Fandom: Gundam Wing
Title: Honto no sensou.
Pairing: Heero + Duo
Rating: PG
Description: Even after the war (endless waltz timeline), Heero's still fighting the war…
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing doesn't belong to me, but to Sunrise.
Honto no sensou. (the real war.)
By miyamoto yui
I never thought it would be like this.
I was quite ashamed at myself for being so weak. After all, this was just a part of life. People came and people left. They were just numbers in a swarm of nonsense called life.
And as for me, I was usually the one that left.
I was always selfish like that. Living on the principles of 'freedom and independence', I found out that they were just words covering what was really below that shallow surface. They were hiding 'isolation and total dependence'.
You never really thought about things like this. You crowded upon someone's comfort zone with no reason at all. Squeezing your way into someone's personal space only to find that you had wormed your way into their heart without even knowing it.
That's just as awful as seduction.
It's even worse when you're not aware of breaking someone's heart because of your insensitivity to their feelings. You didn't mean to, but that was just how it all crumpled down to my feet.
You watched those totally sappy movies in which the usual, "You changed my life" or "I couldn't bear to live without you" were all stupid to both of us. I thought that logic would take over, even if it was love. Blindness was a state of mind until it became a way of life.
It wasn't ignorance. It was self-imposed stupidity.
I thought that I knew a lot of things about people and how to relate to them on a superficial surface. You kill what got in your way. Members of the opposite sex fell in love. That's just how life worked out. It was all an endless hierarchy to gain power.
After all, hadn't I pushed myself aside all these years? Wasn't that how one was supposed to live?
If you wanted to defeat your enemy, you became your enemy. Simple.
If you wanted to become more human, naturally, wouldn't you become more inhuman?
Was that a paradox?
It made perfect sense, right?
There was a logical pattern to everything. Convoluted as that may have been.
And yet, here I was. It was the end of everything.
The beginning of the reconstruction of the world was starting. It was starting all over again for a new era.
With that era, I let him go.
Nonchalantly and silently, I let him go to wherever he needed to go. I knew very well that he wouldn't come back to me. After all, I had just borrowed him.
He wasn't mine after all. We were both men and yet he was still so persistent. Some part of me couldn't believe his ridiculous idea while the other half wanted to smother him with them.
But all in all, how the hell was he supposed to understand my silence anyway?
I never understood if he talked to fill in all the silences I had or was he just uncomfortable with me?
Yet…
Without him,
It was truly silent.
Inside and outside myself.
That stupid chestnut-haired death angel made me laugh at all the wrong things. He pinned me to the bed as a joke. I looked up to those eyes of his for an answer to that situation.
I usually had a solution calculated in my head and I always knew what to do. But not with those looks of his.
Those beautiful eyes always made me drown. They were endless. I could never fight against them.
He looked down at me and I could assess the situation. But when he took his hands away from my wrists and laughed it off, I didn't know how to interpret this.
These were things that were totally beyond me. Not because I had devoid myself of emotion, but I was actually afraid of something for the first time in my life.
I was afraid of the fact that he'd meant what he said.
That he cared for me more than I could have ever imagined.
He wanted to take care of this decrepit soldier? Why?
Love: A trivial matter plastered all over the media.
Chocolates for Valentine's. Movies with love stories and that likely crap just exerted extra energy that could have been used for better things.
Focusing on how to get further in life.
He told me goodbye…
…but I had made that decision for him.
I didn't know how long that could be.
I didn't know how long I could last.
It's easy to say goodbye and leave.
It's hard to be the one left behind.
When I went back to my quarters, I looked at my laptop and I touched my chair. I blinked at everything because his scent was still in the air.
I didn't know how to truly miss things. I guess Relena was right to call me cruel when I told her that I wanted nothing to do with her anymore. She was a good person, but she suffocated me.
Not that she asked too much. No, that wasn't it.
I just didn't feel anything. She didn't give me peace. I was still fighting when I looked at her.
What looked like affection was misinterpreted as something more…
For the first time in my life, I waved goodbye to someone. I didn't smile because I wasn't used to it. But as he went away, my eyes were becoming misty. I wanted to shout, but no words would come out. They were lost somewhere in my throat because I couldn't even move my tongue.
And so, he left because I didn't say anything.
I stood in my room trying to breathe in this reality. I never felt this way before and it was strange. I felt like someone had just totally robbed me of something important. Like someone had raped me and I could never get my virginity back, mentally or physically.
Everything that was empty became emptier now.
I looked around if he had hugged anything in my room. I needed his scent somewhere because it was dissipating with the wind. It was driving me insane.
I was already suffering from withdrawal.
It was in that moment that I finally understood.
I finally understood what was stronger than the drive to fight, it was the obsession to care for another human being.
He had done something to me and I couldn't erase it, but nor could I understand it fully.
That smiling joker really got to me, didn't he?
He was now missing and I didn't know what to do.
+/+/+/+/+/
But it was already half a year since that time, and I should have moved on. Surely, he had already.
I moved from place to place after I left Relena. It was the most natural thing for me.
I was a nomad, after all. I could never stay in one place.
A man with no nation.
I had to keep myself falsely focused. Getting further and further from where he was so that I would become numb myself all over again. It was my false sense of movement that made me feel like I was getting somewhere anyway.
Deception was the foundation of humanity, I learned.
You saw things as you wanted.
I could still remember his smile so clearly. And I thought, "The moment I realized you were leaving, that was the moment I realized I couldn't live without you."
While crossing the street, as if in a dream, I heard someone shouting behind me, "Heero! Heero!"
I turned around to find him running towards me. I blinked my eyes, but I felt him embrace me before I could even open them up again.
"I finally found you," he whispered.
I was too shocked to respond. I couldn't believe it.
"Have you been looking for me all this time?" I said with my eyes, but couldn't say with my mouth.
It wasn't that I never had these emotions, Duo…
They were always hidden with me. They were on the brink of coming out, but I wouldn't let them.
But you wouldn't let me do that.
You didn't want me to hurt myself or to lie to myself anymore…
"Stop running away, Heero…" he said as he hugged me even tighter. "…especially from me."
I didn't want to cry and so I stood there frozen as I felt his warm arms penetrate the coldness of my body. I felt relief and calmness wash over me.
Finally, the war was truly over…
…and I had finally won.
I lifted up my right arm and buried my face into his chestnut-colored hair. I held him tightly to make sure that everything was real. "Duo…"
"Shh…you don't have to say a word."
Owari.
-
Author's note: I needed something to vent and I didn't know where this was going until it came out. (This is dedicated to you. You know who you are.)
October 24th, 2003