Warnings: none that I can think of, except the fact that this story is shounen-ai based, and if you don't know what that means you may want to look around and find out before you read. There is nothing explicit, however. The story takes place during the series and endless waltz, and covers some of the events therein. If you haven't seen the series (all the episodes 23 and above and endless waltz) you may be confused and/or spoiled.
This story is an experiment in point of view, among other things. It was inspired in part by Aura, by Carlos Fuentes, and in part by my biology class. As always, feedback of any kind is appreciated and welcomed. In fact, it makes me very happy.
It should be noted that no payment of any kind was exchanged to anyone for any of this crap.
Entropy
-----by trucizna—
You are perfectly still. The cool calm slips surreptitiously through your bloodstream, wafting from your very pores like noxious gas. You feel him looking at you anyway, the unique mixture of surprise and suspicion prickling the back of your neck. His anticipation of some mistake on your part is irritating to you, but you refuse to check if his gaze carries the same weight that you imagine. You resist meeting those deceptively solid eyes. You know that if you look closer you can see the liquid beneath them, thick and shiny, full of things you dare not guess at. You might get trapped in those tar-eyes. But you're trapped already; you just don't know it yet.
There is an exact moment where you fell in.
It was dark; you couldn't see where you were going. Once the doors slammed shut and you wished the cell goodnight he came to you. Your conscious mind missed the hesitant understanding in the black eyes that seemed to mold perfectly into the rest of the darkness. Whispered, reverent curses fell around your bruised and throbbing head, released only because he thought you'd stopped breathing. You couldn't see how close his cheek was to your lips, and you could only barely perceive the press of fingertips on your neck.
You are about to fall.
He hadn't noticed he was holding his breath until he released it. Satisfied at having found what he was looking for, he slunk quickly back into his corner, graceful despite the awkward metal circling his arms. It was safer there against the wall, where he could see and not be seen. But you weren't asleep as he thought you were, and in the trickle of light from the tiny window in the door you caught it. You couldn't be sure, you were so tired, and the only rational thought allowed by your brain was that you weren't rational at all.
And so, an indeterminable number of days later, when the panic of the end buzzed through your oxygen-deprived brain you reached out to him, confessing your loneliness with failing breath and begging him to keep you company until the end. But he wasn't asleep as you thought he was, and through the sheltering walls of his mind he heard you. But he couldn't be sure, he was dizzy too, and his last rational thought before he followed you into unconsciousness was that he wasn't rational at all.
You are perfectly still. You are waiting for the opportune moment. Soldiers are running everywhere, shouting, confused. Someone's been shot, or someone is being shot at. Something is wrong. Your hiding place is too small for one, let alone two, and your side is pressed seamlessly against his. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. Someone is running closer to you, just one, his footsteps loud and uneven. Without seeking approval you spring from the doorway, tripping the passing soldier and riding him to the ground, making sure his head hits the floor with more force than necessary. His gun is now grasped in your right hand as your left skims OZ uniform pockets, seeking other useful items on the unconscious body at your feet.
Another set of footfalls approaches, but before you have time to turn around and fire Wufei has palm-heeled him in the face and he lays bleeding on the floor. You want to thank him but you don't want to admit fault—he already seems to like laying more blame on you than is reasonable. Though he never says it, you can feel his displeasure with every nuance of your behavior, every excited smile, every flick of your braid, every single unnecessary noise. You offer a smile anyway, but he turns away, taking the gun from his victim and forgoing the rest. You stand quickly, gun ready.
You follow him as he sneaks away, grudgingly trusting his sense of direction to take you to the hangar where your Gundam is waiting for you.
"…is dead, Sir."
"Dead?"
"Yes sir. She was shot by General Tubarov, Sir."
"Lady Une is dead?"
"Y-yes Sir…" This time the soldier's voice is strangled, like his superior officer has seized him by the neck and shaken him. You glance at Wufei, but if he's heard the conversation taking place around the corner he doesn't care. The words explain the surrounding panic, at least, and now you think you know who opened the doors to the cells. Why she would save you is beyond you, although you catch the corners of a wicked thought forming. It whispers that Une knows Treize would rather not have a certain honorable pilot die in such a pathetic way. You know that pilot isn't you. You smirk at Wufei's inky ponytail as he looks carefully around a corner. He draws back suddenly, frowning slightly, looking down at his gun before glancing over at yours. His eyes finally slide up to meet yours again and they stick there as he taps the wall sharply with his gun several times.
