Title: Hazard of the Dice (1 of 1)
Author: Paola
Disclaimer: Hazard of the Dice is based on characters and situations that belong to Sunrise,
Inc. (and other production affiliates that have the right of ownership). No money
is being made, and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Consideration/s: Similarities to other stories/events/passages
are purely coincidental unless otherwise cited. Beliefs and points of view
found in the story do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s.
Note/s: Written for 
1sentence community.
Theme set Epsilon. As per requirement, themes are written similar in order to
their given set.
Hazard of the Dice
Every nerve ending is shaken alive, thrumming with the desire that
is running in her veins and leaving the imprint of his being seared on her
person, and she accepts everything he has to offer, drinking his air and
sharing his passion, and they are moving the way a man and a woman are designed
to move.
Cool
His lips are hot on her skin, his skin is scorching against
hers, and even the chilling spray of the shower feels warm all of a sudden.
Young
Even when the war has taken a lot from them, there are still a
lot of opportunities to make up for lost time so they take every chance they
get to live the way they want to, to play under the sun, to swim in the ocean,
to ride and feel the breeze on their faces, and to satiate the thirst to come
together and re-assure each other that they are alive, again and again, through
liquid motions that make them forget where one ends and the other begins.
Last
She checks her planner and encircles the date on a blank page,
and she bites her lip in trepidation as she is reminded that there are only
three days left before the month ends.
Wrong
Her heart leaps in her throat when she suddenly feels queasy
upon catching a whiff of the kung pao chicken he bought for her during one of their Chinese take-out
nights — it used to be her favorite and now it’s making her stomach turn and
she knows that something is definitely not right.
Gentle
He holds her hair up and runs a calming hand down her back as
she throws up her dinner, telling her that she better get to the hospital to
have her stomach flu checked, and she feels guilty for lying to him when all
he’s shown her all this time is sincerity.
One
She hasn’t taken any tests, hasn’t gone once to the doctor, and
she understands that she has to — has to confirm what she’s done to her
future…to his future — but the thought of being right about her suspicion
scares her like nothing has ever scared her before.
Thousand
Of all the things that she could have done wrong, she didn’t
think this one would be it.
King
“I’ll remain a knight, never a king, because a king’s life is
more important than the queen’s, and that’s not how it is between us” — she
laughs, playing off the red that colors her cheeks, “That’s corny, Athrun.”
Learn
Sometimes, she doubts she’s ever really stood up for what’s
right and in times when her monsters make a grab for her, she thinks her life
is a lesson in surrender.
Blur
It’s always the two of us… hey, the two of us… never just… never
one… always with the other… Cagalli, Cagalli, Cagalli… forever…
always, always… two for each… remember, don’t forget…
Wait
It’s become almost like a twisted game, ticking the time before
the next bout of nausea hits her.
Change
“Hey, Athrun, I think I’m changing for
the worse,” she says one day, and he only grins, like she’s telling him a joke,
and proceeds to embrace her — that’s
impossible, he replies — believing in her with all he’s got, so much, so much, so much so that it hurts.
Command
Rock bottom…then all that’s left to do is go up.
Hold
When he holds her at night, she can pretend that everything is
all right.
Need
The desperate need to keep her balance leaves her leaning
towards a decision that is ultimately, undeniably wrong.
Vision
She’s blinded by what she believes is best for him, unwilling to
ask for help, and even more unwilling to listen to that tiny voice begging her
to shift directions.
Attention
If she can just focus, just go past her misguided beliefs,
she’ll remember that she can tell him, that he won’t turn her away, that he’ll
reach for her hand, fall with her, then pick her up and dress her wounds.
Soul
She turns to her side, stares at his sleeping face — smiling
that melancholic smile that hardly graced her face before but has now started
to come more often — and caresses the familiar lines of his cheekbone, his
nose, his eyes, his lips, feeling the tie binding their souls and knowing
she’ll be putting a crack on it.
Picture
It’s all a blend of colors, blinding, distracting, moving so quickly before slowing down and forming a dream
that clamps down on her heart.
Fool
She dreams of white flowers, of a warm breeze ruffling her hair,
of a white dress with ribbons and ruffles, of purity and innocence, and when
she wakes, she feels foolish for feeling for even just a second that the dream
has a way of coming true.
Mad
For a moment, Cagalli doesn’t
understand what the doctor is telling her, hearing the words clearly but not
making sense of them, and she detachedly wonders if she’s gone crazy.
Child
She looks at the results with unseeing eyes, bitter at the
confirmation of something she has known for days, and she feels the bile rise
in her throat — I can’t
breathe, I can’t breathe — and
this time, the nausea has nothing to do with what she’s carrying.
Now
They say that nothing is as important as the present, the today, the now, but she
thinks she’d rather go back to the past, when it was all uncomplicated, when
all was right with the world, when there was still the chance that she might
not have gotten the way she is now.
