Julia was just finishing breakfast when the phone rang. She answered it, and found herself looking at Wufei's face. "Hi Wufei! Long time no see!" she said with a grin.
He smiled briefly at her, although the expression looked somewhat forced. Julia didn't mind - like Tousan, Wufei didn't smile very much, and even if he was forcing himself, it was nice of him to make an effort for her. "How was the flight home?" he inquired politely.
"Tousan didn't stop typing the entire time. Well, except for when Daddy tried to braid his hair," Julia grinned at the memory. She was grinning a lot nowadays. She didn't know what it was, the rest from school or something else, but her eyes and ears hadn't been giving her as much trouble as they had been at the beginning of the trip. They hardly broke free of her control more than once or twice a day during the entire trip, and they'd also behaved themselves on the shuttle ride back, for which Julia was very grateful. It was bad enough when it happened at home or school, when she could at least get up and go somewhere quiet for a few minutes, but trapped on the shuttle with all those other people...
She didn't know how long this was going to last, but she intended to make the most of it while it did!
The other reason she was smiling was that when they'd gotten back yesterday, there'd been a message waiting for her from Richard, saying that he'd thought about it and he'd like to talk to her whenever she got back. It was difficult to tell from the brief message, but he didn't look or sound like he was angry with her anymore. She'd find out soon enough - she was planning on heading over to see him as soon as she finished breakfast. It was already almost noon - she'd slept very late, both because of exhaustion from the trip and because of the time difference between here and L4. As far as her body was concerned, it was very early in the morning.
"How was your trip back?" Wufei, for his part, looked far too awake for her tastes. He was on the same schedule as her, how come he looked perfectly awake and aware and she was having trouble keeping her eyes open?
"Fine. Is your fat... is Heero around?" he corrected himself, and Julia stifled a giggle. How many years had she been around, and he still made that mistake every time that he asked to speak to one of her fathers.
"Didn't you guys talk enough about me and your kids in the past week?" Julia asked playfully.
Wufei smiled gave her a slight smile again, this one more real. "Enjoyable as that is, that's not why I called."
"So why did you?"
"It's just business."
That got Julia's attention. "What kind of business?" Tousan worked for a computer company, Wufei worked for the Preventers. They didn't work together. Maybe Wufei was just talking about giving Tousan something he'd left behind at Quatre's or something.
Wufei blinked, then frowned slightly. In the next instant the expression was gone as if it had never passed his face, and Julia wondered if she was imagining things. He raised one eyebrow and asked, "Can I speak with him?" with just a hint of irritation in his voice. Julia wasn't entirely sure whether he was teasing her or not about being irritated, and decided to play it safe.
"I'll get him." Julia turned her head towards the bedroom, where both of her fathers were still getting dressed, and hollered, "TOUSAN! PHONE!" She distinctly heard a loud thump from the other room, and a couple seconds later heard Daddy muttering words that he definitely wouldn't use if he knew she could hear him. A couple of seconds after that, Wufei's gaze shifted slightly, looking to one side of her, and Julia knew that Tousan had picked up the call on the phone in his room.
"Thank you, Julia," Wufei said, just before she hung up the phone in the kitchen.
"No problem!" she replied, still wondering what, exactly, they were talking about. She quickly decided that it was none of her business, finished breakfast, and cleaned up the kitchen a little.
Deciding she'd waited long enough for her parents to get dressed, Julia walked down the hall and knocked on their door.
After a few seconds Duo cracked open the door, wearing a bathrobe and a glare. His hair was mostly out of it's braid, for once, sticking out in a thousand different directions and tangling around his arms.
"I'm going out, I'll be back later," she told him.
"Where?"
"Going to see Richard." Julia didn't miss the well-concealed grimace that crossed his face before he went back to glaring.
"You know, Julie honey, there are better ways of getting our attention then screaming at the top of your lungs from the other end of the house," he pointed out.
"But then I would have had to walk over here," she responded reasonably.
"It's three miles to visit Richard, and you usually walk there!" he protested.
"Yes, but that's different, Daddy," she said, leaning over and giving him a kiss on the forehead.
He blinked, then glared at her. "Don't think you're getting off easy because of that," he warned her.
"Of course not, Daddy."
He glared at her again, then he became serious. "Seriously, Julie. Your otousan and I need to talk to you later, OK?"
Julia looked at him, concerned. It took a lot to make him stop joking around. "Is something wrong?"
"No, it's fine."
"OK," she replied, unconvinced. "I'll talk to you later, then."
"Sure."
---------
Julia found herself sitting in the foyer again, trying to keep her feet from tapping. This time she didn't have any paper to tear into confetti.
After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a few minutes, she heard soft footsteps on the carpet. She looked up and Richard was standing in the doorway, an expectant look on his face. When several seconds passed without either of them speaking, Julia finally found her voice. "Hi. Um. How have you been?"
She winced. That sounded awful, like every single syllable was being dragged out of her.
"Fine. How was your vacation?" he asked with a slight smile.
He seemed to be acting friendly enough. Maybe he didn't hate her. He had asked to talk to her, after all. "Pretty good. I had a good time. We just got back last night."
"Come on, we need to talk." He gestured for her to follow him, and then led her back to the small room they'd met in last time. Julia hesitated slightly when she saw where they were - she didn't exactly have the most pleasant memories of this place - but after a moment she steeled herself and stepped inside.
"Here." Richard held out the disk with all of her research that she'd given him the last time.
"Ah, thanks." Julia took the disk, but since she'd come without her backpack, she didn't have anywhere to put it, so she just rested it on her lap.
Richard sat quietly for a moment, then said, "I wanted to apologize to you, Julia. I've known you for a while, I should have known that you wouldn't make a claim like that frivolously."
"It's all right," Julia said uncomfortably. "I knew that it was a sensitive topic with you, I shouldn't have said anything. I'm sorry."
"Still... I didn't know," he told her, looking very unhappy.
Now she was really confused. "What?"
"I didn't know. If I had... I don't know what I would have done. But I didn't know," he repeated.
"Didn't know what?" she repeated, worried.
"All that stuff about the colonies. I had no idea things were like that there. All I knew was that we were at war with them, that they'd sent terrorists to kill us."
Oh. That explained it. "It wasn't your fault," she said immediately. "I had to hunt for this stuff, now, when the government doesn't really have any reason to hide it. Back then... there was no way you could have known. Look, I didn't give you that stuff so you'd feel guilty!" Julia wasn't certain exactly why she was irritated, but she was. How dare he go and make himself feel bad over something that he couldn't have done anything about anyway!
Richard chuckled at her, and after a couple of seconds, Julia chuckled too. "That was pretty ridiculous, wasn't it?" Julia asked,
"Fairly," he agreed easily. "Why did you show it to me, though?"
"I just... I needed someone to talk to, and... well, you know that I don't have any friends, and my advisor... she doesn't approve of where I'm taking this at all..."
"Hmmm. You have a lot of information there. It took me most of the week just to go through it."
"Yeah, well, I'm a genius, remember?" Julia joked weakly. She wasn't quite sure how to handle him knowing her secret. Her parents were the only other ones who knew, and they didn't joke about it.
"Yes, but you've still got a bunch of big holes. Is this all the information you have?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm assuming that you didn't write everything down. I wanted to know what you left out. Do you know anything about what happened that made the pilots go underground after they killed the doves?"
"No," Julia shook her head. "I thought something must have happened, but I've never been able to find any files to substantiate that."
Richard snorted. "There's a good reason for that. When I first heard about Operation Peace, I thought that it had to be some kind of sick joke. It wasn't until weeks later that I found out that it actually happened, and that was after I'd been injured. So I didn't really care, even then. I just remembered it when I was reading your information."
"What operation?" she demanded eagerly.
"Operation Peace," he repeated. "It was the code name for Colonel Une's plan to capture the Gundam pilots. Nice bit of irony, there," he added. "Naming any military maneuver 'peace'. Come on," he said, standing up.
"Where are we going?" she asked as he led her out of the room. "You can't just tell me that much and not tell me the rest of the story."
"I wasn't there," he replied. "But there's someone here who was. I'd rather you hear it from him first, then you can ask me some questions. Just let me speak to him first, make sure he remembers that he agreed to talk to you."
