I never sleep much.
It is nothing so trite as nightmares that
keeps me awake. I simply don't need as much sleep as most people. So
instead, tonight I stay lying awake in my bed, no missions pulling
me shivering from the warm blankets.
Yes, I do shiver. I can feel warmth and
coldness like any other human, despite what some people might
believe. I feel pain when I am hurt. I bleed in the same shade of
crimson as anyone else.
I am often more human than I would prefer, but
then, we all have our weaknesses. One of mine is that I do not sleep
very much, and neither do I dream.
My roommate more than makes up for whatever I
lack in my dreams. Duo Maxwell. Usually, Duo is as still as the
Death he claims himself to be in his sleep, but if his dreams are
restless then so too must be his body.
He whimpers softly, just once, and I wonder
what he sees in his dreams. Does he see the faces of those whom he
had destroyed, the faces of the dead haunting him in the darkness of
night? Does he see his own death, in a fiery wash of pain and blood?
I'm not afraid of pain, if I ever was.
Sometimes I feel like I was born this way, all consumed with an
ideal of perfection. There was a time when I didn't even consider it
anymore. I took it for granted that I would not, could not, make a
mistake and people paid for my presumption with their lives.
I paid for it with regret and a debt that I
can never repay. But not nightmares.
He cries out again, rolling over and kicking
away the blankets. Yes, it is a nightmare tonight, his face, usually
graced with a bright smile, is twisted with pain this night as he
cringes away from whatever horrors haunt his mind. I watch as he
rolls over again, wrapping his arms around his head as if to silence
something, or someone.
I simply watch, not even tempted to wake him.
Humans need their nightmares, they are an outlet for their minds
that keeps them from going mad, and from what I've seen, Duo needs
as many outlets leading away from that path as he can get.
After a few minutes he settles down, loose
strands of his hair clinging damply to his sweaty face as he
relaxes, demons lying dormant once again.
I study his sleeping face in the dim light of
our room. It's like my own, in a way, a pale youthful oval in the
dark, slack with sleep. I wonder if I look this way in my sleep,
though I doubt it. I am never so relaxed, even when I rest. Always
riding the edge of awareness, just in case. It is simply what I am,
something that I could not change even if I had wanted to.
I don't. I have no true pride in my abilities,
they simply are, but I would not trade them away. They are what I
am, everything that I am.
Still, I can't help but wonder sometimes what
it would be like to be something, someone else. Someone like him,
perhaps. I know that Duo had nothing resembling a normal childhood,
but it was still something different than mine, and it certainly
trained him to be someone different than I.
He seems careless, incautious, but there is
more to it than that, far more. Duo Maxwell has a stronger will to
live than any person I have ever known, and I find it a great irony
that such a person would dub themselves the God of Death. Perhaps
that is a touch of Maxwell's sense of humor, which is as foreign to
me as his desire for life.
I am curious about him, I admit. He is like
nothing I have ever seen. Quatre, I can understand. Innocents
abound, even in this world, and I have met my share before. And
Trowa, whose silence can speak volumes to one such as me. Even
Chang, I understand. Revenge is a simple emotion and lesser men have
been driven to it for worse reasons than he has.
But Duo is different, subtly, in a way that I
do not understand. So I watch him, trying to learn.
Awake, asleep, it all reveals little slivers
of what he is. I've watched him dream, watched him cry silent tears
in the dark when he thinks I am asleep. More and more, I find my
eyes drawn to him, wherever and whatever he is doing.
Perhaps I am obsessed. Or perhaps it's simpler
than that. Duo Maxwell is also one of the more attractive people I
have met. I am not inhuman and neither am I blind, and my body works
the same as any fifteen year old. No amount of training can change
that.
He starts to whimper again, twisting slightly,
and without thinking, I reach out and touch him, rubbing a soothing
hand down his spine. To my surprise, he relaxes almost instantly,
burrowing into the warmth of the blanket as he sinks deeper into
sleep.
I roll over into my own blankets and close my
eyes, trying not to consider what I have done. It doesn't matter.
One night of dreamless sleep won't hurt him. It has never hurt me.
Still, as I lie awake watching him, I cannot
help but wonder what it is he sees late at night, behind his eyes
that makes him suffer so. And I admit, if only to myself, I envy his
dreams.
-finis
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