The Journal, Chapter 9

By: BadMomma

… thoughts

Journal Entry 12.08.AC214

I have to write this now, though I am still bone weary and have not had enough sleep in the last day.  I'm afraid that if I don't do it now before I get some real sleep, that I'll wake up to find it was all just a dream.  In the last two days I have known more joy and sorrow than I can imagine.  December 7th [1] will from this year forward - for me - be my father's birthday.  I met my father that day though not really, no more than I had met him the day I was born, but it will have a much greater impact.  Duo has stayed up with me for the majority of the time, we have laughed and cried, on our own and together, repeatedly in these last 24 hours.  It all started late yesterday afternoon. 

I had gotten up rather late yesterday because I hadn't quite recovered from my trip to L2 and all the schoolwork and socializing just suddenly caught up with me and kept me in bed til almost 2pm.  Mom had come in around eleven to make sure I was feeling OK, and had suggested that I sleep a little more, she'd said she had some work to do and that we weren't expecting company until later.  Since both Duo and Trowa were coming over for dinner, which Trowa had volunteered to cook, I wanted to rest so I wouldn't be nodding off at inopportune moments like I'd been doing for the last few days.  I had even fallen asleep while Katie was painting my toenails at our picnic on Friday!

After breaking out of that sleeping stupor, I showered, dressed and headed straight for the kitchen. I think my stomach was what finally woke me because I was starved.  Rather than encountering Marie as the root of the noises coming from the kitchen, I was surprised to find Trowa there, in a pair of jeans, a faded old t-shirt (that looked suspiciously like something Duo would wear) and a formerly crisp-white apron.  At the moment it was a little wrinkled and dirty at the lower corners, obviously from him wiping his hands.  It looked like he had half the pots in use and the other half in the sink.  I wondered if it would be safe to eat tonight. He graced me with a quirky little smile and asked if he could do anything for me.  I admitted that I was just looking for something to eat.  We talked amiably while I fixed myself a sandwich that would hopefully hold me over until dinner, he relayed the menu for the evening.

After a while I volunteered to beginning cleaning out the sink so that we would have a place to put all the rest of the pots and pans when he was done with them.  He accepted my help on the condition that I would help him cook.  A cook, he explained, should always be responsible for their messes and he fully intended on helping me, but that by the same logic, the dishwasher should then always help cook.  I told him I didn't think that theory would hold water at a fancy restaurant, but I guess it worked at home.  He took a moment out from his work at the stove to begin drying what I was washing and we talked some more about everything in general, interspersed by him humming a vaguely familiar tune.  I asked him about it and was surprised to learn that he was an amateur musician, never formally trained, I think he said he played the flute.  When we were done with the pans we put them away and he sat down to drink coffee that I don't remember seeing him brew.

He asked about school and how things were going, and I told him about my week.  I told him about how I met Michael and that he'd come for dinner.  He said he was sorry that they hadn't been able to join us as he vaguely remembered him from Quatre's wedding and thought it would have been nice to see him again.  I was so distracted by the cooking and the cleaning and the preparations that when Uncle Mill came in to 'kiss his favorite niece' and ask if dinner was ready yet I couldn't believe more than three hours had passed.  As Trowa told him that it wouldn't be much longer it occurred to me that that was the third time Trowa had talked to me for hours and I was beginning to wonder if everyone was just exaggerating the whole notion of Trowa's silence.

Trowa and Mill simply greeted each other with their names; 'Trowa', 'Zechs'.  I guess it's just a man thing, Mill and Duo do it all the time. Of course if Wufei is around it goes; 'Merquise', 'Chang'. But I'm digressing.  I noticed Mill give Trowa an odd look before telling him that Duo needed to speak to him, it was then that I realized that I hadn't seen or heard from him since I'd gotten up.  I was so excited that I jumped up from my chair and asked if I could go too, just to say hi.  Mill said that it was business, and that I should really wait til dinner, then asked if I could go tell 'Noin' that he'd be home soon.  I thought it odd that they would not be joining us for dinner but didn't say anything because things had suddenly gotten very serious. I headed off toward their place while Trowa followed Mill in the direction of mom's office.