"I can't believe… did you hear that?"
"Hear what, Sir?"
Silence. Wufei is glaring at you like your breathing is too loud, so you should stop and save him all kinds of problems in the future.
"Go check it out, Harrison. That way."
"Yes Sir."
Once he's seen us the soldier barely has time to open his mouth for a warning when Wufei has grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head against the wall. He slips to the ground. A few moments later the officers comes to investigate what his subordinate failed to find out. He curses as he approaches, and the moment he steps into sight he falls into the same trap as the enlisted solider. This time, however, Wufei doesn't render him immediately unconscious. The officer weighs twice as much as the boy but Wufei slams him easily against the wall, pinning him there.
"Where are you keeping the Gundams?" Wufei snarls.
The officer—you glance curiously at his nametag, but it's obscured by Wufei's arm—appears shocked for a moment, and then he looks as if he's about to laugh.
"I would answer him, mate," you tell him casually, "This guy is absolutely crazy. He'll snap your neck like it's stale spaghetti. That is, if I don't shoot you first." You point your gun at his temple, smirking. He glares at you and you recognize the look in his eyes as the look of a man planning something stupid. You tap the muzzle of the rifle against his head to remind him of what he's up against.
"You're Gundam pilots!" He says in sudden realization. You roll your eyes.
"Uh, yeah. And we'll kill you. Where'd you stash the Gundams?"
"I can't tell you that!"
"Do you like your knees?"
"What?"
"We don't have time for this," you lower your gun slightly, "or, I bet there's some body part I could shoot off that you like better, eh? How would you like that?"
This time, both of them are staring at you, but their expressions are completely different.
"Where are the Gundams?" Wufei repeats, forcing himself to look away from the glittering malice of your eyes.
"C Dock," He mumbles, "Go down two levels—there's an elevator down this hallway—and turn left when you get off. There are signs."
"See? Not so hard," you're grinning, but the sight is not a comforting one. Wufei releases the man's lapel. In a fraction of a second, he's reached up, grabbed the man's head, and twisted. Compared to the previous near-silence, the crack of his spine snapping seems as loud as gunfire.
"Well, at least he got to keep his dick," You quip as Wufei glares at you, "It could always be worse."
His glare sits for longer than you're used to, and the moment your self-satisfied smile falters in confusion he darts around the corner toward the elevator. You follow.
When you enter the hangar and catch the gleam of Deathscythe's hull in the darkness you can't resist a joyous, shouted greeting. He doesn't chastise you for it—in fact you can almost sense his tentative smile despite the obscurity of the hangar. Obviously he's just as happy to see Nataku.
"Now that you're upgraded, buddy, we'll have to upgrade your name, too!" You call up to your Gundam.
"Maxwell, be quiet. We don't want to be discovered."
"Eh, what gives? They're about to find out we've escaped anyway when we blow the place to smithereens."
"We're not out yet."
"Whatever you say, Chang." You throw his last name at him to prove you don't care. Your lips part in a sneer, exposing nearly perfect teeth. When he glares at you with his usual marble-carved impatience you find yourself wondering if he has teeth like the rest of the human race, or if instead he has rows and rows of saw-like shark's teeth—the kind that could rip your heart out with only a smile. On second thought, you decide you don't want to know the inner workings of his mouth after all.
You only notice how long you've been standing there when the green eyes of the improved Shenlong blink to life with a series of beeps you're sure carry farther than your voice. Rolling your eyes, you dart forward and ride the line up, reveling in the feel of Deathscythe's cockpit as you buckle yourself in. You realize just how much you missed it.
"All right, buddy, let's give them hell!"
You pull out your twin beam scythe and remove an entire wall of the base, grinning all the while like the maniac you think you are.
It's the way he looked when you told him Trowa was still alive—that he hadn't killed him after all. The flashes of emotion on his face were painful to watch, the range reaching from ecstatic to guilty to terrified and back to elated in a fraction of a second. You wondered how anyone could possibly feel that much and still manage to wake up every morning.
