This fic has some adult themes, but everything is pretty much normal levels of objectionableness, and I don't think anyone reading it will be scarred for life. Features only the usual level of weirdness for my oneshots. ^^ To everyone who recognizes that the Instructor in the first half is not in fact original, you get a cookie! Don't worry -- he's happier here than he was in his original series. Unless he has to deal with Sulky!Azuma.
GONE
to sleep, perchance to dream
by Kay Willow
The curls of smoke in the air around him created a haze that shrouded
everything. It was, he mused, a lot like the past, and just as depressing.
"I hate it when you smoke. It'll kill
you, you know."
"Rill smokes."
"I hate it when she smokes, too. What would Instructor
Misturini say?"
"Come on, don't be a killjoy here. Let me have
my fun."
"But you're killing yourself."
"Better that than let GOA kill me, right? Hehe."
Smoking was a bad habit. He knew that. Everyone told you that smoking
was a bad habit, that smokers suffered from a higher rate of incurable
cancers, that they had shorter life expectancies, and that their automic
surgeries were necessary more often and came more expensive when they were
needed. There was no escaping the information; it was everywhere. It defied
all logic that there were still so many people who smoked.
It had nothing to do with logic, and everything to do with emotion.
Azuma looked up through the wafting tendrils, and realized that Instructor Hardin was standing in front of his desk, looking disapproving.
Oh, God. You'd better not be here to tell me that smoking's gonna kill me, John.> Making a small concession to the health-conscious man, he snubbed out his cigarette in the nearby ashtray. It was getting overfilled. "Hey there. How can I help you, Hardin?"
"You can't help me, Hijikata. You can only help yourself. They're not my responsibility."
Belatedly, Azuma remembered that he'd asked Hardin to look after his
Candidates today. He'd wanted to take the day off. Not really a vacation,
or even a respite. More like a vigil.
"Where do you suppose we'll be in twenty
years?"
"What a stupid question."
"Come on, you jackass, you know you're every
bit the sentimental loser I am."
"In twenty years, we'll still be here. You'll
get promoted to Pilot, of course. Then when your years are up, you'll wind
up an Instructor here. And Rill's going to be in the medical staff. And
me..."
"And you?"
"I don't know. Can't see myself in the future."
He should've known better than to hand off his kids to someone else,
even someone as competent and grounded as Instructor Hardin had always
been. Even when they'd been Candidates, John had been a stick-in-the-mud,
the kid who was elected President of the Student Council and made slogans
for motivational campaigns. John Hardin had been Candidate 16.
Right in the middle of Candidate 13 and Candidate 19. That had been Hardin's place in everything: right in the middle. He couldn't see things from where Azuma stood, because he'd never been where Azuma stood.
"Do you even pretend to maintain discipline with those kids, Hijikata? They're like savages!" the man pointed out, shaking his head.
"That bad, huh?"
"The late-60s all but held an open rebellion when I tried to get them to Pro-Ing practice; the early-30s couldn't be detached from their Repairers with crowbars despite the fact that such behavior is strictly against the rules; the Top Candidates have a collective attitude problem such that I've rarely seen; and the late-80s spent all their time quarreling amongst themselves!"
Hardin paused there, waiting for a response. He got none. Azuma didn't
have the answers he deserved, and no excuses came to his mind. He didn't
want to make excuses. Azuma knew that his methods of training were unconventional,
at best. He allowed his Candidates more leeway than any other Instructor
in the Academy.
"We give Misturini such a hard time I
have to feel sorry for him."
"Well, I don't. I think he deserves it, for not
keeping a closer rein on us."
"I like the way he's going about it, though.
He lets us do what we want. If it doesn't interfere with our job, he doesn't
interfere with it either."
"If he doesn't want us to misbehave, he should
discipline us. And then we can misbehave out of resentment. That's the
way things are."
"When I'm am Instructor, I'm going to let them
behave however they choose in their free time."
"They're going to eat you alive, Azuma."
John Hardin had never understood Azuma's methods of teaching. He
was a practical, down-to-earth man, a man who had never thought twice about
following orders, to whom "efficiency" meant "order". He was a good man,
an Instructor First-Class, like Azuma himself. Hardin's Candidates had
the highest survival rates of all the Instructors; they behaved as model
citizens and they all loved him, every Pilot Candidate and Repairer Candidate
among them. Azuma, on the other hand, had the highest rate of Candidate
promotion to Pilot in all GOA; his students would disobey orders if they
felt it best, and they all loved him, every Pilot Candidate and Repairer
Candidate among them.
Who was to say which of them was the better Instructor? But Hardin had never understood Azuma's methods of teaching.
And Azuma didn't expect him to. How could John Hardin understand when Cain Fisher hadn't? Cain had understood Azuma perfectly -- except in this.
