Moments of Haven Part 8
Lessons from a Three Year Old
-- Early January, AC 197 --
It had been a long day, but not as long as he thought. Chance had dictated that he be the one to watch over the children this day, the first day of school after the Christmas holiday. He had not considered it to be different from any other day he had supervised the young ones, until he had arrived to an old building full of reluctant, excited, tired and restless children, none of whom really wanted to be there. Initially, he had been mobbed by the clamoring kids, each happy to see him again, each delighted to share his or her Christmas stories with their honorary 'niichan'.
Heero thought he was handling it rather well, all things considered. The handling of children was nothing that he had had any experience in, when he had first come here, but from the very beginning he had won the children's love and respect by not treating them as children at all. He listenly solemnly to everything they had to say rather than brushing them off as some of the adults were wont to do. He also, fortunately enough for him, had that air about him that inexplicably caused the children to do as he instructed, whether because they liked him, or because of the casual aura of authority and competence, mixed with his own unique blend of seriousness and innocence, he exuded. Likely, he would not have known how to discipline a child, had he had to, never having received a child's disciplining himself. He was more than intelligent enough to recognize that what had been discipline in his own youth was entirely unsuitable for his charges.
Truly, that was why he never treated them as children -- he had no idea how one was supposed to treat a child. He had only his own upbringing against which to measure, and he recalled that as a child, he had respected those who had treated him with a reasonable amount of respect. Those who hadn't were either fools who had no clue who or what he was, or else fools who knew and were choosing to ignore it. Indeed, even for people in general, he had learnt that it was best to treat everyone with at least a decent amount of respect. It cost very little in terms of personal effort, and yet went a long way towards smoothing relations with others. Interpersonal skills were also nothing he had ever truly been trained in, and he didn't really care if he had other people's respect or not, but plain old common sense informed him that one ought not to make enemies needlessly. One picked up enough enemies as it was.
It was finally the latter half of the day, however, and the children had finally settled enough to fall into small groups, each doing as they were inclined. Most of the day had passed without much instruction, and by this time it was too late to start anything productive. The atmosphere of the makeshift schoolhouse was typically informal on any given day, due in large part to the variety in the ages among them.
They were a smart bunch of kids, disinclined towards excessive trouble; they needed little supervision on most days, but Heero unobtrusively patrolled the room anyway, his active nature requiring him to monitor the activities. It was also an excellent opportunity for him to observe the behavior of humans in social peer groups. Although they were young, many of the same social patterns cropped up in their elder equivalents, contributing to his comprehension of his own social circle. This community he found himself in eluded him at times, but he merely rolled with the punches, adapting his understanding as he went. Heero was skilled at observation, and the social system actually became, to some extent, quite rigorous, once one factored in the human emotional response.
He floated from group to group, dropping a word or two once in a while, both on the inside and the outside of them all, a situation he was not unfamiliar with. He couldn't readily identify the last time he had entirely belonged. Even among the other Gundam pilots, he had always been somehow separate from them. They met in understanding, many times, comradeship, even, yet they had all always been too individual during the war to form a truly cohesive unit. It was a role he was comfortable with.
Heero wandered over to a young boy, seated relatively alone at the table in the corner. His face was scrunched up into a curious expression, a scowling pout pursing his lips tightly as eyes almost teary attempted to glare the paper before him into submission.
"Something wrong, Brian?" Heero inquired quietly, crouching down beside him, where he could talk eye to eye with the child.
The boy sniffed once before looking up to the young man's eyes. "I messed up," he declared, half contritely, half angrily.
Heero's focus shifted to the sheet in front of him, unable to discern much of a pattern to the colorful crayon scribblings at first. The image resolved itself into a conglomeration of shapes and figures only a three-year-old could look at and interpret as a complete picture. Heero chose not to hazard a guess as to what it might be. He looked back questioningly at Brian, whose stubborn expression had not abated.
"It looks... fine to me," Heero attempted.
"I can't r'member," Brian muttered as he sniffed angrily again.
