misanagi

Player's Hands
Noin and Quatre. Gen. Angst. PG
For raletha

He was just a boy.

She wasn't surprised, not like she had been when she had seen her first Gundam pilot and marveled at the things boys had to do in their times. Of course, she had just been a girl when she started the academy but she at least had the luxury to become a woman, even if barely a woman, before she had to battle for the first time.

And a pilot.

The boy had killed, just like the ones she had met before him. They didn't need to be covered in blood for it to be obvious that they had seen too much, grown too fast and now they were torn between boyhood and manhood and soldiers and killers and a war that seemed to have no end.

And he was playing.

She had liked music when she was young; her grandmother used to play the piano and had even attempted to have her play it too. You have the hands for it, Lucrezia.

They had become the hands of a soldier, just like Quatre's.

Maybe that's what made her stop at the threshold of the music room and listen to the boy play. He probably had the hands too, long limber fingers, now covered in calluses and harsh from holding weapons. However, while her hands had lost any musical possibilities here was the boy, the pilot, playing a song she couldn't recognize but was familiar all the same.

It's sadness, Lucrezia. That's what this music is. Crying with your hands.

Her grandmother had only played sad songs. Her parents and brothers had been killed in one of the many conflicts and she had spent months in refugee camps, and even after the years and forming a new family she still played sad songs.

The boy's music wasn't exactly her grandmother's sadness. His fingers moved swiftly over the piano and the music was beautiful and enthralling but it was raw and intense, pulling and pushing and penetrating in every way for there was no distancing here, no escape. The music, the feeling was a constant that it seemed would never stop.

Ache.

Not sadness as that was moveable, maybe sometimes ignorable, like her grandmother's memories had been. Not nostalgia as there were no healed wounds being reopened. Not pain because that was cathartic in a way, pushing to a release, even if it was a late one. It was aching, a constant hurt that would offer no relief, that wouldn't close or go away and heal or allow any respite as it wasn't allowed, not yet.

If she were one to shed tears easily she wouldn't have been able to cry either. Not after understanding that the entrapment of the music and the feelings of the player wouldn't allow for such release, not for himself or his audience. His hands weren't crying but aching into music and she couldn't help but to ache with him.

When the music faded, slowly into nothing, the feeling lingered. The boy looked at her and didn't hide within a smile. She nodded at him at watched him go.

Later, as she helped the five boys go into battle, go into war, she couldn't help but remember her grandmother. She had never learned to play but she had learned to understand and now she could play her part.

You have the hands for it, Lucrezia.