Maybe the problem wasn't their understanding. Maybe it was his own inconstancy. Maybe he didn't understand himself. Azuma shook his head, to clear it and rid himself of these odd thoughts. "I'm sorry I had to inflict the little monsters on you, Hardin. It won't happen again."
"No," Hardin agreed, "not for another year." Azuma looked away. The other man's face twisted into a frown, proud jaw setting. "You're killing yourself like this, you know."
"Don't talk to me about smoking, Hardin."
"I'm not talking about smoking this time, Hijikata."
The worst of Hardin's many goody-goody traits was his concern. Another bad one was his perceptiveness. "You never miss a trick, do you?"
"Don't you dare blow me off, Azuma." The harsh whisper left Azuma surprised
more because Hardin had actually used his first name than the negative
tone. Hardin took another step forward and leaned in close to insist under
his breath, "I know why you took today off, and I know why you've been
sitting here smothered in smoke for hours on end--" He waved an irritated
hand through the haze meaningfully; it warped where his arm passed through,
and then seeped slowly back into place. "--and I think that the best thing
you could ever do for yourself is to just forget about Cain Fisher!"
"They're gonna make me a Pilot soon, Cain."
"Yeah, I heard. Congratulations, man -- you've
earned it."
"More than you!"
"Ha. I only ask one thing of you, Mister Hotshot
Pilot."
"What can I possibly do for you, O Meager Peon?"
"Don't forget about me when you're off ensuring
the future of the human race, okay?"
John Hardin had left, but Azuma couldn't remember when it had happened,
or how long ago. The smoke once more hung in a thick, impenetrable cloud
around him. A lethal barrier that both embraced and crushed him. Azuma
felt tired all of a sudden, lost inside the haze.
"Azuma?" came a discordant voice, shattering his serenity with long-practiced ease. "You're not going to sleep in this den of carcinogens and monoxide, are you?"
Rill always knew how to kill his moods. Azuma snubbed out his latest cigarette, realized that his pack was empty, and reached into a drawer for a new one.
"Cut that out. How many packs have you had already? And you've been sitting in this room breathing in poison all day."
"You're a fine one to preach about the evils of smoking," Azuma retorted, grinning as she marched up and snatched the box right out of his hand. "You've been smoking since you were fourteen."
She ignored that comment, instead choosing to glare at the box. "I don't know how you can like this disgusting brand."
"I like the taste."
"What taste?" Rill snorted indelicately, "Get off your lazy ass, Azuma, and let's go for a walk. Assuming," she added with a smirk, "that you aren't wheezing like an old man yet."
"Old man?" he demanded, forcing himself to his feet, lethargy temporarily banished in the face of a challenge. "I'll show you an old man!"
Time sure is passing strangely today,> Azuma thought as they passed by the dining hall for what was surely the sixth time in an hour. The minutes had inched by, the whole morning and afternoon passing in what seemed like eons; suddenly now that he was out in the fresh, metallic air of the GOA corridors and moving around it was like everything moved in fast-forward: he could tell that things were happening no faster than normal, but everything seemed strangely intense.
"I remember how much you used to hate it when I smoked," Rill said suddenly, staring at the smoldering stick in her own hand, after an eternity of just silent walking.
"I never did."
"You would always scold Cain, for giving me a cigarette that first time and getting me started. Whenever we used to light up, you'd pretend not to recognize that we were there at all." An almost wistful smile was on her face, strangely soft and equally as surreal as the hyperfast universe around them.
Azuma shook his head. "You're hallucinating. I was the one who gave you that cigarette. Cain only smoked that one time, and he nearly choked, and told me to never give him another one."
She didn't say anything.
"Do you remember when I predicted that you were going to be a Doctor here? And that Cain would be an Instructor?" Azuma grinned and shook his head. "We had nothing better to do than dream about the future."
"That prediction was frighteningly accurate," she agreed. "But that wasn't you, it was Cain. He thought you would be the Instructor."
"You're talking crazy again," he warned her. "I've been thinking about this all day, trust me. I know what I'm talking about."
She gave him a withering look. "That goes in the book of famous last words," she commented, dryly, and took a long drag of her cigarette.
Azuma sighed, long-suffering. Obviously the smoke was getting to Rill's brain. "Next you're going to be telling me that he advocated harsh disciplinary action, and I was all for letting the little monsters run wild."
Rill stopped short in the middle of the hallway, turned and snapped her fingers suddenly in front of his face. He flinched away, but before he could recover and demand what her problem was, she said snidely, "You don't seem to be in a sleepwalking state, but you'd better be in some sort of hypnotic trance if you can't recognize your own teaching style."
