The Insider (Prologue) (Eventual 3x12 & others)

[El Su]

I have never written anything substantial for Midii and so this was
somewhat of an experiment. Let me know what you think---C&C welcome!



Prologue: Ma M?re
------------------------

By El Su/Ashy

----

The earliest memory I have of my mother is of her lying flat on her
stomach under the bed, only her thin white ankles sticking out, pink
slippers on her feet. Drawn to the sound of rustling and rummaging,
I asked her what she was doing under there.

"Nothing, darling."

"Oh?"

She slid out, her pale hair all frizzy with static. She smiled- a
broad, one- which made her eyes sparkle. She had strange eyes, my
mother; one was blue and the other was green. She once told me a
fairy came to her as a baby and granted her the choice of what
colour eyes she wanted, so she picked them herself. Therefore she
was special, she explained with a giggle.

I don't remember any fairy coming to my cradle as an infant, so I
must not be special. Both my eyes are a murky greyish-green. But I'm
content with that. And I don't know what colours I'd have picked
anyway had I been given a choice, so best not to concern myself with
it.

"Come on, Amie," she cooed, still smiling, in my hazy memory. "Let's
go make some cookies, would you like that? Chocolate ones?"

She snatched my hand and led me from the room. I watched how her
pink slippers moved rapidly across the wooden floorboards, and was
mesmerised by the floppy-eared rabbit heads stitched onto the front
of them, jerking with the motion.

We made cookies that afternoon. We must have done because I have a
vague recollection of her allowing me to lick out the mixing bowl,
and I did so with relish.

Later that day, when she was in the bath, I went into her bedroom
and dropped to my knees in front of the bed. I peeked under, into
the darkness. I had never been afraid of monsters because I had once
heard someone talking to my mother in a hushed tone, in the parlour
of our house in Lyon, telling her not to trust any person she spoke
to. So it was real people I was wary of, not fearsome beings with
big, sharp teeth who lived in dark places. I wriggled further into
the shadows, unfazed and desperately curious.

There were two boxes lurking under there. I saw the nearest was
covered in Christmas wrapping paper. I don't recall the pattern, but
it was snowing that day so I assume it was the festive season. I
felt a thrill down my spine, as I grasped the nearest package and
tugged it out into the open, tearing off the paper slowly at first,
then with more vigour as my confidence grew. My mother was still in
the bath; I could hear the sound of the water sloshing and her soft
humming. I kept half an ear on her song, knowing even at such a
young age that my operation must be a covert one. She hadn't
explicitly told me not to touch the boxes, but I sensed they were
off-limits all the same.

I was four years old, I think. It's funny how memories twist and
distort, until you wonder if you did in fact experience what you
remember, or if it was simply an illusion. But I doubt that my four-
year-old mind would have been capable of fabricating the image of
guns; for that is what I saw, when I tipped the box on its side, and
lifted the lid of the black leather case within it. Three small
pistols, neatly packed into the foam-lining, each fitting its
concave space exactly.

Of course, at such an age, I did not know they were pistols, and did
not question why the case hadn't been locked. I had never been
exposed to any sort of weaponry, as I was never permitted to watch
our television and I never played with any other kids; no cops and
robbers, cowboys and Indians, no OZ and Gundams. Those were a boy's
sport anyway, and I was a girl. A pretty girl, everyone said, when
they patted my head. So I thought this box of metal pieces was some
elaborate game- match the shape to its correct home. I began pulling
the guns out from where they nestled, hefting their weight in my
small hands. They were heavy and I dropped one with a clunk.

Still, this did not deter me. Lost in wonderment, I pulled out the
smaller box, also wrapped in Christmas packaging. This one was even
heavier, and inside was another case. Its contents, I discovered,
when I pressed the little gold button and opened the lid, were
distinctly boring. Pieces of paper, all a certain rectangular shape,
tied together in bundles. They were bank notes. There was a man's
face on all of them, who I later realised belonged to Heero Yuy the
1st, a famous peace activist.

I was much too young to know this at the time. And money was no
good for playing with. Disappointed, I turned my attention to my
previous find. I picked up the lightest gun again, turning it over
in my palms. It was smooth and cold.

I then recall hearing a soft noise at the doorframe, and freezing on
the spot. It was my mother, wearing only a towel, her long hair wet
and darkened. The bathwater ran in rivulets down her shoulders and
dripped onto the floor.

"Merde!" she cursed, dashing forward, and I knew it was a bad
word. "Amie, you naughty girl! Mama did not say you could have
those!"

She looked angry, but I did not cry because she sounded afraid, and
didn't look as though she would strike me. Just in case I was wrong,
I bolted to the landing and from a safe distance, watched her
groping on her knees, through the open door. The towel had slipped
down so she was naked, small breasts bent over the disaster. She
repeated the bad word a few more times as she squashed the guns back
into the case and snapped the lid shut, muttering that they should
have been locked. I do not know why they were not. Maybe she had
mislaid the keys and decided to take a chance until she found them,
or perhaps that was the one time she just got slack. Never again.

As I grew, that early memory did not stop me from exploring more
nooks and crannies of that old house in Lyon, in case I found any
more things I shouldn't. But I never did.

I hated that house with its creaky doors and the smelly corridor,
which led down some cold, damp steps to the outside. But my mother
had a way of making even the dreariest of existences into something
exotic. Everyone knew her as Belle Bonnet, and it seemed they
approved of her, or at least the men did. In the street, they would
often catcall in her direction, and she would play up to it with her
red lipstick, buoyant blonde curls, and tight clothing. She had a
sort of sway when she walked. I tried to copy it when we ventured
out to the shops together, but my ass was too small, my legs were
too long and gangly, and my hair wasn't blonde like hers. I couldn't
do her flirtatious smile either, so I chose not to smile much at
all, rather than make a fool of myself.

