On the Corner of West Elm and Bailey

Quatre watched him anxiously as he disassembled the flashlight in front of him.

There had to be some way to pop the cap off to get to the damn lightbulb inside. He\'d tried to screw off the top lens of the dubious instrument, which did absolutely nothing, then he tried to see if there was a latch under the head. Convenience stores sold lightbulbs small enough for flashlights. So, obviously, there should be some way to use them; like getting into the damn flashlight.

\"Okay,\" Trowa said resignedly, \"I\'ll figure it out later.\"

He twisted the head back on and flipped the light on casting a meager light in the already sunlit room.

Quatre clapped his hands together and smiled brightly at Trowa. \"May I try?\"

Trowa shrugged and handed the flashlight to Quatre shuddering a little when his fingers brushed the ghost\'s static-like ones.

With a simple smile, Quatre clicked the light on and off delighted in the instant action. Then he tuned it over in his hands, and Trowa couldn\'t help the sadness that lanced through him as the light passed harmlessly through the ghost\'s body to land on the opposite wall.

\"I have other things today, too,\" Trowa said, anticipating the melty smile he knew that he would recieve.

\"Will you show them to me?\" Quatre asked, beaming, his words more of a coy formality than a true plea.

Trowa smiled back at him before digging into his backpack again.

As his hand closed around a CD player, he froze.

He could almost swear that he heard whispering. Definitely not Quatre\'s. The whispering that he was hearing was poisoned, shrill, and heated coming from all around. It seemed to rise up from the floorboards sticking to his skin like painted curses. He regarded Quatre from a corner of his.
.

Quatre didn\'t seem bothered, in fact, he seemed more interested in the on and off switch of the flashlight. Its solemn clicks reminded Trowa of what was real and gave him a little reassurance. Then Quatre noticed him staring and smiled, though he had no reason to, calling back to mind his promise: me between you and them.

Resolutely, Trowa shook off the whispers and presented the CD player to Quatre.

\"What\'s that?\" Quatre asked leaning forward to study it cocking his head to the side to see under it. \"Another light?\"

\"Kind of,\" Trowa replied connecting the headphones. When he pressed play, the soft strains of Coldplay streamed out tickling Quatre\'s ears and making his face form the most interng eng expressions of rapture.

His eyes asked excitedly: Where is the band?

Trowa smiled in a small way, the corners of his lips barely turning upward.

This music would always remind him of Quatre. When he\'d first heard it in a few years prior, in the middle of a serious music drought, he ran to it as if it were an oasis. The incandescent nature and dream-like quality of the songs never failed to send shivers up Trowa\'s spine. They had a certain sense of urgency coupled with a timeless grace that was intoxicating, and all these things, Trowa had come to associate with Quatre. He felt that if the ghost before him could transmutate into music, these songs would be it. They would become the land, water, and sky of his world, and he would be the prince raising the mountains and painting the sunsets.

\"This music sounds like you,\" Quatre said to him, pleased.

\"Really?\" Trowa felt a little disturbed, he\'d just been thinking the same of Quatre.

Quatre closed his eyes and looked to be imagining something nice, \"It sounds like a dream.\" His downy lashes parted, and his eyes that held within them the very seed of the world seemed to draw a light from him. His soul threaded and strung itself around Quatre\'s ardent heart. \"It sounds just like my angel.\"

Trowa ran a hesitant finger along the string of his soul, it trembled but held fast to its two bearers, like a spider\'s web in a strong wind. Tears stung his eyes as he felt a piece of himself stray away from him to join a vessel not of his own design; but he was not sad, nor was he pained. It was like a release, it made his very soul bleed.

\"No, Quatre,\" he said swallowing the pill of emotions in his throat, \"You\'re *my* angel.\"

Quatre\'s eyes slipped half-mast as he mulled this over in his head. His hand raised unconsciously to caress the air where the thread of Trowa\'s soul still stretched between them. Then he spoke very quietly, \"Do you see my wings as clearly as I see yours?\"

It wasn\'t quite clear whether that was spoken in jest or in earnest, but, all the same, Trowa looked hard.