"Remembers?"
"Yes. If he does talk to you, just listen to what he has to say and thank him. I don't want to get him upset."
"Richard, what happened to him?" Julia asked quietly, certain now that Richard was avoiding talking about it. He slowed minutely.
"John... has lost more than most, even here. A few weeks after the battle I was talking about, he was in a fight with some of the former Alliance forces. His mobile suit got shot out from under him, and he got hit on the head and took some serious damage. He can remember bits and pieces of the war... and that's about it. He doesn't remember anything of his past before the war, and his memory after it is very shaky. He doesn't even remember his name. They've been trying for over fifteen years to either find a living relative or to help him start to remember, but so far they haven't had any success. But he did say that he wanted to tell you himself, and it isn't that often that he makes requests like that... is this all right with you?"
"Yeah, it's fine," Julia said nervously, squaring her shoulders. This was what she'd been expecting when she first met Richard, a man whose life had been entirely destroyed by the war. She hadn't looked forward to it then, and she didn't think it was going to be much fun now. But it wasn't this man's fault that something horrible had happened to him, and if nothing else, she owed it to Richard. "I'd like to hear it from him."
A small smile appeared on Richard's face. "Thank you," he said as they entered a large lounge. A bunch of men were crowded on couches around a large television, watching a sports program, every so often making loud comments directed at the coaches and players. "Wait here for a second," Richard told her. He spoke quietly to a couple of men who were playing cards. One of them set down the cards and stood up. Richard grabbed his arm at the elbow, and the other man guided him to a corner where a man sat in a large chair, looking at a book. He wasn't reading it - Julia could clearly see his eyes, and they weren't tracking back and forth as he scanned the lines - he was just staring into space. Richard thanked the man who'd guided him, sat in the chair opposite the man, and started talking.
Julia was distracted from watching them when there was a loud exclamation from the group of men watching the television, followed by a great deal of booing. She shifted her attention back to the screen, and saw that there was some kind of news announcement being made. It was interrupting the sports show, which was the reason for all the shouting. Julia would have turned away again, except that she noticed a small figure standing off behind and to the side of the person making the announcement. Chang Wufei, looking ever-so-serious, stood there, obviously as a guard for Lady Une, the head of the Preventers. Out of curiosity, she concentrated her hearing on the screen, so she could hear what was being said over the disgruntled mumbling.
"...managed to trace the electronic trail back to it's source, so that we will be able to apprehend every individual involved in this misguided attempt to resurrect mobile suit combat in the present age of peace..." Julia tuned it out again. Like most of what politicians said, anything Lady Une said was going to have a great deal of propaganda in it. If she wanted the facts, she could always look at a newspaper or something... Julia was about to turn back to Richard when something struck her as she stared at Wufei's face.
:Wait a minute... trace the electronic trail?! And Wufei said he wanted to talk to Tousan about business this morning...: Was her father working for the Preventers?
It sort of made sense, now that she thought about it. He was very good, there was no doubt about that. But the thought of her father working for the Preventers was just strange. Of course, Wufei knew that Tousan was very good, and they were good friends, Wufei had probably hired Tousan himself for this one thing. That made sense.
"Julia?" Julia turned automatically at the call, and saw Richard gesturing for her to come over. She steeled herself and obeyed, taking another chair in the corner.
"John... this is Julia, she's the one who wanted to hear the story," Richard said slowly. John turned his head towards her, his eyes focusing briefly on her face before sliding away.
"Julia," he mumbled to himself, then turned back towards Richard. "Have I ever met her before?" he asked.
"No, this is the first time you've met her," Richard explained patiently. Julia realized with a start that 'John' almost certainly was not that man's real name. How could it be, when he couldn't remember anything else about his past?
"Ah. She wants to hear about that battle? Very few people do. It was..." the man's face twisted into a parody of a smile, "... a great victory, wasn't it? They were on the verge of surrendering. That boy blew himself up. All we had to do was threaten thousands and thousands of innocent lives."
"What?" Julia asked, momentarily forgetting that she wasn't supposed to ask questions. "What happened?"
"Colonel Une happened. We got out there, and suddenly she was on broadband, saying that she'd blow up the colonies if the Gundam pilots didn't surrender. They were fighting, and they just... stopped. It was so silent, so very silent..." he mused to himself. He fell silent for a minute, then continued as if he'd never trailed off. "No one knew if it was going to work or not, then all of a sudden, there was an old man, saying that he'd surrender himself, but not the Gundams. Then the hatch of the first Gundam popped open, and the pilot came out. Damn it, he was just a kid! All that time fearing them, and he was just a kid!" His voice had a slightly hysterical tinge in it, now, and Richard looked mildly alarmed. "He just stood there for a second, then he raised his hand... and he self-destructed his own damn suit! While he was standing in it! Didn't even try to get clear, just pushed the button, everything went white... Three of our guys got caught up in the explosion. Just stepped out and killed himself..." he mumbled, his eyes losing the clarity they'd had a moment before. His eyes drifted closed after a couple of seconds, and when he opened them again, they were as glazed as they'd been when she first arrived. "Richard," he said slowly. "Didn't you want me to help you with something?"
"You just did, thank you," Richard said quietly.
"Oh."
"Thank you very much," Julia said, standing up. He turned to look at her, and she saw from the confusion on his face that he had no idea who she was. She managed a weak smile and beat a hasty retreat to the other side of the room.
A few minutes later, Richard joined her by the door and they silently walked back to the room they'd started in. "What happened, exactly?" she asked slowly. She thought she understood what was happening, but she wanted to make sure before she jumped to any enormous conclusions. And this was pretty enormous, if she was right.
"He said it pretty clearly, this time," Richard said quietly, aware of how serious the issue was. "Lady Une threatened to destroy several of the colonies with space-based missile systems unless the Gundam pilots surrendered. Instead of surrendering, pilot 01 stepped out of his Gundam and self-destructed. Presumably they all would have done it if someone hadn't overridden the Colonel's orders and let the rest of them escape."
"He... he said the pilot was just a kid," Julia said slowly. "Like early twenties? Just out of the Academy?"
"Probably, I don't know, not many people actually saw him," Richard replied. "Does this help you?"
"Yes! I mean... I've been trying to figure out what happened then for months, and... thank you!" :So that's what happened to 01a. I wonder how the pilot survived...: There was no doubt in her mind that the pilot had indeed survived, somehow. She would have noticed if the tactics had changed noticeably, and they would have, if there'd been a new pilot 01. She felt an obscure sense of relief that he had somehow survived. She remembered stumbling across a report somewhere that said that pilot 01 was 'more than human'. Maybe this was what they were referring to.
"Julia?"
Julia started, and realized that in her preoccupation with the new information, she'd completely missed whatever Richard had just said. "What?"
"Can you come back later this week?"
"Come back?" Julia said, attempting to drag her thoughts back on track. "But I just got here a half-hour ago."
Richard raised one eyebrow. "Are you saying you don't want to go home right now and add this to your notes?"
"Um... no?" Julia said. It didn't sound as if she was even making an attempt to sound convincing. "Sorry," she apologized as Richard chuckled.
"It's all right, I thought this would happen. It's my own fault for not talking to you *before* I gave you something to think about," he said, waving a hand to show that he really didn't mind. "You are going to come back and tell me about your vacation, aren't you?" he asked with mock sternness.
"Yes, of course I will!" Julia said, standing up. "You really don't mind? I just really want to think through some things..."
"It's fine, as long as you let me have a look at the final product," Richard said, his face once again slightly uneasy. "Julia, I really am interested in what you have to say about this. I'm not sure what to think, exactly, but I am here if you need to talk, all right?"
"Thanks, that means... a lot to me," Julia said gratefully. "I'll talk to you later."
---------
:They weren't expecting to live through it.: Julia sat back in her chair, staring at the computer screen, and shivered. :No wonder they took such risks. No wonder they threw themselves into battle. They all felt like they had nothing to lose.: The shiver grew more pronounced.
Julia had run all the way home from visiting Richard, snagged a peanut-butter sandwich on her way through the kitchen, and headed upstairs to her room to review everything she'd seen and thought about the Gundam pilots with this new information. They were willing, even waiting to die for their cause. To just obey and order like that... Julia shivered again, wishing that she didn't understand them as much as she felt she did. If she hadn't studied them so thoroughly, hadn't worked so hard to get into their heads, maybe she wouldn't feel like this now... empty. They must have already counted themselves as dead. How could anyone live like that?
