I Wish

by Yumemisama

Just some musings from Heero's point of view.

I wish there were something to read here.

Correction. I wish there were something else to read here. I have plenty of documentation here on the screen of my laptop, sitting now on the scarred desk, on weather projections, wind speed, and mobile suit movements over the Black Sea. The problem is, I have already read it five times, and I don't really care to go over it again. When Dr. J taught me to read, I don't think it ever occurred to him that I'd use the skill for anything but skimming battle plans and satellite-bound intel. To top things off, I wasn't able to manage a single room this time around at the boarding school, and Duo Maxwell is sitting behind me -- on my bed, instead of his, which is mildly irritating -- and probably wouldn't silence himself long enough to let me read a book if I had one.

"And then this other kid just comes down from the north side of campus and fwang! foom! starts poundin' on the first kid, and all hell breaks loose." Duo shifted on his roommate's bed, turning the immaculate spread of covers and sheets into something resembling a half-clove hitch. Heero had some strange habits, but this had to be one of the strangest, to Duo; Mister Perfect Efficiency spent a good ten minutes every morning making the bed. That had to be the epitome of pointlessness. What good was makin' up the bed when you were just gonna sleep in it again that night? "So I walk over and ask him what the hell he thinks he's doing. He says, 'Dispensing justice.'"

So Wufei isn't the only one. Unlike the bully, however, I think Wufei insists on the dramatic speeches more to convince himself than to convince his opponents. They don't bother me as much as they seem to bother Duo. After all, Wufei is a competent pilot before, during, and after the theatrics, and as long as their wasted energy doesn't affect his skills, it really doesn't matter.

Heero emitted a sound that bore a suspicious resemblance to a snort and resumed scanning the information scrolling ceaselessly down the screen of the computer. Duo paused for just a moment, then rolled on over his companion's total apathy with words and gestures, animating the tale of a school bully and the sharp-talking Shingami that had taken him down.

I seem to have missed part of the narrative. With Duo's stories, it scarcely makes any difference. I'm not sure he can tell the one from the other. I can and do play fast and loose with our room assignments to suit our particular need for secrecy -- no one ever double-checks what the computer tells them -- but no matter what, I inevitably wind up sharing a double room with Duo. He talks incessantly, about anything and everything. In his sleep, on occasion. The one thing he seems to keep battened down in his brain is our mission on Earth and the intelligence related to it; anything else is fair game.

I like to pretend I end up in Duo's room because no one else is sufficiently steeled towards hardship and sleep-deprivation to survive his company. To be honest, the steady rush of pointless words is a kind of background noise I've never had to deal with before, and it gives me some very mixed impressions. On the one hand, it's noise, potentially distracting noise at that. On the other -- he's talking to me. I don't get that much.

"And then he turned around three times and transformed into a great big chicken-shaped Gundam. You are so not listening to me." Duo wrapped his arms around himself and threw himself backwards on the bed in a melodramatic rendition of 'Ignored And Suffering'.

That bed is never the same after Duo gets to it. The school should save themselves the money and just give him a pile of linens to sleep on -- he'd be happier.

"I don't know how you do it, Heero. You don't listen to anybody, and then you get a hundred percent on every single goddamn pop quiz we've ever had. I do the same thing, and I have to fast talk my way out of the school calling my parents to tell 'em I'm flunking."

An eidetic memory goes a long way towards good quiz grades, I've found. Not natural to me -- part of my training. Given how I began, I assume anyone can learn. Remembering things is the easy part; the more difficult trick is sorting through the images until you find the one you want. Pages and pages of tiny print are more time-consuming to step through than satellite photos or blueprints -- they all look alike, and there's no way to convert them into a three-dimensional figure.

"Look, Heero, I know it looks snazzy on your transcript, but has it ever occurred to you that you're gonna stand out like a sore thumb if you're the only guy in school who actually studies?"

Actually, no, it hadn't. I'll have to remember to drop my next few grades down to an eighty-five or so. Dr. J and his colleagues worked their hardest to turn me into the very personification of The Perfect Soldier, but it's beginning to dawn on me that they forgot about a few other things. Most notably, societal camouflage. It's difficult to blend in when I have little conception about the human community in the first place.

"And another thing -- would you quit monkeying with my transcript? I earned all those F's, dammit, and if you keep tellin' the school I was the elementary valedictorian, they start asking me why I cut class every three days."

