Windstar: This is my first attempt at a gundam wing fanfiction. I originally thought up a whole series revolving around this family-relationship, but I'm not certain that I'll have the time or energy to do so. I may extend this further, explaining Uno's side of the story etc, but as it stands this is a one shot.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing, I receive no profit from this work of fiction.
Nightmare Ironies:
Trowa Barton did not have nightmares. How could he? Trowa Barton was dead. He'd been shot by an anti-OM supporter in the hanger that the Gundam Heavy Arms was being built in. Trowa lay dead on the ground for almost a full year before anyone realized that he was a goner. Someone else had taken his name, and that someone had no name to fall back on. He was simply and quite confidently not Trowa Barton however, because that name belonged to someone else.
This no named person that was living the life of Trowa Barton; did have nightmares though. They started off the same way each time: an abandoned military encampment where dead bodies lived to laugh at the survivors of the war. Blood stained walls and destroyed machines everywhere. He sat in the middle of it all, his knees pulled up to his chest as he counted the ants as they walked by him.
He always liked ants. Diligent workers, they made, and they never complained. They never argued or thought twice about how their homes were always stepped on and destroyed, they didn't rise up and forge rebellions. No, they simply hustled about and minded their own little ant business. How unlike people.
One ant, two ants, trois fourmis- that wasn't right.
That's where the nightmares became, well, nightmares. Before it was just reality – cold and harsh that was the world he'd lived in. The moment he thought about French words though he fell into the nightmare. The only hint of survival that he could find in those dark images was in the form of two little hands that pulled and dragged him this way and that. He was a survivor by those hands and he was grateful for them. The hands of Uno.
These weren't their real names. In fact, he remembered the boy named Uno being much like himself. He either forgot, was never given, or didn't care for a real name. He was simply another child in a sea of children who are easily ignored and pushed aside during war time. His name was given to him because his master was Hispanic and that was the number he'd said when he pointed towards the boy. "Uno." He'd announced before moving on down the line. "Dos, tres, quarto…" each one was given a number.
The one who was pretending to be Trowa Barton of modern day remembered back then that unlike Uno, he had a Frenchman. He had been given the distinction of being called "Trois," only no one else besides that man spoke French and the distinctive "twa" became much more meaningful "Troys." He supposed like all historical things, it meant that his life was once more in the hands of fate. He was both the horse and the city, the conqueror and the defeated, he was an oxymoronic child who was a soldier before he could even say his own name. A name he didn't have. A name he'd never been given before that Frenchman pointed to him and the others mispronounced it.
Uno wasn't much bigger then him, in fact they were around the same height. Uno was broader though, even back then. If he'd survived the war the Not-Trowa could imagine him as being of modest height and reasonable body mass. He'd be muscular (he was back then after all), and he'd be nimble fingered.
Still, despite the less then striking appearance of Uno and himself, there was nothing of especially importance to note about them. They were young, and they were both hardened by war. They'd seen more dead people then living for most of their lives, and the bodies that piled high in their minds were endless.
That wasn't what the nightmares were about though.
The nightmares that the Not-Trowa dreamed up in his mind as he lay on the dirt covered ground of some farm land in Italy; were about what happened after he met Uno and before he left Uno. They spent a few months together on earth. Their feet were chained and their wrists were locked together.
This is how they met:
The Frenchman and the Spaniard were arguing. One said they pushed the boys too hard the other too slow. They changed each day and their annoyance and aggravation grew. They complained and bickered relentlessly, and Trois remembered sitting in the sand of the Arabian desert feeling too hot and too tired to care.
The Frenchman angrily unchained all of his prisoners, and started to pull them this way and that. When he got to Trois, the man grabbed him by the arm and tugged him to his feet. He remembered being backhanded by the Frenchman, and then he was marched to where the Spaniard was doing the same thing. Trois's chained wrists were interlocked with Uno's chained wrists, and then a lead chain was attached to both the Frenchman and the Spaniard.
Where one walked, the other followed, and when the pace kept changing to accommodate the whims of the two Europeans, the boys tripped and fumbled behind them. More then once Uno caught him as he stumbled and he recalled returning the favor. They kept each other upright and moving and no words were spoken between them.
That was how they met. It was simple, quiet, and they didn't need to think much. There was nothing except the cool comfort of knowing that someone was there. There were others too. At least two dozen boys traipsed behind them, and Trois remembered being grateful for his current state of recognition rather then being addressed as "vingt-quatre" or something along those lines.
