Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Scissored Kismets ❯ Murmured Facades ( Chapter 3 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Chapter 3: Murmured Facades

"Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem." Maugham

“How could you, Relena!” Dorothy fumed through gnashed teeth, struggling to keep the dirtiest lineup of cusswords she could ever think of from spilling out. The expletives pressed teasingly itchy to the roof of her mouth and walls of her cheeks, her tongue ached to release them, but her manners told her it was not appropriate—especially that she was directing it to the former Queen of the World. So what she could only do was just to shriek the very words that fueled them: “A blind date!”

Relena brushed the strings of honey blonde locks that stormed across her face away, arching one brow when she noticed the lack of the title Dorothy would normally put before her name. Once she thought the locks were tightly secured behind her ear, the wind blustered again, wafting the same strands to slap across her now flushed face. Groaning, she rolled the window up.

“What's wrong with a blind date?” she coolly responded, drinking in the blur of colors outside the window. She combed her tousled mane with her hand and got her pinkie entangled with one of her now half-tied braids in the process. She clicked her tongue and inattentively fiddled with the knotted strands, feeling the extremity of rage reeking off the other woman that at that moment she almost regretted setting up the whole thing.

“Wrong?” Dorothy retorted, furiously pounding at the horn button to punctuate the word with ear-splittingly scandalous hoots. “Miss Relena, you're asking me what's wrong?Everything! Seriously, I'd rather torture myself thinking about Qu—Cupid than meet up with some sickening milksop! Goodness, I can't believe that you—you of all people, Miss Relena—would waste your time to make this horrible—“

“Dorothy, it's just a date,” Relena calmly cut in, rolling her eyes. “It's not like you're going to die just by seeing a man.”

Dorothy grumbled something incoherent under her breath and drove at top speed, positively declaring a silent war right then and there with the woman on the passenger seat. Relena picked the message up easily but she knew she didn't have to worry. If there was one person in this universe whom her best friend couldn't resist, it was her. She had proven this lots of times in the past, though not exactly during the war. Sighing, she busied herself freeing her hair of the plaits, taking in the fact that she couldn't make it appear neat again while she literally bounced on her seat.

Ten minutes passed, and the hush between them just thickened with pressure and showed no sign of diminishing. Dorothy, brooding, took a couple of deep breaths when the traffic rather built up before them. She mouthed numbers to herself but bits of her displeasure leaked out of the effort to keep herself calculated, showing in the series of horns she blew that arrested the attention of other already pissed off motorists. Some of them even popped their heads out of their windows to throw cusses. Dorothy didn't seem to care. She was too caught up in her own infuriation to notice someone else's. The air conditioning was on, but for the now somewhat cringing Relena it felt like she was seated inches away from a giant, open stove. I know I'm going to pay for this, she thought shakily, biting her lower lip.

She just thought Dorothy would not take so much offense of the whole thing. After she listened to the release of well-kept emotions in the metaphorical tale that afternoon, everything seemed to be alright. Assuming that the lady was just in the right mood at the perfect time, she immediately told her to dress up because they were going somewhere where a `surprise' was waiting. She earned a bunch of blackmail attempts and she was successful at keeping her mouth shut, though it cost them a waste of copious minutes until Dorothy decided to comply with her wishes. It was when they were already on the highway when she revealed the `blind date'.

Well, blind date of sorts. Dorothy didn't know who her date would be. Quatre did.

And that did it.

The traffic jam lasted for about twenty minutes. Relena didn't even have the time to catch her breath when Dorothy recklessly pulled the car out of the maze of slower vehicles and up the skyway, increasing their speed every passing millisecond until they reached the limit. It was apparent that Dorothy hoped for more.

“Dorothy, you're not in Grand Theft Auto,” Relena quietly spoke, peeling her eyes off the window when the blur made her a little dizzy. The ride rendered the seatbelt a useless strip of cloth limply adorning her body so she had to grip the leather seat with both her hands.

Silence.

“You know you can always drive somewhere else,” Relena finally said, throwing sideways glances at the other blonde. “That's why I let you bring your car. I'm not forcing you.” And Quatre would understand for sure, she silently added.

A hiss escaped Dorothy's gritted teeth. “Timing is everything, huh, Miss Relena?”

Relena snapped her head to Dorothy's direction, not quite getting what Dorothy had just said. It's just when the angry woman slowed and pulled the ten-wheel yellow limousine to the parking lot of a restaurant that Relena understood. They were already at the venue.

