Shortcut Communications Ch. I

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Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.

Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695)

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

William Faulkner

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Maybe Rashid didn't recognize the stationary, but I knew it immediately. The heavy paper was smooth, and I knew the mere feel of it under the pads of my fingers would bring me into my memories. Even now I saw the great wooden desk, his hand wrapped around a gold pen as it swept across the crisp white paper, the black ink a swirl I couldn't even understand, the first time I watched it, but beautiful to me as it seemed to appear on the page, despite the evidence of his hand.

Somewhere, lost in those memories, is the one where I was taught the difference between all the papers my father used. There was that one, the smooth, sheer richness of it. The one they used for social occasions, one step down. I remember the invitations I'd seen, the edges laser-cut, the ink impermeable, stark black against stark white, never any colors. The business was all done on a different paper, so distinct from the other papers I was associated with. It was the tradition, and I was immersed in it. So how could I not know that paper? My name was engraved on it, but the address was not. I'd seen those envelopes many times. When I was small, he'd sent an entire box of envelopes away, and had my name engraved on all of them. For all the time I'd spent away from him, in school, he'd send those if I even had cause to hear from him. The address beneath my name was handwritten, his pen. This paper was never typed on. More tradition.

I didn't want to touch it. If I touched it, it might show me things, give me the feel of him in my heart, show me what it was that made him sit there to write it, with that gold pen. But I knew that if I didn't read it...if I didn't, I would always regret it, no matter if I knew, as soon as I saw it, that the words on the pure white folds of that paper were going to hurt me.

I had Rashid leave it on the table, because I didn't have the courage to pick it up, not yet. I ignored it until Rashid left the room sometime later, after informing me of the new events around the world. My binoculars were spying the beauty of Earth for me, though after I saw that letter packet, my enjoyment—even my absorption in the scene—was a pretense. The open window was just there to hide me, hide the knowledge I knew would show in my eyes.

When Rashid left, I waited ten seconds to be sure he was gone, the silent counting words running through my head, each one increasing my trepidation. Then I put the binoculars down gently on the sill where I had braced my elbows, stood, and sat down at the table-cum-desk, its surface covered with maps of Earth and charts of space, little markers for all the elements, the pieces of this war that weren't safe to put on anything electronic for fear of hackers making bright specks, scattered across the perfect pictures. The envelope was a sea of clear white, a break in the cacophony of color and lines. Even after its long journey, it still seemed untouched, pure white and clean, holding with it none of the dirt, the grime, that would surely gravitate towards any other envelope. A sigh went through me as I dropped into the chair, and I just looked at that whiteness. Slowly my head sank down onto crossed arms, and, with my cheek pressed into the harshness of my perfectly pressed shirt, I stared. I could feel the sadness on my face, the draw of the skin around my eyes, the pinching of my lips.

I didn't want to read that letter. But without touching it, it couldn't tell me anything, and I knew nothing but that it was from him.

My father. It would be the first time in over two years that I would have any contact at all with him, and there were no clues available to me. Except for the outward appearance of that letter, except for the dread in my heart. So I studied the letter; the thick, expensive paper hid anything that might have shown through; the clear cut address, the strokes firm; my name written formally, the address of this house just a tad bit smaller underneath it, all of it revealing nothing but what I already knew. Another sigh welled up against my throat. I was going to have to open it, and read it, and feel it.

Slowly, as if I were approaching some small animal that could jump on me, and kill me, my hand reached out, unfolding from underneath my head—which promptly, with no effort from me, hit the other arm—my fingers stopping just shy of the edge of the brilliant white of the paper, the tips mere millimeters away from the sharp crease of the fold.

But it wasn't going to tell its secrets by sitting there, so I had to cross that last, miniscule distance, and touch, and feel, and know.

Anger. And disappointment. Grief, a sadness, though, it was so hard to tell what kind of sadness this was. Was it the grief that came when someone died? Was it part of the disappointment, or was it that depressed sadness that follows through some people's hearts? I had to give a bitter chuckle, because I didn't know my father well enough to tell. The paper was smooth, and cold. Full of that anger, and sadness, and, even, possibly...rejection. For me, I knew. And if it was there, it would be total. He would never do anything by halves...it was his way, the thing that had made him such a great success, that...burning need to complete, to finish. It wasn't something I could compete with.

Holding it, touching it, feeling it, I didn't want to open it and actually read what he had to tell me so desperately. After all...if it were platitudes, but was tinged with all these feelings...what would that tell me about my father? And if it were another sort of letter entirely... Would that be a door to my past shutting? What door in my future would that blow open?

I sat there for a long time, turning that pristine white paper over and over in my hands, until, evidence to myself of my unworthiness, my hands, those large weapons that could deal out great amounts of pain, and suffering, but that I'd also learned could tend to delicate wounds, began to turn the paper gray. They were never really, truly clean anymore. Too much grease, too much sweat and blood were ingrained in them now. It'd take the end of the war to give me clean hands, and then...they'd only be clean on the outside, much like Lady Macbeth. I felt a wry, empty smile on my face.

I was no Shakespearian villain. Just, according to so many people, a real-life one, with no purpose, and no honor.

I burnt it after I read it. Can't leave that behind me, though I must admit, he skirted the issue wonderfully. He was a true master at that, the perfect businessman. I think, right then, I understood what I felt from Duo. That awful aching, beyond what seemed to warrant crying, but there were no tears. An empty, dry hurt. That's what I was feeling, right then. Like I'd stared at the sun to the point where I couldn't blink anymore, even through the pain it was making me feel, that lack of blinking.

More bitter laughter. Finally, what I'd been after for years. My father's disapproval, complete, and, I knew, probably unchangeable. I'd burned for it for so long. But now I had it...