A lot of things made more sense now, like Oz's silence on the matter of why the Gundams had gone into hiding - they *knew* why the Gundams had gone into hiding. They'd done it to protect the colonies. It also explained why the Gundams had reappeared immediately *after* the colonies cut them loose. Once the colonies had officially denied any connection with the Gundams, Oz must have assumed that the Gundams wouldn't care if they threatened the colonies. So in an odd way, by betraying the Gundams, the colonies had freed them to act. It was still completely unforgivable.
It also reinforced her impression that the pilots must have had a very good reason to fight. It was one thing to dedicate your life to a cause, it was another thing to give it up before you even started. Because that was the only way she could see 01 - or any of them - being that ready to kill themselves. He obeyed orders, but even so...
Julia realized that she wasn't being particularly objective at this point, but by now, she'd invested way too much of her time, energy, and thoughts into it to have any pretense at objectivity. She'd spent the past several months trying to get into the heads of the pilots, trying to *become* them at some level - you couldn't do that without loosing objectivity. It was going to make things more difficult when she finally got around to writing up her project.
Abruptly pushing her chair back and standing up, Julia paced back and forth across her room for several minutes, trying to take a step back. The real reason that she was thinking that 01 wouldn't just obey an order to kill himself was that she didn't want to believe it. She didn't really know what he had been like, but a person who would give their life to a cause, who would kill themselves at an order to save innocents did not deserve to be given that order. If that old man, whoever he was, had expected 01 to follow that order, and it seemed likely that he had, he should not have given it. There should have been a better way.
That was patently ridiculous. The world was not a fair place, and bad things happened, if that wasn't the case the war would never have happened. Just because she thought something was wrong didn't mean anything. And things certainly didn't change just because she thought they should.
But... at another level, wasn't that exactly what the Gundam pilots had done? At some point they must have decided that there was something wrong with the way things were, and they went and did something about it.
Julia heard a knock on the door and Duo-daddy said, "Julia, are you sure you're all right?"
"Fine," she answered automatically.
"All right, then we're going to bed."
:Bed?: Julia turned to look at the clock on her wall, and realized that it was a little after midnight. That was impossible, wasn't it? Where the hell had the time gone? She'd gotten back from visiting Richard a little before 2 in the afternoon. Surely it hadn't been that long already?
Julia had an unfortunate tendency to get so engrossed in a project that she would become oblivious to any outside event, including the passage of time, the attempts of her parents to get her attention, the ringing of her alarm clock, or any number of things that she really should have paid more attention to. But usually she only lost an hour or two when working on a project (all right, three or four was more typical, and she knew she'd lost six or seven a couple of times), but this had to be a new record!
:This is getting absolutely ridiculous.: Now that Julia thought about it, she dimly remembered one or both of her parents trying in vain to get her attention, probably to come down for dinner, and her brushing them off. Julia deliberately turned off the screen of her computer. She'd been at this more than long enough, and now that she'd finally snapped out of it, she was aware of other discomforts that had crept up on her while she wasn't paying attention. She was starving, for instance, having only had a quick breakfast and a peanut butter sandwich to tide her over all day. She also had to go to the bathroom quite badly. Plus she hadn't taken a shower today, so she was beginning to feel quite filthy. Not to mention the fact that it was after midnight and she had school tomorrow. Not that she actually needed to be awake for that, but still...
Julia got up and crept down the stairs as quietly as she could manage, aware that she was probably going to keep her parents awake despite her best attempts otherwise. She quickly heated up a can of soup (the refrigerator was basically empty, since they'd just gotten home) and ate it as quickly as she could manage. When she crept back up the stairs, she could still hear her parents talking quietly. She quickly stripped, wrapped a towel around herself, and then walked to the bathroom, which was luckily at the other end of the house from her parents' room. There she showered as quickly as she could manage and still get her hair clean. It wasn't until she was almost finished that she remembered that her parents had wanted to talk to her, and she must have ignored them and missed the meeting. She promised herself that she'd talk to them first thing in the morning. As she quietly walked back to her room, she was pleased to note that the sounds of talking coming from her parents' room had ceased, and she could hear two slow, steady heartbeats.
She smiled to herself and finished walking back to her room. There, she closed the door, toweled herself off, and changed into pajamas. She cast one last longing look at the computer before firmly telling herself that she did need to get some sleep tonight, and climbing into bed.
---------
Julia did not sleep well that night. Her dreams were a jumble of everything she'd learned about the Gundam pilots, and a great deal of things that weren't. An old man she'd never seen before looked at her disapprovingly, then told her to go kill herself. Before she could respond, she stood on a battlefield, as a pilot stepped out of Gundam 01. But it wasn't the pilot of 01, it was her own Tousan, and as he raised his hand and pushed the self-destruct button, she could hear Duo-daddy screaming. Slowly the screaming died down to a mere whimper, but somehow that was even worse than the screaming.
It sounded like... she didn't know, she had never heard anything like it before, there was nothing for her to compare it to. It sounded like someone was having their heart torn out, like something in them had be broken beyond repair... it was the most horrible sound Julia had ever heard...
Julia started awake, her heart racing. Her entire body was one clenched muscle, she was shaking slightly, and she could feel sweat soaking her nightclothes. :What... what was that...: Her mind seemed to be refusing to function, which might have been why it took her several seconds to recognize the sound of low conversation coming from her parents room. Was that what had finally woken her? She concentrated on her parents' voices.
"...you all right?" once again she heard that odd, very tender note in her otousan's voice.
There was a long silence, then Daddy finally whispered, "You know I'll be fine." There was another long silence, then, "It's just with everything that's happening, it keeps coming back." He laughed weakly. "I know Julie doesn't mean it, but she's not making things any easier..." he trailed off, while Julia felt a deep stab of guilt. She'd been right, it was her fault! She was doing something wrong, something that was making him have bad dreams... She cut off that trail of thought when Duo-daddy spoke again. "I'm not going back to sleep tonight. Is that all right?" There was an odd little hitch in his voice that sounded vaguely familiar, and Julia let her concentration slip as she tried to remember where she'd heard something like that before.
She missed Tousan's answer as she realized where she'd heard that sound before. :Oh God, the whimpering. He sounds like that... it's the same tone... I must have heard him while I was sleeping, that's what woke me up... Oh God, he's the one that was making those sounds, I made him make those sounds...: Before she even realized what she was doing, Julia stood up and grabbed a robe off the hook near the door as she threw it open and hurried down the hall to her parents' room. She knocked on the door, silently counted to five to give them a chance to throw the sheets over themselves if they were indecent, and then pushed open the door.
It was dark in the room, but Julia forced her eyes to adjust and in less than a second everything took on a crystalline clarity despite the lack of light. She had just an instant to see the naked shock on both her fathers' faces, as well as the open pain showing in her Daddy's eyes before they both recovered. It was almost painful to see the pain in his eyes suddenly disappear as he tried to hide it from her. For a moment they just stood there, staring at each other.
"Julie, what's wrong?" Daddy finally asked, reaching for the light on the table right next to his bed. Julia threw her arm up in front of her eyes to protect them from the sudden light, frantically trying to reduce the sensitivity that she'd called up seconds before. She was mostly successful, and only winced slightly when he turned on the light. Daddy got up from where he was lying in Tousan's arms, looking concerned.
"Daddy!" Julia took several steps forward, wanting to give him a hug, but at the same time irrationally afraid that she'd somehow cause him more harm. "I'm sorry!" she cried, fighting back tears.
Daddy immediately looked more alarmed, and quickly crossed the distance between them, embracing her. "What's happened? Are you all right? Why are you so upset?" the words tumbled over themselves as he spoke.
Julia shook her head, crying freely now, and pulled away. "It's my fault. It's all my fault. I'm sorry. I don't know what I did, but I'm sorry! I know I shouldn't, but I couldn't help it..." she broke down sobbing, and allowed Duo-daddy to pull her back against his chest, stroking her head gently.
