His shoes stare at me dispassionately.

They are sitting against the wall, unused and dormant, a horrid yellow colour that is starting to muddy with travelling. The laces are tattered, breaking from stress and the demands placed on them. They are pulled into a brutal knot everyday and only released when the owner decides to rest. This isn't often.

The laces were once white, but now gray, the fibers fraying and shooting tiny sparks of thread. The eyelet on one hole is missing, the soles worn away to practically nothing and they are even losing the hideous vibrancy. Of all the colours to choose, Heero wears yellow sneakers. I can understand the tank-top and spandex, but I am left wondering where and how he got these particular shoes.

They are creased where his stride recurs, indenting them in specific places. It seems too personal suddenly, staring at one of the only parts of Heero he leaves out in the open.

These shoes have walked a hundred miles and destructed with him; they have run through bases and traipsed through blood. They have seen everything Heero has seen, they are the only ones who can recount his path to the last miniscule detail and make sense of his journey.

Moonlight depicts the room with blue hues, a hotel chair silhouetted against another source of pallid light.

Heero's computer monitor glares out harshly, existing as an omnipresent element. Unlike beams of natural sunlight, the computer glare is pale white that lightens the entire room to a less harsh shade of bleached-out gray. Colours are lost in the sea of bland light, all except Heero's yellow shoes that are caught in the darkness of my own shadow.

Shadows dance upon the ceiling as black and white data flashes across the screen, the slight shadow only noticeable out of the corner of my eye.

I turn onto my side in the single bed, ripping my gaze away from Heero's shoes. My eyes had grown relaxed to staring at one thing. Something like butterfly wings flutter in my chest; I stop letting Heero's godawful shoes dominate my thoughts. But he is everywhere, even if he doesn't mean to be.

The light of his computer every night, his shoes left in the same place every where we've stayed, his eyes silently observing and storing information as we had walked through Europe searching for the Noventa family.

He never says anything important to me, letting his eyes and actions speak for him. I sit or stand behind him on his personal crusade, always watching silently.

He lets me be there though, and I don't know why. It doesn't matter; I don't have to understand this and I don't have to understand him. We simply coexist with few words, little meaning; the simplicity comforts me. People I meet find interest in me because of my silence, and I become an intrigue for them to pick apart.

Catherine, who cared about me from the beginning out of a kindness I still fail to appreciate the significance of. Quatre offered me kindness, drawing into his web in his simple yet intricate way.

But Heero was different. He didn't try to draw me in at all, and yet he still allowed my presence and in some bizarre sense, maybe he needed it. He didn't necessarily need me, but rather someone to remind him of who he was.

So why am I staring at his shoes? Why does the fading yellow captivate me so?

I suddenly wonder what he was like before his training. Then I realise that he has probably always been who he is, killing from childhood. He doesn't spell it out, but I've gathered enough pieces of throwaway comments to piece a picture together. Not like me; I've always been lost in a sea of faces, waiting for a title to be given to me, to be instructed.

It's strange, lying here and knowing that my reflections on Heero's shoes, so insignificant, is one of the first times an opinion has come from me. "Me", the only identity I haven't possessed. Nanashi, usurper, clown, Gundam pilot, Oz soldier. But "me", that's just another face with no meaning behind it, no defining qualities about it. Just a person, someone who was born, someone who will die, yet managing to not be anyone at all.

Then who is this thinking about Heero and his dilapidated shoes?

 

---

 

We both have borrowed names, Trowa and I.

I can feel his eyes glance at my back shyly and then look away, going back to observing the room. He seems preoccupied with the tiniest things, although I'm unsure as to what he's thinking about tonight.

His eyes see everything. When they actually do look at me, they simply observe and then it's as if he's staring straight through me, out of the other side of my body.

He often has a sort of vacant, uncaring look on his face, and I know he's not judging me or trying to deconstruct me. It's odd, how he just lets everything wash over him, as if he thinks that every moment is preordained and thus should be expected. He seems numb.

But there's something lurking in him, something fierce and kind all at the same time. Does every person retain their personality, regardless of what happens, regardless of how smothered it is?

It unnerves me, knowing this energy will break out of him one day; it might even be a quiet eruption of self knowledge, but it will change his relationship with the entire world.

I wonder what it feels like to be called "Trowa", a stolen name, a pilfered identity. Did no one notice the nameless boy and his fighting skills? Did all of his past acquaintances live in ignorance of his skill, of his sharp intelligence?

