Good Intentions Darwin Delantri I don�t want to spend the rest of my life Looking at the barrel of an armalite I don�t want to spend the rest of my days Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say Snaking her arm out from the covers again, Anne took a wild swipe at the rambling alarm clock. She missed and hit the corner of the table, and that meant that it was finally time to get up instead of tacking another nine minutes onto her time under the sheets alone. She was feeling sticky in the first place, and dying for an excuse to peel herself out of bed and take a long shower. As she gradually removed herself from the unseasonably layered trappings Anne took in the room�s steady d�cor as she did every other day. The rows of pictures on her useless desk, all dedicated to one haughty man, once again bore the coat of dust that would invisible to any other pair of eyes. The frames on the walls, all meticulously keep in perfect place, would need to be straightened again. The bed had to be made with fresh linens and comforters and the plants to be watered again. It would be another busy day. It was all a fa�ade, really. She had been putting up with this farce for weeks now, and never once lied to herself without apologizing immediately. Somehow, she had outlived her usefulness. Younger upstarts desired her position as the Preventer head, so had been forced out in an unsightly campaign to cut out of the deadwood and let some other fawn earn their pension. A lot of good it would do them when they themselves reached the same tier as she had. Anne smiled at the thought of it. At least the fresh leader would have to contend with a visible deadline. At the age of thirty, they would have no option but to depart for the same reasons. The difference would be that this candid Sharpe fellow would have his retirement all drawn out for him by the previous administration. That might prove deliciously strenuous on such a thin mind as Sharpe�s. It still wasn�t like her to hold grudges and silently flaunt a personal victory as she was doing day to day, but there was simply nothing left anymore. Don�t let this one triumph be taken away by a pristine bureaucratic belief structure. Structure. That was another joke. There was no structure aside from the routine she was sliding into. She had never before realized how much dependence she had once had for being counted on to hold the floodgates of larceny back. She had never previously known exactly how important being a mother made her fell. Perhaps it had been selfish to refuse to relinquish her office and be such a clingy woman. She would have been much more popular if she let things go easier, popular with everyone but herself. I don�t want to spend my time in hell Looking at the walls of a prison cell I don�t ever want to play the part Of a statistic on a government chart It was a little too easy to hate oneself at times. The daily commencement of a smoldering routine was one of them. When all your useless ventures that would carry you until another desired sundown were stretched out in front of you as you laid your schemes. What kind of world allowed a transition from being the most powerful person alive to being a maid to your own ill-earned life in so short a time? What kind of world catered to the young and shed anything it perceived as past it�s prime? Ten years could not be a surprise. The world had changed much in those last ten years, undergoing a complete metamorphosis into something unfamiliar and impossible to comprehend. Perhaps the young officers that had been so eager to oust her and move up a rung on the military ladder had a point; she had grown outdated in this last decade. Not quite obsolete, since she could still perform her duties with the same quiet proficiency that she always flaunted, but outdated in the respect that as the world changed, she refused to. As all the environments grew and perished, she did not want to acknowledge the change. To do so would be to shatter the half-broken promise that was once made, the promise that she held dear to her heart for so long, and then for another ten years after it broke. It was a vow that needed approval from both sides to carry itself out, a promise that would surely have ushered in a new light to her life. However, it proved no less fragile than a human�s life, or his sanity. It had been a heartbreak, watching him try to kill himself, and finally to finally succeed� No. Listening to him finally die was a different experience than she had imagined it to be. Hitting rock bottom was a profound thing to feel. You simply didn�t care any longer; you became a spectator in your own reality, able to unfeelingly watch as everything crashes down around you. To hand down orders, even when they were indeed the type of commands that been forever beneath your dignity, without feeling embarrassed or shamed. To roll yourself over and not feel the ache of the blinding light. There has to be an invisible sun It gives it�s light to everyone There has to be an invisible sun It gives us hope when the whole day�s done Still sitting on the side of her bed, Anne contemplated giving up on rising at all, and just lying back down to let the world pass by on traffic and weather reports. There was no reason to get up anymore. Mariemaia was no longer her little girl, waiting eagerly for her new mother to prepare her a nice hot breakfast and help her get ready for school. Mariemaia, in fact, no longer chose to inhabit these walls and sleep in her delicately furnished room, but that had been her decision. Mariemaia�s little announcement had come in an unexpected direction, at least. Anne had been innocently cleaning up her room, uninvited. To this day, she still believed that she had not been snooping, but that was a moot point now. She had come across a set of pamphlets detailing the respective virtues of boarding and private schools stashed underneath Mariemaia�s dresser, and went through a long set