"Shhh, shhh, now calm down. I know you'd never do anything to hurt either of us, all right? I know that. Tousan knows that. Now, what do you think you did that was so horrible? Is this about earlier?"
"Yes... no!" Julia corrected herself. "No, it's more than that. I... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, but I've heard you. A lot. In the last few months." She felt him tense, and the hand stroking her head stilled for several seconds before resuming it's motion. Before she could loose her nerve, Julia quickly continued, "Ever since that first night I asked you about living in the colonies. You... you keep having nightmares, and it's my fault, and I don't understand! You were... you were talking about Maxwell, and I don't know what that means!" She felt him tense again as she mentioned his own last name. "Please," she pleaded. "Explain to me, what Maxwell it, please! I won't ever mention it again, I promise! I just need to know, so I can stop! I... I'm sorry!" she broke down sobbing again.
Tousan turned on a few more lights, and then came over to stand with her and Daddy, placing a comforting hand on her back. "Shhh, shhh, it's going to be fine, shhh... take it easy," Daddy soothed, guiding her over to the bed, where they all sat down. "None of this is your fault. Really. You listening? This is not your fault. If anything, it's my fault." Julia stared at him and shook her head slightly. She knew what she'd heard earlier.
"Look, there were some things we wanted to talk to you about, anyway," Daddy continued. "I have to admit, two in the morning is not the exact time for discussing it that I had in mind, but I guess it will have to do," he joked, and Julia smiled weakly. "I'll explain to you about Maxwell first, and then we'll get into... other things."
Julia wondered briefly what 'other things' he was talking about, but put that aside for the moment as he began to speak.
"You already know that I'm from L2, originally, I think."
"You think?"
Duo-daddy gave her a kind smile. "I'm an orphan. I think. I can't remember ever having a family, at least."
"Oh."
"What do you know about L2? I don't want to be repeating anything."
"Um... I know that it was in an economic slump for a long time before the war, but that very little aide was getting through to it. There were a lot of slums there. Ah, there were a bunch of plagues that swept through there, with varying results..."
"That... that's far enough," Daddy stopped her. "The plague is as good a place to start as any."
"The plague?" Julia asked with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"Yeah. L2 wasn't a great place to be an orphan," he said quietly, his tone light, but Julia could tell it was forced. "I grew up on the streets. There were some gangs, and one of them took me in. Well, the guy in charge of the gang took me in. Taught me how to stay alive, basically. His name was Solo." A shadow of some painful emotion passed over his face. "Then there was one of the plagues... and he died." The closed-in look on his face made her think that there was more to it than that, but he had told her enough. "That's when I picked my first name, actually," he said.
"You... picked your first name?" Julia asked, confused. No one did that.
"Well, I was an orphan, and a street rat to boot. There weren't exactly a ton of people lining up to name me. It was better, actually, not to have one on the street. You didn't know people's names, you didn't hurt as much when they died. But after Solo died, I wanted to remember him, so..." he shrugged slightly. "After that, I was in charge of all the kids. Took care of them for a while. Then we sort of... stumbled..." his lips quirked upwards in a wry smile, "into a better situation. We got taken in at a church. Father Maxwell ran it, along with Sister Helen. It was called Maxwell Church."
Julia had a good idea where this was going, given how he'd gotten his first name, but that didn't completely explain the unsettled feeling she had. Something about that little smile... she couldn't figure out what it was, and Daddy was continuing his story.
"I liked it there. Things were tight, but the Father and Sister were good people. They always had orphans coming through, with not enough money for everyone, but they managed somehow. They tried to place everyone in foster homes, but I just wasn't cut out for that sort of thing. I stayed with them for a long time, a couple of years, I guess." A small smile had appeared on his face at that point, but it disappeared at his next words, "Yeah, it was great, while it lasted."
"What happened?" Julia asked after several seconds of silence.
"The Rebels happened. The Alliance happened. The war happened." Daddy took a deep breath. "Rebels on the run from the Alliance took refuge inside the Church. We helped take care of the wounded, but they wanted more... and the Father wouldn't give it to them. He refused to take sides. They threatened him, and Sister Helen, and the kids that were there. I... I offered to go steal a mobile suit for them, if they'd leave us alone."
"You what?!"
"Offered to steal a mobile suit for them. They said that they needed one, and I wanted them to leave Father Maxwell and Sister Helen alone."
"How old were you?"
"I'm not sure, eight or nine, I guess."
"You were eight or nine and you were going to try to steal a mobile suit?" she asked, shocked. That just didn't make any sense. "Wait a second, how old were you when you were taking care of those kids? You said that you were taking care of them for a while..."
He shrugged again. "I don't know, six or seven sounds about right."
"But... that... How could... um... how could you expect to steal a mobile suit if you were only eight?"
"I couldda been nine," he pointed out with a short laugh that was only a shadow of his normal attitude. "And genius knows no age limit." The uneasy feeling in her gut was getting bigger. "Julia, I did a lot of stuff to keep us alive, including some things that weren't so good. Stealing was among those things. When the Rebels arrived, it seemed like the natural response to me, to offer to steal it. That was the way things worked there." He watched her carefully, waiting for some kind of response.
Julia swallowed and tried to ignore the image of her father struggling to survive on the streets, stealing in order to live... and then offering to steal a mobile suit when he was only nine... things like that just weren't supposed to happen to people you knew... and the story wasn't over yet. Julia knew without asking that the worst was yet to come. "Then what happened?"
"I grabbed the mobile suit, and I drove the truck back to the Church," he said, his eyes distant. "There wasn't anything left. The Alliance had discovered where the Rebels were hiding and with their usual efficiency they bombed the church into the ground. There was nothing left. Two hundred and forty-five people died there, mostly kids I'd brought in along with the Father and Sister Helen. And the Rebels, of course," he added bitterly. "I got back just in time for Sister Helen to die in my arms. She blessed me with her last words," he added, a dark edge in his voice. "Alliance caught me there, wasted too much time checking bodies," he said in an off-hand tone that horrified her. How could he act that way? Had he seen that much death that checking bodies was another 'natural' step for him?
"Anyway, after that I started calling myself Duo Maxwell. It's my name, and it was also a way of remembering... a part of me died that day. I don't know if Father Maxwell and Sister Helen would have approved of what I became, but I didn't feel like I had any other choice, everything else had been taken from me. I lived... a very long time where the only thing keeping me going was getting revenge on the Alliance. I just..."
Julia suddenly lost track of what he was saying as his last words impacted on her. :The only thing keeping him going was getting back at the Alliance... And he said that something died, that there was nothing left for him... nothing to loose. And 02 danced into battle, threw himself at them, had a very personal reason... and his fighting style was so familiar... and Daddy knows how to fight, but he won't tell me where or how... and the guns...:
Julia stood up and backed away from the bed, staring at her father as if she'd never seen him before. "It... it can't be!" she stammered. He just stared back at her with an expression she'd never seen before, with eyes that looked far too old. God, he looked positively ancient when he looked at her like that. She was dimly aware of Tousan getting up and walking to the door and shutting it firmly before repeating the process with the windows. He drew the shades, too, although it was still the middle of the night and pitch black out. She kept staring at Duo-daddy. The thought forming in her head couldn't be true, it was impossible... "You... you can't be..." she stammered, mentally scrambling for some reason that it couldn't be true. "You... you would have only been sixteen or seventeen, you couldn't be..." she trailed off, staring at her father. After several seconds, he finally responded.
"Actually, we were fifteen."
Aaagh! I can't believe I finally got here. I'm sure that I had some very clever comments to make here about this section, but I'm not sure that anyone will care what I have to say after leaving you guys hanging like that. So sorry! (I feel especially bad since last time I sent something out someone commented on how glad they were that I didn't leave cliffhangers, and here I've done it.) Anyway, I am already working on the next section. Story's not anywhere near finished yet, though. I have at least three or four more sections to go, I think. And I'm babbling.
Anyway, a few notes, now that I'm calm again (really). Sorry about the abrupt ending with Richard's section, but I couldn't think of any way that she could stay and have a conversation with him without it sounding absolutely ridiculous, so I didn't even try. In this last section, I did my best to stick to what was said in the Episode Zeros, but I'm not sure how I did. If I had any major inconsistencies, please let me know.