That wasn't the nightmare though.
The bristling heat the lack of water the desperate need for food was not a nightmare. It too was simple fact. It happened often enough and it existed as a state of being that occurred more then it didn't. It was a life he was used to and it was a mission that he was receptive too. Thus it couldn't be a nightmare because invariably that would mean his whole life was a nightmare – and that just wasn't so.
Uno slept next to him. When the nights got cold and they received no blankets, the two of them lay together in the dark. Uno's arms wrapped around his waist and he hugged the boy's chest. They shivered and froze together, struggling to stay alive. They dug into the pre-warmed sand and prayed scorpions didn't get them.
They braved the harsh climate of the desert and they were of the lucky few who survived. Fourteen out of the original twenty-four had been lost to the desert. The Not-Trowa never once could appreciate it for what it was. He hated that desert. He always would. No matter what happened.
That too wasn't the nightmare though, that was simply fact. He was well used to it and he was well accustomed to it. No surprises there. No shapeless, faceless, monsters in the dark.
Indeed, none of the previously described was ever dreamed about. That was all history and prior knowledge that could be called up through the various electrical channels that ran through the Not-Trowa's brain. He didn't need to dream about it because he already cataloged it into the filing cabinet of "acceptable." If he did dream about it, he didn't remember it. He could only remember the dreams that dove into the "ignore at all costs" cabinet that he tried so hard to chain up each night before he fell asleep but invariably failed because he just couldn't stop those signals from firing in his already exhausted brain.
Perhaps he'd crammed too much into the cabinet. Perhaps he needed more room. Perhaps that's why he dreamt…storing all this information into the long term "ignore" box took time it seemed. So far, it had taken ten years. He hated it, but that too was fact. That too was life.
The nightmares continued.
They always started with him sitting in an abandoned military encampment. They always started with the blood and the gore and the ants and the facts. They always started with him counting in one language and then ever so suspiciously counting that final ant in French. Then the scenes would change his vision would blur, and the nightmare itself would rear its ugly head.
In his mind, he could see Uno waking up and looking around him. They both were ageless, or at least they both knew not their own ages. They both counted themselves as being somewhere near the others – all of them were five. They both clung to that similarity that they had noticed was true about themselves without so much as uttering one word to each other.
Over the long days that they traveled from one place to another, Uno was as much of a comfort to him as Trois tried to be for Uno. There were times when he couldn't help but cry, his body giving in to human emotions that had long since been locked away from his heart. During that time, a simple leaning of the shoulder told him that Uno was there- he wasn't going to leave. What a joke.
The Spaniard seemed to like to smack his group of kids. He yelled at them in languages they probably didn't understand, and would hit them. The only one he never hit was Uno. No…with him he just touched his hair and whispered strange things. He said something about "dinero" and "familia" and "principe de espacio." Neither he or Uno seemed to understand what he was talking about. They both couldn't speak Spanish back then.
If Trois could remember correctly, Uno spoke Japanese and English. Still, those were names to words that he couldn't understand until he was much older. It was only when he joined the military encampment years later did he realize that there were such things different languages and not just different ways to say certain things. Back then, it didn't matter, he just knew that Uno didn't speak what he spoke (not that he knew that at the time because they never spoke…no, that was after the fact).
Still, the one word that they did hear most commonly was "brother." The Frenchman and the Spaniard said that all of the children were siblings. They said that they were all brothers because they were all going to be going to the same place. Having never been apart of a family before, Trowa embraced those words. He cared little for the other children as they cared little for him, but Uno was his brother.
It was the only word that they called each other when it was late at night. It was the first time they dared to break the silence. Trois had been brave enough to do it. He reached out and touched the other brown haired boy's shoulder. Blue eyes looked at him in curiosity. "Brother?" He whispered softly as if trying to decide if it was true or not. The other child nodded. "Brother." He replied. The two fell asleep sharing heat as they tried to keep warm through the night.
None of that was the nightmare, that was rather peace...peace and belonging. No…the real nightmare started now.
Trois remembered Uno sitting up and looking around. No one was watching them.