I later discovered her real name was Midii Une. I only found out
because I read one of her diary entries. She scribbled them a lot,
but she never kept the papers; when she had re-read each entry, she
would put it in the log fire as though this gesture was some sort of
catharsis. I now know even she needed to remind herself of the truth
sometimes, even if she could not allow it to linger for very long.

One time, when I was nine, I plucked the curling paper from the
flames when she wasn't looking. She had tossed it almost absently,
worried there was someone at the door, and I had seized my chance to
sate my curiosity. While she hovered near the window, clutching the
iron poker in her small hands, I placed a blank leaf from her
notebook into the fire instead.

I read the stolen page that night when I was alone in my bedroom. It
didn't say much, but it was her letter to someone- a friend, or God
perhaps. The name of the addressee was burnt away so I couldn't be
sure. She had signed it Midii Une, and I knew this Midii could not
be a fictional character, because my mother didn't seem like the
novelist type; she had too much fiction to cope with in her real
life, without creating more for pleasure. And besides, she had
mentioned my name in the entry, saying how sorry she was that she
had to lie to me every day.

I wasn't sorry about it. Knowing her name was not really Bonnet made
me wonder if mine wasn't either, and I thought it was kind of
exhilarating, having a double identity. When I proceeded to ask,
casually, who my father was, she laughed and said he was a clown,
and what did I want for breakfast? I didn't believe her outlandish
claim, because who would fall in love with a circus buffoon? My
mother was dainty and elegant, and they're bumbling with grotesque
smiles, tacky polyester wigs and big feet. At least the ones I'd
seen were, but that was just from picture books and on television
(by this time she let me watch it). For this reason, I sensed
that `clown' meant something else entirely. Nevertheless, my mother
did not allow me to go to the circus the one instance it came to our
area, and she warned that if I did, it would make her very sad.
This, I did believe, for that was the first time I saw a proper
wrinkle on her still-young face, a deep groove, as she frowned hard
and pulled a fabric bag of banknotes out of the washing machine.

And I didn't go to the circus. For I never wanted to make my mother
sad. I loved her more than anyone. When I was a child, there was no-
one else to love. I was home tutored, if one could call it that, and
I had few friends. I'd once heard a man say that the more friends
you had, the more complicated it made your life. When he uttered the
word `complicated', it had sounded more ominous than that, as though
he had meant to say `dangerous' but couldn't, because I was a little
girl.

That man was one of my mother's co-workers, Monsieur Moffet. She
worked part-time as a waitress at the Caf? Bleu on the corner of our
road, and the rest of the time at a liquor store a few miles away,
which confused me because sometimes when I was in there, I would
witness her colleagues acting very oddly, and hear talk of the
latest `job'. I wondered what this was. Everything seemed so hush-
hush.

I soon learned as I grew older. My mother was a money launderer;
part of an armed gang who shifted large amounts of cash garnered
from heists, fraud operations, and weaponry, around the globe. The
liquor shop was just one of their fronts for it all, and the boss,
Jacques Moffet was the one in charge. He was forty, half French,
half English- apparently- with flawless straight, white teeth. I
noticed he was fond of my mother; he called her his `petit poup?e'.
Sometimes he'd pat her on the backside. I didn't like it when he did
that. But I kept my face neutral whenever he glanced my way; not
approving, not disapproving. I never dared anger him. I saw him,
with his tall frame, bad language and confident aura, as our
protection from the entity known as `Preventer', who apparently
tortured anyone it caught, using the most heinous methods, and was
always on the lookout for people like us.

It made me feel good to belong to an `us'. It was like having a real
family, even if we weren't bonded by love, but secrets. I sensed
this family extended beyond Lyon, beyond France even, perhaps even
beyond Earth. We had to be careful. My mother was sharp- always sure
to make anything suspicious look legitimate, and she was fastidious
about it, as though she had been a schooled liar right from
childhood. Sometimes it was exciting to live that way, even when I
wasn't sure just what was going on. Other times, I hated it. Though
so much cash passed through her house, my mother did not want to
appear to be living beyond her means in case the police checked her
spending records, so we didn't. We scraped by, and sometimes it
annoyed me that I couldn't have all the things I asked for, when she
could clearly afford it and more besides. I wondered what she got
from the whole thing, if not the financial perks.

"One day, you'll understand," she would assure me.

One of her roles involved taking caseloads of cash bundles from the
men, and in order to give any fresh notes a used appearance, she
would put them once through the washing machine. When they came out
they were all crinkled- not completely destroyed- but no longer
pristine, as they had been in the vault from where they were taken.
As a very young child, I never understood her interest in washing
money. I thought she was just a compulsive obsessive and liked
everything to be clean.

She certainly gave off that impression. Our house was spotless. She
was always cleaning, always checking everything twice, three times,
and was never completely still unless she was listening intently to
something. Then, it was like watching a cat, alert, straining to
catch some faint noise, and I had the feeling of being shut out, not
privy to the secrets of her sixth sense. I would watch my mother's
face, how her small nostrils flared, how her kohl-penciled eyes
would narrow for a brief moment. Then she would smile at me.

"Let's have some ice cream, Amie, shall we?"

Then everything was back to normal, or as normal as it could be,
till the next time. I wonder how I could have been at all content
with such an existence, but children are surprisingly resilient, and
loyal. No; my mother wasn't a criminal, or a liar. She was
wonderful, smart, and beautiful. I wanted to be just like her when I
grew up. It was she and I against the world, this much was for
certain. But what the nature of this world was- a world where
soldiers used to fight in huge metal suits, where people lived on
big wheels in Space, where `Preventer' roamed like a lion on the
prowl- I wasn't entirely certain?

It was an enemy I was yet to discover.

TBC?