“You're not dumb, Dorothy,” Relena muttered, offended. “You already know I've given you the choice the moment I decided that we use your car.”

She fumbled to undo her seatbelt while Dorothy took a deep breath, smoothing her silk hair and peering to the rear-view mirror.

“I hope I look presentable,” Dorothy spat mockingly, sporting a scowl. “Let's go meet today's Prince Charming.”

“I'm so sorry,” Relena uttered. She wasn't sure if Dorothy even heard her, as the taller woman had immediately left the car and slammed the door shut with excessive force that shook the whole limo.

“There he is,” Relena cheerfully chimed, eyes widening brightly at the sight of someone Dorothy was positive she would not want to see. She noted the change in Relena's face from the moment they entered the pricey restaurant to the instant she spotted the damn guy.

Dorothy bit her tongue when one of the six-cornered oaths menaced to slip out loudly. The suddenly very happy girl dragged her by the arm towards her anathema, giving her squeezes that she thought was some kind of `good luck'. She rolled her eyes.

Good luck to the man, she thought irritably. Wish I don't find anything here that I could kill him with. She inhaled a lungful of air, hoping it would somehow mollify her boiling blood and the surge of disgust that blended in.

“Are we late?” Relena excitedly breathed to the man Dorothy could not see, being blocked intentionally by the first.

“Not at all.”

The voice filched a heartbeat from Dorothy's chest.

No, she gulped, images of her disgraceful mistake yesterday whorling in her head.Impossible...

Relena stepped out of the way and there he was—the Cupid in her unfinished fairytale, coyly regarding her with his hypnotically dazzling eyes. A frosty tongue of air licked the length of her back, seeping out the blood from her face that left her shining with a quite unhealthy pallor.

“Miss Dorothy,” Quatre greeted almost hesitantly. He displayed his lopsided smile, the one she remembered him wearing yesterday, the same sugary beam playing on the lips of the boy she mistakenly took as a part of her regular daydreams…

“Dorothy, this is Quatre Raberba Winner,” Relena playfully said, derailing her nervous train of thoughts. “Of course you know him, the heir of the Winner Company and all. He stayed for a while at the Institute with Heero, do you remember?”

Dorothy cocked a nod. She never directly informed Relena that she and Quatre fought against each other personally during the war. Her oblique admittance of this was the tale she told the unsuspecting girl just hours ago; it appeared that Quatre didn't tell the vice foreign minister, too.

Relena paused for some seconds. “I figure that you know he's also a… pilot.”

Dorothy, though very edgy, simpered at the incomplete statement. “Of course. Nice to meet you again, Mr. Winner.”

“Nice to see you again, too, Miss Dorothy.”

The two tasted the meaningful exchange, leaving Relena thinking it was their first reunion in months. The unsuspecting blonde released Dorothy's arm, winking at her before spinning around and leaning to whisper something to the Arabian blonde. Shapeless pink stains bobbed up on the boy's cheeks.

“Alright then,” Relena chirped in an exaggeratedly corky tone, vaguely waving a hand, “I'll leave you now. Got some appointment in an hour…”

Lie, Dorothy spat mutely, throwing daggers at the girl who pretended to look at her wristwatch.

“See you later, Dorothy,” Relena brushed it off. “Bye, Quatre.”

“Take care,” Quatre mumbled.

Relena slid past Dorothy purposely, whispering, “Forget your little Cupid for a while, okay?”

You just made that the most impossible thing to do now, Dorothy snarled in her head.

Both of them watched as Relena sauntered away from them and out of the restaurant. Both of them stared into thin air for a minute after the dear honey blonde was gone, drowned in their own thoughts, before acknowledging each other's presence again.

Quatre was more than willing to have his Space Heart traded for the ability to hold back blushes just for that moment alone. Since the minute Relena exited the place, his temperature had soared up considerably. He didn't need to look at the mirror to see the little red apples there that were his cheeks. Aside from the heat under his skin, the amusement on his date's face was far from enough.

He had seen the shock on Dorothy's face when she finally discovered he was her date, but she recovered her posture as quickly as she had lost it. There wasn't even the slightest hint of embarrassment in her actions—that were in his—from yesterday's little reunion.