of arguments with herself on whether or not she should confront her about her plans. Her decision was forgotten by now, but that too was irrelevant. With a storm of emotion, Mariemaia resolutely declared that she would not reside here anymore, and wanted to go away for a prolonged change of scenery. Guiltily, Anne had relented quickly. Mariemaia did not take well to getting a debating opponent, and it was obvious that the girl had been doing her research. Mariemaia had not let her rebellious urges fall short at simply shunning her only parent. She had also opted to dye her hair a shade of brilliant goldenrod, in an attempt to go against the tide of her heritage. The cruel girl that probably relished seeing Anne�s face when she saw that the earthen red had vanished from her daughter�s head, and one of the last tangible traces of her father�s legacy gone once and for all from the world. That may have just been her intention. One of the finest treasure Anne had in Mariemaia was the inherited gifts that her father bestowed upon her, and the shade of her hair, although it was not a perfect match and dirtied by her mother, was one of those attributes. Could it be possible that the cruelty had once manifested itself in the child was resurfacing and cutting Anne off from an element what she held dear? Did she recognize the way that Anne looked at her hair, as a memorial to her deserted love? It was wrong to criticize the child, though. Rebellion was a natural part of becoming an adult, and Anne would have to abide by the fact that Mariemaia was no longer the little child that had scrapped her knees, but instead the young woman that never ceasing dropping hints as to the state of her relationship with her boyfriend. It would have done her no good to use Mariemaia as a symbol of her own aging process, and Mariemaia�s growing revolt as a representation of Anne�s slow decline of value to the world. It�s dark all day and it glows all night Factory smoke and acetylene light I face the day with my head caved in Looking like something that the cat brought in There was no sense in spending all day sitting on the side of her bed, trying to decide whether or not to rise and go about the old routine. Wait� That wasn�t right at all. She had came up with a brand new routine for today, a special one to break this monotony. She was looking forward to it. However, it couldn�t begin until she took action and lifted herself onto this new course. She did so with unexpected strength. The hazy bulk of sleep had been cast off quickly at the promise of a change in habit. Anne quickly made her way into the limited bathroom and cast her nightgown onto the cold, thin linoleum. She took her time getting the shower ready, adjusting the dial again and again to get the temperature just right. It didn�t help; she could not force herself to carefully tweak something so soon out of bed. She was eager to hop into the lightly steaming stream and purge the sweat and grime from another uneasy night alone. Dreams and nightmares made hard things to clean off, but the water did a fitful job. A distraction might have all she really needed. Toweling herself off vigorously, she spent some time considering what would be the most appropriate for today�s occasion. It was her duty to look her best, but precisely how was a different question. There was the rigid, compulsive appeal of simply putting on the ancient OZ uniform that she kept secret all these years, even from Mariemaia. It was tempting to slip back into the uniform that she spent all her time with her beloved in, just for old times� sake, but it would do no good to be seen by others in it. It would make her look like an obsessed old maid. She chuckled dryly. How unusual, to be an old maid at thirty. Maybe this was a world for the young after all. There was also the fresher Preventers outfit she still had, if she felt she really had to be in uniform. But again, it would mislead people as why she was taking the action she was, and give too much credit to the upstarts that forced her out of the organization. Her most powerful message had to be directed at the right people. The solution was simple, then. She spent some more time in the bathroom preparing herself in front of her brightly lit mirror until she was satisfied that she would be presentable, then went back to her closet to draw out the proper selection. It was a base blouse and skirt, both the romantic red of wine and roses. Trying to find a hint of elegance in the ensemble, she stood in front of the full-length mirror hanging on the closet door for a while. This would serve. There has to be an invisible sun It gives its heat to everyone There has to be an invisible sun It gives us hope when the whole day�s done A pang of hunger edged up on her as she passed the kitchen, but Anne disregarded it as a part of the old routine. She would have continued making her way to the drawing room, but a new point came out of the woodwork; why shouldn�t eating a bit of breakfast be a part of the new routine as well? Stopping short, she mulled this argument over for a moment then decided there was no sense debating silly details and even less sense in going about her business on an empty stomach. She didn�t want much, just enough to silence her stomach�s quiet complaints, so a piece of fruit would do. Selecting a shiny Macintosh apple from the freshly arranged fruit bowl, she leaned up against the spotless counter and bit into it gingerly. It was soft already, and unpleasantly warm from sitting just a day or two in the bowl, so she quickly swallowed the chunk of skin and threw the apple into the garbage under the sink. If she remembered correctly, she commonly put half of the fruit in the bowl for presentation and half in the fridge for eating, so she hastily pulled the pearl door open and dug into the crisper until her hand clasped on a glossy globe that felt like a Macintosh. She shut the door and looked over the memorabilia