"Well, sure, now I think like this, but I only started doing it because Cain told me too!" Azuma insisted. He felt very odd, over-defensive. Everything was still too clearly defined. Had one of those punks slipped something into his coffee, or what? Goddamn, I'm gonna kill Aracd-->
"Now you'll be telling me that Cain made it to Pilot and you didn't."
"Well, gosh, Rill," he said with automatic sarcasm, "that would be simple to say, wouldn't it, since he did--"
He stopped short on his own sentence.
Cain Fisher had died minutes before his own promotion to Pilot. He remembered that much. He could never forget it.
But for some reason, he felt like he was the one who'd been left behind and abandoned.
Rill stood there, smoke wafting up from the smoldering end of her cigarette, watching him neutrally while he put himself back together. She didn't say anything as he leaned against the wall. He was grateful for the lack of biting witticisms.
Cain Fisher was dead. He, Azuma Hijikata, was alive.
That was all there was to that, right?
"I could've sworn it was me," he murmured.
"Yeah, well, it wasn't." Rill dropped the cigarette in her hand and ground it into the floor. Almost immediately, a light came on at the ceiling to summon one of the little sweeper-bots. "Cain didn't even really want to be a Pilot. He just wanted to go to Zion."
"But they wouldn't let him go," murmured the Instructor. "Only official-types and authorized personnel allowed on the planet, and he was neither. But he was proud of me when I got promoted to the Red Goddess, and he asked me to name her 'Tin Can' as a joke, and you tried to get 'Tincan Babe' past Rivould, and he was very polite about telling us to think of something less mocking..."
"And you were always the one who wanted to be an Instructor, too."
"Cain was always making fun of Misturini, but I felt bad for him... I knew that he had the right idea, just wasn't sure how far to take it without letting us monsters get out of hand. And that damned Fisher, he always thought I just wanted to take the lazier way, when in fact the fact that it was the lazier way only mattered to me about half of the time..."
"And he was always making those predictions about the future."
"Hasn't yet been proven wrong, either. I'm an Instructor, you're a Doctor, Lana married Nicodemus and ran off to join some research staff somewhere... And he isn't around to have predicted anything for. Just like he always said."
"And he was the one who enjoyed smoking."
Azuma looked at the tattered remains of her cigarette, on the ground.
Cain had always smoked, and Azuma and Lana had always very loudly and vocally disapproved of it. It was practically the only thing Azuma and Lana had ever agreed on. Then Cain had given Rill a cigarette, and she'd taken up with the putrid habit, and Azuma and Lana had decided to get back at their partners by pretending not to hear them speaking when there was "too much smoke in their mouths" to hear them properly. Azuma had once given a lecture in the dining hall about the evils of the "mind-warping smoke" while standing on a chair.
He remembered that he used to call them "cancer sticks".
He remembered that once, Cain had given him a cigarette, and convinced him to smoke it somehow. He remembered choking, and burning himself, and vowing to never do it again while his best friend and girlfriend had laughed at his folly.
He remembered the day that he'd started smoking.
"I need a cig," he muttered, and stalked off to his room. Mutely, Rill
followed in his wake.
"Hey, Cain."
No one answered him.
"I want you to know that I'm sorry..."
No one answered him.
"It's because of my promotion, because of my
selfish attitude... because of me that none of your dreams will ever come
true."
But no one answered him.
"You always used to kid around that you smoked
so that GOA wouldn't have to kill you, but it's too late for that now,
huh? Service got you first. Now who can carry on your little rebellion
against the Powers That Be except for me, the guy who got you killed..."
And no one would ever answer him.
Azuma lit up, and sighed as the poison filled his lungs.
"That doesn't sound like the relief of an addict," Rill observed.
"It isn't," he said curtly.
"No, it isn't," she murmured, strangely affectionate. "You're not addicted to the tobacco. You're addicted to something much worse."
"What are you talking about?"
"You're addicted to guilt."
Rill knew him better than anyone. She knew about Cain, and realized that in a way his death really was Azuma's fault, and understood why Azuma could never forget. She knew about his penance, too.
"I think you should stop smoking, Azuma," she whispered.
He laughed, bitterly, and took another drag from the cigarette. "I can't. I robbed Cain of the chance to die the way he chose. So..."
When Rill stepped forward and took away the cigarette, he didn't resist. And when she looked up at him, expression soft and sympathetic, he couldn't help but fall in love with her all over again. And when she reached up and drew his head down, he cried on her shoulder.
They were all little children, living in a world that they could all too easily lose.
Or forget.
Weeeeeeirdneeeeeess.... On Lain-level weirdness.
Well, better weirdness than meaningless, like so much on ffnet. Li-san helped with the title after hearing the original, which was simply "Gone".
--Kay