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      Why Ask Why?
A Moment in a Dorm Room
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	I've never been much of a dreamer, in either sense of the word.  
In terms of hopes and dreams, I've always thought more in terms of 
expectations and aspirations.  I'm very goal-oriented.  If there was 
some wonderful thing out there that I wanted, either I made a point of 
pursuing it, in which case it became a simple objective, or else I 
recognized it as unattainable and discarded it as a passing fancy.  What 
was the point of a hopeless dream?  If it had nothing to do with 
reality, if one could do nothing to make it a reality, then it was 
useless.  A waste of time.

	In terms of dreams in my sleep, well, it'd be ridiculous to say 
I never dreamed.  I went through regular REM cycles, hence I dreamed.  
Did I remember them?  Maybe for those few moments right after waking, 
but I've always let them slip away.  I've never had a dream that I 
really wanted to save.  I've had plenty of dreams I've wanted to forget.

	I think most of my dreams weren't true dreams, but rather 
memories.  All muddled together, perhaps, but things that had actually 
happened.  Never mundane things, of course.  Mundane in a relative 
sense, that is.  Memories of death and violence were pretty mundane for 
me.  Even the playback of my worst, my lowest moments qualified as 
fairly mundane through mere repetition if nothing else.  These things 
were present in my conscious mind.  It was no surprise, then, to take a 
stroll through them when my subconscious was in control.

	They were nothing I hadn't seen before, so when I was confronted 
with them in my sleep, or more accurately, upon my waking, I never woke 
in terror, or whatever other reaction is typical of a nightmare.  I 
hadn't reacted that way the first time I had experienced those things in 
real life, so it made no sense for me to react that way experiencing 
those things in remembrance.  Did I wake abruptly?  Yes.  Did I 
sometimes endure a few moments of disorientation?  Yes.  Did I often 
find my vital stats elevated?  Yes.  But did I bolt upright, a strangled 
scream in my throat, perspiration dripping down my face?  No.

	I've never been much of a dreamer in my sleep, so perhaps that 
is why I was plagued with waking dreams instead.  It seemed a little 
unfair to me, but it was tolerable, so I let it be.  It started as a 
small echo, a strange sense of déjà vu, as if I'd seen something happen 
a split second before it actually did.

	A few days later, the headaches started.  Again, nothing big.  
In fact, I only saw them in hindsight.  At the time, they were 
insignificant enough that I passed them off as mere tension headaches.  
They were a slight discomfort, but nothing that couldn't be worked 
around.  I didn't think I was stressed enough to warrant them, but I 
could concede that perhaps I was on some level beyond my control.  My 
fellow ex-pilots and I had been tossed into a remarkably foreign 
situation and told to adapt or suffer the consequences.  I don't like 
ultimatums.

	So many civilians made me edgy.  I couldn't count on them to act 
in a reasonable manner.  If something came up, some emergency, they'd be 
running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and it'd be up to 
the rest of us to defend them.  Their value systems were just so 
different from mine that I found it difficult to comprehend them, and 
that made them threatening.

	My room was my haven -- or more accurately, our room.  No 
civilians.  Just Duo.  I'd first thought he might be as disruptive a 
presence as a civilian, but I got over the notion quickly enough.  He 
was a soldier, and it made an almost tangible difference, despite his 
deceptively shallow surface.  After that, I thought I'd just ignore him.  
We had been thrown together to live in the same room, and it seemed we 
agreed that the best way to survive the experience would be to stay out 
of each other's way.

	Of course, things didn't always work out that way, but it worked 
well enough.  He talked at me a bit when we first started out, but he 
didn't arrogantly demand my attention as he made idle, one-sided 
conversation, so I didn't mind.  I understood that that was his way of 
assessing people.  He claimed to be pretty skilled at judging people 
after interacting with them, and I could believe it.  He seemed to 
ramble on, flitting from one subject to the next, but it was all a 
skillful manipulation designed to lead his victims down a path of his 
creation.  I preferred to sit back and silently observe people in their 
natural environments, watching for what they gave me, while he chose to 
study people in an artificial one, seeking out the information he 
wanted.  My method was less intrusive, his more... straight to the 
point.  I refused to call it more efficient.  Both approaches had their 
uses.

	I think his system broke down a little when faced with a 
non-participating subject.  I didn't give him much information to work 
with.  At the same time, I could reflect his method and catch a glimpse 
into his mind.  The threads he spun, when left to their own devices, 
often turned back on themselves and revealed little hints of how he 
thought.  Once they dropped their clues, I had avenues I could pursue, 
behaviors I could watch for.  Together, they wove an interesting 
picture, and I was more than happy to explore it.  There certainly 
wasn't anything else interesting for us to concentrate on.  The academic 
programs we were enrolled in failed to challenge us, and acceptable 
extracurricular activities were minimal.  If the government was intent 
on breaking us, they had chosen an insidious way of doing so.