None of the other pilots have ever complained. Of course, I suspect none of the other pilots are failing physics. It is something of a required subject for a mobile suit pilot, practically speaking.

Duo could be passing, if he tried a bit harder. He's very intelligent; all of them are. Duo's problem seems to be that he lacks experience with formal schooling and has difficulty applying his skills to hypothetical situations. He reads a word problem that begins, "Two trains leave City A and City B, 127 miles apart, at 6pm and head towards each other on parallel tracks. If train A is travelling exactly 3/5ths as fast as train B, how far from City A will they meet?" and he can't visualize it. On the other hand, if they started giving him problems like, "The 6:45p express leaves Brussels thirteen minutes late and travels at 136kph down the track. If the train is five standard railroad cars long and you can pull off a shot every .79 seconds, how many Oz soldiers can you pick off through the windows as your train passes theirs at 127kph on a parallel track?" he wouldn't even blink. Duo's like that.

"Are you even paying attention to me?" Duo demanded, bouncing back upright. Heero closed the browser window and promptly opened a direct telnet connection to the stealth transmitter, collecting the hour's observations and pouring them across the screen like so much alphanumeric drivel. "Well?"

"Duo," he said flatly.

"Yeah?"

"Do you ever stop talking?"

He usually doesn't take that well. Starts jumping up and down and waving his arms, and asking me how I dare accuse him of running off at the mouth. Or he stays quiet for a while so I can do some real work. I keep halfway hoping he'll answer me seriously; there is a nagging curiosity about the subject that goes far beyond the question itself. I have never heard anyone able to go on for so long about so little before, and I want to know what dictionary he has stashed away in the back of his brain feeding him filler words for all those run-on sentences. I grew up with Dr. J's scientific dictations, the status reports of the others who worked with me, and I speak in the clipped phrases I was taught in, short snaps of sound designed to convey as much as I could in the briefest possible time. I send nothing extraneous over the comm when I'm piloting; Duo curses and crows, bellows and barks at his fellows, at his targets, and at Deathscythe itself.

I do laugh. I'm not sure why; although the occasional word or gesture will strike me as funny, more so now than before I came to Earth, this seems to be more of a release of tension than anything else. It's nothing that was ever taught to me as a technique of battle, and it never happened before they gave me Wing. The training suits and simulator weren't -- 'alive enough', I suppose, although that isn't technically accurate. Wing responds faster than even the computer simulation of the Gundam did, and more smoothly than the older, smaller mobile suits. There are mechanical noises that are distinct from those inside of a Leo or the digital sound effects generated by a computer mock-up that serve to let me know the state of the Gundam's 'health' or lack thereof. They make piloting the Gundam a lot more... satisfying.

"Yeah," he groused, giving the back slope of Heero's shoulder a disappointed glare. "In the shower. Otherwise I get shampoo suds in my mouth."

My mind is tempting me to comment about washing Duo's mouth out with soap, but I refrain. I'd never heard that phrase before I got to Earth, and it strikes me as very appropriate for a certain subset of the students I've met here -- Duo included.

Duo stared hotly at the back of his fellow pilot's head for a good minute or so, then crossed his arms sullenly and sighed. Rooming with Heero was never that much of a picnic, but Duo supposed it could be worse -- he could be rooming with Trowa, for instance. All the reticence of Wing's moody master, and none of the satisfyingly irritated reactions. At least Heero had buttons to push; Trowa just bowed down to whoever was acting as an authority figure. At least the kid was tough enough to fend for himself when no one was around. In a pinch, anyone'd do for a leader-figure, Duo guessed. Even himself.

"Hey, Heero," he tried.

Heero, per the usual, gave no perceptible answer.

"You ever take your eyes off that damn laptop?"

Heero looked like he was going to ignore Duo yet again, but then the hand that was tracking along the edge of the touchpad to scroll the document lifted, tracing over the slick plastic casing to touch the sleep button. The laptop's screen went black and glossy, like an unblinking eye, and Wing's pilot closed the battered lid gently over the keyboard. It latched with a quiet click.

All right, then. You've made your point. There's nothing there to read anyway; you're not interrupting anything. If you want my attention, you have it. Talk.

