I guess my muse isn't really lost- I just got a postcard from her, and she's in Hawaii (what the hell is she doing in Hawaii without me?!) and doing fine. She also sent me some ideas for inspiration, which is just as well because neither Ralph nor the ACoR wanted to touch this part. They both said that it was way out of their fields of specialty.

Gundam Wing and all its little characters are not mine with which to create madness and mayhem, I just borrow them. This takes place after Endless Waltz, in my own little dream world (ha ha). Warnings for this fic so far include T?WT?, shonen ai (1x2, 3x4x5), and first person monologue. Angst in this part.

Someone to Talk To
Quatre: In the Combine
By: M.E. (Magnificent Entity)


"McMurphy doesn't know it, but he's onto what I realized a long time back, that it's not just the Big Nurse by herself, but it's the whole Combine, the nation-wide Combine that's the really big force, and the nurse is just a high-ranking official for them."

— Chief Bromden, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey


I got a letter today. From my friend, Duo Maxwell. He was the one who suggested that I try talking to you. He said that you listen. I figure that I don't have anything to loose, so I'll give it a whirl even if I'm not all that religious.

Duo is the only one of the other pilots who'll still talk (or, rather, write) to me. He hasn't been put off yet by the fact that I never answer the letters he sends. I think that might be because he talks so much that he doesn't really notice when people don't reply.

I want to write back– really I do. I just can't. They won't let me.

Studying Duo's letters, I've gathered enough information to figure out that they all think I'm getting home schooled. The letters are sent to my home account, at least. I wouldn't even be getting them if Iria wasn't kind enough to forward them to my account here. Even if I could write back, I wouldn't have the heart to tell Duo where I actually am, since it seems to cheer him up that one of us escaped the clutches of the government.

I don't want to destroy his hope by telling them that I've been committed to a mental institution on the grounds that I'm a homicidal maniac.

In the letter that I got today, Duo says that he thought of me a few days ago while watching a sunset. He says that he remembers how I used to always try to get him up early enough to watch a sunrise. I feel happy when I read his description of the sunset.

I haven't seen the sun in over five months. The keep me locked up in Disturbed twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, so I don't get out much (ever). All the rooms (cells) in Disturbed are sterile white boxes without windows.

Duo says that he and Relena are planning to escape from their respective schools. He says that they'll come and get me when they finally manage to break out. I don't know how they'll do it, since they think I'm living at home, not locked up here.

But, still, it's nice to think about it. Sometimes at night I dream of him busting through the door to my room, his eyes sparkling with mischief and his braid swinging. Relena is close behind, dressed up in camouflage army fatigues and carrying a rocket launcher. Duo asks me if there's anything I want to take along, and I say no (what would I want? My toothbrush?) while Relena guards the door. I follow them out the door, down the hall, and out of Disturbed. We go down the stairs and outside (where the sun, the beautiful, wonderful sun, is shining) and I get onto a motorcycle with Duo (Relena always disappears at this point for some reason), and we drive off towards the horizon. In my dream, when Duo and I finally stop, Trowa and Wufei are there, and they're not mad at me anymore, just happy to see me.

Most nights I have nightmares.

I knew when our records came into the eyes of the public at the end of the Eve Wars and the government got all weird about us Gundam pilots, it was only a matter of time before those goons decided to do something about us. I kind of expected them to get upset over the fact that my files say that I'm mentally unstable, but I never thought that they'd lock me away like this. That they would declare me psychotic and a Menace to Society. I guess that's what happens when you go insane with grief and you have the Zero System to help you along.

Out of all of us, I always thought that Heero was the one who had the best bet for a one-way ticket to a mental asylum. I guess that all of this shows just how little I know.

Actually, I really wouldn't mind this all that much if they let me talk to people. They provide me with enough reading material to keep me occupied most of the time, and they let me receive letters, even if I'm not allowed to reply. But I wish I could talk to someone. Since I'm under eighteen and therefore a minor, they won't let me mingle with the other patients, and the nurses are all afraid of me on account of my gruesome reputation (See that one? He trashed two colonies during the war! Two!).

If it wasn't for Duo's letters, I don't know how I'd survive. Both Wufei and Trowa stopped writing three months ago, after sending a joint letter that basically said that if I didn't even have the time to reply to them, then they both through with me and cutting me out of our relationship.

A few days later I asked a nurse from some tape (I wanted put a photograph of the three of us– Wufei, Trowa, and myself– on the wall), but she wouldn't give it to me. I think they were afraid that I'd try to use the tape to somehow kill myself, since I tried to slit my wrists after reading that letter.

I wish that I could tell them, tell Trowa and Wufei, tell Duo, even tell Heero, how much I miss them all, but I can't, I'm not allowed.

So that's why I'm talking to you now. Duo said that when he's not feeling that good, it helps him to speak to you, and I've been through a lot of bad stuff lately. The time intervals between Duo's letters are getting longer, soon he'll probably stop writing all together. I need something to keep me sane when that happens, I think talking to you will do that.

I have to stop now. The nurse wants to dope me up with some sedative– Iria is coming to visit me later on and they don't want me to be lucid enough to really talk to her. She– the nurse– is staring at me now, trying to figure out if it's safe to come near me, since she thinks I'm talking to myself, and that scares her.

Thank you for listening. Duo was right, it does help.

Maybe I can visit you again sometime...?