✎ Fel's Creative Journal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tinfoiltennis) wrote2009-09-15 10:58 am
tinfoiltennis) wrote2009-09-15 10:58 am
Entry tags:
✎ ficlet - gundam 00 - with our mouths wide shut
Title: with our mouths wide shut
Fandom: Gundam 00
Characters: Lyle Dylandy, Feldt Grace
Rating: PG-13
Summary: He’s not sure what prompts him to take the train to where Feldt’s staying. He’s even less sure about what prompts him to ask her to visit the grave with him.
Word Count: 773
Notes: Originally written as part of a Lyle-centric post-series fic that I never got around to finishing, this was my favourite scene of the ones that I actually managed to get written, and I thought it would be a shame to waste it - so, here we are.
Warnings: Spoilers for the end of Gundam 00!
✎ ✎ ✎
Lyle’s not sure what prompts him to take the train to where Feldt’s staying. He’s even less sure about what prompts him to ask her to visit the grave with him.
It can’t be for company – he’s never needed or wanted someone with him before now. Besides which, if it was company he was looking for, there’d be several people he’d go to before Feldt. He thinks. Maybe it’s just because she knows. She knows what he’s lost and she knows what it’s like to lose people. And she knew Neil. Maybe that’s why.
Either way, he’s completely not sure at all about what prompts her to say yes. But now they’re both stood back in Ireland under a sky that’s been threatening rain for a good week, both dressed in black. She’s in a dress that he’s never seen before. Although in fairness, he’s never seen her in anything other than her uniform.
“Have you ever been here before?” he asks as they get closer.
She shakes her head. “No.” Then she pauses, as if deciding whether or not to say what she wants to say. “… I know that Tieria used to, though.”
Tieria. Another name from the list of the lost. Lyle doesn’t say anything to that, not yet, because he already knows that Tieria used to. He’s seen him here before, after all.
“Why didn’t you?” he asks after a moment, unable to hold back his curiosity.
“It wasn’t my place,” she says quietly, her eyes looking somewhere beyond the grey sky, the rows of grave markers. Silence rushes back to fill the gaps that her words leave behind them, but Lyle’s thoughts are anything but quiet. He hasn’t been here in what feels like an age, and now he’s making up for lost time.
Neil. He should get Neil’s name put on the stone, really. So that he can be with the rest of their family. He wonders if he’d be proud of him. He wonders if he knows that the bastard that killed them all is in hell where he belongs.
I never understood you, he thinks. That’s part of the reason I started doing this, to try and understand you. He thinks of fire and guns drawn in a dark corridor, and a terrible, empty feeling of nothingness. But maybe I understand you a little better, now.
He’s startled out of his reverie by Feldt gasping in surprise as the heavens open, the sudden downpour soaking everything in seconds.
“We didn’t bring an umbrella,” she manages, looking slightly shellshocked.
No shit, Sherlock. “There’s a tree over here,” he mutters, cold and wet and uncomfortable and in a thoroughly worse mood than he was before. They hurry over to the tree, as undignified as you’d like, and take refuge below its large branches, where in spite of its best efforts, the rain is reduced to dripping pathetically, trickling down through the branches.
Feldt, her dress soaked right through to the skin, shivers slightly as they both stare out at the rain. And with nothing better to do, he shrugs his own jacket off and holds it out to her.
She stares at it – and him – as if she’s never seen a jacket before in her life, before she slowly reaches out and takes it. “Thank you,” she says, not looking at him as she shrugs it on. The sleeves reach down past her fingers and he has to fight a sudden urge to laugh. Time and place, Lyle. Christ.
He doesn’t say anything and goes back to staring out at the rain. With a sudden lurch in his stomach, he realises that it’s not just Neil who’s missing, and a lump that he can’t shift appears in his throat.
“Do you think,” he starts after he’s vanquished the lump with some determined swallowing. Feldt’s head whips round comically to look at him and whatever he was about to say flies out of his head. “I mean. Anew…” he says, and trails off, unable to go any further. It’s the first time since it happened that he’s mentioned her in front of someone else, and doing so still feels wrong, somehow. Feldt is quiet for a few long seconds.
“I think she’d be happy here,” she says slowly, surprising him. “It’s a nice place.”
She turns her head to look at him, the smallest of smiles on her face. He blinks. Twice. Then he lets an equally tiny smile match hers.