Duo, for once, was silent. If there was one thing he hadn't expected outta that snipe, it was for Heero to actually respond. Well, respond beyond "I'll kill you," anyway. Heero had that disturbing little tendency to take anything that annoyed him and fill it full of bullets.

"Yes," Heero said, perfectly seriously.

"Shit," Duo breathed, suddenly rather uncomfortable. Anyone else, he'd've sworn up and down that was either the sarcastic answer or the pissed-off one. With Heero -- who could guess?

Heero stared straight ahead at the wall above the beat-up dormitory desk with that cold, faintly sardonic expression on his face again, before he turned in his chair, crossed his left ankle over his right knee, and let his eyes bore right into Duo.

Duo swallowed. "So. Uh. How was your day?"

I have never gotten the point of small talk. I don't think I ever will. It didn't exist for me while I was being trained, and observing it at work on Earth has not helped to clarify its purpose. For a short time, I had thought that much of the endless chatter was perhaps some sort of code, or oblique references to more important matters, but after a day or two, I started to get cynical. So I stopped considering it, and moved on to more important things.

"Fine."

Another pause.

"Yannow, you're not very good at this conversation thing."

I am well aware of that. Which is why I generally don't start them. My manners aren't quite as arbitrary as you seem to think.

"Say somethin'."

Heero's brow furrowed. "What?"

"Say somethin'," Duo repeated. "Talk. You know, move your mouth and make words come out?"

Heero thought it over. "About what?"

"Anything! What was your childhood like?"

What childhood? I remember training, and long nights alone in a cold room, being handed a gun and told to use it before I could properly understand what I was supposed to be aiming at. I remember being told that I was the last hope for the colonies, and that if I failed, the consequences would be disasterous. My life was put on hold so that millions could live. The only existence I've ever known is filled with the smell of gunpowder and the sounds of gatling chatter overriding the radio static.

Heero reached behind the laptop and started bundling cords together, giving Duo a welcome reprieve from the challenging glare. Shinigami's pilot settled himself in a comfortable slouch on the edge of Heero's bed, feet tapping in idle arcs on the scuffed floor, hands knotted together between his knees.

"Harsh," he answered, at last finding the word he wanted. "It was harsh."

"I didn't figure it was much fun," Duo said dryly, watching the other boy bend double in his chair to reach the strap on the computer's worn carrying case beneath the desk. The padded bag was probably the only thing that had kept that laptop from being put permanently out of commission several times over, and it looked as wounded as its contents. "You set that broken leg like you'd done it before. But, man -- who sentcha to boot camp kindergarten? Yer parents have some kinda military ethic or somethin'?"

"I was trained by Dr. J."

"The creepo with the claw? What'd your parents have to say about that?"

"Not much."

They weren't in much of a position to say anything, as I recall. Not being there made it understandably difficult to lodge a complaint.

"Some parents. Nothin' personal or anything, but I'd have to say the average Mom and Pop nowadays would have some pretty strong objections to a mad scientist takin' off with their son and handin' him a bag full of grenades."

Heero unzipped the front panel of the computer's case and dropped the battered laptop in.

"I gotta wonder what Dr. J was thinkin'. I mean, you have to admit, Heero, you've got a lotta people convinced you're off your nut right now."

Sometimes I think I am crazy, yes. It never ceases to shake me when one of the other pilots is surprised at something I do without thinking. I bandage my own wounds because I never had anyone else to do it for me. Take a thirty-foot jump onto a concrete floor because there's no other choice. Self-detonate because otherwise the war is lost. It makes perfect sense to me. You have to do what your feelings tell you to do, and the only feeling I'm sure of right now is the one that tells me that if I fail in my part of Operation Meteor, everything falls apart.

"They didn't touch you much when you were a kid, did they?"

Where the hell did that come from?

Heero stopped the zipper pull halfway around the soft suitcase and stared at his roommate with what passed, on him, for incredulity.

"Hey, I know it sounds stupid, but I've seen it before. Living on the streets, there were some kids that didn't have anyone, any kinda group to stick with, like I did. Kids like, five, six years old, all by themselves... they got cold. They could take care of themselves alone, but whenever you got 'em in a room full of people, they looked like they didn't know what to do with themselves, yannow? Just stood there and kept lookin' around like they were afraid someone else was gonna get too close to 'em and mug 'em or something."