He thought that he could make out a trace of wings, but they had no more substance than smoke and illusions.

\"I can see them,\" he half-lied. Then he added teasingly to break the tension, \"But they\'re puny. I don\'t think they\'d generate enough lift to raise a cat.\"

Quatre\'s smile curled inward with amusement, lifting a little higher on the right side.

\"Yours beg no praise, either,\" he said saucily.

Though Trowa appeared amused, and truly, he was; he was also secretly miserable. He loved this (possibly imaginary) person\'s wit and playful nature more than he liked his tangible friends. He\'d never felt so full and empty in one singular moment.

Deliberately, he pressed his hand through the static of Quatre\'s chest.

That stilled him instantly, the smile disappeared from Quatre\'s face as he looked down at Trowa\'s submerged hand.

They both exchanged faces of the deepest melancholy.

Even as his hand stung and began to lose feeling, he held it there.

Quatre\'s head was bowed. It looked as if he had died all over again. The sunken posture curled around Trowa\'s hand as if his very fingers had been the instrument of deliverance.

Trowa drew his hand back, but not before two hail-like things hit it. Surprised, he chanced a glance at the ground. Two blinking stones sat there soon joined by the pitter patter of more. They weren\'t coming from the ceiling.

These things were falling from Quatre\'s bent head.

\"Quatre?\"

Slowly, reluctantly, he raised his head. \"I\'m sorry,\" he mumbled wiping tears away that landed with muted chatter oe hae hardwood floor.

Carefully, Trowa plucked the glittering gems from the floor, cradling them in the heart of his palm.

\"Are these your...tears?\" Trowa asked holding one up between them. He already knew, but he wanted to hear it from him.

Quatre regarded the item with less recognition than he would have given to the dirt under his house. Then, he answered with a wondering certainty, \"Yes.\"

Trowa looked at the small pile in his palm once more, then at the glassy eyes of his ghost, and said flatly, \"Cry some more.\"

A perplexed smile crossed Quatre\'s face even as a few more tears easily tumbled to the ground. \"You\'re terrible,\" he chuckled softly.

\"My interest is purely scientific,\" Trowa tried to sulk. Then, feeling a little guilty, he decided to strike a deal. \"For your sorrows, I\'ll compensate you with...well, anything from this bag.\" He pushed his second pack at Quatre.

Quatre dried his eyes and dipped his hand in the bag with a sort of half-interest to satisfy Trowa.

++

After spending a time admiring a mini-stapler, an electronic metronome, and a few other oddities; it surprised him that he actually found something.

A leatherbound volume sunken to the bottom of the treasure bundle caught his attention.

He carefully took it out and flipped through it.

A photoalbum.

He read the inside cover: Trowa, I hope you will remember this life with at least a little fondness. -Nathaniel T. Barton
On the following pages was a chronicle of Trowa\'s life starting from six months old o hio his current age.

The desolation that Quatre had felt at the hollow touch of Trowa\'s hand ebbed away under the gentle tide of tender dedication. Each picture Quatre saw represented love, the way that they were arranged to be so straight and uniform. All of that perfection took time and heart; Quatre could feel his own swell, tightening his tether to Trowa who looked up from his long study of the stones, a little bewildered.

\"What are you looking at?\" Trowa askedotinoting to sit next to Quatre.

\"This is Trowa?uatruatre asked pointing to a photograph of a baby in repose.

A troubled look flitted across Trowa\'s face when he saw what Quatre was holding. He couldn\'t, for the life of him, remember putting *that* particular volume in his bag.

Now that Quatre had it, there was no reversing it.

So, Trowa shrugged off his irritation.

\"I suppose so,\" he replied, taking a look and blushing a little.

Even as a baby, he had been long and thin, though, in that particular picture, it wasn\'t very obvious.

It was taken in the days of the finalization of his adoption to a Nathaniel Barton. As a condition of his release, he had to be baptised in an eastern orthodox church.

Nate had gone out of his way to buy an elaborate, weeping baptism gown; just the train of it was about two baby Trowas in length.