You wondered how he survived killing Trowa in the first place.
Seeing them together now is still shocking, despite the fact that you've had days to adjust to the details. The lingering glances, the drifting hands, the elimination of personal space barriers, the excess of smiles on both faces—all these things you can't get used you, you can't stop watching. You're always asking yourself the same questions, annoyingly vague and on a permanent, static-ridden loop through your mind.
How? Why?
But you don't want to ask. Somehow, you feel as if you're already supposed to know the answers, like someone's told you but you weren't really listening. You didn't realize you were supposed to be taking notes.
"Ah, here they are."
"Who?"
"Sally. She said she was on her way to meet us, along with some 'friends'," Noin smiles at her friend's mysterious air, but you find her intentional evasiveness more than slightly annoying. Luckily, you don't have to wait long before they enter, and trailing them is a person you haven't seen in…
…a very, very long time.
You have to blink a few times for the image to register properly.
"Wufei?" Quatre beats you to asking the obvious, and when he realizes he is, indeed, correct in his identification he leaps up, "Wufei!"
The boy in white shifts, leaning against the wall, arms crossed in defense against the unwanted attention. He switches his glare to Sally Po, who obviously holds the blame for his presence. You are impressed to note that his silent attack doesn't faze her at all. On the contrary, she smiles, amused.
You're not sure how you feel.
After a few scattered greetings everyone else has gone back to their work or previous conversations, pleased and enchanted by the presence of the pilot who intentionally holds himself farthest away. You, however, are still staring, and are more than surprised to discover him staring back. His face is as it always is—blanker than the mission logs you're supposed to fill out regularly. Your stare jumps back and forth between the puddles of his eyes, waiting for him to give you some sort of signal. A simple 'hello' would suffice.
He blinks—once, twice—and then turns and walks out of the bridge. You gape openly at his blatantly rude exit before recovering enough to make a snappy comment,
"Well, good thing we've got our personal cheerleader back with us."
Quatre frowns, "is he okay?"
"He's fine. That's just the way Wufei is," you glance at Trowa in time to catch his hand bail out of its crash-course toward Quatre's shoulder. You sigh, scratching your head. Doing so makes you wish you could take showers more often; the slick, tangled feel of your hair is neither comfortable nor attractive. You wonder if there are any such accommodating commodities on this junk of a spacecraft.
"Meh, catch you guys later," you wave an arm in farewell and disappear through that door. You're not really looking for a well-furnished bathroom—although that thought has not completely disappeared from your mind—but you've managed to convince yourself you're not really looking for him, either. But when you stumble across the room he's chosen to hide in you can't even pretend to look surprised.
"You look well, I see," You say lightly, letting the sarcasm leap like lightning across the empty cafeteria. He waits a few moments to turn and look at you with those dark eyes and you're holding your breath; the buzz of the air circulation system is so loud in the silence it's like a huge fly wedged in your ear.
"They're all dead."
"What?" You didn't expect him to actually say something.
"They're all dead."
You weren't asking for him to repeat himself. You were asking for clarification—you're not sure if it's coming, but you're sure he knew that's what you wanted.
"Who's dead, Wufei?" The soft confusion in your voice causes his stare to freeze into deadly icicles. Your hands are immediately up in surrender as you wonder what offended him this time. You're madly squashing the frustration that threatens to take over—no one's trained you to deal with him, and it seems everywhere you step is taboo.
"You… I thought…" He sighs, scowling into the plastic tabletop, "I thought you would be different, I thought you would understand."
"How can I understand when you won't tell me anything?" The anger, so far kept in check behind your teeth, leaks only slightly into your words.
"My colony self-destructed. Everyone's dead."
"I'm sorry," you say softly after a few seconds of respectful silence. You mean it, too. He's now just as lost as the rest of the Gundam pilots; if he wasn't before already. He shrugs, the gesture too tight, his shoulders too heavy.
"It's because I… hesitate." Though he isn't looking at you anymore the self-loathing on his face is painfully evident, "so I have nothing left to fight for, except my honor. And now I'm wondering… do I even have any of that anymore?" His voice has trailed away; he's forgotten you're listening to him.
Your smile creeps up on your face without you noticing and, armed with it, you slide carefully into the bench across from him, making sure not to startle him into remembering what he's supposed to be acting like.
