Author: Grevola
Disclaimer: The characters and the universe aren't mine, but this particular twist, and the way the story is told is.
Warnings: Spoilers for the end of the series, swearing, possibility of further warnings as story progresses.
Title: Family Ties
It may seem a strange thing to say, but there are times when I think Marimea's war did more good that bad [1]. She burst the bubble of contentment that had formed with the end of the Meteor Wars [2]. People began to look around them and note that while the fighting had ended, and communications were restored, there were still many wounds that had yet to heal. There were still those who refused to give up fighting, of course, and while certainly an obvious conclusion, the Eve War brought it to light. But the issue she really called attention two was the amazingly large number of orphans. The death of Heero Yuy is marked as the official beginning of the Era of Discontent, which lasted for twenty years before escalating into a full out war in the year A.C. 195. That era created literally hundreds of thousands of orphans sphere wide. An entire generation was raised without the benefit of parents. That these children and young adults would be willing to organize and fight against the current system came as a shock to the world. Amazingly enough, the world was quick to respond.
A new importance was placed on the value of a stable family and home for children to grow up in. Before pre-pubescent children had been able to enlist and train to fight legitimately, or with mercenary or terrorist groups; the world no longer saw these youths as miniature adults.
While the sanctity of a childhood had been restored to the general consciousness, there still remained the question of what to do with the population of orphans that were too old, in experience if not in years, to be considered children. A comity discussed the issue and decided that all people under the age of 18 should have some sort of legal guardian, it would be at the discretion of guardian and ward to decide how much of a 'traditional' parental role would be necessary. Families that had lost children or spouses were encouraged to foster an older child and a younger one. The thought was that the older child could assist with the smaller one, and would be less work than the smaller child. The greatest effort was put on finding living relatives for the orphans. A voluntary DNA/RNA bank was established so that genetic matches could be made. Some of the matches they made for orphans who had no knowledge of their biological families was very surprising.
My sister and I donated samples of our DNA as a public gesture of support to the program. Neither of us expected any close matches to be found, so when we received notification of a brother… our world turned promptly on it's head.
[1] From the personal files of Milliardo Peacecraft.
[2] I've herd the war the Gundam Pilots fought referred to as the Eve War(s), but it makes more sense to me to call the Marimea incident (happening on Christmas Eve), the Eve War.
Author's Note: I've decided to start tackling some of the staples for really bad fanfiction, but hopefully make them work by keeping things more or less cannon. This one is the whole "What if So-n-so had a brother they didn't know about and he showed up?" I'm saying right here and now that I am not inserting any unnecessary OCs (the person delivering pizza, or working as a secretary is like to be OC, but our mystery brother isn't). Also there will be no self-insertion, and no Mary-Sue action. So please stick with me in this for a little bit longer.