Heero gave the other pilot a good, hard look, then gave his head a sharp jerk as if to clear the insensicality of Duo's babbling out of it, and rose with the computer's case in his hands.

I really can't follow him, sometimes. I feel like I'm missing something vital, that precious chain of logic that lets him jump from point to point like that. Like there something indivisibly basic about how he and Quatre and Trowa and Wufei think that I've never been taught, and it's hindering me in my mission. The knot in my stomach that comes when I think it may be too late for me to learn can be forced away with training and diligence, but the stumbling block in my mind -- that, I'm starting to fear is permanent.

"Aw, forget it," Duo mumbled, watching Heero stretch to tip the laptop case onto the top shelf of their shared closet. Neither of the boys were very tall; short and light were advantages in the cockpit of a mobile suit, where space was at a premium. The less pilot there was, the more armor the machine could afford. Heero's side of the rack was neat, full of perfectly pressed shirts and uniform pants precisely folded and draped over hangers; Duo's side looked like someone had planted a bomb in a department store, set it off, and then corralled all of the debris into a pile about two and a half feet in diameter. There were hangers on Duo's side of the closet, but they were forlorn and alone on the bar, dangling in all their much-abused glory above the pile of dirty clothes that was in turn collecting directly atop the pile of clean clothes, which resided more or less permanently on the floor. Heero nudged the mess out of the way when it threatened to swamp his side of the closet (dresser, bathroom, floor), but otherwise completely ignored it. "I shoulda known better than to even try. Forget I said anyth...."

"You're right," Heero said quietly, in a tone that indicated that it didn't matter to him one way or the other what Duo wanted to make of it. He gave a twitch of the shoulders that could have been a shrug, and closed the closet door.

Duo gawked.

Interesting. It's virtually impossible for me to predict what will take Duo by surprise, anymore; he seems, amazingly enough, to be at a loss for words right now. I know the others accuse him of making no sense, but they seem to mean something entirely different than what I'm grappling with -- they laugh, and Duo laughs with them. When I'm lost, I don't find it funny at all. They speak, and while I understand what the words say in a semantic sense, others seem to extract from them an entirely different secondary meaning that goes right past me. All I can do is respond to what I comprehend, and I don't even always know how to do that.

Dr. J never profiled anyone like Duo for me. I don't think he knows people like this exist. I certainly don't think he ever considered one of them might make a decent Gundam pilot.

"Shit," he breathed again, scrambling for something else to say. What a hell of a day this was turning out to be! "Man, I'm sorry...."

Nothing to be sorry for. You had nothing to do with it.

Heero glanced past Duo's startled figure to the window on the far wall of the room. The sun was just finishing its daily disappearance, but no one had moved to turn on a room light; the only thing left outside was a luminous wash of darkening blue, just light enough to turn Duo into a braided silhouette on the bed. "Hn." Heero turned away, evidently satisfied with his estimation of the time, and reached for the light switch.

A shadow parted from the larger shade of bed, desk and boy, and a strange weight threw itself around his neck and shoulders from behind -- two hands clasped together over his collar, two arms laying across his clavicles. Heero stopped dead.

Instinct tells me he needs to move, that he has his hands in a dangerous place. Reflex wants me to twist around and bury my fist in his stomach, sending him flying backwards, warning him not to do it again. I do neither, relying on willpower alone to keep me absolutely still while Duo leans his head against my neck, pointed chin poking me in the shoulder. He says nothing; I say nothing. Seconds tick away.

It feels strange, someone else's breath on my cheek, an alien heart beating this close to mine. I knew as a matter of course how much heat the human body generated, from survival training, but it's difficult to appreciate how much heat that actually is until there is another human body pressed against yours. The room goes dark at last and I couldn't swear to anything in it except myself and the boy who calls himself the God of Death leaning against me, still, despite the fact that I haven't reacted in the slightest. Maybe because of it -- I don't know.

Nothing. Nada. Duo sighed and slumped away from the other pilot. "Stupid idea, eh?" he said ruefully, reclaiming his hands. Heero started to breathe again. "But hey, I thought, what the hell," Duo continued tiredly, shrugging as he turned around to meander back to his side of the room, "it might just he--"

Heero spun around on the balls of his feet and seized Duo's near arm in a grip so strained the American swore he could feel those little pebbly-bones in his wrist grinding together in protest. His fingers were bruising, his knuckles white; and what Duo could see of his eyes, beneath the feathering of his unruly bangs, were hiding desperation behind a face of frightening intensity.