“I don't want to assume anything, but it seems that you liked my kiss,” Dorothy said with a vicious smirk. She stabbed one of the lamb dumplings on her plate with emphasis more than what she intended, sending Quatre wincing. "How did you do it?"

The heat seemed to rise up a couple of degrees more. He refused to meet her stare and instead glared at his own plate, attempting not to cower as he picked up his own fork, imagining a gleaming fencing foil. “I don't set this all up, if that's what you're implying.”

Dorothy's eyebrows twitched. “Oh? Then I wonder why Miss Relena will set us up all of a sudden?”

Another implication. “I kept whatever happened yesterday to myself,” Quatre replied curtly, then forced himself to give her a smile.

“You didn't seem surprised at all when you saw me,” she pushed. The sneer on her face told him that the smile he flashed wasn't a smile at all.

Now what? Would he talk about his six-month-old nightly slash morning phone calls that led to this date? Relena had been a good, indirect confidant of him to keep that, even to her best friend. He didn't tell Relena to keep it, though; she was free to tell it to anyone, and he didn't care at all. It was apparent too that it indeed was a one-sided blind date, otherwise Dorothy would not be here. But he hadn't prepared himself for this. He got too nervy just by the fact of seeing her again that he hadn't really thought how it would go, especially with yesterday's event that complicated everything.

Another intentional clank of fork from the woman made him flinch again. The sound made the scar on his side to throb a little.

“It's because I know you're coming,” came his curt, truthful answer.

Wrong move.

“Who's mad?” Dorothy asked, her voice slightly trembling with barely kept emotion. “Or am I the only one who thought it was a blind date after all?”

Quatre shifted in his seat, hesitated, then looked into her eyes. “Technically, yes. Miss Relena must have figured you're not into such things so she decided not to inform you until you're on the way.” At least there was a truth in there.

“So Miss Relena must have thought you are into this kind of cheapness,” Dorothy smirked harshly, “that's why she told you.”

“I knew from the very start that it was you I'm going to see…” he said with a gulp. “Even if it wasn't in the form of a date, I would have agreed to see you. I think it'll be a good chance to…settle things.”

To what? Quatre questioned his own words. An uncomfortable silence crept over the table for a while, their stares attempting to unlock something they knew they couldn't. Surprisingly, it was Dorothy who looked away first.

“We don't have anything to settle,” she churlishly spat.

“Yes we do,” Quatre replied readily, searching his head for something that would justify his previous statement. He found it effortlessly. “And it's not just all about what happened yesterday.”

He waited expectantly for her to respond, but she just focused on her food, ignoring him, mulling over what he had just said.

Then he grimaced. Stupid! Why did he not consider the past would hurt someone else just as largely as it hurt him? Especially her. Just for the sake of saying something in reply to her, he.....no, it was wrong, using the past to cover his cowardliness! It was not even near the reason why they were here. It was supposed to be an ordinary date. Clamping down the panic and the strings of apologies, he studied her face to search for the hurt he supposedly inflicted on her. What he saw was just pure blankness.

Then the disyllabic excuses that were harbored in his throat and the terror he felt vanished altogether. The moment he fixed his eyes on her, he realized that he couldn't remove them easily, and it was indeed easier to look at her without her misty eyes doing the same. He drank in the delicate lines of her face, the golden locks that somehow escaped her black velvet hairband to fall over her brow, the long lashes that veiled the very eyes he was still so unnerved by, and the small frown she was wearing on her lips…lips he..

His thought was cut off when Dorothy looked up, her branded smirk slipping in place.

“That doesn't tell me anything. For settlement or closure? I don't suppose Miss Relena knew about what happened in Libra.”

Quatre didn't say anything, taken a little off guard by her penetrating gaze and how calmly she mentioned Libra. Somehow was toying with the idea that Dorothy was just playing innocent—that she could read minds with her glassy eyes.

“You can ask her why later,” he managed to say as he looked down, the red on his face deepening, if that was even possible at the moment. “I think we should not be arguing about that. We have our own business here.”

“Then let's just get it over and done with.” The scorn that poured out with the statement was extreme.

“…Right.”

Dorothy took a swig from her juice then resumed eating, throwing some eerie upward glances at him at intervals of looking at her food. He knew she could see him shiver as he searched for the right way to start this conversation, the way she tilted her head like that and how her smug grin seem to get a little wider.

“So…about Libra..” Quatre started, face now curling in regret. “I'm so sorry.”