"Let me tell you a little secret," you tilt your head to try and catch the downward turn of his eyes, but he's avoiding you, "there's nothing to fight for in the first place. I can tell you this because you can handle it. There is no reason for fighting this war, because even if peace does come out of it, war will inevitably follow again. We can say we're fighting so others don't have to fight—but we need people to fight against, don't we? Where do they come from? We can say we're fighting for the colonies, but they seem to be fighting for themselves now. We can say we're fighting for ourselves, but are we enjoying this? We can fight for our families, but would they be proud upon seeing the lists of men we've killed? You and I don't have families anymore, anyway. We can fight for Relena, we can fight for the Sanc Kingdom, we can fight for Earth, we can fight for each other… no reason is a better illusion than any other. Everyone's chosen a brand of soul-healing salve and is sticking with it. Yours has just run out, and now what? Well, now nothing."
You tap his nose with your finger on impulse and he jerks backward, eyes skittering open in confusion and distrust. Your smile is genuine now.
"You fight because there is a war, and because you're good at fighting. Nothing more, nothing less. Don't let your search for something that isn't there get in the way of mourning for them, or you'll end up mourning forever. Remember, you still have to live after this. It'd be a shame to forget how."
Now, you know, would be the ideal time for a dramatic exit—but you linger. Perhaps if you stay long enough you'll be able to watch his glare burn a hole through the table.
"You…" he begins, and you're not sure if you want to stick around for the rest of that sentence. But when he doesn't continue you wish he had. You… what? Should stick your face in a blender and hit purée? Are the greatest thing to happen to him since the construction of Shenlong? You are, did he ever mention before, the most beautiful creature he has ever seen and would you, pretty please, ravish him now? Your slightly overactive imagination was always a very entertaining—but never very useful—quality. You're no closer to solving the mystery of Chang Wufei than you were before.
"That's not fair."
"Aah," you find yourself smiling again. He glances up at you. Leaning your face against one hand you leer conspiratorially at him, "you still think the world is fair."
Somehow you find that almost unbearably cute.
"It's supposed to be," he says flatly, glaring once more at the corner of the table.
"But has it ever been?"
"No." The word is spoken so quietly he's only mouthing it, but you can hear the confession as if he'd been screaming. You jump up so you're sitting on the tabletop. In a moment you kick your legs over and land on the bench next to him, eliciting a half-disapproving, half-surprised stare.
"I'm sorry," you inform him steadily, looking him in the eyes.
"For what?" His voice is equally steady, his gaze hard as asphalt.
"Bursting your bubble." Why are you whispering?
"It was already broken." It's okay because he's whispering, too. You have the sudden and confusing urge to touch him—an arm, a leg, a cheek—only to make sure this isn't an overly detailed and complicated illusion set up for your embarrassment. You restrain yourself. He gets up, and the awkward bumping of knees against plastic marks the end of something beyond simply this conversation. You only wish you could pinpoint what.
You're lying there, only halfway trying to sleep in the canvas and metal contraption Noin calls a cot. The room would be completely dark but for the sizeable gap under the door where the excess of fluorescent light in the hallway leaks through. By it, you can see the ceiling well enough to pass time staring at it. You enjoy these moments where the passage of time doesn't matter, where you can take stock of where you are and what you're doing. You like the long breaks in-between bouts of rushed and messy homicide.
You're less likely to admit out loud that you enjoy the homicide, too, to a point.
So time is floating lazily around your head and you don't mind at all. Just when your eyelids are starting to tick closed the door opens, and they're driven shut against the onslaught of too-bright light. The opening of the door is not an alarming occurrence—there are six cots in this room and only four of them are currently filled. You open your eyes.
He's a black shape in the doorway, and every time you blink against the light he comes more sharply into focus. You make out a tank top, a ponytail; before the door is suddenly shut again, and while your eyes try madly to re-adjust to the dark you see his shape moving towards you. His outline is black against the token strip of light and his movements are slick and fast, like those of a panther stalking his prey. You think you're safely out of his predatory path—the empty cot is several feet away from yours, after all—but you're wrong. He's on top of you in a moment, his loose black hair falling and tickling your cheeks as his nose barely brushes against yours in the dark. You're staring into his panther-like eyes, feeling his breath on your lips and his knees by your hips with every nerve in your body. His smirk as he looks down at you is impossibly coy, and when he sighs across your face you close in for the attack. Your mind is absent without leave, your brain cells all on a cigarette break, because it doesn't occur to you that you would never, ever, even in the wildest of dreams, kiss Wufei of all people.