Don't go.

I don't know how to ask. I don't even know how to let you know I need to. But please don't move.

I can't get it through to anybody. I can't make them understand. I am lost and floundering and I don't have any idea what I'm doing. But maybe you -- I don't know the questions you ask, they're all strange and unfamiliar to me, but maybe they're the right ones. Maybe I can make you understand that I don't. I'm not trying to be cold; I don't really know what cold is.

"Aw, man...." Duo breathed slowly, staring at the stranglehold Heero had on his wrist. "Aw, man...." It was just getting stranger and stranger -- and definitely more imminent, whatever it was. Carefully -- just in case Heero decided to go homicidal after all -- Duo took his free hand and draped it over Heero's shoulder, patting him awkwardly on the back, working his other hand loose from the vise-grip to run it around Heero's side. The other pilot moved without any of his normal balance, stilted like a robot, trying to match Duo as best he could in the unfamiliar motions. Duo crooned softly, random notes of a lullaby Sister Helen used to sing to him at night, verse and bridge arranged in no particular order, and eased closer, coaxing Heero to settle his head on his shoulder and trying to get him to stop holding himself like he expected an attack at any moment.

Man. Who the hell would have thought babysitting the other kids in the back alleys of L2's crooked streets would have prepared him for dealing with Señor Psycho Pilot in the middle of a war? Yowsa.

It's some terrible irony, that the questions these people wrestle with, in their books -- death, purpose, direction -- I can answer so decisively, with such little hesitation, and the things they take for granted day after day, I just can't seem to get a handle on. I seem to be a society of one set adrift in an enclave of millions. I wonder, just for a moment, where I'd be if I didn't have a mission to accomplish, and the only answer I can come up with is, nowhere.

I can't remember ever being hugged before. Seems to me I've been missing something. Maybe this is part of that gaping blank I keep seeing in my education.

"Heero? Ay -- hey -- Heero! My shirt's one thing, but you're gettin' skin in that death grip! Lighten up, okay?" Duo sighed, softening his voice. "I'm not goin' anywhere, bud."

I didn't even know I was gripping his shirt. That's not good -- I'm supposed to have perfect control of every part of myself, body and mind.

I'm slipping. Dr. J would not be pleased.

"Not goin' anywhere...." Duo repeated, blowing his unruly bangs out of his eyes with a gust of air. He rubbed a hand soothingly down the other pilot's back, wondering how anyone could manage to live 24-7 with this sort of tension. Heero's back was like a rock, and not just from the musculature involved -- Duo was now seriously beginning to doubt the boy ever relaxed, even when asleep.

He blew out yet another sigh. For once in his life, Duo and words had parted company, and he wasn't sure what do to about it.

I think... this is what they mean by 'comfort'. The impression that someone else wishes to allieviate my pain. It's been a long time since I thought of pain in anything but physical terms -- it's so omnipresent that I've trained myself to ignore it. I've always been the only one in my little world, and to have someone else step into my bubble so wholly is disturbing -- even frightening. And yet -- the longer it goes on, the less I feel suffocated. Maybe I'm learning to ignore him.

Or maybe I'm learning to understand him.

I don't want to move. This suddenly drives it home -- I don't want to move. I can't afford this. Duo is not me; Duo is dangerous, if only in the sense that he could potentially give away my location if he's captured. I can only rely on myself.

I am who I am. Who I have been made to be. And as much as I want to live a good life, as much as I want to be able to act on my feelings as they come, I can't. Not now. Not yet. I must be self-contained. If everyone else were to fall, I have to be able to go on. There is no other way for me.

I'm sorry.

Heero stiffened. He stood up straight again, and with a short grunt jerked out of Duo's arms, pulled away, turned around, leaving Duo confused and alone in the middle of the floor.

I think I might finally understand what 'sorry' really means.