Dinner took place about an hour later and while the food was great and company pleasant, there was something not quite right.  Mill and Lu did join us for dinner with the kids, but as soon as we had finished clearing the table she made some excuse about putting the kids to bed.  It was an excuse, I know now but only suspected it then, because the kids had not been cranky at all.  Just as she left, the room became uncomfortably quiet for a moment and I was surprised when Duo cleared his throat and said in a very serious voice that they had something they needed to show me.

They lead me into the living room and asked me to sit down on the couch.  Mom sat to one side of me, Mill in the chair across from us, Trowa hung back by the door leaning against it with his arms crossed and Duo just hovered on the other side of me but didn't sit.  I was starting to get worried, they all looked like they were nervous about something and the slightest little thing could have set them off.  Finally Trowa said that it would be best if they just got down to it, and they all seemed to agree with him.  At this, Duo looked at me, picked up the remote to the disc player and simply said, "I don't think there's anything we can say to prepare you for this."  I tried hard to swallow the lump in my throat, whatever they were going to show me had to be bad, they were all so tense.  He pointed the remote at the player, what came on the screen has me numb still. 

My father.  I vaguely remember Duo sitting at some point in time and putting his hand on my back gently, mom reaching out to hold my hand, and not much else.  I don't think I really heard any of what he said that first time I watched it, I was just so shocked to see him, sitting there, and talking to me. Directly to me.  He'd sent me a message.  It was something that I had never even dreamed of and I mean that in a most serious way. 

Sometimes people say that they've dreamed about something happening, but in reality they've fantasized about it.  Your fantasies you can control, because you control your conscious mind when they are taking place, you can consciously make yourself believe that these things could happen, because in some vaguely remote way there is the possibility that they might.  Yes, you might actually one day cross paths with your favorite movie star in a grocery store, or stand at the podium of some huge stadium to introduce your favorite rock band.  Not likely, but possible.  Your dreams are entirely different, you have no control over them whatsoever. There are those who believe that your dreams are a manifestation of your true desires, but I don't believe that, because no one really wants to walk around school naked, nor do most people want to find themselves in some of the odd situations that the "funnier" dreams find them in.  Who really wants to take their shoes off in gym class and find that they have webbed feet like a duck.  None of the people I know, so it just doesn't make sense.

So you see, I had wanted it, yes. But never dreamed it, and most certainly never fantasized about it.  He was unattainable to me.  Mom had said he would never come back and somehow I just accepted it as the truth, everyone else seemed to believe it, too.  I would never see him, I would never talk to him, I would never interact with him.  He was dead for all intents and purposes, only it didn't have the same finality.  Any kind of direct contact between him and me just never seemed possible.  But there he was.

The recording finished and I thought I saw tears shining in his eyes, but he was gone before I could be sure.  The screen went blank but I was left frozen with the final image of him saying goodbye.  "I do love you Helena, I just wanted you to hear it from me."

No one spoke or even moved for what could have been an eternity.  I think they were afraid I might break or something.  I finally came around to my senses when I felt Duo touch my face to wipe away a tear I hadn't felt.  I looked down at my hands that had remained unmoving on my lap and noticed that my blouse was wet, just off the front of my shoulders, where apparently other tears had come to rest.  I felt my mother shift next to me and embrace me gently, without stifling my ability to move.  I was the first one to speak, though it took a few tries to get out two simple words, 'again please'.  I think Duo was in the same trance as me because Trowa had to come from where he was standing at the back of the room to restart the recording.  I remember him saying 'as often as you wish' as he passed on his way back to his post.

I watched it again and this time I heard more of the words.  He loved me, he missed me, he'd committed a grave error that kept him from me, he watched me, he was proud of me, he was sorry and again that he loved me.  I kept getting lost in the look in his eyes, the way his mouth moved, the slight pause between words, the way his shirt moved gently as he flexed and relaxed the muscles of his arms and chest, perhaps merely with the process of breathing.

I wanted to watch it again when it ended, but I didn't think it would help.  I needed time to get over my shock and I had to give them, the others in the room who seemed to be holding their breaths, a chance to react.