But you are, and his lips against yours and his tongue between your teeth seem natural, like you've been waiting for this.
You bring your hands up to run along the bare skin of his back, your fingers gliding fast as ripples over the muscles there. He's all around you, everywhere at once, despite the fact that his hands, braced on either side of your head, hold his body rigidly scant centimeters from your own. He draws back suddenly and your fingers slip from their perch against his spine. Your lips are remarkably dry. You lick them as you stare at him, and your tongue is still tingling from his touch. For a few seconds he's looking down somewhere at your chest, his hair obscuring his face. He doesn't seem to be breathing at all. Irrationally, you're convinced that if you speak and break the thrumming silence he'll disappear. He flops, suddenly and weightlessly, onto you, his lips pressing briefly against the curve of your collarbone and the scar you didn't realize he knew was there. You tilt your head against his, taking in the vague scent of his hair, and for some reason you're reminded of dandelions.
There are no words exchanged as you drift asleep with him strewn on top of you. He doesn't move at all as you slide your arm around him, and the rustle of your fingers against his shirt is the only sound you hear as you fall into a steady and dreamless sleep.
When you wake up—in that moment before you open your eyes—your fingers seek out his shoulder but find only your pillow.
You murmur his name, confused.
Then you realize what you just said. You open your eyes quickly, drawing your questing hand back to hide under your chin. He's lying in the cot across the room and watching you, his expression carefully blank. You feel the heat in your face light up as fast as a match.
"Good morning," he says.
"Hi," you whisper, wishing to hide under your itchy, military-issue blanket. You wonder when you became so cowardly.
You wonder why you woke up with his name on your lips, and as your dream comes back to you in a rush of confusion and embarrassment you wonder why the first non-platonic dream you can ever remember having involved him. You wonder how you could have reacted in such a way, how you could have touched him like that, how you could have kissed him so easily and without hesitation.
And you wonder, most of all, why you enjoyed it.
Your dream, now several weeks old and thankfully unrepeated, has left an itch in your mind you can't reach. Thoughts of him ambush you when you least expect it, and even a flash of a scene from that night leaves you twitching with mortification.
It doesn't help that seeing Trowa and Quatre together often elicits these unwanted memories, and it doesn't help that you've been staying with them since the war ended. When you're not busy trying not to puzzle out your subconscious you find yourself wondering how a mansion full of Maguanacs and your two best friends could be so lonely.
Today, as with the past seventeen or so, finds you lying in bed, reveling in that pre-waking ignorance that regretfully barely lasts a minute. It's a damn good minute, though, and you take proper advantage of it. The sunshine through the high window is white and cloyingly hot as thoughts settle in through the morning haze, reminding you that you don't know why you're here; this isn't where you belong.
Just as you begin thinking about getting out of bed you hear a knock on the door.
"Mister Maxwell, sir?"
You'll never get used to all those honorifics. You make an incomprehensible gargling noise you intended to be a fairly polite 'yes?'.
"There's call for you, sir. Would you like me to tell them you are unavailable?" You can feel her timid fear through the solid oak door. You've always tried to be disarming and nice, but your reputation as the god of death has tainted all of Quatre's servants against you despite your best attempts otherwise.
You're tempted to say yes, whoever it is can shove the phone up their ass, and can't they tell you're sleeping? But you weren't sleeping, and you feel sorry for whichever girl drew the shortest straw and had to come tell you about the phone. Forcing your warm and sleepy limbs into compliance you draw yourself out of the tangle of sheets and stretch, wincing slightly at the popping noises that spring from your back and neck.
You open the door, making sure to do so after you've stopped scratching your ass. The look on the servant's face when you do says you've forgotten something else, though. You frown at her shocked stare and in a moment her eyes have shot back up to yours, her face pink up to the roots of her hair.
