This Reality

The door of the cockpit creaked open.

You’re right.

He gripped the edge of the entrance as a brace and stepped out.

You’re right, Quatre.

He climbed down to the floor of the ship. His feet seemed to buzz lightly with each step.

You’re right, Quatre. We both have people that we want to protect.

Like you.

He had absentmindedly tacked that last part onto the sentence in his memory--so convincingly that it had almost become reality. To him.

He didn’t know if he had the strength to face the reality that awaited him somewhere in the halls of this ship. A mind that had been going on just hearsay and functioning in only its subconscious had suddenly been thrust into full life again, and these two realities were going to clash directly in front of Quatre’s face. He wondered if he should warn Sally or Howard about possible explosions just outside the hangar bay.

His flightsuit was chafing him, though it was a perfect fit. The vent blew sweat cool on the back of his neck. He could hear the blood pumping viciously through his ears as he walked away from Sandrock and turned a corner.

“Quatre.”

His body suddenly decided to play paddleball with his heart made of rubber and arteries of elastic.

His name. Saying his name.

Everything came clear in that one name. A world of remembrance spilled over and around it.

“Quatre,” the voice said again. Dripping with lost memories like molasses. Sweet rainwater.

On cue, one drop from a leaky metal ceiling stung him on the scalp, and he moved his body and neck until his eyes focused on a pilot with a fountain of brown hair in an identical flightsuit, leaning back against the wall and smiling thoughtfully.

His brain told him to think and feel a thousand things as he looked at the boy he’d almost killed. Smile. it said. Sob. Scream.

Say you’re sorry.

His mouth didn’t seem to want to do any of this. It could only fit itself around a word. A name. He knew he said it too much already, but at times like this it was all he had. Almost like a security blanket.

“Trowa.”

The other pilot lifted himself out of his leaning position on the wall and took a few tentative steps in Quatre’s direction. Quatre found himself moving backwards, to the safety of the opposite wall. His mind didn’t want to confront his error, didn’t want to see the whole thing blow up in his face.

But everything in him wanted this boy to forgive. His entire body was shaking with this need.

His back hit hard metal and his knees bent upward as he sank to the floor in a sitting position. Trowa followed suit in almost exactly the same manner. Quatre shuddered at their sudden proximity. He felt his eyes glaze over, and his fingers began to twitch nervously.

Everything he wanted to say suddenly spilled out of his dry throat at once, and he croaked, “I - ”

Trowa interrupted him.

“All that,” he said, “doesn’t matter now.”

It was a roar in his ears. Quatre wanted to touch this boy, to make sure he was real.

“Your memory - ” he sputtered. “I did that - to you... I don’t deserve - ”

“Quatre,” Trowa said, silencing the stammers. “Do you think I’m going to dwell on any of that now?”

A mobile suit exploded a few hundred feet from the Peacemillion. In the metal hallway in the ship outside the hangar, the only noise was the white breathing of the cooling vent.

“You’re Quatre again,” Trowa continued. “I... I remember everything. Souls heal. People move on.”

Quatre gazed at Trowa in amazement. He didn’t deserve this, any of it. He didn’t deserve to be sitting here with such a person, being so readily forgiven. This couldn’t be the reality clash he had feared earlier. There was no explosion; there was nothing except the cool air and Trowa, who was sitting there beside him, breathing, alive. He could almost feel their chests moving in unison, his own breath a bit more ragged.

But God, he could feel Trowa’s breath. Life. “Trowa,” he gasped out. “God Trowa, I can’t believe... I just...”

No visible change in expression played itself across Trowa’s face, but something spoke deep within his eyes. Everything about the boy revealed itself in those green eyes. They shimmered even when emotion was otherwise undetectable.

He needed to confirm this reality. He wanted to know...

“Can I - ” he began. “Can I touch you? I just want - I don’t know...”

Emerald orbs tentatively nodded.

The vent shut off, and in utter silence, Quatre’s fingers clutched thick flightsuit fabric, pinched fine brown hairs between thumb and index, pressed themselves into a soft palm. Trailed and grazed over pink lips.

Caught themselves and began to pull back.

Stopped at another green eyed sparkle.

Returned.

Eyes and fingers spoke simultaneously of mutual surrender. Eyes closed. Fingers pulled. Lips touched.

He didn’t know what he was doing, and he didn’t care. It was a taste like mint, clear and fresh with life. He licked at it with senseless abandon. Tasted a new reality.

Quatre pressed mouth and cheek against the soft skin of a neck, where he felt blood pumping, and a heart beating faster against him. His eyes were still closed.

He didn’t want to open his eyes, didn’t want to be assaulted by any other reality. Soon they both would go out to follow the sounds of explosions; clashes would consume them. But not now, not in this moment. There was only this, now.


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