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That's the Way

Chapter 2

Ramble On

A/C 201

"Heero, man, maybe we could do something tonight. Just to, y'know, get you out for a little while. Sound good to you?"

Duo did not bother knocking anymore, instead just barging into Heero's apartment. He always heard him coming up to the door, he did not particularly mind anymore – at least not as much. He gave up on locking the front door to his room a long time ago. Safety was not much of an issue.

"No." He was consistently asked by the braided ex-pilot to go out and he consistently refused. Nights out were out of the question.

For about six months after her death Heero barely left his apartment. Duo eventually got him to leave, though it was a reluctant departure. That was the first time he realized the relief alcohol could offer, a brief solace from the world, a lapse in time, in memory and judgment.

He kept his alcoholism a secret for over a year. He always thought he had it under control but each passing week his desire for the liquid relief grew stronger and more difficult to ignore. He lost track of how many times he had been cut off and kicked out of bars, typically for fighting.

No one ever took notice, but he swore he constantly reeked of the liquid drug. People's ignorance made the alcohol all the more enticing. He could not refuse its intoxication.

"C'mon Heero. I know you miss her, we all do. But keeping yourself a prisoner to your own home is not doing you or her any favors. She would want you to keep living your life. Not containing it in a cage." As much as it sounded rehearsed, Duo's distress laced his words. A part of Heero knew he was right but he could not bring himself to act on the words that had been spilled out before him. "You have to keep living, man."

One night Heero took his drinking too far. Everything which had been kept simmering inside him for nearly seventeen months was bubbling to the surface. All of the pain, loneliness, anger, shame, guilt, frustration, but mostly his anguish, which had been steeping inside him, boiled over and he did the only thing he knew how to just to make it stop.

He drank.

He drank himself into a stupor. Some of the details were fuzzy to him but from what he was told and the patches he recollected told the lot of the story. He had gotten into a fight, thrown out of the bar and he returned his home to finish off what he could in his liquor cabinet. He was not sure if he was trying to kill himself that night, by means of alcohol consumption. He just knew he could not bring himself to stop drinking. Nothing was making the pain dissipate, not like it used to.

The most vivid portion of memory to him was when he returned to the scene of her death. Completely inebriated, he made the mistake of driving to the place where the core of his depression lay.

He stood amongst the barren land of the once-was Peacecraft mansion. He had a bottle of tequila in his hand, which was being quickly emptied into his body. There was a vacant bottle of brandy on his car's floor already, having been finished on his drunken drive to the site. His blood was soaking in more of the drug, coherent brain function squandering more with the passing seconds.

Heero made an effort to avoid this place completely, treating it like a plague. But one year, four months and seventeen days later, he stood before the wreckage. Vaguely, he remembered collapsing into the dirt; from pain and weakness or alcohol-induced vertigo he was not positive. He knew that he had been crying, unable to bear the heartache. The loss of her was so strong and heavy on his mind and his heart. It was suffocating. And it became more real with each shuddering, shaking breath he struggled to take in.

The bottle was now empty and lay uselessly next to his trembling body. Seeing that bottle next to him angered him. He blamed it on the lack of reprieve established to be the inducer of his rage but that was far from the root of his present, growing anger. He threw the glass, watching as the pieces shattered and danced before his eyes.

His heart was broken into more pieces than that thirty-two-ounce bottle.

Words began spilling out of his mouth at that point, not so much a lucid thought as much as irate drivels.

He had never felt so human before.

As juvenile as it was, he always thought himself to be invincible, impenetrable, immune. If his emotions began to be a burden to him, he had the simple option of shutting down completely, turning himself into stone, into ice. When he met her he realized he had a central flaw – his heart. He worked so hard to keep himself closed off, to construct an unyielding wall that entire armies could not defeat. It was a losing battle. Because no matter how much effort he exuded to keep her away, she would continuously find a way to tear down his strongest barriers. Until the day she died he painfully refused her, never wanting to but feeling like he had no other option. He always thought he would be the death of her and the realization dawned on him that he had been.

The next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital, Lady Une in the room with him. She did not say anything for some time before she finally told him that Relena would hate to see him like this and then she left. That was when he stopped drinking.

Duo sat down next to him on the couch, a hand absently scratching his head. "It's just…you've been so separated from everyone lately. Maybe a little time out won't be such a bad thing."

