Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ In the Arms of the Angel ❯ Fidelity ( Chapter 22 )

Part XXII

There was haze. Haze everywhere, as though it was a foggy day. It was indoors, though, so it couldn't have been weather. Maybe like the fog machines they have in dance clubs and in theatres and in high school dances. But that fog is smooth, dry, like silk, whereas this fog, this haze was itchy, rough. It scratched whatever it touched without leaving a mark. It was uncomfortable. It was haze.

It was dark. Not like nighttime, or even the darkness of a movie theater. It was an unnatural darkness, like the type of darkness that descends before a storm, or that covers everything before the climax of a horror flick. It was the darkness that hides the crime.

However, at the same time there was light. There were vague shapes behind the haze. If there hadn't been light then those fuzzy shapes couldn't have been seen. There was no awareness of the light -- it came from nowhere, it came from everywhere. It was like the lone spotlight on a clear and dark stage with the floor hidden from sight. There were no stark lines to represent the cone of light, the source or the destination of that light. It just was.

It was through this that glass could be seen.

But first, there was the darkness.

The dark was heavy, suffocating. It seemed to want to hold everything down under its weight. It was murder to walk through it. It was like being underground, perhaps in a sewer, where there is no light, not even the hope for light. Where your eyes imagine things, looming and reaching things even though there is nothing there for you to see with, no light to illuminate even the softest of outlines. It is the type of darkness where your eyes spark with madness, and the light of one single star would burn and ache -- if it had only been there. When in this darkness, there is only the feeling of the walls closing in, the floor rising and the ceiling lowering in the desire to crush. Not crush for any personal reason, that would be too humanlike, and this darkness is as far away from being human as possible, but wanting to crush simply for the sake of crushing.

A few, heavy, dragging steps, and the knees begin to bend, sagging under the giant weight being carried -- a weight comprised of nothing but this terrible darkness. Before long, there is only crawling. Intense pain stings its way up deadened legs as already tender knees are scraped open again and again with old and rotted concrete.

But once through that drugged darkness, in all of its shattered eternity, there only remains the haze.

The haze of past and forgotten dreams. Vague memories of what the future might possibly hold. The haze of decisions weighed and discarded. The haze of knowing what was right, but doing what was wrong.

The haze of the remembrance of a better life.

This haze was created from the past, of all it holds and all it could be. Everything from creation through destruction held its part in the haze. Forgotten dreams, unremembered memories, betrayed hopes and murdered wishes made up this haze. Old arguments, heated conversations, passions and times of bordom helped to thicken the haze until it became not just the haze of the past, but the haze of drugs and dreams.

It was the haze that clung to the just awakened mind; it was the haze that glued eyelids shut. It was the haze that alarm clocks had to penetrate.

But, eventually, even the haze parted itself like curtains, or like the fog parting over still waters. One had but to only wait long enough, toil hard enough.

And it was after this evaporation of the haze that the glass stood. It was here that the sourceless and directionless light existed.

The glass was clean and clear, towering like a wall, a balwark in the center of nothingness. Around the glass were the edges of the haze, coiling and drifting, beckoning. And beyond the haze was the darkness.

But here there was just the glass standing proud in the clearing in the center of the haze.

The glass was unremarkable, but its appearance was, of course, remarkable. It was alone, just it and the unnoticeable light.

There were two sides to this glass, just like any other wall in existence. On one side, a translucent figure appeared, humanoid in appearance, but otherwise nondescriptive for its shimmering translucence. On the other side, another figure, this too humanoid, appeared. Both sides of the glass wall gained opacity slowly, as if they were afraid of this clearing in the haze.

But with the eventuality of the end of the forest of haze, so to did these two figures materialize into being, facing each other through the glass barrier. On one side stood Duo, on the other slumped Quatre. They each reached for the glass -- for each other.

Their fingers never touched.

Quatre leaned heavily against the glass, his complexion becoming ever more pallid with each passing moment, though there was no time here to speak of. Duo pressed himself fully against the glass, trying to get through. Duo's lips moved in silent screams, Quatre! Quatre! Quatre slid down the glass, clutching at himself as though he was his own lifeline, as though he had the cure to his disease. Duo followed, chest heaving, mouth opened wide, tears gathered in his eyes. Quatre seemed to barely notice.

Quatre! Quatre! There was no sound.

On one side of the glass crouched Duo, hands pressed to the glass, the skin of his palms flattened and white. On the other side Quatre was propped against the glass, his side to Duo. Duo banged against the glass.

The haze continued to grope.

Quatre's hand slowly pressed against the glass, seeking out the comfort of Duo. His fingers were spread. Duo, tears rolling down his cheeks, pressed his own hand to Quatre's.

Their hands never touched.

The darkness entered the haze.

The haze welcomed it.

Two hands pressed to each other across a gulf, which suddenly seemed a thousand kilometers wide.

Quatre's hand slowly fell from its place against the glass. Duo screamed silently again.

Quatre's crumpled form began to fade away as Duo banged on the glass again. The haze beckoned, groping for the lone figure at the glass.

Duo began to fade away as well, becoming transparent only after Quatre was completely gone. The haze groped at nothing.

The glass stood silently alone. It was no longer clean, two handprints marred its surface; each centered upon the other.

Duo's voice broke the silence in an anguished wail: "Quatre!"

Their hands had never touched.