"A…er…she… the call is on line two, sir, sorry to bother you sir I'll be going now sir have a good afternoon sir." With an awkward half-bow she's gone, her primly shined black shoes beating a panicked rhythm down the hardwood hallway. You look down, finding yourself decently clad in a pair of boxer shorts. You don't know what her problem was, and you brush it aside as you move toward the phone on the desk. You flip open the lid and press two, waiting sleepily for the connection to click into place.
"Hello? Duo?"
You look down at the tiny screen and the face perched happily on it, looking up at you from beneath a lurid beret.
"Hilde?"
"Hi, Duo! You would not believe what it took me to find you. I have a proposition for you… did I wake you up?"
"Nope. What's the story?" You're a little surprised to be hearing from her. Only a little.
"I've somehow become the owner of a junk heap," she laughs, the sound tinny through the tiny speakers, but genuine, "I could really use a hand cleaning it up and turning it into a proper salvage yard. I thought immediately of you. Want to give me a hand?"
Several thoughts leap to mind. One, that you want to get out of here, that you want to do something useful, and this would fall into that 'something' category; and two, that you're not sure if you can stand being around Hilde for an extended amount of time. Unfortunately, you've already said "sure" before the second thought comes around. Her smile is touched and excited. She responds emphatically and rattles off her location. She's at a colony in the L2 cluster—who'd have thought you'd end up back there? Not you, although you're not really all that surprised.
You're not easily surprised; at least not by girls and coincidences, anyway.
To you the click of the phone snapping shut has an ominous ring to it, and you move away to put on clothes before you tell Quatre you're leaving again for space.
When you get there you realize that this isn't where you belong, either. You know this because that empty feeling in your gut is still there. In fact, it seems to expand when you catch sight of her as you walk off the shuttle. She wants to give you a hug—the way her hands are flapping and the fact that she's darting about like a hummingbird are evidence enough of this—but you've made sure your arms are too full of luggage to allow her the opportunity to attack.
"Duo, it's been so long, hasn't it? Oh, it's great to see you!" You nod, smiling, and follow her out of the spaceport.
You tell yourself you can do this.
You don't think you can do this anymore.
You're staring out into space, sitting idly on an unfinished satellite, taking advantage of the fact that Hilde has no idea where you are right now. You've been leaving without warning her a lot lately. She doesn't mind because she knows you'll always come back. So far, she's always been right. She's always there for you to come back to, and her arms are as warm as they always are, but even in those rare moments where you lose yourself in them that empty feeling is never completely gone. You always pull away from her at the same point, when clumsy, brainless fingers stray past that imaginary boundary below the waistline. Your excuses are always rushed and mumbled, and you can see the hurting bewilderment in her eyes, the self-doubt, the confusion. She wants to know why you don't want her.
The answer isn't difficult—you simply don't want her. It's impossible to tell her that. You feel bad enough that you're using her as a distraction from your stagnant life—you don't want her to actually know that's all you feel. She's annoying and clingy and obnoxiously innocent, but her heart is in the right place and you don't want to be the one to break it.
But you really can't do this anymore. At least Quatre and Trowa understood, even if they couldn't do anything about it.
"Hey, kid! Lunch break's over, get moving, huh?"
"On my way," you call cheerily into your radio, but you don't start moving quite yet. You've been working here building satellites for the longest out of all the sporadic jobs you've held in the last year, not counting Hilde's scrap yard. This grand record you're holding is approaching its three week mark. You're getting ready to quit, but you're not sure if you're ready to go back to Hilde yet.
You stand carefully, making sure your slightly magnetic boots gain purchase on the hull of the satellite before walking toward the airlock and the mobile suit hangar.
"Hey, kid!" You've just leapt out of your old demilitarized Leo and taken off your helmet when your supervisor calls for you. You turn, curious.
"You've got a call from Mr. Quatre Raberba Winner." He seems as surprised by this as you are. He grins, "So tell me; why are you working here if you've got friends in such high places, huh?"
"The world sphere may never know," you return the grin, "thanks old man."
"Hey, I'm not even thirty. You're not allowed to call me old man, kid."
You shrug amiably and start to walk off toward the office where the phone is, "yeah, yeah."
"It's on line one, you whippersnapper!" Your supervisor laughs before following the rest of your co-workers toward the locker room. You slip into the office and close the door behind you.
