Author: Kai (newtypeshadow)
Title: untitled (The Forgotten)
Last updated: 03-06-02
Rating: G, PG?
Warnings: none
Summary: AU; After the Eve Wars, the people have forgotten about the sacrifices their parents and grandparents have made.
[hair is gray and the fires are burning so many dreams sitting on the shelf you say I wanted you to be proud of me I say I wanted that myself] Tori Amos, 'Winter'
He sits and types on his laptop. He is alone in the small, dark room. Alone with his gray hair and gray heart, wrinkled hands and wrinkled shirt. His bed is unslept in, and his eyes are bloodshot. Yet still he types. The messages have long since stopped coming on the phone. He disconnected it for a while. When he finally had it reconnected, it rang no more. The only letters in his mailbox are the occasional bill or notice that he has won something, and needs to send in money to receive it. All of it junk mail.
Nothing exists of the life he once had except for the laptop. All the records have been erased. The shrunken man with the defiant chin never piloted a mobile suit in anything but a strange dream. Mobile suits, after all, never existed. And what is gundanium? You say it's a metal...that can only be mined in...space? In zero gravity? They always laugh at this point, talking down to his gray head. How do you mine in space? And how, Mr. Know It All, can humans achieve zero gravity? Crazy words come from the old man's mouth, and no one talks to him anymore. They are tired of hearing his stories of a war between colonies that lived in space. They don't know about Relena Peacecraft, the pacifist leader and Vice Foreign Minister at the young age of sixteen; the Lightening Baron who led a double life of total pacifist prince and ruthless soldier; Mariemeia Barton, the child manipulated into attempting world domination; Quatre Raberba Winner, the only son and child of natural birth in a family that nearly owned a colony; the heartlessness and cruelty of war.
People today know only the beauty of nature. And that the older generation had been exposed to some dangerous substance there was no positive cure for. The substance - unnamed and unknown -- had not been tested enough, and anyone over a certain age carried the strange sickness within their veins, a sickness usually not passed on to their offspring. It made people believe things had been different. It made them believe they had once been soldiers, they had once seen battles fought and speeches spoken. It made them believe they had walked on the moon and stayed for weeks, months, even years, in space.
But everyone knows the old man speaks nothing but nonsense, for he has the strange drug in his veins that distorts his brain and makes him say strange, impossible things are true. It makes him think the governing party is wrong, that they are the ones responsible for a generation who's forgotten its heritage. He's a silly old man, they say. And sometimes he believes.
Then his fingers twitch, he feels his emotions clamped down upon and hidden from his analytical mind. Always, when things begin to overwhelm and he begins to doubt what he has lived through, he sees the faint scars that cannot be explained by any other means; the beaten laptop the government wants so desperately to destroy; the codes and files upon it that could tear the entire foundation down. But his gray hair and dulled eyes have taken in much since the immortality of his youth. He knows whatever he shows them will be proved false by a court of liars whose paychecks are filled out by the foundation, and who owe him their lives, but think they owe him nothing.
The cobalt eyes blaze as he types another line in his history, the history of the Eve Wars and the assassinations of the pacifistic leader Heero Yuy, and entire Peacecraft family. The colonies were destroyed, all the people on them killed. One old man is all that remains of those who sat in those gundams and wished the wars would end, prayed not to hear the enemy screams as they cut down suit after suit, each harboring a human soul and human bone and blood. One old man is all that is left of a perfect soldier, a jaded joker, silent clown, a reluctant killer, and a grieving face of justice. The Lightening Baron is no more, and his wife, Preventer Fire, fell pray to her name. An obscure group of doctors was executed secretly at the beginning, blamed for hiding knowledge of the strange virus that contaminated the elderly from the government. There was a girl named Dorothy Catalonia. She had the power to manipulate and understand people and events without emotion. She was too dangerous for them to let live, and she was killed shortly after she disappeared. All knew their deaths were coming, but none knew how soon.
The light cast on an old man's face is fading slightly as the computer prepares to shut down, then goes black like its cover. The forgotten savior of the world during a forgotten era lies down on his unwrinkled bed to sleep for the last night. He knows tonight is his night, and he is no longer afraid. The world will know in time what has been taken from them. The world will know.
They will know that Romefeller lies to them the way they did even before the wars began. And they will know the truth about the leader of the foundation who changed the history books yet again to suit his own agenda. Romefeller is stronger than ever now with their new leader, a Christlike figure to some, the ideal ruler and man to others. He teaches them to respect nature, because it's all we have. He teaches people to be honorable and just. Under him, they learn the meaning of chivalry and good will. And most importantly: they learn to forget.
The door opens with a creak, and a sliver of light lances onto the old man's floor. Footsteps approach the old man's bed, but the old man moves nothing but his eyes, which follow the figure to the foot of his bed to stare down on his prone form.
"So. You've come, have you?"
An unseen nod in the darkness. "Yes."
A long silence follows before the old man says, "I remember when you would have considered all you've done to be...inhuman."
The wrinkled ears, still sharp, hear the gloved hands move from clasped behind the back to cross over the chest. The tired mind registers the sigh from the standing man.
"That was before I realized all this was necessary to stop the wars," he says sadly. "I'm sure God will understand the steps I've taken. And the steps I'm taking now."
The old man lets out a disdainful snort, but otherwise doesn't move. "I don't know about God, but I understand what you've done. Neither of us agrees with it though, do we Treize? Do you think they will when they find out?"
Treize shakes his head. "I don't know. But I don't care anymore. I am prepared to make myself a monster to ensure peace."
"Zechs said almost exactly the same thing on Libra. You understood each other too well."
"...yes." There is a heavy silence. "Well."
The cobalt eyes shine with their owner's smile. "I suppose we should get this over with, ne? How were you planning to do it this time?"
The leader of Romefeller shuffles over to a wall, his tall frame slumped slightly from holding the weight of a planet's memories behind a closed door. "Actually, I was going to leave it to you," he says softly.
The prostrate man smiles and asks where the Lady is. "She's here," comes the reply, colored by a warm tone of content. A call and Lady Une enters the old man's bedroom.
"It's been a long time, Heero," she says, her ageing body doing nothing to remove the strength from her voice.
The old war hero stands with them and smiles. "Yes," he says, "sad it must be the last." The other two nod.
"We thought you might want to do this," Romefeller's leader says.
"You still know me too well."
A silence. The youngest of the three holds a detonator into the center of the triangle they form. "Are you ready?" he asks.
The woman nods. "It is long past our time," she affirms, "and we are no longer needed." Kushrenada sighs and wraps his arm around her waist, drawing his wife closer.
Sayonara, an old man thinks as his thumb presses the worn button for the last time.
*Onii-chan, are you lost?*
A young boy looks around him and smiles. "Iie, ojosan." The little blond girl skips off after her dog with a laugh, and the world around Heero Yuy fades to white nothingness.
*owari*
"If you're not remembered, you never existed." Lain, 'Serial Experiments Lain'