This time it was Mill who was brave enough to go first.  Tentatively he asked me if I was OK, if I needed a moment alone, he offered that they could all step outside the room to give me a second to pull myself together.  I felt mom shift next to me, stretching out to touch me.  I think now that she was afraid I would push them all away, it didn't take a genius to figure out that they had been hiding this from me for a while, though quite honestly I hadn't figured it out yet.  Duo later confirmed that this was the 'it' from that fated conversation at the L4 terminal.  Mill waited a few moments and spoke my name again, this time Duo reacted too.  He brushed a few of my bangs from my face, tucked some hair behind my ear and said 'baby, are you still with us?'  His voice sounded like I'd never heard it before, like a frightened child, and oddly I wondered if that was what he had sounded like years ago before they had all first met.  I turned to look at him, as if seeing for the first time.  My gaze then passed over his shoulder to Trowa who stood like a statue by the door a haunted look in his eyes, I had seen the echo of that look before and I later understood what it was.  I then turned to Mill who looked almost frightened, and then to mom who looked like she would burst from the sadness.  I had never seen quite that much pain in her eyes and all I could do was let the tears flow and cling to her desperately, as much for myself as for her.

I guess that my actions were the proverbial flood gates for everyone in the room.  I don't remember too well what happened in the next hour or so.  I'm vaguely aware of people moving about, hands caressing my hair, my back, my shoulders, my hands but all those touches were aimed to reassure me, to tell me that I was loved and that I was not alone.  It helped, and slowly the dam closed.  I hadn't cried because I was sad, I was just overcome with emotion and a need to vent it somehow. When I finally regained control over myself, only mom and I were in the room, I looked around for the others, confused at first at why they had left. 'Privacy' she said, they had wanted to give us privacy.  She started to ask if I was OK, but hesitated and instead asked if I thought I would be alright, and if I was ready for them to come back.  There was more she said, but she would not be the one to tell me about it.  I think I was afraid for a moment, unsure that I would be able to handle any more shocks like the one I had just received.  And then I agreed, whatever else was to happen could only be good.  I had wanted this with the very core of my being for so long. In a moment of clarity I truly understood that my father loved me.  No, he hadn't come back but he had risked hurting all those that he loved so dearly to prove it me in the only way he felt he could.  And I understood for the first time that what they had all said was true, and the memory his words came back to ring truer than they ever had before.  …I love you and Helena, I always will…

Duo and Trowa must have been waiting outside the door because before I finished thinking or agreeing to it they were at my side.  Duo pulled me into a fierce hug and I felt dampness on his cheek and felt the irregularity of his breath while he stroked my hair and whispered unintelligible words of comfort.  When he released me he went and did the same for mom.  Trowa came up to me hesitantly placing a hand on cheek and had askance in his eyes, it was then that I realized what the look had been before and I clung to him in an effort to let him know with my actions that I held no blame or animosity toward him.  He said nothing, he just held me until Duo was ready for his next job.

The next task would not be as difficult.  We had made it past the first hurdle and were in the home stretch now.  I sat down again and Duo sat at the end of the couch facing me, with his right knee bent towards the back of the couch.  He looked at me, then up at mom who had not resumed her position beside me preferring instead to stand out of view.  He looked back at me with intent and then looked down at his hand, the one that was extending towards me.  'Heero asked me to give this to you.' He opened his hand to reveal a small key and I cocked my head to one side as I looked at it.  'He asked you?' was all I managed to say before looking back at him and tilting my head the other way, as if the movement would make sense of the words.  His voice was so low when he began to speak again that I wasn't sure if I had missed what he said first.  'He wrote me a letter and left it where I'd find it.  He asked me to give this to you and to show you… show you…' He stopped and pursed his lips, as if unable to continue, then he put the key in my hand, grabbed hold of both and gently pulled me to stand with him.  'Let me show you' he said and he led me away.  I felt like I was moving within a dream, I felt like I was watching what was going on as if it wasn't really happening to me.  He led me to the study, the place where I had found mom's journal.  Mom and Trowa stood at the door but did not enter, she said they'd be nearby if we needed anything and then closed the door between us.