Heero's brows twitched in thought. "Can't remember what?"
He glared at the paper for a few long, silently upset seconds. "Nothin'. It's messed up anyways." Brian took the paper into his hands suddenly, crumpling it in his little fists in preparation to destroying the incipient work, but Heero's hand shot out reflexively to stop him.
"Let go!" Brian cried softly. "It's messed up! All wrong!"
"That's no reason to destroy it, Brian," Heero chided reasonably. He had seen so many things destroyed for so many spurious reasons. Gently, he pried the sheet out of the youngster's grip and carefully smoothed it back out on the table as the boy crossed his arms aggressively across his chest and stared irately at nothing in the corner.
"Now. Brian?... Brian?" Heero waited patiently until the boy reluctantly met his eyes, still refusing to spare his art a glance. "Why don't you tell me what's so wrong about this picture?"
Brian might have refused to answer, but even three-year-olds eventually had to submit to the steady pressure of a certain pair of piercing blue eyes. "Her hair," he admitted grudgingly.
Heero looked at the picture. He supposed that that sphere-like object could be a head, the lines coming down from it a body and appendages, and the non-descript standard box of sixteen crayons brown falling from part of the rough circle could be interpreted as hair. It fell almost to the figure's 'knees'. "What's wrong with it?" he queried.
"It's too long," Brian mumbled vehemently. A short silence. "I think," he appended uncertainly. He looked back into Heero's calm gaze with a worried expression.
Heero made the connection. "Is this what you can't remember?"
Brian nodded anxiously. "An' her eyes.... I can't r'member what color her eyes was!"
"... Were," Heero muttered absently, correcting the child's grammar as he looked back at the picture briefly. "Who is she?"
"It's s'posed to be my mommy... Only I can't r'member!" Brian fixed his eyes on the paper as well, distraught as he concentrated hard on trying to remember the details of his mother's face.
As Heero recalled, Brian's mother had died during the war. She had been unable to get the medical attention she had needed when she fell ill because of a military blockade that had been erected around the area, and she had never recovered. Heero had never seen a picture of the woman, so he was unable to tell Brian what he needed to know. He thought, however, that perhaps he might be able to help Brian remember some details on his own.
He quietly got Brian's attention by resting his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Brian?" The boy tore his gaze away from the wrinkled page. "I've found that, when I can't remember something, sometimes it helps to think about things that are related to it." Not that J had ever encouraged forgetfulness, but the doctor had of course recognized that some things could be either forgotten or never consciously memorized, and sometimes applying the proper techniques could help recall lost details.
Brian just stared uncomprehendingly at him.
Heero provided more direction. "Alright. You can't remember how she looks, right? What about how she sounds? Did she ever sing you to sleep? Did she hum while she cooked? Did she tell you stories at night?"
Now wide-eyed and attentive, the boy nodded solemnly. "She used to read me. I liked 'Give a Mouse a Cookie'. That was the bestest."
"Good. Can you remember the story?" Heero prompted encouragingly in an even tone. "Can you remember her telling it to you?"
The boy closed his eyes tightly in concentration, then nodded more vigorously.
"What about the way she dressed? Did she have a favorite color? Did she have --"
"Yellow!" the child interrupted. "She liked yellow! She had a yellow dress, and yellow flowers, and yellow blankets and everything!"
Heero nodded in acknowledgement. Certain shades and quantities of yellow were proven to cause anxiety, but he supposed it could be a fairly cheery, sunny color in the proper environment. "What about the way she smelled? The way she felt?"
Brian beamed. "She smelled like gingahbread! I like gingahbread. And she was warm!"
"Perfect," Heero murmured. "Now take all of those things you just remembered, and remember them all at once." Brian's face screwed up once more in fierce concentration. "Now. Tell me what you see."
"I see... I see...." Brian gasped. "I see her!" He snatched up a crayon and was about to modify his original picture, but after a moment's thought, he snatched up a fresh sheet and attacked it with zeal.
