be
capable of doing anything.
But
Quatre... Good God. Like I said- huh. Yeah. Right. What-EV-uhr.
So
why did I keep thinking about him? Why, whenever I saw him fight, did I ever
start to wonder how I could have brushed him off so easily? Tactically, it would
have proved to be a great error had we not fought
together at New Edwards or Siberia; our alliance
was, at its heart,
strategically sound. At the time, I could accept
that, even when we lost in Siberia- but at least we lost together a soft little
voice, Quatre’s voice, said.
I
was happy enough to keep it like that as Heero and I ended up galloping around
the globe in search of his absolution. Still, when you’re alone with another
person who keeps to himself almost as much as you do, thoughts have their way of
intruding. They become more persistent the more you try to think about your next
step, the next feint to get OZ off your trail. They come when you need to sleep
or concentrate- and oh, boy, do they come.
And
even worse, they stay with you in ways you aren't prepared to deal
with.
I
remember when I fired Vayeate’s cannon at Duo’s Deathscythe. There
was this ball of flame that enveloped
Deathscythe so completely that I
couldn’t see him and as I watched the flames
engulf him, I kept seeing
the ships carrying newscast camera crews all
intent on filming the
destruction of the Gundam. The destruction of
the symbol of something
I had fought to defend.
Briefly,
I wondered if Duo was watching. Part of me hoped he didn’t.
Then another part hoped he did, so that when it
came time for him to
fight again he would remember this thing.
And
then I saw my tears drifting through the emptiness of my cockpit.
And
marveled that I had any of them left.
Then
I wondered where they came from, how things I haven't seen for
years could suddenly come so easily- so easily
that I didn't know they'd come until they'd gone floating before my eyes.
Quatre.
If
Quatre had been the one in the Vayeate instead of me, I know he would have
cried. Knowing that makes my tears both hated and loved, because it seems like
I'm getting closer to him- but it means I'm moving further away from myself.
Moving
further away from myself and into a place where I'm not sure I belong- into a
place where emotion is permissible and even welcomed, where tears are beautiful
and joy is not a waste of energy, where light is golden and where I can move and
be free. Sometimes it's like waking up after a long, cold sleep in a coffin.
Not
that I know what a coffin's like, exactly, but sometimes it gets cold in
Heavyarms' cockpit. Cold, but I've mind it because I've been cold for a long
time- buried along with everything else in a deep grave.
My
heart is a grave for live things, things buried there that I thought were dead
and gone but in truth still have breath left in them.
And
Quatre, damn him, is bringing them to the light again.
THE
END