The furniture had been pushed out of the way and in the middle of the room there was this huge box, a trunk.  It looked old and dusty.  He sat in front of it and twitched his head to indicate that I should sit next to him.  It occurred to me that the key must be to unlock the trunk and I was suddenly gripped with some irrational fear.  I asked him what it was, what was in there, why my father had given this to me, what would I find.  He thought for a moment and then said only one word.  'Answers.'  I knew what he meant, answers to my questions about my father, answers about who he was, answers that would allow me to know him.  I think we were both a bit afraid of what we might find but I fit the key in the lock and with little effort opened it to look inside.

There were papers, books, smaller boxes, pictures, news articles, vid disks, trinkets, a few notebooks, and numerous other things, probably some I won't find for a while still.  At first we just picked things off the top, trying to figure out what they were and what significance they had in his life.  Some things were obvious, there were pictures at the top of the pile, pictures of places Duo knew he'd been.  There were a few pictures of him with one of the other pilots, with mom or with me.  There were news clippings of some events that had been important enough that they would make a keepsake years later, like now.  There was an ad for Trowa's circus, from a performance they had done in Russia about six months before he left.  But there were also things that we had to think about.  Things that made no sense to me, but when I showed them to Duo would make him hold or take in a breath and then he'd explain the significance.  There was one small article about a new bill being signed into legislation regarding increased funding to rebuild orphanages and group homes on the colonies for the children of the wars.  It had taken a considerable amount of effort to push them through and the greatest need appeared to be in the L2 cluster.  Duo's home.

We hadn't even made a dent in the contents of the trunk and we had been pulling things out for over an hour.  We realized that he must not have gotten around to organizing the stuff that was on the top, because as we dug around to get at the other boxes and the books, we saw that he had catalogued the older things.  Some of the boxes held pictures, some exclusively news clippings, there was a box with only vid disks in it and they were numbered, so they have to be watched to determine their content.  There was one box that contained several small bags with sand, soil and pebbles.  Each bag was labeled with a date and location.  These were the places he'd been, these were the tangible examples of where his life had taken him.  As we began to see the pattern of how he'd arranged things we decided that it would be best to follow his example.  So we began to organize everything that was loose.  Of course we would still get distracted by the objects we were handling.  Sometimes one of us would run across something that we wanted to share with the other and we would sit back and talk about them.  At one point, it had to have been very late that night or early the next morning I became absorbed by one of his sketch books.   I had meant to take the book out of the trunk and move it the pile with the other books when it slipped slightly from my hand , opening to a drawing of a sunset.  It had been done in pencil first and then he'd apparently gone back to color some of it in, but only part of it, which is what caught my attention.  I sat back and started thumbing through the pages, mesmerized by the images. 

That whole night and the greater part of the next day we spent in that room.  Just the two of us.  By the early morning hours we had taken off our shoes and pulled our shirts from their tucked positions inside our pants so that nothing could obstruct our needs.  One at a time we went out to use the bathroom, we wandered into the kitchen to grab something to eat but always brought it right back and shared it, we drank coffee and soda and talked and looked and catalogued and reminisced and learned a whole lot about the man named Heero Yuy.  We also took little naps, cat naps mostly, every once in a while one of us would get a little too comfortable while looking something over and would drift off into to sleep.  But when we awoke the other one never mentioned it and no one ever came in to interrupt us.  It was as if we'd found a new world to explore and nothing, not even our own tired bodies could stand in our way. 

I think that by mid-afternoon we had sorted and catalogued only a third of the loose items and we were starting to get punchy.  Every little thing we did or said made us giggle.  I actually caught Duo falling asleep sitting straight up with a picture firmly grasped in one hand and the lid to the picture box in the other.  I think that mom must have had some radar or something because she walked in on us around five and demanded that we shower and go to bed for a while.  It was pretty clear to her that we had spent the whole night up.

So here I am, it's 6:10pm on Sunday, December 8th, the day after my father's birth.  I'm about to pass out from exhaustion, both physical and mental, but I'm hunched over this damned laptop just trying to get it all down.  Maybe I'll sleep for the rest of today and return to my new world again tomorrow.  Now that I have proof that it wasn't all a fantasy – or even a dream.

