Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, the plot of the series or any of the canon characters. All OC characters in this work are mine and I will be rather cross if they're reused without my permission.

I've taken liberties with backgrounds of the pilots but that's the joy of being the storyteller. I've completely ignored Frozen Teardrop since this work was originally started in 2002 before it existed and I still haven't read/watched it.

Warnings: Future chapters will include mentions of rape, pedophilia/statutory rape, consensual sexual acts between legal adults, homosexuality, PTSD, alcoholism/drug use, and that's only what I know about already. If any of these are negative triggers for you, this may not be the best story for you to read.

Background: One of my college fiction professors challenged us to write a story from the view of a character we didn't appreciate. This took me to writing a fanfic centered around my least favorite of the main five pilots to see if I could find a connection with him I hadn't before. It didn't work at the time but 15 years later, the magic happened and I was able to start revising and reworking this.

Pairings: OCx5, 3x4, 2xH, mention of non-con 13x5.

Chapter 1

From the moment they called her down to the office, Jana knew something was wrong. She had never given anyone in the children's home a reason to notice her. Unlike many of the other lost children who acted out to get whatever attention they could, Jana preferred being alone with her thoughts. She was a rarity in the building; usually following instructions without question and being almost limitlessly adaptable.

The building was one of several in the L2 cluster that was re-purposed over the last few years to accommodate the number of street kids that were roaming the colony. L2 was known for being the poverty ridden colony cluster. Pipes were always in disrepair limiting water access. Hospitals and doctors were short in number and high in demand. Sicknesses were left untreated and often spread rapidly before turning deadly. All of this left a large number of children without parents or anyone else who cared for them. Prior to the wars, funds were allocated to L2 as a recovery program to help with the medical and orphan epidemics. The centers were originally factories or warehouses left empty when the economy had crashed.

The converted buildings were never initially meant for human habitation. Plywood partitions were put up to create rooms. The bathroom situation was even worse, there was one shower and one toilet for eight or nine orphans to share. The water pressure was low, showers were limited in length and frequency and there was always someone banging on the door yelling to get in.

There were some jobs created with the program in terms of caretakers and administrators but costs were kept low by having the residents do most of their own cooking, cleaning, and yard work. They were told the purpose was to make them appreciate what they were being provided with. They needed to remember how lucky they were to have such a wonderful opportunity for housing and an education.

No one lifted from the streets or from the poor religious homes needed to be reminded of their good fortune.

Jana had been one of the luckier ones, she had never experienced street life. Her parents had died in one of the many plagues that infected the colony without warning. Most children in her situation were taken to the churches or left on the streets but she had been an infant and immediately adopted by a family who had lost their daughter to the same illness that had taken her parents. She remembered little about her early life, she knew she had been adopted but didn't know anything about her birth family. When she was ten years old, her second family went the way of the first and she had been one of the first children accepted into the newly opened East Side Children's Home. She had been there every since, there weren't many parents looking to add teenagers to their families.

The years went on and she found what enjoyment she could in her life. She was a good student and enjoyed most of her classes. During her free periods she found herself being recruited into working at the library and the small computer lab. What they paid her was a joke but she kept it stashed safely away in the bank, finding out quickly what happened to orphans with loose money in their rooms.

It was the after school time that she dreaded. Her assignments in the home were mostly in the administration area, she was meticulous and organized and could be trusted to type, file, and collate whatever was needed. She dragged out her work as much as possible, anything to avoid going back to the tiny room she shared with two other girls. The orphans were grouped up together by age, there were never any single rooms. Even more than she missed her adoptive family, she missed the small room that was only her own.

The room she shared now was longer than it was wide and had very little floor space after the furniture was placed. There was a set of bunk beds and one single cot separated by a small folding table they used as a night table. The room had one closet and a six drawer dresser. Even with such limited storage space, there was extra room, none of them had much in terms of personal possessions. The only other piece of furniture was a small desk and chair. Jana had never figured out how three high school girls with the same workload were supposed to share one workspace.

Her footsteps echoed in the hallway. It was late in the day and all the normal business had concluded so the lights were dimmed. The possibilities of why her presence was being demanded ran through her head quickly, each as unlikely as the next. Her grades certainly weren't a problem, she had always managed to stay in the top ten percent of her classes at the local high school. She had never been in any fights and she didn't speak to any of her classmates or teachers enough to be reprimanded for being rude or noisy.

She paused outside the door. Oh Lord, don't let it be another psychiatrist. The past three evaluations had all come back the same; she was severely introverted but not so much that she couldn't function in an academic or work setting. Considering her past consisted of losing not just one, but two families, it was reasonable to believe that she had trouble forming long term bonds. They all believed that she would open herself up eventually, after her past mental scars had fully healed. There had been talk of joining extracurricular clubs to try and foster friendships as well as further therapy sessions but the interest wasn't there for the former and the funds weren't available for the latter.