The silence was deafening.

The longhaired pilot sighed, defeated. "I'm not going to make you do anything, but you can't spend the rest of your life feeling sorry for yourself." And with that said he departed.

The audible click of the door securing shut rang in Heero's ears, a reminder that he was alone. He did not understand the feeling, considering people who he knew were worried about him surrounded him. There was just a piece of him that felt desolate. Alcohol could not fill the void. Comrades could not ebb the sensation. Closure was only disconcerting.

He had seen a body. The medical examiner said it was hers. He refused to accept it initially because he did not want to believe she was truly gone. It was burned beyond any sense of recognition. A strong part of him still has not affirmed it to be her.

The entirety of the world and Colonies alike were shocked by the attack on her home and sudden death. But their devastation was shallow in comparison to those who were closest to her.

There were two funerals held for her. The first was for those closest to her – friends, family, colleagues, and diplomats. It was relatively small, respectful. The way she would have wanted it.

Heero was isolated from everyone he knew best, refusing to look anyone in the eye and not talking to anyone. He could not bring himself to say any words about her during the service. He blamed himself for her death. What right did he have saying anything about her?

The other attendees filled time with stories about good, humorous memories and highlighting her greatest attributes. He listened to their words, knowing exactly how great she was.

The second funeral was the day following, all who had attended the first did so the second, but this was open to the public and broadcast for everyone in the world and Colonies to see, allowing them to be apart of the memorial of the former Queen of the World. The streets were crowded with people, eerily quiet for such a mass as the hearse carrying Relena Darlian Peacecraft drove to the site of her final resting place.

She would have hated people making such a fuss over her. That singular thought, in a peculiar way, carried Heero through the rest of that day.

Her burial was private. Only open to those closest to her so they could offer their last respects to one of the strongest young women they had ever known, one who's life was cut short in its prime, well before she was meant to go.

Heero again stayed away from people, staring at the casket he knew was empty. It was just an object to please those in attendance, to offer a deeper sense of closure. Duo had put a hand on his uninjured shoulder, silently telling him everything will be okay and that he was there for him. He offered no acknowledgement, continuing his gaze, his thought process drastically slowed.

Finally at the close, people were placing red roses on her casket. He her favorite flower was the Arctic starflower. He was the last to place his flowers on her coffin. He stood next to it, staring down, the pang in his heart sharpening. She was gone, stolen away from him and it hurt. Slowly, he gingerly placed a small bouquet of the tiny flower atop the roses, watching some slip down the edge and fall into the waiting depth that would confirm she was gone from this world. He set his hand atop the cold wood, the chills dancing up his spine from the touch. "I'm sorry." He whispered it at a near silent level.

He stepped away, standing straight up as she was lowered to the grave below.

Heero shook himself from his reflections, the ache growing to an intolerable level. His life had taken a halt upon her death. His hours at work for Preventers were sporadic, taking jobs when he felt like it, to help pass the time. Eating was an atypical occurrence. Friends were lost on him. They made contact with him, never the other way around. He lost a desire for a lot of things when he lost her, when he let her down.

He stood up from his seat on the couch and walked to small table adjacent to the front door, the red flashing light on his voicemail becoming a nuisance in his peripheral vision. He hit the play button and listened to the mechanical voice announce the quantity of his messages.

"Left today at two forty-one p.m." The voice stated before the message played, the feminine voice familiar to him.

"Heero, it's Une. I wanted to check in on you to see how you were doing. But also, I want you to come back into work, with a regular schedule. We need you back here."She sighed, the speaker cracking slightly at the sound. "You can't keep doing this to yourself. Call me back." The beep at the end of the message lingered.

"End of new messages." The machine announced and then quieted itself, the light no longer blinking.

He would call her back the next day.

Taking his shirt off, he ambled through the sparsely decorated apartment to its only bathroom. He threw the dark fabric into the hamper and stared at himself in the mirror. With his torso exposed, the scar that matted into his shoulder could be seen. He received it the day of the fire, when he was trying to save her. It covered his right shoulder, traveling from his clavicle to the top of his bicep. The scar wound and twisted its way around a quarter of his pectoral muscles.