Journal Entry 12.14.AC214

Trowa left last Tuesday, he said that it was time for him to return to his responsibilities and stop reliving the days of his youth.  I know that he meant the times after the war when they'd finally gotten to act like teenagers but it was sad to think that they'd not had a chance before then, most of them had been either 16 or 17 by the end.  If the wars had lasted any longer, they would have all been adults by the end and that would have been sadder still.  It was a bittersweet goodbye for me, though I've only really known him for just over a year and we didn't keep in touch between my two visits to L2, it feels like he's become an integral part of my family in the last three weeks.  I think I'm going to miss him terribly.

The trunk has become the focal point of the last week.  I must admit that I'm almost as tired now as I was last Sunday.  I have fallen into a routine of going to school, rushing home, doing my homework and rummaging through the trunk contents but I'm not alone in that, everyone has joined me.  It hasn't been all that organized, my rummaging that is, there is so much to see that I just don't know where to start.  I've decided to leave the vids for later.  I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet and Duo agrees that I probably need to go through the more tactile stuff now.  Everyone seems to get more pleasure from that, as if it's better to touch that which he touched, as if it somehow brings us closer together. 

For some reason we've spent most of our time going through the pictures.  There are at least two boxes of those.  It seems that father took to photography quite a bit, and since one of picture boxes close to the top had a start date and no end date that is where we have concentrated our effort.  On Tuesday night after dinner, Duo brought that box to the table while we were having coffee and dessert, we sifted through the pictures and put then in chronological order, the last of the pictures was taken just a week before he left for the last mission.  There are a few of him and me in that bunch so I guess mom must have taken them. We spent hours talking before the guys said they needed to leave.  Trowa need to get back to the dorms and pack his things so he could catch the early shuttle the next morning.

He promised to keep in touch, if nothing else by email and that he'd let us know the next time they came to earth, which could be as early as next spring.  I told him I was looking forward to seeing him again and that I would hold him to his promise.  Then he asked if he could speak to me privately, at this Duo and mom left the table.  He explained to me in slightly more detail how he and father had kept in touch before his disappearance and how he'd tried to reach him after. He made it clear that father had gone out of his way, even lately, to make sure that no one could find him and unless he changed his mind that no one ever would.  But Trowa wanted to try, he felt he owed it to us try but not unless I was OK with it.  I agreed and thanked him, then I assured him that he shouldn't feel he owed us anything but that I would welcome it.  He hugged me, kissed the top of my head and stepped out of the dining room.  I heard him and Duo talk briefly and then he walked away.  Duo came back in and settled himself at his place at the table, he had decided to stay the night and return to the base in the morning.  Mom came back a few minutes after Trowa left but retired shortly, reminding us that we had school and work and shouldn't stay up too late.  Duo and I spent another two hours looking through the old photographs, organizing them and talking.

On Wednesday while I was at school, Trowa sent us an email with their schedule of performances for the next two months.  He kept the first of his promises and I believe he will continue to do so with the rest.

Duo on the other hand is leaving in a few days.  He still has some work that he can accomplish here but he says if he stays much longer, Lady will start to wonder if she needs him at all and Hilde will probably kill him.  I know he misses them and Christmas is just around the corner. He should go home to his family, I know they must miss him terribly, too.  I'll see him again in a couple of months because his work brings him here often enough, but I'll miss him until then, that much I can't deny.

Journal Entry 12.31.AC214

Another New Year's Eve is upon us and I'm sitting here making my finally entry for the year, and possibly for a while. 

We're going to a party at Katie's, it's their turn this year to host the festivities though it will likely be our last together.  By this time next year Katie will be on L4 and there's no telling when they might come back.  Katie told me that her dad's assignment there will last at least three years, and while her family discussed the possibility of her staying and completing her school here, they decided against it in the end.  It wouldn't be right to split up the family like that so she and her mom will be leaving within a month of school letting out.  We'll just have to enjoy the time we have together. 