How could they look into his eyes and then forget? It's inconceivable.

Without preamble, I turn around fully to look at him, feeling his roving gaze drilling into the back of my head.

 

---

 

He never walks around barefoot; he sleeps in his socks, lives in his shoes. Heero is a mystery. The first thing you'd assume is that he doesn't deal with exposure well. Not so; he sprawls out on his bed in nothing more than a pair of boxers and socks when he actually does sleep. He doesn't seem to care who sees his body in such a state.

He has no qualms about his physical form, yet there's something paradoxically chaste about how he walks around in revealing (albeit practical) clothing that shows his body in such a blunt way. Only he doesn't realise that he's even being modest, because the thought that people look at him at all and want him out of lust has never occurred to him. Heero is so aware of everything else, of everyone else and their motives and thoughts that he forgets to be aware of himself.

Regardless, he still always wears something on his feet, probably unconsciously, as if letting anyone see him barefoot would be giving away a

Regardless, he still always wears something on his feet, probably unconsciously, as if letting anyone see him barefoot would be giving away a part of what makes Heero, "Heero".

He turns to look at me unexpectedly, although I knew he could feel me staring at him. His eyes catch mine easily, almost too easily, and he calmly studies me in the thorough way that he studies everything.

I can suddenly feel myself burn as the intensity he usually reserves for his personal crusades flares in his eyes. I note dumbly that they're a striking shade of blue even at this distance.

 

---

 

He looks surprised, and for a moment terrified until he snaps his self awareness back in like a whip.

I break our eyes strange split second union and beckon him over to explain where I want to travel tomorrow, pictures of people I've never met with long titles flashing across the screen.

He pulls himself out of bed and I don't watch him any longer, knowing he'd think my scrutiny odd. I hear the whisper of cloth as he pulls on a t-shirt, and I can picture him suddenly: the sheets falling in scratchy cotton folds to his waist as he sits up, his long pale legs swinging over the edge of the mattress as he rights himself. These images flood my mind, unbidden.

I can feel his weight as he leans over my shoulder to examine the screen, but suddenly my own world shrinks dramatically and my sense are on fire.

A few errant strands of his hair have accidentally brushed against my cheek as he leans forward. I don't know why the contact is affecting me in such a way; he touched me a countless number of times after I had self-destructed. But this is the first time it was unintentional and thus unexpected.

There is no external reaction, nothing to tell him the nature of my thoughts, but he senses it anyway as some undefinable thing stirs in the air between us.

 

---

 

Something is spinning, beating both of our brains hard enough to leave figurative bruises. I can almost feel the sudden change in my body from practicality to something more tenuous and intimate.

I pull back and say something mundane about his plan. He replies with something as equally mundane.

Then my hands are on his shoulders as he sits perfectly still in the chair, barely breathing. I don't know how they got there or what part of me allowed them to get there.

We just stay like that for a long time, portraits of suspended animation. Finally after what seems like forever, Heero slowly reaches forward and flips the computer's power button off, bathing us in darkness.

His breathing is normal again, but I can tell he's controlling it on purpose. My hands squeeze his shoulders lightly and he flinches in surprise.

Then his arms hang limply at his sides, and I begin to touch him, not knowing or who's doing this. Is it Trowa Barton the original, conquering? Or maybe I have adopted the spontaneity of a rash young Oz solider. Perhaps it's even insignificant, unremarkable Nanashi. However, the most terrifying thought is that this really is me.

His upper body is unclothed, just as he always sleeps, and I lower my head to kiss his neck tentatively. He's never been touched like this before, I can tell. He loses control as he realises that this is the one thing he couldn't train for. And it's odd, how he's grown up in every other way except this one. The reactions of his body are that of a previously untouched fifteen year old boy who has always been so intent on training that he never realised his own sexuality.

As he exhales hard, he utters my stolen name, "Trowa."

It's over before I get involved and over before I start losing myself. We go to bed, awkwardly at first, but fall back into our roles eventually.

The next morning, I wake up first. He's the first thing my sleep blurred eyes see, his body totally sprawled out across his bed in slumber. Stirring, he turns over away from me, exposing his lower leg.

It is then that I notice his foot hanging out from the tangled sheets that adorn his frame, its arch seeming graceful against the rest of his body's hard, chiseled features.

He's not wearing any socks.