	Duo came back to the room one day with a scowl on his face, and 
again I had the opportunity to peer into the Maxwell enigma.  He almost 
immediately started in on one of our classmates.

	"You know, I really hope 'Rick' is short for 'Richard', because 
then I could be perfectly justified in calling him a dick."

	I cast him a faintly curious look.  The jock had been getting on 
Duo's nerves since our first week at school, so I wondered what had 
transpired to cause Duo to make particular note of the boy's annoying 
behavior that afternoon.  "Doesn't his personality already justify it?"

	I didn't like the guy either.

	Duo laughed, his black humor dissolved for something a little 
more on the gray side.  "I'm glad we don't have the misfortune of having 
him in our gym class.  Hell, I'm glad they let us get out of gym 
altogether, although whether they did that for our sakes or for their 
peace of mind, well, I don't really care.  Maybe that was a good idea on 
their part, seeing as how, if I got hassled like that ass was hassling 
these other guys, I'd worry about the physical safety of our fellow 
students, too."

	Something I had discovered about Duo was that he had a definite 
soft spot for the underdog.  Of course, didn't we all?  It was probably 
a natural consequence of being the oppressed underdog for a good part of 
the last year.  Five against the world were miserable odds.

	He went on to describe what the bully had been doing to incite 
his ire.  The jock had apparently decided it was his god-given right to 
shove around the scrawnier crowd.  The five of us qualified as scrawny 
in his eyes; none of us could match him in height or mass.  Our 
intellect by far trumped his brawn, but at least he seemed intelligent 
enough to recognize that there was something odd about us, something he 
didn't want to mess with, so he left us alone.  He watched us, though, 
just looking for an excuse to get in our faces.  Perhaps he wasn't a 
completely oblivious idiot, but he was still a fool.

	I listened to Duo vent for a while, but eventually my mind, its 
edge dulled slightly by the ache in my temples, failed to keep up with 
what he was saying.  I interrupted him.  "You know, there are some days 
I have no idea what you're talking about."

	He paused, gave me an odd, faintly hostile look.  "Well, gee, 
Yuy, sorry if you've never had the privilege of being annoyed by your 
fellow man.  Or am I just expressing ideas beyond your limited 
comprehension?"

	His hostility hit my facade and slid right off it to land in an 
unattractive little puddle by my feet.  I wasn’t certain why I had the 
image of it slinking off in embarrassment.  I shook it off.  "No, I mean 
it's like we're speaking a different language sometimes.  What did you 
just call him?  Dickweed?  What is that supposed to mean?  And I believe 
you used 'uber' as a modifier of some sort?  And Charlie was 'hella' 
pissed?  We're speaking two different languages here."  Although I could 
easily guess what they meant from context and etymology, what there was 
of it, the descriptive language was still foreign to me.

	Duo snorted derisively.  "Uh-huh, and you think something like 
'asshole' makes any more sense?"

	Only through common use, I suppose.  It was a term prevalent in 
every locale, but that didn't excuse it from an obligation to make some 
sort of sense.  I thought about the matter, determined not to let Duo 
win the point.  I didn't like being inconsistent.  "Hm.  Well, an 
asshole is what shit comes out of," I offered after a moment.

	After suppressing what was perhaps an amused snort, he seemed to 
try and figure out the derivation of the phrase he had used.  Apparently 
there was no convenient explanation for how the words 'dick' and 'weed' 
related to each other, and what they might imply about the person being 
thusly labelled, because after about two seconds, he decided to move on.  
"You need to get out more.  You're sounding way too sheltered."

	"And you sound like you're from L2."

	His eyes narrowed dangerously, but that was all to indicate I 
had hit a nerve of some sort.  "I beg your pardon?"

	I was only stating a fact, so I went ahead and continued, though 
mindful of attempting neutral commentary.  "Those words you use.  
They're L2 slang words, aren't they?  It's not that I'm sheltered.  We 
just had a different set of vocabulary on L1."

	He looked at me long and hard, as if he was trying to figure out 
whether to take offense or not.  Finally, he sighed sharply.  "Dammit, 
and here I thought I was doing okay with getting L2 out of my speech 
patterns."

	"It'll probably never leave you completely."

	I received yet another harsh glare.  "You saying I'm gonna be a 
gutter rat forever?"

	So it seemed I had just learned Duo wasn't fond of his origins.  
I blinked innocently at him and tried to correct his misconception.  
"I'm just saying that you can train it out of your speech, but it'll 
always be there as what you picked up when you were first learning how 
to speak.  Even I still speak with an L1 accent sometimes, when I'm not 
thinking about it."