stuck to the white surface as she stood munching on the fruit. She had just put up a new set of decorations under the magnets a few days ago, on the days leading up to her thirtieth birthday. The usual slew of store-bought birthday greetings had came in with the mail, bit by bit, and went up here for a splash of colour, even before being read. That was rude of her, to disregard all these memos without a second thought. She might as well go over them once. Clenching the apple in her teeth, she pulled one of the cards off from under a magnet. The front was decorated in some velvet design with a few burning candles in the lower corner, and a sheet of gloss over the whole thing to make in look expensive. The wasn�t much inside either, except the usual Hallmark poem cranked out by a hack chained to a writing desk, and a short signature by the well-wishers, Duo and Hilde Maxwell. She had known the girl for a very brief time back during the wars eleven years ago, when she was sent to go over her records and interview her for a place in a new mobile suit squad she had been charged with forming, and then again during the Preventer years. She had only met Duo on one or two occasions, and wouldn�t even know his name except for being introduced by his wife. The card represented the exact same thing that Anne had been going through, dry routine. There was little motivation behind it except a date on the calendar and a trip to the greeting card racks and the post office. It translated into: �Just to let you know that we haven�t forgotten about you yet, but we�re trying. You make us very uncomfortable.� There was another one, emblazoned with a painting of tulips of yellow and red, and a calligraphic caption. After opening it, Anne was startled to see that it was one of those cards with a blank interior. Well, it was at one point, but the sender had completely covered both halves with writing. She scanned to the end of the impromptu letter to check the names, and was hardly surprised to see Zechs and Lucrezia Merquise�s signatures there. Noin could be longwinded when she thought she had to be. There was no point in reading the entire message. It was just her trying to urge Anne into catching up with her again and subtly asking when she never came to any of the parties anymore. The full message boiled down to: �Why are you secluding yourself like this? You make us very uncomfortable.� The third card she pulled down was another with a painting of tulips, this one showing a pristine vase sitting in an abstract apartment. Although it showed no inhabitants, you could tell from the colours that wherever they were, they were happy. Inside, it was just another fruitless attempt to wish a pleasant birthday, and a request to meet again over coffee, signed Wufei and Sally Chang. Nothing out of the ordinary, it translated to: �We miss the older you. You make us very uncomfortable.� She threw the third card onto the counter instead to slapping it back up on the fridge like the others. At least this wasn�t a waste of time. It was a lovely and poetic way to remind herself why she going through with this. She finished off her apple and threw the core in the trash along with the first one. And they�re only gonna change this place By killing everyone in the human race They would kill me for a cigarette But I don�t even wanna die just yet She had been furnishing her living room for this purpose for the last few months, but never once admitted her intentions that provoked her in turning it from a growing child�s drawing room to one of a decrepit widow. Even when she dug her ancient OZ service revolver out of the stacks of memories in storage, dusted, cleaned, polished it, and placed it on the television cabinet, she still denied her reasons. So, in the end, she was lying to herself without apologizing. It didn't matter now. She took up the shining gun from its place between picture frames of Mariemaia and Treize, and weighed it gently in her hands, the grip cold against her skin. She had loaded one round three weeks ago, so she didn�t need to open the cartridge. What the hell, she popped it open anyway. Sure enough, one bullet waiting for the hammer to come crashing in to set off the spinning journey it waited for. Anne took a seat deep in the plush armchair she had selected with the gun in her lap. The chair seemed to envelop her in its softness, so welcoming that sheets of fatigue she had cast off in the shower tried to work their way back and send her back to sleep, but she just sighed and relished the repose. The delay she allowed herself was short. Clearing her throat, she voiced the words that came to her naturally, for her own regard. �Treize, you once made me a promise. You said that if ten years passed and neither of us had married for love, we would marry each other. You were being tactful, weren�t you? You didn�t want to hurt my feelings, so you had to be careful about what you could pledge to me.� This was for her own benefit, of course. She had to remember her reasons. �Well, it�s been ten years, and I�m thirty now. I haven�t found anyone else, and I think it�s safe to say you haven�t either. You promised me�� She took the revolver up in her hand again, and rested the muzzle on her temple. Everything was in order; she had liquefied her life savings and paid off every one of her debts. She had mailed the letter to Noin asking her to come over to get caught up on the last years, so her form would not go undiscovered long. The last notes and promises and explanations were piled on the coffee table, waiting for their respective addressees to arrive. Everything was in order. �It�s been ten years, and you�re not going to get away from me that easily, Treize Khushrenada.� Her finger moved against the trigger. There has to be an invisible sun It gives its heat to everyone There has to be an invisible sun It gives us hope when the whole day�s done |
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