MetaMorphosis

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way

by moonlight, and his punishment is that he

sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

 -Oscar Wilde

      Serena tossed restlessly in the darkened room, the sheets twisted and knotted about her legs. With a final start, she sat up, panting and glancing about the empty space. Her breathing slowed as she calmed herself, and she raised a shaking hand to her brow, wiping away a cold sweat. Kicking her legs free of the sheets, she slid off the bed and staggered toward the doorway, grabbing onto the empty frame momentarily before continuing to the bathroom.

      She leaned over the sink and stared at the darkened reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror, then reached up with her right hand and traced the unfamiliar streaks on her cheek. Her fingers recoiled against the feel of dampness there.

      Serena jerked the lever on the sink violently, yanked the plug mechanism, and waited for the basin to fill with water. When it was filled halfway, she plunged her face under the surface and held it there while the water continued to run. When she began to consider staying under, she wrenched her head up, splashing water across the small room. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps while she fumbled with faucet, turning off the water and opening the drain. Grabbing an elastic hair band from the medicine cabinet, she combed her dripping hair into a ponytail with her fingers and secured it at the nape of her neck. Grabbing a towel, she mopped her face and then the floor, her heart still pounding in her chest.

      The mindless work helped to distract her from the nightmare, but she couldn’t hide from her own subconscious forever. She crouched down in the corner of the tiled room, clutching the towel to her chest like a security blanket. Serena was still sweating, and she realized that she felt uncomfortably hot. She pulled her tee shirt away from her skin with one hand, and pushed beads of sweat from her brow with the towel in the other.

      Pulling herself up from the floor and finding the door, she staggered to the broken window in the main room and pulled the plastic aside. She was immediately hit with a gust of icy wind, causing the hair on her arms and neck to stand on end. She sighed with relief as the heat radiating from her body was blown away by the wintry draft. Serena immediately crumpled beneath the window, and pressed her throbbing head to the cool surface of the wall. She cringed in pain when the pounding increased as snippets of her nightmare came back to her.

*

      “What’s with him?” Serena nodded to a guy sitting beside to a dumpster, hunched over and crying softly to himself.

      “Him?” Duo looked up from the engine, a smear of grease across his brow from where he had wiped away perspiration. “Oh, him,” he repeated, following her gaze through the dirty windows in the garage. “He’s a skie addict.”

      “Skie? Never heard of it.”

      “Superiority complex in a bottle. It was invented for people with phobias. For a few hours, you’re infallible; you fear nothing. You don’t know hubris until you’ve seen a skie junkie on a high. That’s how it got its name; you feel so untouchable, as if you’re up in the sky and everyone else is a bug beneath you.”

      “And the price for all that self confidence?”

      “When you come down, you come down hard. Your self esteem plummets, you become depressed, you feel worthless, yadda-yadda. People who use it become mentally dependent. The drug itself can’t kill ya, but its after-effects have lead to more than a couple suicides.”

      “I’m getting depressed just thinking about it.”

      “Folks started noticing the new junk on the street about ten or fifteen years ago, when the number of people jumping offa skyscrapers started to climb. Even with the limited contact between colonies under the Alliance, the police managed to figure it out – after a while.” Duo gave his wrench a final twist, then wiped his hands on a indelibly soiled rag, leaving the wrench sticking out of the mess of unfamiliar metal and tubes at an odd angle. “Turned out all the people who’d died with it in their system had something in common: working in the public eye.” Duo looked at his hands and grimaced; he had lost his gloves again. He sighed in defeat at the black stains under his fingernails and in the creases of his palms before looking back to Serena. “They’d been using it as a cure for stage fright, became addicted to the effects, and ended up killing themselves when they were cut off.”

      “Sounds like a pretty pathetic end.”

      “You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie.” He threw the rag onto the work table and smiled at her. “This conversation is too gloomy. Lets go inside and see what Hilde’s got for lunch.”

      Serena smiled back and followed him across the minefield that was the garage floor to the back door to the house, opening it for him with a laugh when Duo forgot his grease-stained hands and nearly grabbed the handle himself.

*

      “Is everything alright?” Serena turned around and caught Hilde watching her from the sink with a worried expression. The two women were left alone in the kitchen, Duo having been banished to the bathroom with a decrepit rag and lye soap.

      “Of course,” she responded, leaning across the counter that cordoned off the kitchen from the dining area. Hilde still looked skeptical.

      “Are you sure there’s nothing you wanna talk about before Duo comes back down?” Hilde had always had an innate sense of when Serena needed to confide something – an enduring characteristic of their friendship since their first meeting on the Libra. Usually Serena didn’t even bother to argue the point, instead immediately capitulating and “spilling her guts,” as Hilde like to call it. This time, however, Serena would rather not disclose her secrets so easily. Instead, she attempted to change the subject.

      “What about you?” she queried. “You haven’t even tried to tell him, have you?” Hilde was caught off guard by this new line of conversation and a surprised expression graced her features before being driven off by an embarrassed smile and accompanying blush.