Speaking of which, this is the first year that we are both participating in the 'adult' party. It really doesn't mean much except that we get to stay in the main room.  The kids are always segregated at these things, they're kept in a separate room from the adults complete with their own form of entertainment until midnight.  But this year we get to dress up in evening gowns, dance and mingle with the older crowd.  It's not that either of us are into older guys but a few of the other parents in the Diplomatic Core have rather good looking sons our age and a little older.  Hopefully the Gaultier twins will come with their parents this year, they are Seniors at our school and would have been allowed into the adult party last year had they attended.  It would be fun having someone we know there, even though we're not the best of friends.

I have to start getting ready soon so I think I'll wrap this up.  I've come to a decision in the last two weeks and, not that I need to explain myself since I'm the only one who's reading this, I want to put my thoughts down cause, well, that was the whole purpose of this.  I have decided that I will not be writing as often as I have been. When I started this journal two months ago I knew nearly nothing about my father.  I was frustrated that at the age of fifteen all I had were images from a handful of pictures and videos and some quaint stories about this man. 

Now, things are different.  The day before Duo went home I asked him about something that I'd come across in dad's notebooks.  I kept finding notes in Japanese in the corners of his sketches.  At first I thought he had just written some note to himself but I noticed that the characters were either exactly the same or very similar in each of them, there were two distinct notes.  Since I don't speak Japanese I figured someone could tell me what it said, but mom doesn't read it – though apparently she can speak it conversationally– so I asked Duo if he might be able to help out. 

When I showed him the first one I thought he would keel over.  It was that line from Duo's poem that dad had quoted in his letter;  "experience the warmth" [2].  That one appeared most frequently. 

The other one reads "Allow me to be forgiven, show me the way to let go." [3] I noticed that he only wrote that in the margins of his 'darker' drawings and thinking about it now fortunately there weren't too many of those.  Still, his darker drawings are something to behold.  I don't know if he had drawn all of them from memory but at least of few of them had to be because Duo explained that some of those drawings were scenes from the wars.  All the dark drawings are done in a dark pencil and none of them are colored in.  Many are partial pictures of mobile suits in the stages of battle (I didn't realize it until Duo pointed them out to me), there are ruined buildings and images of poverty, destruction and death.  There's even one that Duo says must be an image of the Libra exploding.

I feel much closer to him now and I hope it will only get better, but I have so much to learn about him and from him and it's sitting there in that trunk downstairs.  That trunk is actually the reason that I haven't made an entry in nearly two weeks.  I have spent most of my otherwise unoccupied time going through the items in that trunk and one thing I have learned from it is that I have to live my life now and experience what it has to offer.  So in the last few days I have laid out a plan for myself on how to tackle the wealth of information that's in there without letting it consume me.  You see I don't want life to pass me by or lose out on what it has to offer me at this moment simply because I need to learn about my past.  So this will be my last entry for the year, and maybe for some time.  I don't know how long it will be before I get around to making my next entry.  But for now I want to experience the warmth.

~~ to be continued ~~

[1]  OK, I didn't mean for that to happen, it just fell on that day and it's too late now to change the timing on the whole story.  So, sorry.  In case you're wondering, 12/7 (1941) is the day Pearl Harbor was bombed, significant in a sense, since Heero is Japanese.

[2]  Again, "The Warmth", by Incubus from the album "Make Yourself"

[3]  "Thomas", by A Perfect Circle from the album "Mer de Noms"

AN:  First, thanks if you're still reading; though it seems there's only one person left reading it aside from my beta-reader (that would be you, DruidKeep).  Second, I apologize for continuously having Heero quote lyrics from some of my favorite songs.  I'm not all that poetic and those songwriters are, sooo… Next, a challenge:  did any notice a, perhaps too-subtle, change b/w the last two entries.  If so let me know what you think, maybe I'm just being too much of a smart ass for my own good.  And lastly, while Helena may not be making as many journal entries as before, I will continue to write as much as I can.  I just need to skip things along at a slightly quicker pace than before and if I don't make less journal entries then you'll be reading a lot of filler crap.  (Not that I want to write filler any more than you want to read it.)  So from here on out the J.E.s will be skipping ahead in clumps (about 2 months apart.)  We are now truly in the home stretch, only 3 chapters and an Epi left.

If you are still reading, please drop me a line at: BadMomma64@aol.com

Disclaimer: *sigh* In addition to not owning GW; Incubus & APC's words and music do not belong to me.