She entered the office and stood in front of the secretary's desk silently until the woman looked up and smiled at her. "Jana, it's nice to see you. You can go right inside, Miss Edita is expecting you."

Jana nodded and walked into the inner office where Miss Edita Labelle was sitting behind her scarred oak desk with a strange man standing to her side. The man's eyes lit up as he studied her intently. "I wasn't 100 percent sure up until now." A large smile spreading across his face. "The resemblance is remarkable. There's no way I could be wrong."

Jana shifted uneasily where she was standing. Something about the way the two of them were looking at her made her uncomfortable. She began shifting her weight from one foot to another, hoping that they would get to the point

"Jana, this is Professor Alexander Dayone, he studies the genealogy of war heroes at the university." She picked up a photo that was lying on her desk and studied it and Jana in turn before setting it back down again with a nod. "They certainly do share many of the same features. I doubt there are many people with that unusual eye color."

"What's going on?" Jana asked, trying to speed things up. Joelle and Mercy would only be at cheerleading practice for another thirty minutes before they came back to break down the peace she had built up in their room.

"Do you remember anything at all from your past before you were sent to your adoptive home?" Miss Edita asked.

"No." She replied, getting more confused by each passing moment. "My parents told me I was adopted and my birth parents were dead. After they passed away, I was sent here."

"Jana, recently I have been concentrating my studies on the AC 195 and 196 wars and the Gundam pilots that were made famous during them. I found something quite interesting while I was trying to trace back their nearly extinct family trees. The families of Heero Yuy and Trowa Barton are proving nearly impossible to find. Wufei Chang lost his entire clan when his home colony was destroyed during the AC 195 war but their history is well documented. As for Duo Maxwell, it was thought that he was an orphan, the only survivor of the Maxwell Church Tragedy but thanks to some old classified hospital documents that somehow survived the war, I found out that on August 16th Mrs Delia Hoverton was reported dead from cholera leaving behind two children. The older boy was two years old at the time and named Jarek. The daughter was only a few months old and named Jardine. Unfortunately their father passed away weeks after their mother, likely from the same illness." Alexander Dayone paused for a moment to let it all sink into her head.

"What are you trying to say?" She asked, her heartbeat pounding in her skull.

He smiled again. "Thanks to the computerized DNA that was put on the network after you were born and the samples that were imported after you entered the school system and from his during the wars, I was able to connect them. You are Jardine Hoverton and your older brother is Jarek Hoverton, even though I doubt he will ever drop the name Duo Maxwell."

"Do you want to sit down dear?" Miss Edita asked. "I know this must be difficult for you to accept after all these years."

Jana nodded and sank down into the offered chair. "Take a look at this photo of him." Alexander handed her the photo Miss Edita had been looking at. "You two share quite a few features."

She gazed down at the photograph in her hand. The cheerful smile wasn't familiar but the long chestnut braid was the same shade of her own short hair. The nose and shape of the face were familiar but it was his eyes...she hadn't found another person with the same violet colored eyes. There was no mistaking them. "So what now?" She asked.

The two adults shared a look over her head. "Well, as of the moment, we still have a few steps before we can reunite the two of you." Miss Edita said slowly.

"Mainly finding him." Alexander supplied. "The last address given for him was at the Maxwell Church when he was a child and that place is long gone. Your brother has been reported at several other locations in the past two years that haven't panned out either. I'm hoping that one of my contacts will be able to get me in touch with him. It's going to take some time, war heroes aren't always easy to find."

"Why is that?"

"They're acclaimed for taking the lives of others. You can see why so many of them have trouble being celebrated for something they regret as a necessary evil to an end."

"What happens when you do find him?" She asked,

"It depends," Miss Edita flipped open a book that had been resting on the side of her desk, "unlike many other shelters for children like you, we really do try our hardest to get families back together." She searched through a few pages. "Since you are still under the legal age, I can't just let you go off with him without knowing his current living conditions. He needs to prove himself capable of supporting himself with a decent home and steady job before we can factor you in and ensure he has the ability to take care of a dependant." She looked at Jana with an apologetic smile. "Don't worry, if he can be located, we'll have you two reunited as soon as possible."

"I'm throwing all of my resources into this." Alexander assured her. "There are still a few places that I haven't looked. I'll make sure to keep you informed on how things are going."

"Do you have any questions for him while he's here?" Miss Edita asked her.

Jana shook her head. "I have a million but I don't think any of them could be answered until we actually find him. May I be excused? This isn't quite what I expected to hear when I came down here and I need the time to process all of this."

"That's fine. I'll have your two roommates stay out of your room until after dinner to give you some quiet time if you'd like."

"Thank you, that would be nice." Jana forced a smile. "Thank you Professor Dayone. I hope to hear from you soon."

"Likewise." He reached out to shake her hand.

Jana backed out of the office and made her way back up to her bedroom. Her orphan status may not have changed but she had a brother and he was out there somewhere. "Duo Maxwell," her smile was genuine that time, "who would have guessed."