He remembered sitting up also and reaching out to catch Uno's arm as he stood up. He didn't understand what the boy was doing, and because speaking was prohibited and he never broke the rules, he couldn't figure out what Uno was doing. Still, the other nameless, ageless, (now)faceless boy was insistent. He tugged free.
He vanished into the night, his chains slipping from his tiny wrists as he disappeared into shadows. He said nothing, he didn't once try to make Trois come with him, he just vanished…and Trois watched him go.
That was why the nightmares came.
The Frenchman and the Spaniard both wanted to know where the boy was in the morning. He couldn't say though. He wasn't allowed, and he didn't know what to do. Uno was gone. He was gone and Trois didn't know where too. So he stayed quiet and defiant. He felt almost thrilled to know that he could rile up the people who had caused him so much suffering. He felt vindicated, powerful, brave, excited, and he thought that he was doing something grand by this defiance. He didn't even know what those words meant. He didn't even know what to call the rebellious feelings that welled up inside of him.
His bravery didn't last long.
The nightmares always started with Uno disappearing into the dark, and then the screaming and yelling of the Frenchman and Spaniard.
Then they fell into cascading blows, sharp punches, roaring kicks, smacks, backhands, and burns. This scene would continue on despite how in reality Trois clearly recalled falling unconscious through it. There would be no stopping, just strike after strike after strike.
This too wasn't nightmare material as he was used to such behavior in the past. Still, it was the precursor to things to come. He could no more deny the existence of the wounds in the next scene then he could deny that he'd gotten them in real life. So the nightmare had a strange flow to it and it could not be ceased no matter how hard he tried.
The physical punishment did little to hurt him. He had grown up on the streets as an outcast and he was not going to be intimidated by the brawns of others. Despite his young age he had seen it all and understood it all. He was no more a child then they were kind. This was how life was. This was how things were meant to be. This too, was a fact.
What did come next was something that Trois couldn't explain for the rest of his life. He did not understand the reasoning and he did not understand the purpose. He could not shake the images from his mind any longer and he could not sort them out. He was confused and he was uncertain and that experience is what haunted him.
The Frenchman started to do it first. He pulled out a gun and aimed it at one of the eight other children and he told Trois that he would fire and kill the boy if he didn't say where Uno went. It was illogical to Trois that he would actually fire. These two maniacs didn't traipse them through the desert just to have them be killed, so he said nothing. He said nothing and that little boy was shot right in the leg.
He couldn't help but blink in confusion. He actually didn't hear the question when it was asked again. His mind was focused on the screams of the boy who'd been shot. He didn't understand. He couldn't understand. He was five years old and things like that just didn't happen. He wondered if this was normal, he tried to work out the problem. He tried too, but sometimes the world has a funny way of treating its young soldiers. It didn't explain to him why.
The boy was shot in the other leg. Then the arm, the other arm, then the stomach, and then the head. An entire round of bullets had been wasted on that one life. Those screams tore into his mind. Only then did Trois start to know fear. They wanted to know where Uno was. He didn't know though, Uno hadn't told him. Uno had just left.
"Où est-il?" The Frenchman asked, and Trois couldn't tell him.
"Dónde está?" The Spaniard asked, and Trois couldn't tell him. Another six rounds sent another child into oblivion.
Trois tried to pull away, not from fear but from confusion. He didn't understand. He didn't know why they were making the kids stop moving. He didn't know why he was making the blood come from the bodies. He didn't know why they were doing this. He did not understand at all!
"Where is he?" He was asked once more, and once more he shook his head in bemusement. Once more a child was massacred. The children were trying to run every which way now, trying to escape. He was shoved to the ground and the screams continued through the air. Trois shivered despite the heat, their screams wrenching through his mind.
This was nonsensical this was foolish, this wasn't right! He didn't understand what was happening. He didn't understand why it was happening either. He couldn't figure it out. All he knew, was that he had to get away. He had to find Uno, because Uno would understand. He stood up and ran when the two men were busy trying to collect the ones they were going to eventually kill. They didn't realize he was gone until he'd made it almost twelve feet away. Then they started firing, only their bullets missed and instead an explosion killed them all.
Trois remembered being thrown through the air, and landing hard on the ground. He remembered not being able to hear and the fact that his back was brutally burnt. He remembered that he was shaking and that he was crying, and that he still didn't understand.
As fate would have it, the other children were still alive. They were alive long enough to scream. Perhaps that wasn't true. Perhaps they were dead in reality, but this was a nightmare. This was where all eight of those children rose from their graves and screamed and screamed and screamed their little ghastly screams until he was driven insane.