In the picture next to the Trowa-in-repose; there was a photo of Nate holding him in the church next to the minister and the case manager. He looked very young and sullen back then as if the child in his arms gave him no joy. His lips held no hint of a smile, his eyes were steady and grey, and even his posture suggested apathy.

It always made Trowa a little upset to see that picture. He wanted to draw-in a smile, happy blue eyes, and proud shoulders.

He didn\'t want Quatre to know this person. He didn\'t want to relate to him who this person was and what he did, and all the bad things Trowa had done to angle for his attention.

He knew, though, that Quatre would ask, and he knew that he wouldn\'t lie to him.

Quatre\'s eyes had moved on to the picture that he was currently agonizing over.

\"Who\'s that?\" he asked tracing a translucent finger over Nate\'s visage. \"Your father?\"

Trowa shook his head looking at Nate\'s image in a covetous fashion, \"No. No, that\'s Nate.\"

\"Is Nate a family friend?\" Quatre inquired innocently.

\"No,\" Trowa replied.

Just drop it, already.

Pent up frustration began rising up from some unnamed place in his mind.

\"Who is Nate?\" Quatre persisted, unaware of Trowa\'s irritation.

How could Quatre ask that when it should have been obvious that Trowa couldn\'t answer.

Who the hell is Nate?

Why the hell was Quatre asking?

How the hell did that stupid book fall into his backpack?

\"Nobody,\" Trowa snapped impatiently.

Quatre looked at him, bewildered, his delicate brows drawn together in consternation, in expectation.

Then, a childish meanness boiled up inside Trowa. His face turned dark, and his brows arched antagonistically.

And, so, Quatre became the pointless focus of Trowa\'s old anger.

He couldn\'t stop himself, the acid words that dripped from his lips and burnt holes in Quatre\'s heart.

\"You don\'t need to know who he is or anyone else I know,\" his voice rose, \"It\'s not as if you\'re ever going to meet any of them, anyway.\"

If Trowa had reared up and yelled at him. Struck out at his intangible body. Quatre would never have been so hurt.

It was the iron cold truth and coiled malice that struck him, even in a whisper, more sharply than any other instrument of pain or lament.

The photobook fell through his lap and thunked on the floor, throwing up a pitiful puff of dust.

Trowa\'s feelings twisted and wrung themselves, until they were knotted and ugly. He wanted to leave the house, and stop himself from directing his meaningless anger at the only person he really cared about.

He started to pack his things, his movements made jerky and rushed by the rising pressure in his head.

\"Trowa?\" Quatre called to him hollowly. The string around his heart burned and grated against his cell-less, bloodless, flesh. Tears ran shallow streams down his cheeks that cut deep into him and fell, plinking to the floor.

Trowa raised the window and tossed his bags out.

Why were things so wrong today?

He erringly turned back to catch a last look of Quatre.

And, even more terrible than before, hating himself and the pain on Quatre\'s face, he said, \"Don\'t look so stricken. What I said was true, wasn\'t it?\"

It was the last straw.

A sobered expression overcame Quatre\'s features, though no less tortured. His sadness pushed itself back into the confines of his heart, into the backs of his eyes.

He nodlifelifelessly.

Then, he disappeared like a statue of dust in a sudden wind.

Sick with himself, Trowa left through the window and made his way through the bitter dark evening towards home.

TBC...


note(s):
1. good god...I\'m on a mean streak;>>
If the anger scene looks a little stilted/stifled/unplanned...I don\'t think I have anything to say to that;>> because, it was stilted/stifled/unplanned. It\'s among the first I\'ve ever written. (sap/fluff person)
2. there will be more spooky stuff in later chapters. I know that I\'ve laid off that a tad too much. but I\'m plotting/planning/scheming things right now
3. and, don\'t worry, all of these things that I bring up but don\'t really elaborate on will, in some later, chapter be made clear.
I just do this to mess with you XD
4. please leave me reviews. thank you maka, sariL2, and solo\'s ghost for your continual support. you\'re all soooo coool and sooo great and provide me with the power to serve up (nearly) weekly chapters^_^