So... :peaks out from behind computer screen: ...did I do OK?
Marika :) 12/13/01
He smiled briefly at her, although the expression looked somewhat forced. Julia didn't mind - like Tousan, Wufei didn't smile very much, and even if he was forcing himself, it was nice of him to make an effort for her. "How was the flight home?" he inquired politely.
"Tousan didn't stop typing the entire time. Well, except for when Daddy tried to braid his hair," Julia grinned at the memory. She was grinning a lot nowadays. She didn't know what it was, the rest from school or something else, but her eyes and ears hadn't been giving her as much trouble as they had been at the beginning of the trip. They hardly broke free of her control more than once or twice a day during the entire trip, and they'd also behaved themselves on the shuttle ride back, for which Julia was very grateful. It was bad enough when it happened at home or school, when she could at least get up and go somewhere quiet for a few minutes, but trapped on the shuttle with all those other people...
She didn't know how long this was going to last, but she intended to make the most of it while it did!
The other reason she was smiling was that when they'd gotten back yesterday, there'd been a message waiting for her from Richard, saying that he'd thought about it and he'd like to talk to her whenever she got back. It was difficult to tell from the brief message, but he didn't look or sound like he was angry with her anymore. She'd find out soon enough - she was planning on heading over to see him as soon as she finished breakfast. It was already almost noon - she'd slept very late, both because of exhaustion from the trip and because of the time difference between here and L4. As far as her body was concerned, it was very early in the morning.
"How was your trip back?" Wufei, for his part, looked far too awake for her tastes. He was on the same schedule as her, how come he looked perfectly awake and aware and she was having trouble keeping her eyes open?
"Fine. Is your fat... is Heero around?" he corrected himself, and Julia stifled a giggle. How many years had she been around, and he still made that mistake every time that he asked to speak to one of her fathers.
"Didn't you guys talk enough about me and your kids in the past week?" Julia asked playfully.
Wufei smiled gave her a slight smile again, this one more real. "Enjoyable as that is, that's not why I called."
"So why did you?"
"It's just business."
That got Julia's attention. "What kind of business?" Tousan worked for a computer company, Wufei worked for the Preventers. They didn't work together. Maybe Wufei was just talking about giving Tousan something he'd left behind at Quatre's or something.
Wufei blinked, then frowned slightly. In the next instant the expression was gone as if it had never passed his face, and Julia wondered if she was imagining things. He raised one eyebrow and asked, "Can I speak with him?" with just a hint of irritation in his voice. Julia wasn't entirely sure whether he was teasing her or not about being irritated, and decided to play it safe.
"I'll get him." Julia turned her head towards the bedroom, where both of her fathers were still getting dressed, and hollered, "TOUSAN! PHONE!" She distinctly heard a loud thump from the other room, and a couple seconds later heard Daddy muttering words that he definitely wouldn't use if he knew she could hear him. A couple of seconds after that, Wufei's gaze shifted slightly, looking to one side of her, and Julia knew that Tousan had picked up the call on the phone in his room.
"Thank you, Julia," Wufei said, just before she hung up the phone in the kitchen.
"No problem!" she replied, still wondering what, exactly, they were talking about. She quickly decided that it was none of her business, finished breakfast, and cleaned up the kitchen a little.
Deciding she'd waited long enough for her parents to get dressed, Julia walked down the hall and knocked on their door.
After a few seconds Duo cracked open the door, wearing a bathrobe and a glare. His hair was mostly out of it's braid, for once, sticking out in a thousand different directions and tangling around his arms.
"I'm going out, I'll be back later," she told him.
"Where?"
"Going to see Richard." Julia didn't miss the well-concealed grimace that crossed his face before he went back to glaring.
"You know, Julie honey, there are better ways of getting our attention then screaming at the top of your lungs from the other end of the house," he pointed out.
"But then I would have had to walk over here," she responded reasonably.
"It's three miles to visit Richard, and you usually walk there!" he protested.
"Yes, but that's different, Daddy," she said, leaning over and giving him a kiss on the forehead.
He blinked, then glared at her. "Don't think you're getting off easy because of that," he warned her.
"Of course not, Daddy."
He glared at her again, then he became serious. "Seriously, Julie. Your otousan and I need to talk to you later, OK?"
Julia looked at him, concerned. It took a lot to make him stop joking around. "Is something wrong?"
"No, it's fine."
"OK," she replied, unconvinced. "I'll talk to you later, then."
"Sure."
---------
Julia found herself sitting in the foyer again, trying to keep her feet from tapping. This time she didn't have any paper to tear into confetti.
After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a few minutes, she heard soft footsteps on the carpet. She looked up and Richard was standing in the doorway, an expectant look on his face. When several seconds passed without either of them speaking, Julia finally found her voice. "Hi. Um. How have you been?"
She winced. That sounded awful, like every single syllable was being dragged out of her.
"Fine. How was your vacation?" he asked with a slight smile.
He seemed to be acting friendly enough. Maybe he didn't hate her. He had asked to talk to her, after all. "Pretty good. I had a good time. We just got back last night."
"Come on, we need to talk." He gestured for her to follow him, and then led her back to the small room they'd met in last time. Julia hesitated slightly when she saw where they were - she didn't exactly have the most pleasant memories of this place - but after a moment she steeled herself and stepped inside.
"Here." Richard held out the disk with all of her research that she'd given him the last time.
"Ah, thanks." Julia took the disk, but since she'd come without her backpack, she didn't have anywhere to put it, so she just rested it on her lap.
Richard sat quietly for a moment, then said, "I wanted to apologize to you, Julia. I've known you for a while, I should have known that you wouldn't make a claim like that frivolously."
"It's all right," Julia said uncomfortably. "I knew that it was a sensitive topic with you, I shouldn't have said anything. I'm sorry."
"Still... I didn't know," he told her, looking very unhappy.
Now she was really confused. "What?"
"I didn't know. If I had... I don't know what I would have done. But I didn't know," he repeated.
"Didn't know what?" she repeated, worried.
"All that stuff about the colonies. I had no idea things were like that there. All I knew was that we were at war with them, that they'd sent terrorists to kill us."
Oh. That explained it. "It wasn't your fault," she said immediately. "I had to hunt for this stuff, now, when the government doesn't really have any reason to hide it. Back then... there was no way you could have known. Look, I didn't give you that stuff so you'd feel guilty!" Julia wasn't certain exactly why she was irritated, but she was. How dare he go and make himself feel bad over something that he couldn't have done anything about anyway!
Richard chuckled at her, and after a couple of seconds, Julia chuckled too. "That was pretty ridiculous, wasn't it?" Julia asked,
"Fairly," he agreed easily. "Why did you show it to me, though?"
"I just... I needed someone to talk to, and... well, you know that I don't have any friends, and my advisor... she doesn't approve of where I'm taking this at all..."
"Hmmm. You have a lot of information there. It took me most of the week just to go through it."
"Yeah, well, I'm a genius, remember?" Julia joked weakly. She wasn't quite sure how to handle him knowing her secret. Her parents were the only other ones who knew, and they didn't joke about it.
"Yes, but you've still got a bunch of big holes. Is this all the information you have?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm assuming that you didn't write everything down. I wanted to know what you left out. Do you know anything about what happened that made the pilots go underground after they killed the doves?"
"No," Julia shook her head. "I thought something must have happened, but I've never been able to find any files to substantiate that."
Richard snorted. "There's a good reason for that. When I first heard about Operation Peace, I thought that it had to be some kind of sick joke. It wasn't until weeks later that I found out that it actually happened, and that was after I'd been injured. So I didn't really care, even then. I just remembered it when I was reading your information."
"What operation?" she demanded eagerly.
"Operation Peace," he repeated. "It was the code name for Colonel Une's plan to capture the Gundam pilots. Nice bit of irony, there," he added. "Naming any military maneuver 'peace'. Come on," he said, standing up.
"Where are we going?" she asked as he led her out of the room. "You can't just tell me that much and not tell me the rest of the story."
"I wasn't there," he replied. "But there's someone here who was. I'd rather you hear it from him first, then you can ask me some questions. Just let me speak to him first, make sure he remembers that he agreed to talk to you."
"Remembers?"
"Yes. If he does talk to you, just listen to what he has to say and thank him. I don't want to get him upset."
