Disclaimer: I don't own anything par the story, duh.

Parings Include: well, in this chapter they're not really mentioned.

Note: This chapter can get confusing, read it slowly and carefully and you'll understand it no probs… *grins* now… go read the story… oh and sorry if I offend any with some of my descriptions of two characters by another at the end… but… as I'm sure you will come to find… these words against them are definitely deserved.

As A Child Walked Forwards

And the gunfire sounded. I don't think that anyone has ever wanted to do what I am to. As old songs ring in my ears I walk forward onto the battlefield. The only weapon my firearm, hidden safely behind my back tucked into my pants. The safety catch off for greater efficiency. It really is surprising that it's never accidentally gone off, considering I carry it everywhere with me.

The mortar is falling, the shrapnel is flying, and my fears are soaring. Someone once said that perseverance and courage in distress are more than brave armies to procure success. Let us all hope that their great words are correct and that what I am about to undertake is not as foolhardy as it must appear to all I know and more that I don't.

Buildings are collapsing, the troops are drawing near, our soldiers are dwindling and still the enemy charges on. Their black horses of death are great mobile suits armed and firing at all within their range… and some things that aren't.

I don't think that one could ever pinpoint the feelings that are within my petrified mind right now, that shake and reverberate through my body, that threaten to bring about my greatest defeat, yet, perhaps my greatest triumph. If one is not prepared to lose greatly, how can one ever achieve greatly? When unsure, be a fool. There is a fine line between being brilliantly creative and the most gigantic idiot on earth, so what the hell, leap. So many words are circulating through me, so much I have wanted to say, so many things I have wanted to do, places to see, people to meet… I can't believe how cliche that sounds but every feeling I have is compounding and battling for dominance, precisely the same way the physical beings before me battle, battle for superiority and victory.

I won't let fear win. Nor will I let the enemy. I WILL defeat this evil. And vanquish all of its baneful face from this great place's beauty. And no more demons will again stalk her surface. This I vow.

Chocolate hair whirling about my face free from the constricting hair tie I had contained it within, its dancing around, drenched in soot, faintly tinted the copper of blood, dust and dirt, physical and fantasy, it all dances about in my hair, as it dances about my face. Holding all of what I have been through in its silky strands. It is like an Egyptian papyrus holding knowledge that no one else will know, the prophecy of a prophet. I hope that the creator grand accounted for the amount of fears I have, and has some way, to counter it.

All of the faces of the victims I have seen, on television, in real life, their screams and their life's energy ebbing away, the children, the mothers, the fathers, uncles and aunts, grandparents and cousins. All of those who have been felled that I have seen and not, I can see, I can feel, I can hear. Their memories, their thoughts, their feelings, their stories, they all seem to become my own, and lend unto my life force. It is as if I was a single athlete in a stadium, with rows of seats that stretched miles upon miles high, and each person, is cheering for me, urging me to continue, with the only thing that they can, the only way they can. With their souls.

Lifting my elfin head, with chiselled features to meet the sights of this hellish arena I continue onwards. Past the bodies, the blood, the bomb craters, and unexploded shells, the death and the disaster. And all it fuels my desire to continue this wayward journey into the jaws of certain doom.

They say that without great fear can there not be great courage. The two virtues walk hand in hand, like chaos and sanity, like light and dark, without one there cannot be the other. Ironic isn't it? And the comparisons continue, that walk hand in hand, for without the atrocity that war creates and is, there cannot be peace, without brutality there cannot be kindness and without battles their cannot be mercy.

The perfect solider is not the one who defeats and conquers all his enemies, living them to rot by the wayside and die as he believes they were destined to do so, but the one who bends down into the gutter from which he has placed them into and offers them mercy. The very ones, who were trying to kill him, the ones he tries to forgive. But without the perfect villain, can there not be this perfect hero.

They say that this hero can save us all, well, I'm not going to stand by and wait. I will plunge on into this darkness, and the light of my faith will guide me and banish all the shadows. I can feel the cool metal of the blood spattered cross beneath my tattered shirt. I must look like a vagabond, a creature of the night, of doomed nights and hellish days, of tortured times and yet, as I stride forward, the perfect military gait that all tease me about striking off across this battered field, I must represent the glimmer of hope that I have been trying to inspire in all who I have met; all the children, the parents, the sisters and the brothers. When it all comes down to it, we are all one family, and not what we are matters, for in Christ we are one. So sue me if I sound like a lecturing book. I just call it as I see it……

* * *

And as the brazen child strode forward, the soldiers fought, the civilians watched, and the world… it waited. As a child walked forward.