      “I tried hinting it to him,” she defended meekly, “but sometimes he is so thick.”

      “Daddy-to-be is a far cry from his range of expertise – you had to know that just hinting wouldn’t be enough for him.” Hilde’s blush deepened at “daddy-to-be.” Apparently she hadn’t gotten used to the idea of “mommy-to-be” yet either. Suddenly Hilde’s expression turned serious.

      “What if he doesn’t want it? What if it changes our relationship?”

      “Babies always change everything – there isn’t any point to worrying about that. But as for whether he wants it. . . .” Serena shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

      Hilde looked mournfully down at the chicken she was thawing under water in the sink and a small part of Serena worried if maybe the pregnancy was too much for her friend to handle after all. Hilde sighed and smiled sadly at Serena.

      “When you’re right, you’re right. I guess I should stop tiptoeing around the subject and just come out and tell him.” Serena made no comment; her mind had drifted from that train of the conversation and was mulling over other issues.

      “Hilde?” Hilde looked up, slightly surprised at the worried tone in her friend’s voice. “Remember to take it easy, OK? Don’t go taking any unnecessary risks.”

      “Don’t worry about me,” she said lightheartedly. “I’ll be fine.”

*

      Serena entered her apartment, hanging her jacket on the wall hook before closing and locking the door behind her. She raised a hand to her forehead, already feeling the headache starting in her right temple. She entered her bedroom, changed into her nightclothes, and grabbed a warm blanket from her bed before reentering the apartment’s main room. Crossing the room, she turned on the radio that sat on the counter near the stove, letting the sound of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony fill the room. She dragged the blanket over to a large, padded chair she had recently acquired secondhand and practically built herself a nest there next to the recently mended and heavily curtained window.

      It was going to be a long, sleepless night.

*

      “Hey, Quatre!” Duo greeted jovially. The face in the vidscreen smiled back cordially.

      “Duo!” Quatre exclaimed. “It’s been a long time!”

      “Yeah, it has,” he agreed. Normally he would have continued with the polite introductory conversation before getting to the point of his phone call, but this time Duo was too excited to hold it in far past “hello.” Bubbling over with pride and excitement, he blurted out, “Hilde’s pregnant!”

      “What?!” Quatre’s eyes lit up and he smiled widely. “Duo that’s great! I’m so happy for you!”

      “Yeah, she just told me like five minutes ago and I couldn’t wait to tell someone!”

      “I’m glad I’m so high on your list of people to call!” Quatre said with a laugh.

      “God, Quatre! I just can’t believe it! I’m going to be a father!”

      “Congratulations, Duo. I know you’re going to be a great parent.”

      “Thanks.”

      Duo and Quatre continued talking for over an hour, catching up on each other’s lives since their last conversation several months ago. Despite his excitement, Duo managed to avoid the topic of Relena’s disappearance very well – that is, of course, until Quatre outright asked about it.

      “Have you heard anything from Relena?” Quatre asked, his expressive eyes betraying his worry.

      “No, not for a while,” he responded honestly. It had been a couple of days since Lena had stopped by, after all.

      “Anything since her disappearance?” Duo could tell by his friend’s expression that he wasn’t expecting an affirmative answer. He also knew it would be easy to lie to Quatre when he was this pessimistic – his lie would probably never come under suspicion – but he still could not bring himself to deceive his friend. Duo didn’t need to lie though; his hesitation had spoken volumes and Quatre’s hope had been piqued. “Duo?”

      “You know my policy on lying, Quatre.” The blonde man’s eyes widened with some indefinable emotion.

      “You have heard from her! How is she doing? Is she alright?”

      “Quatre,” Duo started, strained. “I promised. . . .”

      “You don’t have to tell me everything – I just want to know if she’s healthy.” Duo found himself looking into his best friend’s sorrowful expression with pity, and knew he was broken. “Please, Duo. Is she OK?”

      “Yeah, she’s fine,” he replied with a sigh, feeling guilty for betraying the confidences of two friends at once. That guilt was quickly replaced by an overwhelming feeling of urgency. “But you can’t tell anyone. No – more than that. If it comes up you have to flat out lie! I may have a policy against lying, but you don’t! I don’t want one word of this getting out to anyone. Got that? Not even another Gundam pilot.”

      “Of course, Duo. You have my word.” Duo knew he could trust Quatre, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt. After all, it wasn’t his own secret he was supposed to be protecting – it was the secret of the former Queen of the World.

*

      Serena groaned as a wave of nausea washed over her, dragging her from her brief respite of dreamless sleep. She curled in on herself and clutched at her abdomen, breathing shallowly and hiding her eyes against the glaring light of the dawn which shone into her window and through a gap in the curtains to fall on her face as she slept in the large armchair. Somehow, no matter how she arranged the curtains each night, the next day the dawn would find her and pierce her with its rays.

      After several long moments, she finally managed to open her eyes while turned away from the window and toward the room. Her vision was blurry and unfocused, but she thought she saw a pair of slanted Prussian blue eyes staring back at her.

      “Heero. . . ?”

*~*~*