On the Corner of West Elm and Bailey

XII

The most sour expression ever stuck itself to Trowa's face. It was as if his body had converted to dark matter, sucking all the light up from around it and casting a dismal pall over its surroundings. Still gripped tightly in his fist was the felt box with Quatre's necklace, which he'd told Relena and co. was intended for his secret transgender mistress named Monsoon who was waiting for him in Thailand. It'd inspired a hearty laugh from Duo and uneasy grins from the girls.

Now, he was stuck at a table in the candy shop with Duo and the girls holding him prisoner.

"Are you alright?" Midii asked him.

"Peachy," he scowled. He didn't mean to be mean, but something about this girl left him desiring distance.

It might have been the awareness that she had girlish designs on him that irritated the irrationality center of his brain, or it might have been, as Heero and Wufei put it, that she was, simply, a girl. He didn't want to think of himself as discriminatory, but, since his recent fixation on Quatre; he felt everyone else lacking and fostered a nearly uncontrollable desire to cast them all away.

"Aren't you going to have something other than water?" Midii prodded him.

"I like water," Trowa snapped defensively, his shoulders hunching like a threatened dog.

"Come on, Trowa," Relena pleaded, "Even Duo's having a float."

Trowa regarded his 'friend' in much the same manner a captain would a mutinous crew. He mouthed the word "traitor," and knew that Duo got the message by the sudden crook of his lips.

For some reason, Duo seemed to feel the most in his element when he was in trouble, no matter how miniscule. A spark would sharpen his eye, and a giggling energy seemed to rise and fill his body from the feet up until he looked like he'd just burst.

Trowa chewed irritably on his inner cheek and settled his eyes on a distant point through the worn oak planked floor to his left. Within moments, thanks to years of rigorous practice, he'd sucessfully zoned out.

++

An indeterminable time later, Trowa was roused from his white-noise reverie by the chime of the shop door. It wasn't a new sound, but this time in particular, it penetrated his consciousness. He blinked a little, aware, for the first time since zoning, that his lenses felt cold, and then looked up.

At first, all that his mind could register was the incredibly dark prescence. The heavy mist of dark feelings completely cloaked the slight figure underneath it all. It took some effort, but Trowa was able to peer through the gloom.

He was short, thin, and hunched. His small shoulders tapered and didn't seem to possess the power needed to raise the well-shaped, but proportionally large, hands at the ends of his arms. The coal black hair that sprouted from his bowed head fell across his shoulders in wide ringlets that seemed to fan out at the termination of each curl. The attire in which he was garbed was a loose-fit net of rags, and he trembled under them, lightly running his fingers along the frayed hem of his shirt. For less than a moment, his face turned minutely to the right, giving Trowa a good look at his eyes.

Like Quatre's, they were astonishing, but in a different way. They were wide, framed by thick lashes, and the irises a brilliant transleucent-orange. The first word-association that had sprung to mind, for Trowa, was the word: owl.

There was something owlish about the largeness of the boy's eyes, and the curiosity sewn into their wideness.

All together he looked a little bit as if he'd just stepped out of a videogame, all of the distorted features came together in the only possible way that they could and looked strangely appealing for something so bizarre.

'Boy' wasn't a good word to describe him. He could, very well, have been Trowa's age. His features were so ageless that it was hard to determine.

Trowa chanced a glance at Duo, who, like him, had been distracted by the creature's entrance and was staring at him with a veiled interest. It was an old interest; made evident by the easy tilt of his head (as if from habit), the thin smile hovering over his lips (from practiced restraint), and feigned apathy that glazed his eyes.

As if propelled by magnets, the boy seemed to glide across the floor to the counter to speak to a clerk that appeared to know him well.

"That's Prescott's son, isn't it?" Dorothy drawled softly in a tone familliar to superiority.

"Eerie Eddie, right?" Midii elaborated, innocently irritating.

"Edward Casper Prescott," Relena corrected them. She made it her business to know people, and also made it her business to make her business other people's business. One-person endeavors didn't appeal to her very well. She came from a long line of social animals and, consequently, finger-pointers.

"Casper the Friendly Ghost," Trowa whispered to himself, the coincidence was far too comical for him to contain.

Luckily, no one heard him.

"He's homeschooled, now, right?" Midii inquired. "Since the music room incident..."

Trowa perked up.

"That was a while ago...eighth grade..." Dorothy cut in. "You'd think that he'd be over it, by now. He looks worse than before."

"Going on about ghosts and spectres and what not," Relena added sympathetically with the characteristic lack of understanding that fueled her bleeding heart.

Two emotions struck either side of Trowa's body: one was the thrill and anticipation involving the idea of a shared experience, and the other was a distinct buzz of irritation that his human-ghost interaction wasn't something particularly exclusive to just him.

Trowa sat at the edge of caving in his pride to the persistence of curiosity, and was mercifully spared the embarrassment by Duo who commented, uncharacteristically sober, "I believe that he did see something."

"That's silly."

"That's nice of you Duo, but, you shouldn't encourage that kind of behavior."

"You can't possibly believe in that stuff."

Duo shrugged. "Whatever floats your boat," he mumbled airily around a straw.

Trowa took a moment to glance at Duo, whose expression slipped, as slick as water around reeds, back into its customary state of unreadable contentment.

When he turned back, Edward was gone, and the air had regained its levity.

++

Elsewhere around the stripmall, Heero and Wufei wandered.

There was an agreeable silence between them. It had always been that way since their first meeting years upon years ago.

It was 'friend at first sight.'

As they walked, their hands nearly touched, but only nearly.

There was a wall between them that they'd reached an understanding, without once speaking a word, that neither of them was to ever breach. Then, around them, and around their safety wall, was an unscalable fence that no soul had yet dared to climb. The fence was linked together by mutual respect, shared insecurities, and a curious likeness.

A dark figure ghosted past Wufei's left shoulder, the particles of air that shrunk and swirled in the brief encounter slipped through the fibers of Wufei's coat and underclothing, through the pores of his skin, and tickled the very marrow of his bones. He shuddered imperceptibly.

"Are you alright?" Heero asked, his voice lacking the earnest interest that he truly felt.

"I'm fine," Wufei replied in an equally dull tone.

Heero looked ahead of them at the flat watercolor buildings that stretched and ended in the near distance.

He moistened his lips before he spoke again, "That was Ed, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Wufei confirmed, a little perturbed by the small talk.

"It's a shame about Ed," Heero spoke with nearly no inflection, a phrase that he'd heard before.

"It's a shame about Ed," Wufei parroted, finishing the conversation.



TBC...


note(s):

I'm so very very sorry that it's taken me SO very very long to update. I've been in an idea drought for a while. Then I dreamed up Edward :) thanks to a book that I've been reading lately. I hope that my writing improves from my reading^.^
Since I've gotten around to thinking about Edward, I'm not quite sure what I want to do with him. If people are interested in him, I could make him a recurring character and build on him. Right now, I'm wondering a little bit about where to go next^^; haha...I know the point that I want to get to, but the journey from point A to point B is a bit of a struggle. I'm trying to pace myself so that I don't rush into everything that I want to include for the sake of inclusion. I don't think that it would be very fun...or coherent^^;
I'll try to update with another chapter by the end of Labor Day. I just need a day to think.
Thanks for reading!!!

p.s. feel free to e-mail me with ideas. I might not use the entire idea, but snippets are always useful!