"Heya Quatre!"
"Hello Duo, how are you?"
"Like you wouldn't believe. How are you?"
"Fine, thank you. Sorry to call you at work, I couldn't find a home number for you."
"It's okay, I don't have one right now. To what do I owe this pleasure?"
Quatre laughs, and then his expression turns sober again disturbingly quickly.
"I propose that we should get rid of our Gundams. It's almost been a year since the end of the war, and there's no need for them in an era of peace. Also, there is a little bit of unrest over their existence. I think it would be a show of goodwill to destroy them. What do you think?"
You don't really need to think about it.
"Hell, I'm in. You're right, we shouldn't need them anymore. I haven't touched mine for ages. What do you have planned?"
"I want to launch them into the sun. That's the only way for sure to destroy them so completely that any part of them can't be used at all for further research or building more mobile suits."
"When do you want to do this?"
"As soon as possible. I've already contacted Heero and Trowa, and they've agreed to send theirs, but they are too busy to make the trip. Would you like to come with me? I could use some help."
"All right," you agree, and before you can stop yourself you're asking, "What about Wufei?"
"I couldn't find him." Quatre frowns slightly, but you've already moved on to another subject.
"My Gundam's with you, anyway. Do you want to pick me up here tomorrow?"
"You can leave that quickly?"
"Yeah, it's no problem. I've quit better jobs on shorter notice than this." You grin deviously. Quatre makes a production of sighing in disapproval, but you can tell he's smiling.
"Okay, tomorrow then."
You give him the coordinates of the satellite and after a few goodbyes you hang up. You turn to leave the office, feeling pleased that you get to see Quatre again, and nearly run into your supervisor standing in the doorway.
"You've quit better jobs on shorter notice than this, huh?"
"Uh… consider this my twelve hour's notice?" You flash him a winning smile.
He sighs, "Who am I going to get to replace you, huh? You're easily the best pilot we've ever had."
"Hey, sorry man, Quatre Winner needs me. He's a tycoon. I gotta bend to the whims of the rich folk." The friendly melodrama rolls off you as easily as ever.
"There's nothing I can do to stop you. Make sure you leave an address I can send your last paycheck to." He sticks out his hand, "it was a pleasure working with a Gundam pilot."
"Uh… I'm a…"
"It's okay, I was shamelessly eavesdropping," he smirks, "don't worry, I can keep my mouth shut. We're all soldiers here, so I admire what you did during the war. I was suspicious before, anyway, since people aren't supposed to be able to maneuver a Leo like you do."
"Ah… erm… thanks." You take his hand and shake it nervously. He steps out of the way and holds the door open as you walk out.
"Take care, kid."
"You too, old man." You wave and leave quickly to pack your meager belongings for tomorrow's departure.
You're staring at him. You can't hear the screams of joy, the cheers, the whistles; you don't see the still-steaming piles of charred rubble that once was over one hundred and fifty mobile suits. Actually, you can't even see him—as he's still sitting in his Gundam.
Hundreds of people are milling about the feet of Altron, embracing each other, shaking hands, grinning hugely, congratulating each other on earning back their well-deserved world peace. Somewhere behind you Trowa is holding Quatre fiercely in an embrace, and the smaller boy isn't even blushing. It starts to snow.
You don't notice any of this.
You want to know why he betrayed you—even the end of the war doesn't remove the irrational pain that's been eating away at you since you found out he was fighting for Mariemaia. Trowa made it clear Wufei was not the type to pretend to fight for the other side for information—it isn't his style at all. He was fighting for real.
You aren't supposed to care what he does. You aren't supposed to care who he fights for. You aren't supposed to care about him at all. But you do, and you now realize that you do, and so you're very pissed off right now.
You see him finally leave the cockpit of his Gundam, a dark, uniformed figure descending slowly like a khaki spider on a thread. He drops the last few feet to the ground and starts to push his way through the crowd surging about and trying to shake his hand, shouting their congratulations through the mess of other people. You don't know what they're congratulating him for. He didn't do anything.
He's coming toward you, ignoring everyone he passes, and when he stops in front of you you're sure to glare pure poison straight into his smooth, spider-black eyes.