This was where Uno didn't come back, and didn't pour water into his mouth. This was where the man named Odin Lowe didn't carry him to a camp not far off and tend to his back. This was where he was left to die in the sands of Arabia with the sounds of the children screaming all around him. This was where Uno wasn't his friend, and he wasn't taken care of until he was able to move out on his own again. This was where he just suffered and blamed himself for the death of all those people because he couldn't tell them where Uno was and he couldn't understand why Uno had left.
He understood now that Uno wasn't really an unlucky child captured by the slave trade. He understood that he was purposefully implanted in the Spaniard and Frenchman's group so that Odin Lowe could track them. He understood that had he not been a coward and run away at the last minute, Uno would have killed him too. Or at least, Odin Lowe would have. As it was, he owed his life to Uno because the boy did convince the man to take care of him until he could successfully walk away and try to forget.
Of course he never did, hence the nightmares.
Only two months after that incident, the Captain of a Rebel army found him and he was drafted into their war. He was killing people one after another, and he ceased caring. Nothing could scare him as much as the sounds of those children and the confusion of that night.
The Not-Trowa was woken up by the harsh shaking of his left shoulder. He gasped and rolled over, pulling a knife out from under his arm by way of defense. He held the blade to the person's throat in confusion. It was just that boy. That nameless boy that Sylvia Noventa had been given the privilege to call Heero Yuy.
"You were crying." Heero explained lightly before stepping back and settling himself on the ground to go back to sleep. The Not-Trowa lowered the blade and put it away.
"I'm sorry." He said without knowing why he said it. Heero made some noncommittal gesture.
"Bad dream?"
"Bad life." He whispered in return, rubbing his eyes.
"Hn." Silence fell over their tiny encampment.
"It was of that day." He continued, feeling foolish. Heero turned over and looked at him. For a time, nobody spoke. The Not-Trowa wondered if the Not-Heero was thinking the same thing he was. He wondered if the Not-Heero even knew who he was.
He remembered waking up in various stages of usefulness, listening to Uno beg the man (Odin Lowe) to take care of him just a little bit longer. He remembered Uno holding him through the night and taking care of him. He remembered waking up from the fever and the pain and feeling apart of something other then himself.
Once he could walk, he was moving with the pair. He didn't speak much, and it seemed like Lowe preferred that. Uno and he were passed off as twins and they moved through the various countries of Earth for the next few weeks together while Lowe completed jobs. Uno and he sat in silence besides each other as they looked out at the land around them. They were friends in the sense that they didn't need to speak to understand. Nothing made sense, and so there was no need to think about things.
Then came the day that Odin decided that it was time for him and Uno to move on, and for Trois to stay behind. The Not-Trowa couldn't remember even caring anymore. All his life up until that point people took care of him then they left. He didn't remember his parents; he didn't remember who raised him after the fact. He didn't remember who he was with after them, and it didn't matter. Faceless people who gave him food and water but nothing else were not to be remembered.
It was strange then, that he did remember Odin Lowe. He did remember Uno. He did remember when blue eyes turned to look at him as they were walking away. Trois didn't move, but he knew that Trois wasn't his name and thus he decided to forget it. He turned around and walked the other way. He didn't care. He couldn't care. He should have been grateful that he was alive, but at five years old he honestly didn't know the meaning.
The mercs found him after that. The rest of that life was a nightmare too.
Uno's life hadn't been all that different. How funny, after all these years they were together again. How funny…he couldn't bring himself to care really. He couldn't bring himself to think much on it.
"Go to sleep Trois." Heero mispronounced the French word on purpose. It was ironic that he was to be called Gundam zero-three, and that when he was a child he was called trois and he had now borrowed the name Trowa. It was ironic that Gundam zero-one was called Uno as a child and that he was called Heero Yuy now.
"Yeah." Trowa lay down once more, pushing the nightmare to the back of his mind, focusing on the now. He shivered, and he felt an arm go around his body.
It was also ironic that the Gundam pilot that the Not-Trowa had saved on a whim (more for the intents of burying his then to be appeared lifeless body then anything else), ended up being none other then the grown up version of the boy who had saved his own life on a whim. "Good night brother." He heard a hum in response, and all fade to darkness.