"Richard, what happened to him?" Julia asked quietly, certain now that Richard was avoiding talking about it. He slowed minutely.
"John... has lost more than most, even here. A few weeks after the battle I was talking about, he was in a fight with some of the former Alliance forces. His mobile suit got shot out from under him, and he got hit on the head and took some serious damage. He can remember bits and pieces of the war... and that's about it. He doesn't remember anything of his past before the war, and his memory after it is very shaky. He doesn't even remember his name. They've been trying for over fifteen years to either find a living relative or to help him start to remember, but so far they haven't had any success. But he did say that he wanted to tell you himself, and it isn't that often that he makes requests like that... is this all right with you?"
"Yeah, it's fine," Julia said nervously, squaring her shoulders. This was what she'd been expecting when she first met Richard, a man whose life had been entirely destroyed by the war. She hadn't looked forward to it then, and she didn't think it was going to be much fun now. But it wasn't this man's fault that something horrible had happened to him, and if nothing else, she owed it to Richard. "I'd like to hear it from him."
A small smile appeared on Richard's face. "Thank you," he said as they entered a large lounge. A bunch of men were crowded on couches around a large television, watching a sports program, every so often making loud comments directed at the coaches and players. "Wait here for a second," Richard told her. He spoke quietly to a couple of men who were playing cards. One of them set down the cards and stood up. Richard grabbed his arm at the elbow, and the other man guided him to a corner where a man sat in a large chair, looking at a book. He wasn't reading it - Julia could clearly see his eyes, and they weren't tracking back and forth as he scanned the lines - he was just staring into space. Richard thanked the man who'd guided him, sat in the chair opposite the man, and started talking.
Julia was distracted from watching them when there was a loud exclamation from the group of men watching the television, followed by a great deal of booing. She shifted her attention back to the screen, and saw that there was some kind of news announcement being made. It was interrupting the sports show, which was the reason for all the shouting. Julia would have turned away again, except that she noticed a small figure standing off behind and to the side of the person making the announcement. Chang Wufei, looking ever-so-serious, stood there, obviously as a guard for Lady Une, the head of the Preventers. Out of curiosity, she concentrated her hearing on the screen, so she could hear what was being said over the disgruntled mumbling.
"...managed to trace the electronic trail back to it's source, so that we will be able to apprehend every individual involved in this misguided attempt to resurrect mobile suit combat in the present age of peace..." Julia tuned it out again. Like most of what politicians said, anything Lady Une said was going to have a great deal of propaganda in it. If she wanted the facts, she could always look at a newspaper or something... Julia was about to turn back to Richard when something struck her as she stared at Wufei's face.
:Wait a minute... trace the electronic trail?! And Wufei said he wanted to talk to Tousan about business this morning...: Was her father working for the Preventers?
It sort of made sense, now that she thought about it. He was very good, there was no doubt about that. But the thought of her father working for the Preventers was just strange. Of course, Wufei knew that Tousan was very good, and they were good friends, Wufei had probably hired Tousan himself for this one thing. That made sense.
"Julia?" Julia turned automatically at the call, and saw Richard gesturing for her to come over. She steeled herself and obeyed, taking another chair in the corner.
"John... this is Julia, she's the one who wanted to hear the story," Richard said slowly. John turned his head towards her, his eyes focusing briefly on her face before sliding away.
"Julia," he mumbled to himself, then turned back towards Richard. "Have I ever met her before?" he asked.
"No, this is the first time you've met her," Richard explained patiently. Julia realized with a start that 'John' almost certainly was not that man's real name. How could it be, when he couldn't remember anything else about his past?
"Ah. She wants to hear about that battle? Very few people do. It was..." the man's face twisted into a parody of a smile, "... a great victory, wasn't it? They were on the verge of surrendering. That boy blew himself up. All we had to do was threaten thousands and thousands of innocent lives."
"What?" Julia asked, momentarily forgetting that she wasn't supposed to ask questions. "What happened?"
"Colonel Une happened. We got out there, and suddenly she was on broadband, saying that she'd blow up the colonies if the Gundam pilots didn't surrender. They were fighting, and they just... stopped. It was so silent, so very silent..." he mused to himself. He fell silent for a minute, then continued as if he'd never trailed off. "No one knew if it was going to work or not, then all of a sudden, there was an old man, saying that he'd surrender himself, but not the Gundams. Then the hatch of the first Gundam popped open, and the pilot came out. Damn it, he was just a kid! All that time fearing them, and he was just a kid!" His voice had a slightly hysterical tinge in it, now, and Richard looked mildly alarmed. "He just stood there for a second, then he raised his hand... and he self-destructed his own damn suit! While he was standing in it! Didn't even try to get clear, just pushed the button, everything went white... Three of our guys got caught up in the explosion. Just stepped out and killed himself..." he mumbled, his eyes losing the clarity they'd had a moment before. His eyes drifted closed after a couple of seconds, and when he opened them again, they were as glazed as they'd been when she first arrived. "Richard," he said slowly. "Didn't you want me to help you with something?"
"You just did, thank you," Richard said quietly.
"Oh."
"Thank you very much," Julia said, standing up. He turned to look at her, and she saw from the confusion on his face that he had no idea who she was. She managed a weak smile and beat a hasty retreat to the other side of the room.
A few minutes later, Richard joined her by the door and they silently walked back to the room they'd started in. "What happened, exactly?" she asked slowly. She thought she understood what was happening, but she wanted to make sure before she jumped to any enormous conclusions. And this was pretty enormous, if she was right.
"He said it pretty clearly, this time," Richard said quietly, aware of how serious the issue was. "Lady Une threatened to destroy several of the colonies with space-based missile systems unless the Gundam pilots surrendered. Instead of surrendering, pilot 01 stepped out of his Gundam and self-destructed. Presumably they all would have done it if someone hadn't overridden the Colonel's orders and let the rest of them escape."
"He... he said the pilot was just a kid," Julia said slowly. "Like early twenties? Just out of the Academy?"
"Probably, I don't know, not many people actually saw him," Richard replied. "Does this help you?"
"Yes! I mean... I've been trying to figure out what happened then for months, and... thank you!" :So that's what happened to 01a. I wonder how the pilot survived...: There was no doubt in her mind that the pilot had indeed survived, somehow. She would have noticed if the tactics had changed noticeably, and they would have, if there'd been a new pilot 01. She felt an obscure sense of relief that he had somehow survived. She remembered stumbling across a report somewhere that said that pilot 01 was 'more than human'. Maybe this was what they were referring to.
"Julia?"
Julia started, and realized that in her preoccupation with the new information, she'd completely missed whatever Richard had just said. "What?"
"Can you come back later this week?"
"Come back?" Julia said, attempting to drag her thoughts back on track. "But I just got here a half-hour ago."
Richard raised one eyebrow. "Are you saying you don't want to go home right now and add this to your notes?"
"Um... no?" Julia said. It didn't sound as if she was even making an attempt to sound convincing. "Sorry," she apologized as Richard chuckled.
"It's all right, I thought this would happen. It's my own fault for not talking to you *before* I gave you something to think about," he said, waving a hand to show that he really didn't mind. "You are going to come back and tell me about your vacation, aren't you?" he asked with mock sternness.
"Yes, of course I will!" Julia said, standing up. "You really don't mind? I just really want to think through some things..."
"It's fine, as long as you let me have a look at the final product," Richard said, his face once again slightly uneasy. "Julia, I really am interested in what you have to say about this. I'm not sure what to think, exactly, but I am here if you need to talk, all right?"
"Thanks, that means... a lot to me," Julia said gratefully. "I'll talk to you later."
---------
:They weren't expecting to live through it.: Julia sat back in her chair, staring at the computer screen, and shivered. :No wonder they took such risks. No wonder they threw themselves into battle. They all felt like they had nothing to lose.: The shiver grew more pronounced.
Julia had run all the way home from visiting Richard, snagged a peanut-butter sandwich on her way through the kitchen, and headed upstairs to her room to review everything she'd seen and thought about the Gundam pilots with this new information. They were willing, even waiting to die for their cause. To just obey and order like that... Julia shivered again, wishing that she didn't understand them as much as she felt she did. If she hadn't studied them so thoroughly, hadn't worked so hard to get into their heads, maybe she wouldn't feel like this now... empty. They must have already counted themselves as dead. How could anyone live like that?