"Too long," he muttered as he worked. "No one's got hair that long...."
Heero ended his observation of the child and glanced back to the original. "Oh, I don't know," he murmured to himself. "I can think of at least one person...." Idly, he opened another box of crayons, pulled out the brown, and somehow managed to work the wild lines into a reasonable facsimile of a long braid.
"Done!" Brian announced, holding the new and improved picture up proudly for Heero's inspection. The child's rendition of his mother now wore a yellow dress, and brown tresses to the middle of her back. The eyes were probably supposed to be hazel, as Brian had mixed brown and green together into something of two hazel-ish circular smudges.
"Good job. Why don't you give that to your father when you get home?" Heero nodded equitably in approval, and moved to stand.
"Wazzat?" Brian pointed to the picture Heero had been working on.
"Hm? Oh. I guess it's supposed to be Duo. He's got hair that long." He gave Brian's growing braid a gentle tug. "You might, too, one day."
Brian turned all his seriousness to the picture. "That's not Duo!" Heero raised an eyebrow. "Don't you r'member too? R'member... r'member his clothes? And his smell? And... and..." Brian struggled to remember the rest of the questions Heero himself had just asked him.
"Oh, I remember him, Brian," Heero answered wryly.
"Then make a better one," the child demanded imperiously. "A realer one." He graciously handed Heero a fresh sheet of paper, which Heero looked bemusedly at before surrendering to the boy's wishes. The set of the child's jaw was vaguely reminiscent of Duo in one of his more unreasonably stubborn moods. It told him he had best obey. The day was almost over anyway, and he was in no mood to argue with a three year old. Rather than use crayons, however, he scrounged around in the supplies box for a pencil, and went to work under Brian's careful supervision.
Heero had never considered himself an artist, but the portrait done from his memory was superb, as superb as it could be, considering it was done with a dull, round pencil on that cheap, fibrous paper that elementary school students are forced to use. It made sense, of course. He had an excellent memory, and an excellent ability to accurately represent his thoughts on paper. It was the same skill he used to map out an OZ facility, or recreate a new mech's secret design schematics, or even draw up a stranger's face he might have seen on an infiltration mission.
"That's better," Brian judged, studying the picture critically.
"I'm glad you like it," Heero replied ironically. Truth was, he liked it, too. It always ended up a pleasant surprise when he could apply his wartime skills to a peacetime endeavor. The more useless it was, the more interesting it was to him. At the same time, however, it also reminded him how easy it was to slip from peace back into war at any moment.
He stood and announced to the class that it was time to clean up. As the rest of the children scuttled about tidying, Brian tugged on his pants.
"Yes?"
"I'm gonna give this to my daddy." Brian indicated his picture. "You're gonna give that to Duo-niichan." His tone made it clear that that was not a request.
*****
// enter random 1st person mode
I was on my home when I had an absurd thought. But the more I thought about it, the less absurd it became. Did I ever think that I was never a child? I was wrong. I was a child at the beginning of the war. A mere child, with a child's sense of right and wrong, good and evil, success and failure.
Was I like Brian, or is Brian like me? Both so willing to scrap an entire project at a few initial setbacks. I should have known better. I knew very well that a plan rarely lasts past the first encounter, yet I conveniently forgot that during my first few days on Earth.
While this childhood of mine lasted, things were so simple. I was given a small task, a single mission at a time, with an objective to accomplish in the end. Because it was considered the end, there was no possibility for later redemption if one failed in the short term. It wasn't until I finally redefined my parameters to make peace the ultimate objective that failure and momentary weakness became acceptable.
With failure used to come punishment, and I came to expect punishment for it as a matter of course. I think, after I was out from the immediate grasp of my keepers, I must have still expected it, for even though they weren't around to carry out the deed, I somehow ended up trying to punish myself in their stead. Only when the Noventas refused to have their just retribution, and to allow me to punish myself, was that pattern broken.
Things changed. During this childhood of mine, I was the 'good guy', those I fought against, the 'bad guys'. We were right, they were wrong, the mere justification for this being that we were us, and they were them.
