Quick notes: This is not cheery in the beginning. I wrote the beginning because I am in a similar mood. *sinks fangs into nearest innocent passerby* But I think Relena, for all the peace she tries to embody, was still very much a child at the end of the Eve Wars. And that was not necessarily a good thing. Also, I made up the word "unprecedentedly." I dare you to call me on it.
Self-given prompt: Be careful what you wish for, because most times you?re wrong about what you want.
She Is Angrily Going To Scream
But then, her throat closes up and she tenses herself into silence.
She forces herself into stilling, and not clenching her fist. His every sound, every twitch, every blink, every shuffle somehow stabs at her. She has seen this routine for exactly twenty-three years, and she can?t bring herself to change anything about it, no matter how her resentment grows. She watches him go through the motions, poising herself as she has each morning past, so nothing belies her fury. He mindlessly puts on his socks, puts on his shoes, puts on his shirt, and then laces his shoes. She never particularly noticed these steps before, and now it makes her want to unprecedentedly poke him in the eye and run around naked and barefoot with her hands in the air and shred his socks.
Since she hasn?t yelled, either joyously or angrily, since she was seventeen.
She was so proud of herself on her eighteenth birthday, when she evenly informed him how she would like to be proposed to, and all the qualities and values she expected her husband to effortlessly embody. (He showed up in a tuxedo the next day, and embodied ever since.) She has been called both ?motherly? and ?icy? for this demeanor, and she cherished each as a testament to her strength and worthiness of him. Nothing, from her third youngest child smashing the crystal chandelier during her twelfth birthday party to the nuclear hostage crisis of X-2322, has made her raise her voice to a sound that would strain her throat.
Because that sound could startle him into remembering that a quiet life was mostly her request.
She feels guilty about it now. About twenty-one years after they married, she started meticulously reading psychology books about the transition of soldiers from the battlefield to society. It started as a side-project for her social health care plan, and morphed into a haunting dilemma that whispers, ?He picked you because he didn?t know how to pick anything else.? It fits, she realizes, with how he had so few people to sit on his side in the pews at their wedding, and how he won?t even let their youngest go outside alone for fear that the littlest girl he knows will be taken away from him again. She is wondering if this guilt is encouraging her to scream, or if it?s even worse than that.
And she doesn?t want to let herself know it?s worse than that just yet.
She knows she is going to have to do something. She has never not done something, no matter how long she?s tried to reign herself back from criticizing lobbyists or going to a war zone or giving away the last of her family heirlooms to decrease the famine on L-1. It took her those forty-one long years to get to know herself well enough, and now she?s horrified to find her old but na?ve self built up a life that stifles her new but experienced self. But ?eventually? is the key word, since she is dealing with enough guilt about getting him to marry her in the first place, that she can?t bear to tell him she no longer desires the life she encouraged him to take for granted all these years.
For she still can?t believe she ever mistook ?peace? with ?complacency.?
She knows now why Milliardo could never settle down with Noin; he knew he could never remain happy in such a domestic and rigid set of expectations. She knows now why Duo doesn?t bother to call; her husband effectively forced away reminders of his past to let himself be happy in this serene world of their home. She knows now why she secretly and selfishly hoped her diplomatic intervention in the Southern War would go on longer; there she could spend just a few more minutes feeling a rush of adrenaline and running giddily to safe houses and gathering great retorts to use in the next anti-war meetings. She knows now that her husband subconsciously would give everything he has to go back to those charged battlefields.
Before she can mold her face into a cheery morning smile, he turns to her.
She stops thinking. She never thought she would want to hurt the person she loves most and never though the person she loves most would be hurt by her, so now she is not going to think and is not going to let this go on. She laughs. She laughs at the irony, sincerely laughing for the first time in at least four years. Her laughter gets louder, pounding against the brocaded curtains, slicing through the tense breakfast table conversation between her children, making her throat tingle from the new sensation. Her laughter threatens to overturn the collection of precious vases, threatens to label her anything but ?calm,? threatens to remind Heero he could have had a wife that laughed every day. Best of all, her laughter does remind her that she can laugh if she wants.
After her bellows descend into chuckles, he uncertainly opens his mouth to ask if she?s alright.
She isn?t. But she?s going to be. After this, Relena Yuy is going to run around the house tearing off the bland yellow wallpaper and singing as loud as she can and letting her oldest drop out of college like he wanted and taking a vacation to the Bahamas and telling Heero she wouldn?t blame him for divorcing her this instant. She is going to quit yoga and take up kick-boxing, she is going to fire the maids, she is going to rent raunchy romantic comedies and invite real friends over. She is going to wear a chicken suit to the Winner?s Spring Ball, she is going to quietly burn her paperwork, she is going to be vivacious and outlandish and plucky and truly strong and be someone who won?t trick her heart into following traditional ideas of marriage or parenting.
But now, she is joyously going to scream.