A lot of things made more sense now, like Oz's silence on the matter of why the Gundams had gone into hiding - they *knew* why the Gundams had gone into hiding. They'd done it to protect the colonies. It also explained why the Gundams had reappeared immediately *after* the colonies cut them loose. Once the colonies had officially denied any connection with the Gundams, Oz must have assumed that the Gundams wouldn't care if they threatened the colonies. So in an odd way, by betraying the Gundams, the colonies had freed them to act. It was still completely unforgivable.
It also reinforced her impression that the pilots must have had a very good reason to fight. It was one thing to dedicate your life to a cause, it was another thing to give it up before you even started. Because that was the only way she could see 01 - or any of them - being that ready to kill themselves. He obeyed orders, but even so...
Julia realized that she wasn't being particularly objective at this point, but by now, she'd invested way too much of her time, energy, and thoughts into it to have any pretense at objectivity. She'd spent the past several months trying to get into the heads of the pilots, trying to *become* them at some level - you couldn't do that without loosing objectivity. It was going to make things more difficult when she finally got around to writing up her project.
Abruptly pushing her chair back and standing up, Julia paced back and forth across her room for several minutes, trying to take a step back. The real reason that she was thinking that 01 wouldn't just obey an order to kill himself was that she didn't want to believe it. She didn't really know what he had been like, but a person who would give their life to a cause, who would kill themselves at an order to save innocents did not deserve to be given that order. If that old man, whoever he was, had expected 01 to follow that order, and it seemed likely that he had, he should not have given it. There should have been a better way.
That was patently ridiculous. The world was not a fair place, and bad things happened, if that wasn't the case the war would never have happened. Just because she thought something was wrong didn't mean anything. And things certainly didn't change just because she thought they should.
But... at another level, wasn't that exactly what the Gundam pilots had done? At some point they must have decided that there was something wrong with the way things were, and they went and did something about it.
Julia heard a knock on the door and Duo-daddy said, "Julia, are you sure you're all right?"
"Fine," she answered automatically.
"All right, then we're going to bed."
:Bed?: Julia turned to look at the clock on her wall, and realized that it was a little after midnight. That was impossible, wasn't it? Where the hell had the time gone? She'd gotten back from visiting Richard a little before 2 in the afternoon. Surely it hadn't been that long already?
Julia had an unfortunate tendency to get so engrossed in a project that she would become oblivious to any outside event, including the passage of time, the attempts of her parents to get her attention, the ringing of her alarm clock, or any number of things that she really should have paid more attention to. But usually she only lost an hour or two when working on a project (all right, three or four was more typical, and she knew she'd lost six or seven a couple of times), but this had to be a new record!
:This is getting absolutely ridiculous.: Now that Julia thought about it, she dimly remembered one or both of her parents trying in vain to get her attention, probably to come down for dinner, and her brushing them off. Julia deliberately turned off the screen of her computer. She'd been at this more than long enough, and now that she'd finally snapped out of it, she was aware of other discomforts that had crept up on her while she wasn't paying attention. She was starving, for instance, having only had a quick breakfast and a peanut butter sandwich to tide her over all day. She also had to go to the bathroom quite badly. Plus she hadn't taken a shower today, so she was beginning to feel quite filthy. Not to mention the fact that it was after midnight and she had school tomorrow. Not that she actually needed to be awake for that, but still...
Julia got up and crept down the stairs as quietly as she could manage, aware that she was probably going to keep her parents awake despite her best attempts otherwise. She quickly heated up a can of soup (the refrigerator was basically empty, since they'd just gotten home) and ate it as quickly as she could manage. When she crept back up the stairs, she could still hear her parents talking quietly. She quickly stripped, wrapped a towel around herself, and then walked to the bathroom, which was luckily at the other end of the house from her parents' room. There she showered as quickly as she could manage and still get her hair clean. It wasn't until she was almost finished that she remembered that her parents had wanted to talk to her, and she must have ignored them and missed the meeting. She promised herself that she'd talk to them first thing in the morning. As she quietly walked back to her room, she was pleased to note that the sounds of talking coming from her parents' room had ceased, and she could hear two slow, steady heartbeats.
She smiled to herself and finished walking back to her room. There, she closed the door, toweled herself off, and changed into pajamas. She cast one last longing look at the computer before firmly telling herself that she did need to get some sleep tonight, and climbing into bed.
---------
Julia did not sleep well that night. Her dreams were a jumble of everything she'd learned about the Gundam pilots, and a great deal of things that weren't. An old man she'd never seen before looked at her disapprovingly, then told her to go kill herself. Before she could respond, she stood on a battlefield, as a pilot stepped out of Gundam 01. But it wasn't the pilot of 01, it was her own Tousan, and as he raised his hand and pushed the self-destruct button, she could hear Duo-daddy screaming. Slowly the screaming died down to a mere whimper, but somehow that was even worse than the screaming.
It sounded like... she didn't know, she had never heard anything like it before, there was nothing for her to compare it to. It sounded like someone was having their heart torn out, like something in them had be broken beyond repair... it was the most horrible sound Julia had ever heard...
Julia started awake, her heart racing. Her entire body was one clenched muscle, she was shaking slightly, and she could feel sweat soaking her nightclothes. :What... what was that...: Her mind seemed to be refusing to function, which might have been why it took her several seconds to recognize the sound of low conversation coming from her parents room. Was that what had finally woken her? She concentrated on her parents' voices.
"...you all right?" once again she heard that odd, very tender note in her otousan's voice.
There was a long silence, then Daddy finally whispered, "You know I'll be fine." There was another long silence, then, "It's just with everything that's happening, it keeps coming back." He laughed weakly. "I know Julie doesn't mean it, but she's not making things any easier..." he trailed off, while Julia felt a deep stab of guilt. She'd been right, it was her fault! She was doing something wrong, something that was making him have bad dreams... She cut off that trail of thought when Duo-daddy spoke again. "I'm not going back to sleep tonight. Is that all right?" There was an odd little hitch in his voice that sounded vaguely familiar, and Julia let her concentration slip as she tried to remember where she'd heard something like that before.
She missed Tousan's answer as she realized where she'd heard that sound before. :Oh God, the whimpering. He sounds like that... it's the same tone... I must have heard him while I was sleeping, that's what woke me up... Oh God, he's the one that was making those sounds, I made him make those sounds...: Before she even realized what she was doing, Julia stood up and grabbed a robe off the hook near the door as she threw it open and hurried down the hall to her parents' room. She knocked on the door, silently counted to five to give them a chance to throw the sheets over themselves if they were indecent, and then pushed open the door.
It was dark in the room, but Julia forced her eyes to adjust and in less than a second everything took on a crystalline clarity despite the lack of light. She had just an instant to see the naked shock on both her fathers' faces, as well as the open pain showing in her Daddy's eyes before they both recovered. It was almost painful to see the pain in his eyes suddenly disappear as he tried to hide it from her. For a moment they just stood there, staring at each other.
"Julie, what's wrong?" Daddy finally asked, reaching for the light on the table right next to his bed. Julia threw her arm up in front of her eyes to protect them from the sudden light, frantically trying to reduce the sensitivity that she'd called up seconds before. She was mostly successful, and only winced slightly when he turned on the light. Daddy got up from where he was lying in Tousan's arms, looking concerned.
"Daddy!" Julia took several steps forward, wanting to give him a hug, but at the same time irrationally afraid that she'd somehow cause him more harm. "I'm sorry!" she cried, fighting back tears.
Daddy immediately looked more alarmed, and quickly crossed the distance between them, embracing her. "What's happened? Are you all right? Why are you so upset?" the words tumbled over themselves as he spoke.
Julia shook her head, crying freely now, and pulled away. "It's my fault. It's all my fault. I'm sorry. I don't know what I did, but I'm sorry! I know I shouldn't, but I couldn't help it..." she broke down sobbing, and allowed Duo-daddy to pull her back against his chest, stroking her head gently.
"Shhh, shhh, now calm down. I know you'd never do anything to hurt either of us, all right? I know that. Tousan knows that. Now, what do you think you did that was so horrible? Is this about earlier?"