I was a child. I was only aware of me. Not in that way that made it selfish or self-centered, but in a child's way, who knows of nothing beyond his own household, knows only those who raised him, and anyone who dares to invade that familiar space is reduced to a foreign intruder.
I was trained to accomplish missions, not win wars. Perhaps that was the largest flaw in my training. I was raised to be a common soldier, regardless of my skill level, and soldiers are generally kept on a need to know basis. But when the colonies turned their backs on us, and we were all forced to decide for ourselves where our destinies lay, then I was forced to grow up, right having become wrong, good having become evil, I having been cut off from my genitors.
They were my parents in every important sense of the word, those who shaped and molded me into what I was. But although a child may be created by his parents, he grows beyond his genetic programming into his own individual. I, too, have surpassed my initial programming. It all becomes so simple once I consider it in purely programming terms. They trained me well in it, after all.
Humanity is my underlying operating system, an evolutionary runtime environment, and they only running their soldier application on top of the kernel. And when one discovers the flaws in an application, what would any good programmer do? Debug. Catch and handle the exception. Reduce the variables to within the acceptable bounds. Add new cases to cover the holes, relieve the reliance upon the fall-through default statement.... It all makes a terrible, wonderful sense.
And now, I shall choose to believe that their application has receded into the background. I can't kill the process; it was never made to be terminated, so there are too many memory leaks, loose ends, things that would be left dangling if it were to be terminated. But let it be a thread with the lowest priority, while its new and improved version, hacked and rewritten by myself, takes the forefront.
When Brian reached out to destroy his work because of his perceived failure, I automatically reached out to stop him. Apparently, I believed that his 'messing up' of the picture was insufficient reason to destroy it. In hindsight, I have to admit that running into some bad luck my first few days on Earth was also insufficient reason to attempt to give up and abort the mission.
That's all it really was. Giving up. A refusal to try any further, when not all of the options had yet been exhausted. And if I wouldn't let Brian get away with it, and I would never hold anyone else to standards I myself didn't share, then I'll have to firmly reprimand myself not to let me get away with it either.
It seems to me as if I learnt this long ago, during the war, else I would never have survived as long as I did, but somehow, it feels better having consciously given it voice, given the words substance. Perhaps this is why Duo feels the need to share things verbally at times -- to give the thoughts significance.
In any case, now that I have determined that I have indeed had a childhood, perhaps now I can get about this business of growing up more properly.
*****
Heero walked in the front door of the cozy little house he shared with Duo.
"Hey, Heero!" Duo called cheerily from the kitchen as Heero walked by where he was preparing dinner. "So what did you teach the kids in class today?"
"Nothing," was the laconic reply.
"Nothing?" Duo raised his eyebrows. "It's not like you to be so unproductive, Heero. Didn't anyone learn anything today?"
A ghost of a smile graced Heero's lips. "I learnt a lesson from a three year old."
Duo blinked. "What?"
"Oh, by the way." Heero pulled a piece of paper from his bag. "Brian asked me to give this to you." He handed the sheet to Duo as he continued along his way towards the bathroom to clean up.
Duo looked at the picture in his hands. "Brian asked you...? Heero, where'd this come from?" Heero just kept walking. "Heero! Geez...." He shook his head in resignation of probably never getting an answer unless Heero felt like giving it. Then he pulled a pineapple magnet from the refrigerator, and stuck the rough pencil sketch to the door before continuing his work.
OWARI
i claim very little experience with three year olds, so i don't really know how they talk. but brian's smart. i said so. so there.
and sorry for the random shift to 1st person. but heero had thoughts he wanted to share with us that only sounded right that way. besides, how else could i work in all those random programming metaphors? i apologize for them. they came to me and it seemed a shame to let them go... and i claim in-characterness!
i started with the whole 'lessons' theme... then discovered that the scene i had written didn't really have a direct 'lesson'... so three reworks later, i stuffed it into one. hope it didn't turn out too badly.
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