Notes: I wrote this a year or two back, and I decided to edit it and finish it. There were a lot of things wrong with this, and the way I originally wrote this, and frankly I don't really like it. It's a little too depressing for me, and it doesn't really have a plot. But it's a drabble, and they don't exactly have to have a plot. Meh.. well here it is.
Disclaimer: Don't own Gundam Wing.
After War Drabble
It was still dark, and too early to be up. Yet despite this Quatre was still awake. Well, awake in the loosest sense of the word. The blonde's eyes drooped, dark circles hanging just below them, and his hand came up quickly to muffle a yawn.
It wasn't that the blonde didn't want to sleep, but the fact that he couldn't. The male had attempted sleep for the past five hours; finally about an hour ago he had given up and came into his kitchen. Not that his kitchen was all that spectacular in a sense to keep him busy. No, not at all - it was small to say the least - the dingy old yellow wallpaper peeling in a number of uncountable places; but it did prove its use and at least provided him with coffee and somewhere to sit, despite the rather unattractive view of the place.
Quatre lifted his glass swirling around the last dregs of the coffee before finishing it off. He moved his chair backwards, flinching at the high pitched sound it against the tile before continuing to the sink and washed his cup clean.
Quickly he dried the cup and placed it back in the cabinets to the side, letting out a small sigh when he finished, rotating his shoulders in effort to relax the tense sore in his back.
Two years had passed since the finally farewell to his Sandrock, since the final battle with the others. Everyone had split in their own directions. Wufei gave into Sally's request to join the Preventors, Duo was living with Hilde, and Trowa had gone back to the circus with Catherine. No one knew about Heero's whereabouts, the dark-eyed male had simply disappeared. And had he the time Quatre probably would have attempted to find the brunette, but currently he was busy with the reconstruction of cities damaged by the war; something that he had started with the Maganacs not long after that final farewell.
But the reconstruction was nearing its completion and Quatre's mind had more time to wander these days, especially now, in the nighttime when he was all alone. In all actuality he really wasn't needed there at all. The Maganacs had left, about a month ago due to his small urgings. They did, after all, have lives of their own to fulfill, and the ex-pilot felt bad that they were only staying for his sake. It was too much to ask for them to stay longer; they had been away from home for too long anyway and many of them had wives and a family.
But despite being unneeded and lonely, he wasn't quite ready to leave. The blonde knew what awaited him back at home, and it was something he was not looking forward to. Back there he had paperwork, but here he still had freedom - though little it was.
At his home he had lost this sense of liberty, barreled down with tons of paperwork from his father's company. Quatre knew once he returned he would be tied down with duties, so who could blame him for wanting to see everything finished first-hand.
He could always refuse to do the work, and leave the job to someone else. Yes, it was possible. But, the blonde would never do that. It wasn't in his nature to do that. Not after what happened. Even though he knew he shouldn't, the blonde always took the blame for his father's death and thought it in his duties to take on the family business as well.
No matter what Quatre did he could never seem to shake the bonds of responsibility his heart took on. But that's how he had always been taught and no matter how rebellious he had been when he was younger those lessons had stuck with him throughout everything he had gone through.
The teen lifted a hand to his eyes, covering them briefly as if trying to block some light that wasn't there. He took a deep breath before letting his hand fall back to his side walking over to the glass door at the end of the room as he did so. Fingers glided over the cool glass as he stared outside at the sky above him. A sky that he had once, for all practical purposes, lived in, fighting a war that he would never in his life forget.
But these were all depressing things.
The time where he could easily travel through space and back to earth was over. His warrior's sprit, if one could call it that, was slowly fading. There was no need for it, and vaguely Quatre wondered if he was really needed anymore either. There was peace. The colonies and earth were at peace, and though Quatre was happy that the war and bloodshed was over. Everything he had wanted had happened and he was left with nothing to fight for.
If the war had done anything good, if it had done anything good, it had shown him friends, something that he had never truly had until he had met them - the other Gundam pilots. But now all that seemed just a distant memory, a long-ago dream that he had woken up from, because already it had been so long since he had seen or even heard from the other pilots. Though the thought had crossed him that maybe they wanted to forget. After all the war brought memories of killing, screaming, blood, and thousands of innocent lives dying.
Yes, Quatre remembered those all too well. Often woke up at night screaming, shaking, tears mixed with sweat dripping onto his bed sheets. It would be entirely understandable if they didn't want to see him because he'd be a constant reminder of the war they had once gone through. This was the entire reason he hadn't tried too hard contacting them.
What was the point if they didn't want to talk to you?
Another sigh passed through the teen's lips, leaving a white mist on the glass that his forehead currently lay on. But even though he knew all this he still wished to see them, especially Trowa. But Quatre couldn't bring himself to break their happiness for his own. Because he knew they were probably better off without the memories.. all of them. They seemed happy, as far as his space heart told him.
Happy, and maybe a little bit restless, but he didn't look too far into it. He wouldn't delve too far with his space heart to figure out those things. Personally it wasn't his business, and he figured that if the pilots knew they would probably be uncomfortable with the thought. Most people didn't warm up to his empathy.
Actually ever since the war had ended, Quatre hadn't really been using his space heart. To a certain extent he did, but that was because he couldn't stop it. He had grown so close with the Gundam Pilots that it had left a connection and he could just feel their emotions.
It wasn't really needed anymore. Not that it was ever entirely needed, but it was an asset – at the same time a hindrance – during the war, finding out the true feelings of a person and whether or not they were being truthful. Where he was going was the cruel world of politics, and though it was important to be in a position to continue to fight for things Quatre didn't like the feeling of being confined to an office when he had once traveled space with only a Gundam.
The thought made him shudder.
Everything was the way to was supposed to be. Why couldn't he just settle in?
