Disclaimer:  I do not nor ever have nor ever tried to pretend to be the owner of Shin Kidousenki Gundam Wing or any of its characters and everything else.  It belongs to Sunrise, Bandai, Sotsu Agency, and related companies…not to me.  I'm just borrowing the characters for the sole purpose of (self-) entertainment.  There is no profit resulting from this.

Warning/Author's Note:  This story is either told from the perspective of Duo Maxwell or Heero Yuy and does not follow the original story line presented in Shin Kidousenki Gundam Wing.  It will feature/focus on a 1+2 shounen-ai relationship…others may or may not be present.  Also, note swearing.

Shi to Shi

Chapter 02

//Heero Yuy//

What a mission.

            And—heavens above—what a failure!  Had that dark Gundam not shown up from nowhere and, somehow, caught me as I jumped from the cliff…why, I would be a mere splatter of blood and flesh against the sharp rocks below.  Trust me, I looked at them before I jumped.  Had the image firmly imprinted in my mind, with my bloody, mangled, utterly mutilated corpse superimposed over it.  Yeah, morbid thoughts, but I could not help it at the time.  But it would have been better to die instantly, smashed against those rocks, than in that fiery inferno that, ironically, had been created by none other than me.

            Perfect Soldier, my ass.  If I was the Perfect Soldier I would cry for the ones considered failures as they stumbled around and shot themselves in the feet.  I am not perfect; no, nowhere near it.  My extensive knowledge on treating battle wounds and their ilk only shows how much I get injured all the time.  I have merely made many, many mistakes and learned my lessons properly…I hope.  Sometimes I wonder.

            Blast it all to hell.

           I scowled at myself in the bathroom mirror in my dorm room—a small double room at the school I was…ah…infiltrating, but for now, its only occupant was me.  Thankfully.  Any roommate would be asking me how I had managed to come home with soot smeared all over myself, never mind the presence of the gun and the bruises and the blood.  I was lucky to have the place to myself, open to my comings-and-goings at all times; any roommate of mine would probably file a complaint to the headmistress within his first hour of being here, begging to be moved to another room.  Not that I would care, really, for I was better off alone.  An instrument of death does not need unnecessary burdens and nuisances such as roommates to make his life more miserable that it already was.

            Miserable…well, who am I to complain, anyway?  I was alive, at least, alive and well and fighting.  In short, I was doing something about the status quo and the Alliance.  Not many my age could claim the same for himself…though sometimes I wondered if it really was something to be proud of.  I didn't know.  I suppose that, for someone like me, it was.  After all, I had grown up knowing nothing but fighting and war, and here I was, fighting in a war—everything a soldier could wish for.

            …I suppose.

            There I go again.

            I shook my head rapidly.  When I start talking to myself, I get all mixed up in the head.  What did I really want?  What were my aims, my goals, my ideals?  What the hell was I fighting for, anyway?  And I wouldn't know the answer to any of those questions—except maybe the last one.  I was fighting for peace.  But no…as soon as I say that, another part of me yells, Peace, hah!  What the hell is this 'fighting for peace' crap?  Who's ever truly believed in people fighting for peace?  What a bunch of hypocrites.  No matter what comes out of it, war is war is war.  People die.  Perhaps the worst kind of peace is the kind that follows after a war—peace built on blood, on the deaths of thousands, on the destruction of youth and innocence all the people who were never meant to be thrown into war.

            So why are you fighting, Heero?

            I don't know.  I guess I could say that I am fighting for my own self-preservation, but if you looked at what I did for my missions, you would laugh in my face.  Or I can say that I am fighting to protect those people who really should not have been sucked into the war in the first place.  People like—say, Relena, for example.  I don't know where she belongs in all this, but it didn't feel right when I threatened her.  So I didn't kill her.  Maybe I am saving those who really can make a difference.

            Or maybe I'm just deluding myself.  Hell, I have killed enough influential people already, and maybe some with potential.  It's not like they have a big neon sign over their heads that says, "This person will be able to negotiate peace in two years, so don't kill him."  God, I wish they did, but they don't.  I just have to trust my own judgment.

            Oh, that's reliable.

            It's better than nothing.  At least my trust in myself has kept me alive so far.  True, I've only eked by a few times, but I'm still alive.  Maybe I'll just manage, eking by, a mere step ahead of my own destruction.

            Like tonight.

            Heaving a sigh, I rubbed at my dry, smoke-inflamed eyes tiredly.  I had spent the entire trip home berating myself for what I had done.  How in the world did you manage to not secure a way out, Yuy? I asked myself for the nth time, feeling like a complete idiot.

            But I did, some small voice inside me protested.  It was all laid out, and the boat was well-hidden.  None of the guard could have found it, even if they were specifically looking for it!  But...

            But?

            But the fire spread more quickly than I had anticipated…

            Wrong answer, Yuy.

            And it spread to where I hadn't expected it to…

            Nice try, but no-go.

            They sicced Leos on me, twenty Leos…! 

           Nuh-uh, that dark Gundam took care of those for you.  Stop making up futile explanations, you sorry excuse for a soldier, and answer the goddamn question: what the hell happened, Yuy?

            I just…ran the wrong way.

            Ran the wrong way!!

            Furiously, I turned the tap on all the way and splashed my face with the numbingly-cold water. 

TBC…

R&R, please!