It was a trophy of his failure that day. Try as he might to forget it, every time he caught a glimpse of it, everything came flooding back in, pummeling the cruel reality back into him. He closed his eyes against the thoughts, leaning against the countertop. Maybe it's time.

Une's brown eyes were locked on her phone, waiting for it to ring. She had been hoping Heero would call back quickly but she knew better. He would wait a week before he did, even if he already made a decision.

She was worried about him. She had never seen the typically stoic, composed ex-pilot this way before. The worst she could ever recall seeing him was after he self-destructed his Gundam over five years ago. She swore the explosion had killed him. She could still visibly remember seeing his limp body take to the air and crash to the ground below, landing in a crumpled, bloody heap amongst the dirt and debris. The shock she felt was unfathomable. Later, to her ultimate surprise and awe, he survived that ordeal.

But the way he acted now was worse than that and she could tell of the pain he was feeling behind the impassive façade. Just over seven months ago she found him unconscious and barely alive at the empty lot that once was Relena's home. She waited for him to wake up in the hospital, alcohol poisoning nearly being the death of him. She watched him laying there, looking vulnerable and weak. It almost made her uncomfortable. That was why she did not stick around for long after he had woken up.

But after two years, it was time to get Heero back on track to his life. Everyone had questions about how anyone could have hurt Relena in the safety of her own home and everyone missed her, but dwelling on it was not doing anyone any favors. Heero was just killing himself slowly at this point. That was why she was insisting he return to work. It would be a good distraction for him and eventually the sadness will not be as strong. Present, but tolerable.

There was a knock at her door.

"Come in." She said as she shuffled a handful of papers together and placed them in a manila folder on the edge of her desk.

Duo and Quatre walked stepped into her office and they sat down in the two seats before her desk.

"Has he responded?" Quatre asked, knowing she was trying to get Heero to return to Preventers.

She shook her head, crestfallen. "No. But I expect he will soon."

There was a tense silence among the three, as they thought about if he would return her call. Everyone had been worried about him and how he had been acting. His depression was growing and without trying to get better, it was left to stew beneath the surface.

"This isn't good for him." The blond announced. They all knew it was true.

Duo closed his eyes and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, his fingertips pressed together. "We've been trying to help. He just…doesn't want it."

"That doesn't mean he can sit inside all day and do God knows what." Quatre's voice was exasperated, frustration apparent. It was not directed at Duo, he felt helpless and useless in this situation. It was infuriating. "We didn't even know about the drinking."

The braided pilot's violet eyes opened quickly, looking at the Arab with a steady gaze. "That wasn't our fault. Heero kept that hidden from all of us. There was no way we could've known with how distant he's been."

Une watched the two as they talked. They all felt the same in this situation; it was obvious to see. And the way they were talking made it all the more clear.

She decided to put an end to their words before it became an unnecessary altercation. "We all want to help him and we are all trying. For the time being, that's the best we can do for him. Just to let him know that we are here for him without actually saying the words. He will come around when he's ready."

They quieted, accepting what she said as the truth.
The three remained hushed for a brief while, their minds soaking in the words and wondering where things would go from here. With Heero in such a fragile state, everyone tried to keep in contact with him, to prevent him from again doing something rash. They had given him space before but that resulted in his excessive drinking and him nearly killing himself because of it. It went on ride in front of them and they failed to notice it until it was almost too late.

"Even though it's already been two years, I still can't believe she's really gone." Quatre finally stated. The words came out before he could stop them.

They all felt the same way. It did not necessarily have to be voiced.

"We still don't even know how it happened. The reports all say everything about her security was clean so how could anyone have possibly gotten a bomb in there without any of us knowing. Especially without Heero realizing." Duo stood up, his aggravation getting the better of him. Sitting was getting uncomfortable. "We should've known something was wrong. We should have noticed." He leaned against the wall, trying to calm himself. He did not want to look anyone in the eye after seeing him momentarily lose control.

He could still feel Quatre's troubled eyes fixed on him. He was always so empathetic and understanding.

Une's voice cut through the newfound tension, it was calm and purposeful. "Duo, if you keep thinking like that, you're going to end up in the same state as Heero. It happened. Someone managed to slip under our radar," she paused as she stood up from her desk chair and turned to look out the window. "It's unfortunate but there's nothing we can do to reverse it. We just have to find a way to move on without blaming ourselves."