He watched how her jaw stopped moving at his words.

“So even you can be sarcastic.”

He recoiled at the derisiveness that tinged the sentence, furrowing his forehead. “No, I mean it. I didn't have the choice back then…I have to leave. I didn't really want to leave you all alone in a battleship that was more than halfway on being destroyed, but the safety of the people on earth is at risk. I need to help the others. I know you are just in shape to survive on your own but…”

He closed his eyes before he finish his statement. “…but it just doesn't feel right.”

The quick leaps of her heart stung her breastbone. He said he was sorry. Sorry for leaving her behind on Libra. She would never meet anyone more foolish! Seriously, what was he thinking?! What have become of him? Just shell-shocked maybe? Or just pathetically thick? Did the war leave that much damage in his head?

Intense irritation and panic—or something akin to it—quashed thickly into her pulse, profusely gushing there to suddenly replace blood, drumming their way around her whole system to finally gnaw at her heart.

She choked, grabbed her juice and downed it in a gulp.

She was right. She knew all along that there was something wrong with his head.

“Dorothy?”

“You're apologizing,” she incredulously breathed, making it sound like a cross between a statement and a question and failing right away when it rang more like a severe accusation. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and tried to regain her composure.

“Yes…” the rather confused and concerned boy said carefully, “ but Miss Dorothy, if you don't really want to talk about it...I mean, I think it's really the reason why we're here, but if you don't feel like discussing it—“

“Have I told you already that I hate you?” she frigidly retorted. She had her shaking hands clumped into white little balls on her lap, her nails digging painfully into her palm that she was almost sure they had cut her skin. Why did he have to do this? Wasn't it enough that he had shaken her to the point that she almost didn't know who she was?

Quatre's eyes widened but softened quickly, though in a sad way. “I guess it can't be helped.”

And then she wasn't human anymore. Hatred, uncertainty, regret, panic, and clutters of more emotions she didn't care to classify replaced the flesh beneath her skin; they even seemed to have melted her bones in a way that she suddenly felt like a limp strip of vegetable. He didn't need to do this. He didn't need to magnify her deepest fear—buried and protected by newly-built walls—a hundred times more, and forcefully shove it to her face. He didn't need to make her see that every second, he just kept on getting closer and closer to her…

She closed her eyes and attempted, in vain, to scare away her inner ghosts that flitted in her chest. Like every battles she had with herself in the past, she ended as the one being too terrified that she had no choice but to drive herself away back to reality. Every time that happens she always curse herself, and she did now. Unwillingly, she lifted her lids and stared straight into the eyes of the dejected-looking man in front of her.

“Then tell me…do you hate me?”

She watched Quatre stiffen. He settled his drink down but didn't let it go, absently scrawling something on its dewy surface.

“That's one point I want to clarify to you, too, Miss Dorothy. I never hated you.”

“You don't have to lie.”

“I'm not lying.”

“I almost killed you.”

“I've…killed a lot of people,” he anxiously stated, his eyes now unsteady, drifting here and there but never straight on her. “What you've done is nothing compared to what I have. I often wonder if Allah could ever forgive me for my sins—sometimes I don't even know if He still heeds my prayers all this time. But still, it's a war. You're lucky enough if you're one to survive, and no one gets out alive unscathed. Uh, but I do hope you weren't harmed at all after the…”

The blue-green eyes widened with alarm when they shot back to her face.

“…Dorothy?”

“What?”

Quatre seemed to wilt as he looked at her, and he moved as if to stand up and scoot a little closer. She leaned back farther against her chair to discourage whatever he was planning and he got it, slouching back to his own seat after rising a mere inch.

“I'm so sorry,” he muttered brokenly with a little shake of his head. “I shouldn't have brought it up.”

She was about to give him a disdainful comment on his apologies but stopped in mid-speak, tasting something salty when she opened her mouth. A hand automatically rose to run over her lips. They were wet, but not with the sweet juice. Tracing where the saline fluid came from, she crawled her fingers up her cheek, and gasped.

She was crying.

“Ow...”

She inwardly cussed. She knew she should have done something to secure an improvised façade, but it seemed that her body wasn't in obedient mode today. Instead of swabbing the tears away, her palms cupped her face as she bowed down and continued weeping, letting the pale curtain of her hair to pointlessly hide her from the same witness of the same weakness she showed not that so long ago.

