His Eyes

He had the most beautiful eyes.

The words died in my throat before I could voice them.  They never saw the light of day; I made sure that they were extinguished before anyone knew they had even occurred to me.  I did not banish the words for their untruthfulness, they were true enough, but only because of the definite end they represented, the quality of conclusion, strung together as they were.  He had.  Not he has or anything such as that, simply he had.  Well, it was true.  He did have the most beautiful eyes to watch over the world, to view the people he passed with.  I may have detested the way he kept his hair or the words he spoke or the clothes he wore, but those eyes made up for them all.  It was a shame that they were as they were.

I lay my hand on the casket.  The people around me were all expecting me to speak, but all I could think about was those eyes of his.  I couldn’t get them out of my mind.  I was supposed to talk about his life, about what made him special, his good characteristics and his bad, I who only spoke to him if I had to, who avoided him at all costs, I was supposed to sum up the best thing that had ever happened to me- to anyone- in just a single sentence.  And all I could think about were his eyes.

They could haunt you, those eyes.  They were the truth amidst all his lies.  They contradicted nearly ever word he uttered, nearly every smile he could muster, every life he brightened.  They were joy, sorrow, guilt, penance, anger, peace, life and death all in one.  His smiles may have been mere fabrications, but his eyes were constantly the truth.  Those were his eyes; that was he.  It was all in his eyes, the so-called window to the soul.  They were his being, his life.  If anything, they were his only truth, the only life he possessed.  They had more life in them than every action he performed, more character than any word he uttered.  They were the Shinigami he claimed to be, as well as the reaper he dreaded.  And yet they were something more.

Why had I been chosen for this task?  I could have named a thousand other people who could take my place and be infinitely better at this than I, just as many who loved him as much, perhaps more, than I.  And yet I was the chosen.  He had loved me, I knew that.  Love that I hadn’t deserved, that he knew I didn’t deserve, because I would react and return the love he gave me without really understanding why I did, emotions be damned.  Because I had only just begun to learn what love was.  But yet I was the one chosen for this task.

Those eyes were at fault, yet again.  They had begged and pleaded with me to do this, to write his death upon a tombstone, and so here I was.  I wouldn’t- I couldn’t, not anymore- refuse those eyes.  It was against everything I stood for.

“Duo Maxwell.  He had the most beautiful eyes.”  I said the words out loud this time, saying them slowly so that I couldn’t botch them up, so that they would be as perfect as he was.

“Is that all, sir?”

I nodded.  “Hai.  That’s all.”  The man hesitated, then began to carve the letters into the blank, gray, marble stone that would only too soon mark the grave of the only person I ever loved.  I lifted my hand off the empty casket and nodded.  “That’s all.”  Anyone who knew Duo would know what it was I saw in his eyes.  They would know that the words on the stone were more than they seemed to be.  That was all that mattered, really.

I walked out of the shop feeling rather empty and morbid and I narrowed my eyes at Duo as he bounded towards me, braid flailing out behind him like a kite.  “You’re done, Heero?”

“I’m done.  You are a sick person, Maxwell.”

Duo shrugged.  “With any luck, I won’t need any of that for a long time yet.  But it’s all been taken care of, so you won’t have to worry about it when I do die.  Casket, plot, stone and all.”

“Hn.  Baka.”

“Yeah, but I’m your baka.”  He looped his arm around my waist and blinked his Cobalt eyes at me, grinning widely.  I could see the truth in that smile and I felt a bit lighter.  “Let’s go home.”

I nodded and we walked.  When his head was turned away, when he couldn’t see me, I smiled.  I couldn’t help it.

He had the most beautiful eyes.