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Title: Transplants Summary: A city of the heart where one wishes that the past would be either dead or, at the very least, past. Preferably both. * Do you know, Zechs, that the heart inside my chest isn't mine? It's a transplant. Mine was literally rotted inside my chest when Une found me, and she had them put in a new one a few years ago, but now, it's falling apart like the rest of me. . . I take drugs to keep my immune system from destroying it; I take drugs to keep it from falling apart. I've been doing a little reading, and I know that another transplant will kill me, so I've got to make this heart last if I want to live. . .
Well, it hardly needs saying, does it? When you came that other day, I told you that Mariemeia was my life. She begins and ends my days: in the morning, before she leaves for school, she comes to my room, and we eat breakfast together, and at night, she reads to me from her books and kisses me goodnight. . . In the afternoon, when she comes back, she does her homework on the desk, and then I listen to her practice piano with the door open. Afterwards, she takes me out on walks -- for her, for me, rolls -- in the garden behind the house. She's seriously pissed at you, by the way. Afterwards, she came in and demanded to know just who it was that got me so riled up, that "being angry isn't good for Papa's health". From my room, I could see that she'd chased you out into the street, and I could hear her even through the closed windows -- I can only imagine what it must have been like at ground zero. "I don't *care* who you say you are. I don't care if your Relena herself -- I won't have you doing this to Papa, not now, not ever. Don't you know that his heart isn't very good? You've strained it, and the doctor *said* -- " "It's nothing compared to what he's done to mine." No, you didn't actually say that; you're too much of a gentleman, but I could hear it echoing in the air of that quiet city street. Do you remember that week in the mountains? The trees were on fire, the sky was on fire, and I was on fire for you. . . That time in the aspens, I laid you down in the leaves, and it felt like eternity there, the leaves falling down onto our skin and the heat of your skin underneath my mouth, and your skin standing out so clear against the fallen leaves . . . I fully intended to go back with you later, to show you that cave, but then you left and. . . And I died. In more ways than I can know, in more ways than I can express. Now, years later, you show up. I'm not so feeble that I can't go outside, and Mariemeia and I go for "airings" in the garden behind the house. Sometimes, if the weather is exceptionally clement, we even go out to the public parks; the neighbors know me as the invalid You didn't ask me questions about where I'd been, about just who is lying in that grave. If you had, I'm not sure I could have answered them. From the time I 'died' to the time I woke up in a hospital with Une on one side and Mariemeia on the other, everything's a blur of pain. I remember. . . I remember being strapped down to a table, and I remember a few beatings and a few voices, but they're scattered and broken, like somebody threw grains of sand into the wind and caught what fell straight down. I never knew who it was that held me in captivity or what they did to me. I'm sure Une knows, but I've never asked. I've never wanted to know. The human brain's ability to forget was something that I appreciated until then. Do you know, do you know that I'd actually started to forget what you looked like until you showed up? Features, even the best loved of features, blur and mix with time, and you'd faded into a general haze of pale blonde hair and colorful eyes. The first couple of weeks in the hospital, I would stare at the ceiling and desperately wonder what color your eyes were, what you were doing, how you were, if you were even alive. Regret and pain started burning away whatever life I had left, and even my drug-induced dreams were filled with memories of you. When I was awake, they were so sharp and so clear that I could cut my fingers on them and almost see the blood. At times, I thought that they were carving my heart out bit by bit; everyday, a little more of me was gone. And then Une had them do a heart transplant where they did cut my heart out and put in another one. And then I trained myself away from thinking of you or the past or anything beyond the struggle of living for another five minutes, and it all settled into a dull ache in my bones. Une had the quiet tact to place a small folder of information on you in my desk but not mention it, but I've never so much as opened it. I assume that she keeps it updated simply because I notice that the folder is getting thicker as the years pass. So when you walked in, it was a jolt. All those blurred features drawn into focus so sharp that I could feel my fingers start bleeding again. Did you know that I'm a hemophiliac now? It had something to do with what they did to me before Une found me, maybe a retrovirus tainted blood infusion. I do remember lots of blood, and these days, whenever a cut opens up, I'll find prints of it on my sheets for weeks afterwards. They have a cure for it these days, but I'm too weak for it. I never did tell you that I loved you in those days, Zechs, not because I didn't, but because I was afraid in some deep way that telling you would drive you away from me. . . But there is no such thing as fear for a man who has come back from death, and yet, I can' t say it now because I don't have enough of a heart, enough of a life, to say it now. Do you still love me? I assume you did, once upon a time, when we were both very young. I could feel it in your kisses and see it in your eyes, this flickering sometimes when we made love, a sudden flash of light like sunlight through stormclouds, and I almost saw it again today. . . Or was it pity for a dying man? I have my gravesite picked out. Une and Mariemeia and I went out to it one exceptionally clement spring morning, and we found a place on the hill. I will have a small granite monument with an angel holding a wreath of flowers and stars, at the request of Mariemeia, but the headstone itself will be just polished stone and have my name and my birthdate written on it. Mariemeia promises she will come and keep it tended, and the thought is comforting, that she'll remember me for a little while. You think I'm cruel? She's my life after all; it's only fitting that she'd know all the details of my death. She's a little soldier, and she takes such good care of me. . . I know she doesn't want to go, but being the person she is, she knows I'll die soon, if not today then next month or next year or the year after that -- whenever this heart that is not mine finally gives up and dies all the way inside me. And now, even your shadow is disappearing down the streets. Black on fading gold, and I think of the color of your hair, the way it used to feel under my hands, clean and crisp and somehow soft and the way it used to smell and the way you used to smell and the way we would both smell after we lay down together, this wonderful mixing together and-- A sudden seizer makes me jerk out of my chair, this heart start to rise out of my chest. I cough, and there is blood on my fingers when I take them away from my lips. I will die, Trieze, and my last thought will be of you, not Mariemeia, as much as I love her. She is here, now, this dying body, and I refuse to die thinking of this miserable present. I refuse. I will die thinking of the past, of happiness, of you, of my true heart. * end * Comments to anasile@aol.com |