* * *

My shoes, I love my shoes, inside my shoes are my feet, my shoes protect them, keep them safe, safe from harm and sharp objects ready and waiting to burst forward and thrust their dangers through the soles of my feet and into them, to damage them and purge them of their ability to walk. I guess, that one of the reasons I like my shoes is that they, in a metaphorical sense, represent myself and what I strive to do perfectly, if the glove fits they say… well… Cinderellas happiness came from a fairy and a pair of glass slippers, I don't need a fairy for instead I have my faith, but I have a pair of shoes, and in them… my feet keep urging me onwards.

* * *

It was if someone had placed all the world into a form of suspended animation, as if everything was moving far slower than normal, the speed of sound seemed to have travelled down from mach one to about one mile a second… in other words… travelling much more slowly that one could imagine.

It was if all the people had suddenly become aged and decrepit from the throes of life's hardships. Like one had placed all beings in water, and they had to struggle through this to reach their destinations.

Many watched the explosions, the shells, the nightmarish scene, as a child walked forward.

* * *

My legs have reached that point where one knows that to reach that destination, to go that distance that they must strive to continue, but they have reached that critical point where their heart isn't quite there and they are unsure if it is worth the effort, the suffering and the pain. Well, the end justifies the means doesn't it? I guess that that would mean that stuffed legs are definitely worth the goal I am trying to obtain. With smoke filled lungs, ash-blackened skin, and blood pouring over the crevices in my body like serpentine streams, I urge my battered being onwards. The result is definitely worth whatever price I am asked to pay the means I am requested to give to achieve it. So onwards I march.

* * *

As the front line draws closer and the troops and bombs nearer a tattered teen walks across the battlefield. He is impervious to the fire he passes, unflinching to the buildings that are falling, the shells and mortar fire exploding, he hears not whispers of this world, but the calling of another, as this child, walks forward.

* * *

And the wind whistles towards me, like a force telling me, pleading with me not to continue on this epic journey. Well, screw it, I've come too far now to fail. I've given up too much to just give up. And besides, it's not in my nature; surrender is what happens when I am released unto death. That is the price of failure, and so be it. For the stakes are high and we are all playing to win, but even the best players, must at some point fall, and allow an, well, the almighty victor to emerge.

I just hope that all this games players are ready to pass the torch unto the people who will lead this new dynasty that I am hoping to create, and if the blood of my life is what is required to cement this new age into being, then that is the price that I must pay for the ultimate peace of all. Yet, as I carry onwards, so too does my fear, and as my resolution grows to continue this through to the end, so too grows my uncertainty. Yet, above and beyond it, yet intimately within it shall I be when the appointed time doeth come. I shall embrace all that has happened and all that is to come, and all that is happening, that past the present and the future, shall I be, if only for heartbeat in time, then that is what it shall be. As I, a child, walk forwards…

* * *

And onwards you did march child, and onwards you did march.

Zechs looked up from the leather-bound that had had Trowa so spellbound and captured within its depths earlier this day. As he watches the others in their meaningless wanderings about the room, all he can do is feel the same pain, the same heartache, as do they.

Yes, they did say that a hero could save us. And you were never one to just stand by and await the inevitable. You walked forward and grasped it, and if it was not a future that you wanted, that you did not believe was for the good of all, then as a potter moulds clay so did you shape the future. You are the future, the past, the present. It has always been embodied in you. I believe that all know that you have lived up to your name. Heero. Ironic isn't it? It means single one that sort of thing… and you were always, always did you work alone for the better of all mankind. Our Golden Child. That, is truly what you are.

Zechs' eyes searched the room until they sought the being they so desperately wanted to find. The soft shallow breathing of one in immense torment floated to his ears, along with the whispered encouraging and pleading of one whom he was truly loved by and whom he truly loved, Hilde. Had Heero and Hilde met under different circumstances they probably would have been long since married despite the fact that they, are only merely seventeen. Zechs smiled, they are the perfect pair.

His eyes wandered the room seeking the knowledge that the others were still here and okay. Well, apart from his treasonous sister and that gutter-rat that she announced she loved the same day she announced the war. Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl. Did she really expect to win when the battered and bruised but definitely not broken heart of the man she had cheated on and betrayed in the worse possible way, was the leader of her opposition? Zechs snorts disgustedly. Stupid, stupid, stupid girl.

He had no notion as to what fate had befallen her via the hands of the people she had once pretended to serve. When she took her vows did those words justice, honour and peace, where they such cheap words in her vocabulary that even the lowliest of crimes could be seen as righteous when attached where these words? I don't think that any shall ever find their answers from her forthcoming. Our little seraph might be able to conjure up some responses from her… but only if his feeble attachments to this world remain. Many are still unsure as to whether he will survive. Brave Brother, Golden Child, those three words along with love where what you also embodied, as young child, as we, the world watched, and you, a child, walked forward.

So… what did you think eh? Good? Yes? More? *silence* HEY!!!!!! So yes anyway… if you've come this far please review. ^-^ Thankyou