AC198prelude
I look out at the street sometimes from my window and wonder just *why* I hadn't been normal. God, not that there's anything "normal" about me that would salvage that anyway.


But what if I was just born some average kid? Parents, white picket fence, dog named "Rover", yammering siblings, and mashed potatoes and roast beef. The whole nine yards.

But here I am, an 18-year old war vet and former Gundam pilot who used to call himself "Death".

That's a part of my life down the drainpipe.

It's not like I haven't started over. Somewhat. I work full hours to pay my rent and needs. I'm like your average blue-collar, in my own sense. The others have gone off their separate ways too.

Quatre... Well, he's in full command of his father's company now, with Rasid, the Maguanac fighters, and at least ten sisters to advise him. He's a very busy guy, so we keep in touch when he can. If you think it's too much time that I'm taking up, you take it up with him. I'd leave him alone if it was better for him, but more than likely, he needs the therapy and release of doing something to relax himself.

Trowa was with the circus, last I saw him. That was a year ago. They came through L2 and, believe me, a circus can be a pretty rare thing. It was a nice opportunity to see the show, and I'll be damned if Trowa is not the most flexible man alive. Stopped backstage after the performance and talked with him for a minute. I think he was stunned by seeing me there... or not. Trowa's always been hard to decipher, even for a guy who hung around the ultimate soldier for kicks. Life seemed to be treating him fair, I assume, seeing how much he bulked up. It's a mystery to me on exactly *how* he'd become that muscular..

Wufei's still with the Preventers, as far as the ol' roster goes. Personally, I think it's only partly because he wants to ensure peace. The other part is that he wants to be around Sally. She's a nice woman, and I'm just counting down the days to hearing of the engagement. I really should contact him sometime, kinda suprising that I haven't already done it. You kind of grow close to a person after being trapped in a cell and nearly suffocated with them. Bonding in the face of death, you could call it.

Heero. I don't know what I can say about him. He's with me, still. We're sharing an apartment, and right now, he's in class. Yep. The soldier is at school. About a month after the.. incident.. he enrolled in the university near where I was, and I offered to split the rent with him. Lo and behold, Yuy actually accepted my offer. He's been in good health, but I don't know about emotionally. Basically, he's shut off. He goes to school, does his homework, eats occasionally, sleeps, and works as a freelance assassin otherwise. A good day is when I can drag him out to eat somewhere decent and get him to hold up his half of the conversation, in a sense. He's not that bad, if you know him well, and... Lord, I'm dragging on with this.

Relena Peacecraft is still trumped up on her high horse as Vice-Foreign Minister. It hadn't stopped her from hounding Heero though. I ran across her a few times in the six months following the Mariemaiya thing, and, dammit, I felt bad for her. She couldn't of known how pathetic it looked, to follow a guy like *Heero* like some homing pigeon. Around the third time we'd "run" into each other (She planned it out. I may be American, but that doesn't qualify me as an idiot.), I caved in and set her up with him.

I haven't seen her since, and Heero refuses to tell me anything.

It's a pain in the ass to have people withhold information about their love lives when yours sucks.

I think war really warps your initial perception of most people. Hirde.. Jesus, it was like she wanted to get married! What was I going to do? It would be a cold day in Hell when I felt like settling down at the ripe age of 16.

She said I had a commitment problem.

I still see her sometimes, and I always think about what would have happened if I said 'yes'. There'd have been a small, quiet wedding, mostly with her friends, I assume, honeymoon on Earth, and by now, we'd already have a kid. Okay, she didn't propose, but that was somewhere down along the line.

I probably do have a commitment problem. So what?

Her fault anyway. Nothing I could do. It's the way I work.

So here I am, two years after the war, still alive (amazing as that may be), taking the occasional class, shacking up with the Indestructible Man™ and getting ready to head out for 10:30 mass, one of the few good habits I maintain.