"Yes... no!" Julia corrected herself. "No, it's more than that. I... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, but I've heard you. A lot. In the last few months." She felt him tense, and the hand stroking her head stilled for several seconds before resuming it's motion. Before she could loose her nerve, Julia quickly continued, "Ever since that first night I asked you about living in the colonies. You... you keep having nightmares, and it's my fault, and I don't understand! You were... you were talking about Maxwell, and I don't know what that means!" She felt him tense again as she mentioned his own last name. "Please," she pleaded. "Explain to me, what Maxwell it, please! I won't ever mention it again, I promise! I just need to know, so I can stop! I... I'm sorry!" she broke down sobbing again.
Tousan turned on a few more lights, and then came over to stand with her and Daddy, placing a comforting hand on her back. "Shhh, shhh, it's going to be fine, shhh... take it easy," Daddy soothed, guiding her over to the bed, where they all sat down. "None of this is your fault. Really. You listening? This is not your fault. If anything, it's my fault." Julia stared at him and shook her head slightly. She knew what she'd heard earlier.
"Look, there were some things we wanted to talk to you about, anyway," Daddy continued. "I have to admit, two in the morning is not the exact time for discussing it that I had in mind, but I guess it will have to do," he joked, and Julia smiled weakly. "I'll explain to you about Maxwell first, and then we'll get into... other things."
Julia wondered briefly what 'other things' he was talking about, but put that aside for the moment as he began to speak.
"You already know that I'm from L2, originally, I think."
"You think?"
Duo-daddy gave her a kind smile. "I'm an orphan. I think. I can't remember ever having a family, at least."
"Oh."
"What do you know about L2? I don't want to be repeating anything."
"Um... I know that it was in an economic slump for a long time before the war, but that very little aide was getting through to it. There were a lot of slums there. Ah, there were a bunch of plagues that swept through there, with varying results..."
"That... that's far enough," Daddy stopped her. "The plague is as good a place to start as any."
"The plague?" Julia asked with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"Yeah. L2 wasn't a great place to be an orphan," he said quietly, his tone light, but Julia could tell it was forced. "I grew up on the streets. There were some gangs, and one of them took me in. Well, the guy in charge of the gang took me in. Taught me how to stay alive, basically. His name was Solo." A shadow of some painful emotion passed over his face. "Then there was one of the plagues... and he died." The closed-in look on his face made her think that there was more to it than that, but he had told her enough. "That's when I picked my first name, actually," he said.
"You... picked your first name?" Julia asked, confused. No one did that.
"Well, I was an orphan, and a street rat to boot. There weren't exactly a ton of people lining up to name me. It was better, actually, not to have one on the street. You didn't know people's names, you didn't hurt as much when they died. But after Solo died, I wanted to remember him, so..." he shrugged slightly. "After that, I was in charge of all the kids. Took care of them for a while. Then we sort of... stumbled..." his lips quirked upwards in a wry smile, "into a better situation. We got taken in at a church. Father Maxwell ran it, along with Sister Helen. It was called Maxwell Church."
Julia had a good idea where this was going, given how he'd gotten his first name, but that didn't completely explain the unsettled feeling she had. Something about that little smile... she couldn't figure out what it was, and Daddy was continuing his story.
"I liked it there. Things were tight, but the Father and Sister were good people. They always had orphans coming through, with not enough money for everyone, but they managed somehow. They tried to place everyone in foster homes, but I just wasn't cut out for that sort of thing. I stayed with them for a long time, a couple of years, I guess." A small smile had appeared on his face at that point, but it disappeared at his next words, "Yeah, it was great, while it lasted."
"What happened?" Julia asked after several seconds of silence.
"The Rebels happened. The Alliance happened. The war happened." Daddy took a deep breath. "Rebels on the run from the Alliance took refuge inside the Church. We helped take care of the wounded, but they wanted more... and the Father wouldn't give it to them. He refused to take sides. They threatened him, and Sister Helen, and the kids that were there. I... I offered to go steal a mobile suit for them, if they'd leave us alone."
"You what?!"
"Offered to steal a mobile suit for them. They said that they needed one, and I wanted them to leave Father Maxwell and Sister Helen alone."
"How old were you?"
"I'm not sure, eight or nine, I guess."
"You were eight or nine and you were going to try to steal a mobile suit?" she asked, shocked. That just didn't make any sense. "Wait a second, how old were you when you were taking care of those kids? You said that you were taking care of them for a while..."
He shrugged again. "I don't know, six or seven sounds about right."
"But... that... How could... um... how could you expect to steal a mobile suit if you were only eight?"
"I couldda been nine," he pointed out with a short laugh that was only a shadow of his normal attitude. "And genius knows no age limit." The uneasy feeling in her gut was getting bigger. "Julia, I did a lot of stuff to keep us alive, including some things that weren't so good. Stealing was among those things. When the Rebels arrived, it seemed like the natural response to me, to offer to steal it. That was the way things worked there." He watched her carefully, waiting for some kind of response.
Julia swallowed and tried to ignore the image of her father struggling to survive on the streets, stealing in order to live... and then offering to steal a mobile suit when he was only nine... things like that just weren't supposed to happen to people you knew... and the story wasn't over yet. Julia knew without asking that the worst was yet to come. "Then what happened?"
"I grabbed the mobile suit, and I drove the truck back to the Church," he said, his eyes distant. "There wasn't anything left. The Alliance had discovered where the Rebels were hiding and with their usual efficiency they bombed the church into the ground. There was nothing left. Two hundred and forty-five people died there, mostly kids I'd brought in along with the Father and Sister Helen. And the Rebels, of course," he added bitterly. "I got back just in time for Sister Helen to die in my arms. She blessed me with her last words," he added, a dark edge in his voice. "Alliance caught me there, wasted too much time checking bodies," he said in an off-hand tone that horrified her. How could he act that way? Had he seen that much death that checking bodies was another 'natural' step for him?
"Anyway, after that I started calling myself Duo Maxwell. It's my name, and it was also a way of remembering... a part of me died that day. I don't know if Father Maxwell and Sister Helen would have approved of what I became, but I didn't feel like I had any other choice, everything else had been taken from me. I lived... a very long time where the only thing keeping me going was getting revenge on the Alliance. I just..."
Julia suddenly lost track of what he was saying as his last words impacted on her. :The only thing keeping him going was getting back at the Alliance... And he said that something died, that there was nothing left for him... nothing to loose. And 02 danced into battle, threw himself at them, had a very personal reason... and his fighting style was so familiar... and Daddy knows how to fight, but he won't tell me where or how... and the guns...:
Julia stood up and backed away from the bed, staring at her father as if she'd never seen him before. "It... it can't be!" she stammered. He just stared back at her with an expression she'd never seen before, with eyes that looked far too old. God, he looked positively ancient when he looked at her like that. She was dimly aware of Tousan getting up and walking to the door and shutting it firmly before repeating the process with the windows. He drew the shades, too, although it was still the middle of the night and pitch black out. She kept staring at Duo-daddy. The thought forming in her head couldn't be true, it was impossible... "You... you can't be..." she stammered, mentally scrambling for some reason that it couldn't be true. "You... you would have only been sixteen or seventeen, you couldn't be..." she trailed off, staring at her father. After several seconds, he finally responded.
"Actually, we were fifteen."
Aaagh! I can't believe I finally got here. I'm sure that I had some very clever comments to make here about this section, but I'm not sure that anyone will care what I have to say after leaving you guys hanging like that. So sorry! (I feel especially bad since last time I sent something out someone commented on how glad they were that I didn't leave cliffhangers, and here I've done it.) Anyway, I am already working on the next section. Story's not anywhere near finished yet, though. I have at least three or four more sections to go, I think. And I'm babbling.
Anyway, a few notes, now that I'm calm again (really). Sorry about the abrupt ending with Richard's section, but I couldn't think of any way that she could stay and have a conversation with him without it sounding absolutely ridiculous, so I didn't even try. In this last section, I did my best to stick to what was said in the Episode Zeros, but I'm not sure how I did. If I had any major inconsistencies, please let me know.
So... :peaks out from behind computer screen: ...did I do OK?
Marika :) 12/13/01