Shadow
She’s afraid of a lot of things, she’s discovered, like the
inexplicable play of shadows at night, the incessant hooting of owls, and most
recently, the uncertainty of her future.
Goodbye
As she waves goodbye to him for her return to Orb after a long
stay at the PLANTs, her heart clenches when he smiles at her unguardedly,
unaware of what she’s about to do.
Hide
“Did you have the doctor check on your stomach flu?” comes Athrun’s voice from the
machine, making this call the tenth she hasn’t answered.
Fortune
It’s ironic that her fortune cookie says she’ll be getting over
an obstacle in her life quite easily.
Safe
She clutches the Haumea pendant she’s
borrowed from Athrun, waiting for the doctor to call
her name.
Ghost
The sterile smell, the buzz of the air-conditioner, the clinks
of surgical metals, the stench of blood — deathdeathdeath— the white-washed walls,
and the warm trail of tears escaping her eyes will never leave her, will always
remain in her mind, reminding her of her own hypocrisy, like an incessant
haunting that leaves her soul bare, raw, and vulnerable.
Book
“You see, Daddy, when the first baby laughed for the first time,
its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and
that was the beginning of fairies,” she once told her father, quoting from her
favorite classic.
Eye
“Your eyes are amber, his are green, you’d have blue-eyed
babies,” Miriallia’s teasing was answered by
a playful glare and a secret gush of butterflies at the thought of what their
future might be — “It doesn’t quite work that way, Mir.”
Never
“I don’t understand how mothers can stomach killing their own
baby.”
Since
She’s come a long way from when she was painfully innocent, and
the changes she’s been through aren’t exactly something she’s very proud of.
Sudden
The tears come unbidden as she struggles to separate reality
from dreams, visions of a child’s happy face swimming before her eyes in the
darkness of her room.
Stop
If time would just pause for a second, maybe she could begin
collecting the pieces of herself that have been scattered by her selfishness.
Time
But the world is cruel, and the hands of the clock will always
move, will not wait for her, will progress and forget her, and along with the
passage of ticks and tocks is the weight of her mistake becoming harder to
bear.
Wash
She splashes her face with cold water, looks in the mirror and
sees haunting eyes, and takes a cleansing breath that doesn’t do anything for
her.
Torn
“If I ever have to make a choice between what will make us happy
and what is right, do you think I’ll choose wisely?”
History
“I will love you forever, Cagalli,”
was answered by: “Notwithstanding my mistakes and more I’d probably commit?”
Power
She collapses on the floor, her strength sapped away from her by
the wrongness of her decision.
Bother
But because she believes this is the best for her — for him — she
can’t be bothered by the guilt that’s beginning to brew in her person…she can’t
be bothered, will not be bothered…she shan’t, she shan’t, she shan’t.
God
What took God six days to create, took her only six minutes to
kill (and now Athrun knows everything...he knows,
oh God, oh God…).
Wall
Where once things between them flowed freely, now there’s a
barrier that blocks their connection, and there are no executive guards to help
her, no Kira to save her, no Kisaka
to catch her, just herself — Cagalli Yula
Athha…on her own, on her own, on her own — to scour her slate clean, start over, and be her own savior.
Naked
And now she’s made her decision so she stands before him,
stripped of everything — deceit, fears, uncertainty, bravado…and just Cagalli — and, without tears, without anything, asks for forgiveness.
Drive
He doesn’t take her into his arms, doesn’t kiss her to tell her
everything’s all right, her “I’m sorry” is answered by a simple “We can start
over,” but despite the bareness of it all, the lack of bitterness in his
expression is enough to drive her to tears — tears of relief for it doesn’t
seem that he hates her…at least, that’s what she interprets his answer as.
Harm
The moment her sin was committed, she’d realized that she wasn’t
protecting him or his future, that she was only running away from the
responsibility because she didn’t trust that she could bear it, so when he
finally smiles at her, she whispers, “Never again.”
Precious
The breeze slowly blows through the empty memorial park, and Cagalli kneels down in front of a headstone, touches the
cool surface, and in her heart she apologizes to what will never be because
she’d been too foolish, too ignorant to recognize a blessing.
Hunger
That night, when he spoons her, she becomes painfully aware of
how she’s missed him.
Believe
There’s always a chance that deep in his heart he hasn’t
forgiven what she’s done, and she understands, but whenever he looks at her with
those eyes filled with an emotion that warms her own heart, whenever he touches
her with hands that promise protection, whenever he kisses her with everything
he has, she wants to believe — and
please, please, please make it true — that
she’s been granted absolution from her sin.
~fin
Citation/s:
“…when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh
broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was
the beginning of fairies.” – Peter
Pan by J.M.
Barrie
Clarification/s:
Hazard of the dice – chance