	He lightened up a bit after my admission of weakness, and I 
could feel it as if I could see his hackles slowly lowering.  I had been 
getting some strange visual images lately.  Was it some result of a lack 
of mental discipline in this unstimulating peacetime environment?  I 
hoped it wouldn't get any worse.

	"Doesn't that piss you off?" he asked without rancor.  The 
question sounded purely inquisitive.  "I mean, it's an identifying 
trait, isn't it?"

	"True.  But unlike, say, Trowa, I've never yet been in a 
situation where revealing even the barest glimpse of an identifying 
trait might endanger me."

	"True," he repeated, but it was an acknowledgment of the fact, 
not a concession of my point.  After all, he had a braid half a meter 
long trailing down his back.  It was ironic he was discussing the 
avoidance of identifying traits with me at all.  I called him on it.

	"Why do you keep your hair so long?  It's not just an 
identifying trait, it's a target.  People like Rick are always going to 
be more than happy to use the fact that you look like a girl as an 
excuse to hassle you."

	Oops, it seemed I'd stepped a little too close to yet another 
mine.  Shinigami swam across his expression.  "You'd better not say that 
unless you mean it, Yuy," he answered with a calmly threatening voice.  
"And if you mean it, then we're going to have a problem."

	I raised an eyebrow at him.  "Please.  Don't put me on the same 
level as Rick.  It's the conclusion that he would obviously come to, not 
me."

	Once again, he warily let the defensive front down.  Didn't he 
tire of these swift turnarounds in mood?  "Sorry," he muttered 
grudgingly.  "I've just had to spend a lot of my time defending my 
masculinity.  Among other things."

	He was making it a habit of inspiring my curiosity.  "Is there a 
reason you don't cut your hair?  Other than just to piss people off," I 
added as an afterthought.

	Rueful humor bloomed in the set of his mouth, a tacit concession 
that that was indeed a valid reason in his book, but he answered with a 
single, decisive word.  "Yes."

	I tilted my head at him in a slight nod, needing nothing more.  
He had a reason, and from that one word, it sounded like a good reason.  
While it would have been nice to know that reason, I could respect the 
fact that it might not be something he wanted to share.  We didn't like 
each other nearly enough for us to be openly sharing things the other 
had no business knowing.  That he had a reason would have to be good 
enough for me.

	"Why do you wear those scary shoes of yours?" he countered, 
simultaneously redirecting the interrogation and moving it towards 
something hopefully a little less deep.

	I glanced down at my mustard-colored boots.  "Scary?"

	He shrugged.  "Steel-toed and everything.  They look like you're 
about ready to bash some guy's head in with them.  Not that that's very 
far from the truth, I suppose."

	I looked pointedly at the pair of big black boots resting on the 
floor on his side of the room.

	"Hey, I asked you first."

	I didn't care why he wore his boots.  I just wanted to point out 
the irony in the question.  "They're broken in."

	From the blank stare he gave me, I supposed he was looking for 
something a little more pithy from me.  Perhaps they had knives hidden 
in the soles, or perhaps a transmitter.  Perhaps they were lined with 
gundanium, lending them a weight with which I could train on my off 
hours, merely by walking around.  No.  They were waterproofed and 
fireproofed, with a soft, but durable sole that gave me very good 
traction on a wide variety of surfaces, plus they provided me with good 
ankle support, but other than that, they were just comfortable.

	Eventually, he blinked.  "Well, fuckin' A, Yuy.  You're shitting 
me, right?"

	"What does the 'a' stand for?"

	He blinked again, then scowled.  "Freakin'--  Godda-- Argh!"  
Taking a deep breath to compose himself without additional use of such 
colorful language, he paused, then continued.  "Okay.  That's really 
annoying.  I'm trying to clean up my language, really I am."

	"You've been doing pretty well," I reassured him, thinking back 
to some of the profanity-laced diatribes coming from Deathscythe that I 
had heard during some of our battles.  Compared to that, he was really 
rather mild, most of the time, which was much more appropriate to our 
current circumstances.

	"Hey, you're anal as all hell, right?"

	It was my turn to look oddly at him, but in the end I decided 
there was no point in denying the obvious, despite the somewhat scheming 
look on his face, and a brief mental digression on how 'anal' had come 
to its current usage.  "Yes."

	"Wanna do me a favor?  If you catch me swearing, and I don't 
seem to have noticed, point it out to me, will ya?"

	A odd request, to be sure, but I agreed.  I was all for helping 
him improve himself, if that was what he wanted.



----
yeah, just pretend that the so-called L2 slang words theory makes sense 
with the words i chose.  i'm not really prone to profanity, so i'm no 
good with these things.

_________________________________________
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The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, 
Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
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tacted at jchew@myrealbox.com.  This has 
been an entirely automated message.
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 12/8/2003 01:15:37 PST