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Drifting through space in a ruined mobile suit, some part of Trowa Barton wonders if he ever took a breath as a real person, if he lived as anything except a double agent, a simulacrum, a means to an end. He supposes real people have memories even if they don't have names—which he does—even though right now, his are slipping away.
It's so quiet among the stars, and although silence usually means death, to be quiet is also a choice; to say nothing in a bustling, living, loud world full of human fears and joy, to avoid being jostled by those emotions as a stalwart object that moves only to achieve a goal, is a choice. Something he might even call joy.
Heero Yuy, an object far more immovable than any soldier Trowa knows, including himself, offers periods of silence that he can wrap himself up in—a muffling of explosions and screams, a companionable quietude.
A memory: "Live by your emotions." Heero says cryptically as he takes a sip of soup, favoring his battered body as he readjusts on the cot.
Trowa just raises an eyebrow but doesn't respond; they think about things the same way.
Heero's words are sparse but mostly true when he offers them. Trowa begins to savor the silences in between, though, when the only noise is eating, breathing, sleep-talking—the things living people do. But those quiet spots aren't empty. They're not a void or blank space or lost places for conversation.
It's the places Trowa feels safest, in those wordless stretches, in the knowledge that there are some people with whom words aren't required to confirm you're alive.
Words are meaningless and forgettable when there are too many of them. Some people withhold secrets and speak with strategies; other people have nothing to say, a blankness.
But both Trowa and Heero house storms that howl without words, feelings that don't have a place to settle until there's a quiet moment. They recognize each other's shrieks, both the literal ones as well as the wordless ones.
To know someone underneath their screams is more intimate than anything Trowa has ever felt, including this moment, right now, dying. Even the silence of space is nothing compared to the silences Heero leaves between their words—tender places that sustain people like them.
When people are about to die, the famous saying is: Any last words?
Trowa knows he wouldn't have last words; he's sure Heero wouldn't either. They're not verbose people, not theatrical, not completely real. They are two weapons who speak as other people who are long dead, say things that their predecessors told them to, answer to names that aren't their own; have never actually had one of their own.
In the shared silence, they are both real; and those memories are the last to begin to trickle away from his consciousness. They're the last to slip away, perhaps because his hot, human heart is about to stop but he wants to remember them.
Somehow, his heart never goes quiet.