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?, first person monologue, and shounen ai (1x2, 3x4x5), but not in this part. I guess.

While my muse has returned, I'm trying very hard to keep her away from this part, since the ACoR wanted a shot at a fic, Fred bless her large and strangely rock-like heart...

Rapunzel: It is a rock, M.E.!

Oh, be quiet.

Someone to Talk To
Relena: Faerie Tale Countrie
By: M.E. (Magnificent Entity)


"[He] would have looked like a hero if only had known he was a hero; but he looked wretched, embarrassed, hunching his shoulders and losing his share in glory because nobody had ever told him he had a share in glory."

— from The Beginning Place, by Ursula K. Le Guin


It's the witching hour right now. The time between night and day, dream and awakening, when "all the dark things come out from hiding and have the world to themselves." [1] Everything is quiet, no sounds can be heard other than those made by my beating heart, shallow breathing, and, now, my whispered voice. The darkness around me is so complete I can't even see my hand in front of my face.

I would be a liar if I said that it didn't scare me, because it does. If it didn't I would be asleep now instead of sitting up in my bed, trying hard to ignore the dense, inky blackness around me.

I'm not succeeding.

So instead I'm talking to you, hoping that you will be able to comfort me, just like you did when I was younger and there was a monster in the closet or a nightmare under the bed.

As long as I talk, I know that you're still here, watching and listening.

As long as I talk, I know that I'm not alone.

I haven't talked to you since the war ended, have I? I haven't felt the need, I guess. That, or maybe I'm still mad at you for what you never told me, for the ignorant fantasy you allowed me to dream. Why didn't you ever tell me then that I was a hero (heroine) too? Why did you let me run around like a fool, trying to live a part of the fairy tale, when all the time I was already a main character in the story?

Why didn't you tell me that not every fairy tale ends with "happily ever after"?

The one that I'm in now, this twisted fable that has trapped us all in its fabric, certainly hasn't ended that way. I'm not talking about the fact that the princess didn't marry the hero. I always knew that that would never happen, and, truthfully, I never wanted it to happen. During the war, I didn't chase Heero because I was in love with him, I did it because he was the one solid thing left in my world, the one thing that still seemed to make sense. My world had become a bedtime story, one with a hero and knights in shining armor– an epic tale of good versus evil, or so it seemed. I couldn't comprehend it all, and so latched on to the one thing I could identify clearly, the hero.

The ending I'm talking about is the one that I'm living now along with the other heroes, the pilots. This endless and monotonous hell that seems to encompass us, choking out our breath and life.

I've written to Duo about this, and I know that he feels it too, perhaps even more than I do, since he knows what it's like to fly, and now they've put him in a cage and clipped his wings. He jokes about being forced to go to school, but I've learned to read between the lines in his letters, and I can see the pain that speaks in his voice. He's afraid, like I am, afraid they'll never let us out, afraid that we'll never get to be our own people. He's afraid that something's happened to Quatre.

I know why the cage bird sings. [2]

Sometimes I wonder if none of it ever happened, if the war never really happened. Other times I wonder if maybe it did happen and that we– myself and the pilots– are the make believe, the fiction in the story.

We were all heroes, but they've taken that away. They've taken away the glory, hiding it under impossible layers of scandal and hate. No one wants to admit that a handful of kids saved the world, no one wants to know the truth behind the soldiers. I have sunk into obscurity, and they have been cursed as ruthless killers, heartless machines bent on destruction.

In fighting, we became different. In being different, we have become something less than human.

Why do you continue to create Man with such a narrow mind? Haven't we paid enough for the betrayal of Adam and Eve?

Or maybe that's why you chose to leave me in ignorance. Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden because they chose knowledge over fear. Do you want us all to live in fear?

I'm crying now. All of it scares me. All of the dark things that have crawled out of the recesses of my mind.

More than anything, I want to be able to curl up on my father's lap and hear him tell me that everything will be all right. But he's not here anymore, he's gone, left me for the wolves.

You're still here.

Thank you.


[1] Paraphrased from Roald Dahl's The BFG. It was the only place I could find any reference to the witching hour, since I'm too lazy to look on the 'net right now.
[2] I had to read this book in eighth grade– we never actually finished it and I didn't particularly enjoy it, but I guess the poem is slightly better...