Author: Chauni

 

Email: ChauniMaxwell@mechpilot.com

 

Website: www.oocities.org/asukalangley2nd/

 

Warnings: None

 

Disclaimer: I don’t own the GW boy nor did I make any money off this. Pity me.

 

Notes: Okay, this is a tad odd. This is my take on Solo, and as if he had returned to the wonderful land of the living.

 

 

           

 

Returning to When

 

 

The soft tap of his boots against the cold stone floor struck his ears over and over again, a small repetitive heartbeat as he made his way down the aisle. Felt uncomfortable? Oh, that was an understatement, but he wouldn’t turn back now. Something about this place beckoned him, called to him in a siren’s voice, and he wasn’t going to avoid this song. He had found the best way to live through life was to follow those small little voices in the back of your head; they usually knew more than the rest of you.

            His emerald eyes flickered across the vibrant stained glass windows, shocks of color in an otherwise cloudy, rather dull room. Their beauty wasn’t in their outside appearance though, just as the same with everything else in the immense room; the mesmerizing nature of it was in the heart, that inspiration that drove men’s hands to work fervently over an ideal and to produce some of the most extravagant art in the most humblest fashion.

            There were few people here; he expected even less, but hey, he wasn’t going to argue. The people, their faith, gave him a small comfort, especially when he knew this wasn’t where he belonged. He didn’t have their passion, their devotion, even after the things he had seen. He hadn’t come here to beg for forgiveness, to commune with some higher being. He had come because the voices in his head had told him too.

            That sounds real good, ya know.

            Shut up!

            Small candles along the sides of the rooms danced fire in the depths of his leather pants and bathed his soft, slightly pale flesh in an unearthly glow. His hair, wet from the mist of rain outside, dangled into his eyes, lapped against his cheeks, kissing the skin softly. The people raised their eyes to him; one woman with a rosary clasped between her hands seemed as though she would pass out and visibly bit against her lip to avoid saying anything.

            Ya think they’d never seen a guy in all black before! Knew the leather trench coat was a bit much.

            With an almost melodramatic swirl, the lengthy coat swirling around him, he stopped at a pew and knelt down before it. His lips moved, but his words were hollow, full of disbelief, full of hate. He hurried and sloppily made the sign of the cross over him, something he had learned from the movies he had snuck into as his days as a street rat.

            Ya make it sound like ya aren’t one now. Heh. Ya know ya can’t leave that part of ya behind, no matter how many times ya di-

            Shut up, damnit!

            He slipped into the pew, finally taking a seat, and absolutely uncomfortable as the suffocating atmosphere began to seep in. His questions were the same as everyone else’s here, but with a different meaning, an almost haunting echo to them that ran through his mind.

            Why am I here? Why was I made to suffer? I’m s’pposed to be…s’pposed to be, damnit! I’m s’pposed to be de-

            He knew God wouldn’t hear him, or if he did, wouldn’t respond. Of course, he knew there was a God, had met him actually, but that was something he really did not want to think about. Now the angels…they were a different story all together…

            Can’t believe I had a crush on Gabriel. Boy, was I askin’ for it, or what?

            But now, now he was in this damn church, waiting for something that he didn’t understand and it scared him, although he would never admit it. He liked to be ahead of everything, know what was going to happen and why; this unexpected, go with the flow shit, he could really do without.

            Why am I even here, damnit! I should be out lookin’ for my charge.

            A snort, something bitter and harsh. A charge? Is that all ya think of him as?

            No, but I ain’t ‘bout to say what I really think, ‘specially not to some stupid, condescending voice in my head!

            Ya love him! Just admit it!

            I do not! He was a kid back then and I wasn’t some damn pedophile! He was…someone I watched over, and that’s it! Now, leave me the ‘ell alone! I don’t need to be arguin’ with myself!

            Heh. Suit yourself, but ya know the truth. Ya came back for a reason. Guess you’re just goin’ ta have to discover that reason on your own then.

            Shut the ‘ell up already!

            Arguing with himself. Hn. That was new. Of course, this entire day had been odd, just a tad off kilter, he supposed.

            Tad off kilter?! Ya came back from the dea-

            Shut up!

            The stares of the other people refused to leave his back; they burned through his coat like lasers and examined his soul. He despised the scrutinizing, the judging especially in a place that you weren’t supposed to be condemned because of what you looked like.

            Hypocrites.

            He briefly wondered if they could feel him, feel the unnatural color of an aura only he could see, but shook his head, looking back up to the front and the immense wooden cross that hung there. No, they couldn’t, they just didn’t like him. Oh well, their loss.

            Won’t they feel stupid knowin’ that they gave up a chance to talk with a guy who shook hands with God.

A small sigh burst, unnoticed, through his lips. He was bored, and it had only been five minutes since he had set foot inside these confining stone walls. Nothing was happening. There was no ray of light, no big choir singing, no magical thing that landed before him. The feeling had been wrong. He had been wrong.

            I’m wasting my time. I mine as well leave and get somethin’ to eat.

            And as he turned around to slip out of the pew, all time stopped, all life ceased to exist as he caught a pair of familiar eyes, violet pools that had been cast upon every television screen on Earth and in the colonies, eyes that glittered with a false happiness and reflected a soul’s inner agony and torment.

            But he knew those eyes not from the television or the rumors. He had seen those eyes long before anyone else had, and those amethyst orbs haunted his death, only because he was the one he could not protect.

            Take it, Solo! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me, too, like everyone else!

            And his mouth formed words that he didn’t realize he was making, as he stared at the boy from across the church, the boy who had not seen him yet, the boy who was his charge. This was the boy, the only one who had loved him, who had seen him for what he really was and not some uneducated street rat who had been abandoned by everyone he had ever known. But this boy, God, this boy, had made his name solely for him, had remembered him, and through him had given him the gift of life even after death.

            And as a small smile wove it’s way onto his thin lips, his emerald gaze dancing in the candlelight fires, he did the one thing he had never done in a church before:

            Thank ya, God. I owe ya one.

 

 

 

The End