"I didn't believe you," he says.
"What?" That's not what you expected him to say. You don't know what you expected him to say, but that isn't it. He smirks, the gesture surprisingly fitting on his face.
"I didn't believe you."
Your glare takes a defensive turn.
"Elaborate," you command him. He takes a step closer.
"Those things you told me last year. I didn't believe them. But you were right, nothing really matters. I know that now." The smirk fades slightly, and he looks away behind you for a moment, reflecting on something out of sight. "My colony is dead. Treize is dead. I killed them all. I know this; I know it was wrong...." He trails off, and his eyes are still staring at that mysterious space behind you, waiting for the right words before continuing, "And I will always feel terrible for killing them, but I feel like I can keep living anyway." He looks at you now and any trace of a smile is gone from his face, "I feel like everything is okay, everything will be okay."
He looks away again, and as part of your brain rapidly digests his words, the remainder is taking the rest of him in. He's standing in the falling snow in that ridiculous uniform, the puffed shorts comical despite the rigs in his belt to hold a sword and a gun. You don't think you can take him seriously when he's wearing a pink tie, but you try valiantly. Crossing your arms partly against the cold you just noticed, and partly to accentuate your look of deadly seriousness, you resume staring him down.
"So, I suppose I owe you some thanks," his eyes shoot back to look at you, "thank you, Duo." That finished, he moves to walk away. Before you realize what you're doing you've grabbed him by the arm with a breathless, "Wufei, wait…"
He turns, surprised. You don't know what to say now, but you wanted something else out of this conversation, and you're going to get it.
"Why did you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Fight for Mariemaia! Wufei, why did you betray us?"
He looks genuinely confused for a moment, "when did we sign a pact of allegiance? I didn't betray anybody. In retrospect, I chose to fight because I felt that is what needed to be done. It was nothing more, nothing less."
You're still holding on to his arm, but beyond glancing briefly down at your desperate grip he doesn't bring your attention to this. He turns back to face you properly.
"Why does it bother you? The war has ended." He shrugs. You're aghast. He's completely unfazed by all of this, and you can't think of any logical way to sort your anger and confusion into words. You give up, letting your hand fall away from his arm, letting your face fall back into that familiar expression. You smile wryly, moving your hands to your hips.
"Well, when you put it that way…" you know it shouldn't bother you. It isn't logical. It bothers you anyway. But when he spits your own philosophy back at you, you find yourself with no room to argue with him.
He steps closer. It's only one step, but with it the rest of the world is suddenly pushed into the background. Then he takes another one.
"I'm sorry." He says carefully, his face straight.
You scoff, "you had better be. You scared the shit out of me." The confession is out of your mouth before it had even formed a complete thought in your mind.
"I am sorry," he says, "but it's over now. No more fighting."
"Yeah, with Gundams, anyway. I'd still like to deck you in the face."
But you're not thinking about punching him at all.
"I'd probably deserve it," he agrees.
"Uh, duh you deserve it. I don't get it. Why did you take orders from such a shrimp? How did she convince you to wear that?"
You've lightened the conversation without really meaning to. You're having trouble staying mad at him when he's being so uncharacteristically cooperative.
"It doesn't look good on me?"
You blanch and twitch slightly with shock at the confusing use of humor. He's smirking again. He takes another step closer.
"Well, I can think of things that would look better," you mumble. You immediately slap a hand over your mouth. You did not mean to actually say that. His smirk widens. You pull your hand away slowly, feeling your face warm up despite the decreasing temperature of the Bremen winter night.
"Is that right," he says rhetorically, and the only way you can think to wipe that self-satisfied smirk off his face is to kiss him.
So you do. And this time it's real.
He jerks slightly in surprise before tilting forward, wrapping his arms tentatively around you in response to your more vehement embrace, and so focused are all of your senses on this moment that it takes several seconds to register the cat calls and supportive jeers from the forgotten crowd around you.
You pull quickly away, feeling your face darken in embarrassment. You're more than pleased to note that Wufei is blushing, too.
So, grinning treacherously, you swoop in for another kiss. And another, and another, letting the cheers and jeers wash over you both.
And just when you think you feel happy, you think you catch the faintest scent of dandelions.
And you know for sure that you are.
---El Fin---