“Yeah. It is.”
She turns back to the rain, still smiling. Lyle leans against the trunk of the tree and listens to it fall.
Fandom: Gundam 00
Characters: Lyle Dylandy, Feldt Grace
Rating: PG-13
Summary: He’s not sure what prompts him to take the train to where Feldt’s staying. He’s even less sure about what prompts him to ask her to visit the grave with him.
Word Count: 773
Notes: Originally written as part of a Lyle-centric post-series fic that I never got around to finishing, this was my favourite scene of the ones that I actually managed to get written, and I thought it would be a shame to waste it - so, here we are.
Warnings: Spoilers for the end of Gundam 00!
Lyle’s not sure what prompts him to take the train to where Feldt’s staying. He’s even less sure about what prompts him to ask her to visit the grave with him.
It can’t be for company – he’s never needed or wanted someone with him before now. Besides which, if it was company he was looking for, there’d be several people he’d go to before Feldt. He thinks. Maybe it’s just because she knows. She knows what he’s lost and she knows what it’s like to lose people. And she knew Neil. Maybe that’s why.
Either way, he’s completely not sure at all about what prompts her to say yes. But now they’re both stood back in Ireland under a sky that’s been threatening rain for a good week, both dressed in black. She’s in a dress that he’s never seen before. Although in fairness, he’s never seen her in anything other than her uniform.
“Have you ever been here before?” he asks as they get closer.
She shakes her head. “No.” Then she pauses, as if deciding whether or not to say what she wants to say. “… I know that Tieria used to, though.”
Tieria. Another name from the list of the lost. Lyle doesn’t say anything to that, not yet, because he already knows that Tieria used to. He’s seen him here before, after all.
“Why didn’t you?” he asks after a moment, unable to hold back his curiosity.
“It wasn’t my place,” she says quietly, her eyes looking somewhere beyond the grey sky, the rows of grave markers. Silence rushes back to fill the gaps that her words leave behind them, but Lyle’s thoughts are anything but quiet. He hasn’t been here in what feels like an age, and now he’s making up for lost time.
Neil. He should get Neil’s name put on the stone, really. So that he can be with the rest of their family. He wonders if he’d be proud of him. He wonders if he knows that the bastard that killed them all is in hell where he belongs.
I never understood you, he thinks. That’s part of the reason I started doing this, to try and understand you. He thinks of fire and guns drawn in a dark corridor, and a terrible, empty feeling of nothingness. But maybe I understand you a little better, now.
He’s startled out of his reverie by Feldt gasping in surprise as the heavens open, the sudden downpour soaking everything in seconds.
“We didn’t bring an umbrella,” she manages, looking slightly shellshocked.
No shit, Sherlock. “There’s a tree over here,” he mutters, cold and wet and uncomfortable and in a thoroughly worse mood than he was before. They hurry over to the tree, as undignified as you’d like, and take refuge below its large branches, where in spite of its best efforts, the rain is reduced to dripping pathetically, trickling down through the branches.
Feldt, her dress soaked right through to the skin, shivers slightly as they both stare out at the rain. And with nothing better to do, he shrugs his own jacket off and holds it out to her.
She stares at it – and him – as if she’s never seen a jacket before in her life, before she slowly reaches out and takes it. “Thank you,” she says, not looking at him as she shrugs it on. The sleeves reach down past her fingers and he has to fight a sudden urge to laugh. Time and place, Lyle. Christ.
He doesn’t say anything and goes back to staring out at the rain. With a sudden lurch in his stomach, he realises that it’s not just Neil who’s missing, and a lump that he can’t shift appears in his throat.
“Do you think,” he starts after he’s vanquished the lump with some determined swallowing. Feldt’s head whips round comically to look at him and whatever he was about to say flies out of his head. “I mean. Anew…” he says, and trails off, unable to go any further. It’s the first time since it happened that he’s mentioned her in front of someone else, and doing so still feels wrong, somehow. Feldt is quiet for a few long seconds.
“I think she’d be happy here,” she says slowly, surprising him. “It’s a nice place.”
She turns her head to look at him, the smallest of smiles on her face. He blinks. Twice. Then he lets an equally tiny smile match hers.
“Yeah. It is.”
She turns back to the rain, still smiling. Lyle leans against the trunk of the tree and listens to it fall.