A somewhat relaxing warmth swathed her as she wept more, and she only discovered what it was when a feather-like voice fluttered in her ear. “I'm sorry.”

How Quatre had dragged her chair back without her noticing and had his arms wrapped around her, she didn't know. All that her mind could comprehend at the moment was that she needed to cry all her heartaches out. The idea of pushing him away did brush by her mind, but all of what she could make out as her remaining strength was all bent on the weeping; she found herself too weak to do anything other than that.

“Dorothy…” he tightened his embrace when she finally peeled her hands off her face and leaned against his chest, clutching at his suit like a frightened child.

“I'm sorry,” she sobbed, voice muffled. “I...I didn't mean to hurt you…”

She felt him shifted and placed his chin to rest on the top of her head. “It's alright, it's alright,” she heard him whisper, one warm hand rubbing her back. “You don't need to apologize about that...”

Sensing a little discomfort about their position, she let go of his suit, slid her arms around his waist and pulled him closer. The gesture elicited a gasp from Quatre but he didn't make any move to push her away or break the contact.

So the streams flowed, each drop a symbolic plea for forgiveness. Her regrets about hurting other people, too, poured out, and for a moment she thought they would never stop. If it weren't for the strong arms and the strength they seemed to lend her that moment, she knew she would pass out.

`So this is it? After all these years you're going to end it like this? I knew all along that you weren't much of a good architect, Dorothy Dermail Catalonia. The walls you built were nothing but trifling toys!'

She froze slightly at the little voice but didn't attempt to strain her ears to hear it again. She knew it quite well—also was the fact that it didn't come in sound waves.

`A fairytale indeed!' the voice mocked, ripe with disparagement. `Just when did the war-hungry little beast become the damsel in distress?! Hah! And that cuddle must be sooo warm to be able to thaw your supposedly ice-cold barriers. Such a sweet scene—you must know it was the most damn sickening thing you can do with your arms!'

Dorothy chewed her bottom lip, the last words of the voice ringing in her ears.

`Wake up from your dreams, thrash,' the voice leered again. `And don't fool yourself believing he somehow cares for you. The man cares for the whole world and it just so happens that thatwhole world unfortunately includes you.'

More tears fell. Quatre hummed and shifted a little to brush her hair. Did she even hope that he would ever return this…whatever this messy emotion she now held for him?

`You know you are different. Whereas those who received the arrows that Cupid shot would fall oh-so-deeply in love with each other, you were just turned into some kind of masochist, directing your affection to the little shooter. Snap the crap out of your head now. You've shown too much already.'

She pressed her mouth up in a straight line and gathered her brows. She knew those final words would put a stop to the overflow of saltwater. Like an alarm clock impatiently shrilling to drag her from the dreamland, the voice had somewhat flickered some sense into her.

No pushing the snooze button now. Time to wake up.

No matter how much her body seemed to be indisposed, she untangled herself from him with a forceful push. He gasped and regarded her with an odd expression swimming on his face, the shock evident in his eyes. When he saw the coldness back in her eyes, despite the film of tears still hovering in them, he reverted to the crestfallen little prince that he was earlier. His shoulders slumped with a heartfelt sigh and he reluctantly stepped back from her.

Dorothy tried not to notice the chill that hissed in the very instant his arms disconnected with her body. She scrubbed at her eyes, then scowled at the wetness that clung to her knuckles after doing so. Quatre had gone back to his chair, his eyes holding so many questions he dared not ask her that moment.

It took her half a minute before she spoke up.

“I think our business ends here,” she said with a contemptuous smirk. She gathered herself and held her chin up. “Mr. Winner, you know you've seen too much. You've witness something you shouldn't, but I must inform you that I couldn't care less if you want to broadcast it to the whole universe. And I must congratulate you. It seems that you've hit whatever goal you set for this little meeting.”

“That's—“

“I must excuse myself now,” she interrupted him with a wave. “Have a great day, Mr. Winner.”

She leered at his gaping face and strode away proudly, not paying him a second look, her heels clacking against the floor.

`Masochistic', the voice came back. `There's just so much you could find pleasure in. Pain is everywhere.'

She merely smirked in affirmation, but this time, she answered back.

"He is just the perfect fetish of a masochist. No one and nothing inflicts pain in me more than he does. Not even the pain you're saying that is everywhere."

She nodded to herself, an unnoticed tear rolling down the hill of her cheek. "Just so perfect..."