Duo watched as Heero stomped into the room's small bathroom and closed the door sharply behind himself. "...the hell?" he wondered aloud, then shook his head. Geez. That guy was even more screwed up than he knew himself, Duo bet. The resolution not to take it personally was easy to make, and Duo capped it off by shrugging and tossing himself in a ball of bony limbs and braid onto his own bed, already comfortably mussed. Being friends -- really friends -- with Heero was probably some sort of insane pipe dream, but right there -- weirdness like that gave Duo hope that it might happen permanently someday. In the meantime, short spurts were better than nothing. It was nice while it lasted.

Every dorm room I've ever seen has this same small pedestal sink floating under this same small mirror, chipping and browning around the edges. And every single one of them is arranged so that you stare directly into the looking glass every time you open the door.

I used to look into the mirror and see nothing but me, plain and simple. A boy's face, occasionally decorated with cuts and bruises. Now I look at myself and my eyes look haunted; haunted, and angry, and lost and a thousand other things I never thought I was capable of. I don't know if they weren't there before, or if I simply never saw them, but now I can't escape them. I can hide them from the girl Relena, from the other pilots I work with, but I can't hide them from me and that burns worst of all.

I shouldn't have to deal with this -- it shouldn't even come up. I'm a soldier. I've even got the marks to prove it. Scars up and down my arms, my legs, across my chest and back; broken bones already healed that start to ache and twist when I'm cold, when I'm wet, when I'm tired. I've dislocated so many joints so many times that I'm not going to be able to move by the time I'm thirty -- and it doesn't matter, since I'm not likely to see twenty. Maybe not even sixteen.

I can see that pain reflected in my eyes now, too. I wonder if it's inevitable. That when one thing starts to show, everything will come out. I try to pull myself together for Dr. J, on those rare occasions now when we're face to face or on a video uplink. I wonder if it's working. That Duo, who cannot sit still for any longer than it takes to draw a breath, even when he's piloting, could focus on me long enough to guess my life is frightening.

Duo has only ever done one thing that I completely understand. When we first met, he shot me. Twice. Once in the arm, once in the leg. He was trying to save Relena's life, and he succeeded in the short-term: I didn't get the chance to shoot her first.

To use another phrase I never knew until I started going to school -- "It was all downhill from there." I haven't truly understood a thing he's done since, least of all anything he actually says to me. The longer I stay here, the more I think I might be starting to grasp what he's trying to get me to comprehend, but then he keeps going and it slips away again. I wish I knew what was going on.

Duo was almost asleep when Heero emerged from the bathroom again, taking a towel roughly to his hair. He lowered his arms after scrubbing at the thick mop for some seconds; it was still wet and unruly and looked about as together as Duo felt. 'Course, Heero never looked brushed. Must've been some strange timesaver, or maybe his hair just ate the last comb that got near it -- never could tell.

He turned over and stuck his face in the pillow. He was sleeping in his clothes, and didn't particularly care; he'd long since gotten rid of the uncomfortable pieces, like the suspenders and the bow tie, and that's what the second pair of pants was for, anyway. Spares. He'd do laundry in the morning. Or maybe just press the pair he had on now and hope for the best. Whatever. It wasn't like they were gonna be around that long. Duo briefly considered the merits of keeping the uniform pieces this time, instead of ditching them in the nearest garbage can once he'd crawled back into his business blacks. He could probably make a killing selling spare school uniforms, if he collected enough. 'Pre-pressed and only slightly used.'

Duo yawned, inhaled a mouthful of dust from the lumpy pillow, and turned over again. Heero hadn't bothered flicking on a light, and he could only barely see the other boy crawling bare-chested into the second narrow bed, on the opposite side of the cheap nightstand.

"Hey, Heero?"

The rustle of blankets and the barely-audible sound of skin against skin stopped, although Heero said nothing.

"That was nice of ya, not killing me an' all..." Duo said sleepily. One hand dropped over the side of his tangled bed and he didn't bother to retrieve it. "'N' hey, if you ever need somethin' like that again... just ask. Everybody's gotta have somethin' sometimes, y'know?" Duo was mumbling, and he knew it; after that trailed off into near-gibberish, he gave up and flopped the arm that was still responding to his conscious control over his eyes, making himself as comfy as possible on the rickety bed.

I don't really know you. I wish I did. I wish I could do that, sprawl out on the bed and fall asleep like I don't have to get up again at dawn and keep fighting a war. I wish I knew how to ask you for things like that. I don't. And I can't take the time to learn right now. Maybe someday.

I wish someday would come soon.