Maybe it was like a little boy, poking a large spider. He'd poke, and poke at it, and jump back when it scuttled forward, in fear. But he'd keep on poking it. Maybe it'd bite him, and he'd never poke it again, and that would be the lesson. Is that what my father thought? That his letter, the harsh words in it, would make me give up my fight? If that was it, he was wrong.

Because I wasn't doing this as a "poke". I was doing this because I believed in it, and I could do more than many I'd met. Was that what hurt the most? The fact that I'd not been seeking his disapproval anymore? Perhaps it was. I wasn't going to stop, though. I wasn't a little boy, and I'd given up poking my spider a long time ago. For some reason, I don't think the spider realized it.

There was an upshot of this, though.

I got Trowa's question yesterday. It popped up on my screen, so it was my turn. And I had a question, but I still wasn't really ready to ask it. I would, anyway. Yet another spider...

"Figures you'd be the first one to give out a really frickin' hard one." Of course, there was the usual wryly bitter tone in his voice that I'd come to associate with him when he was being serious. One strong, slender hand went up to brush back his wild bangs. It heartened me, to see that gesture, because it meant, to me, that he wanted me to see his face, when normally, those bangs were his shield against the world.

The boy on the screen, as slight as I was, despite the strength we hid, gave a huff of a sigh, yet one more dramatic move for the audience. I had to smile at it. Sure, he may have wanted me to see the expressions as they flew like hawks across his face, but that didn't mean he'd drop all his masks, his ingrained techniques of hiding, running. So it was still Duo, there. "What am I most afraid of, huh?"

He shook his head, and I could see where the movement of it was restricted because he was sitting on his braid again. How that could be comfortable, I wasn't sure, given the density and the thickness of it, but he did it all the time. Now he was staring off into space, head propped up on one elbow on one of his control-chair arms, his eyes focused at me, and therefore the screen, but not really seeing it. I knew how unnerving it was, really, to face a blank screen and act like you were talking to someone about something that was like this.

Those advanced systems were really both a blessing—a wonderful tool, that versatility—but they were also the end of that saying, a curse, because...how, unless you were top programmers, like us, could you tell when you were watched or not? So many things we'd faced in those cockpits, so many secrets a recording of us there could tell, to our enemies, to our supposed allies. What would history use such a thing for? Would they use them to immortalize us, or...the darker side of that coin.

Five minutes, now, he hadn't moved, hadn't spoken. So un-Duo-like. But that was good, really. I knew how smart he was, how much he could coordinate at once. And if something drove him to complete concentration, I knew that it'd be as searched-for an answer as the one I'd come up with, when I'd asked that question to myself. I sat, watching him do nothing more than breathe, for nearly another three minutes.

When he did move, it was to shake his head again, absent-mindedly, and look at the screen straight on. "You know, I think..." He stopped again, his gaze distant once more, though only for a few seconds this time.

"So long, I've been fighting death, or even...when it gets down to it, sometimes, I'm welcoming it, inviting it in, tryin' to get it to come to me, and give me some fuckin' peace...but then..." His head shook once more. I was beginning to wonder if this was a suppressed habit. "No, I know that I don't really fear Death. So that's out." He laughed, as happy a sound as it could really be from him. "You know, that's what most people fear, ain't it? Anyway...I think, really...I fear this peace we fight for, 'cause..." Here, he looked at the screen so intently, I wondered, for a fleeting second, whether or not he could see me. "'Cause if we do get this peace...I'm gonna have to live it, aren't I?"

A sigh came out, a smaller exhalation of breath, and he shifted his eyes away from the screen, looking at something that wasn't there. "I mean...what the fuck do I know about just livin'?"

He was silent again, but I knew that there was another minute on the recording. After all, it was my life to pay attention to that sort of thing, and I had two years of training to make sure I did.

Now it was his lap, just, down, that his eyes were focused. "That's all I can think of, man. So I guess, you could say that what I fear the most? Is life, 'cause I know death, better'n anyone, I think...but life..." He just trailed off. Then his eyes flashed back up to me, the screen, and he smiled, a cynical, real smile. "I'm out."

I came across the next drop point, and Heero and Trowa's answers, shortly after I got Duo's. It'd surprised me, how Heero seemed to throw himself into the questions, and answering them. So maybe not threw, but...he didn't try to avoid them, which is what I'd been thinking he'd do. I wonder, if, even then...if he was fighting to find peace, and, much though he'd throw himself into the missions with suicide...I wonder if it was a desperate gamble, a "if I survive all of this, maybe I am worth something...at least enough to live in this world after the peace comes". But that's not what I was thinking then. Then...it was different.

It took almost five minutes to get through the multitude of times that he'd turned on the recording, and just sat there, without saying a word, and then, the recording would shut off. I counted eight times that he did it. But as they went up in number, they'd get longer, like he was just sitting there, thinking.

It made me pause, that he'd let me see him being so indecisive. He could have easily erased the first attempts, and I would never have known. On the ninth start of the recording, he sat there for two-hundred and eighty-seven seconds, doing nothing, and staring at the screen. Then, his eyes focusing in on the screen, he started.

"I don't know, for sure." He glanced off to the side, his eyes no longer making me feel pinned. His breathing was deeper, almost as if he were pulling in breaths to calm himself. After another long pause, though not nearly five minutes, he sighed, and when he looked back at me, even over the recording, and no physical touch, I could feel his hurt in my heart. I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

"When I was in training...there was an accident, I killed civilians..." More pain. It was enough to make my mouth water. "I..." His eyes went beyond me again. "I reacted badly."

This time, when he returned to look at the screen, me, and even, the others, because they'd be watching this eventually, too, he had a nasty, bitter, sarcastic smirk on his face. "I was retrained." He gave a snort, and his dark blue eyes slid away again.

More time, and nothing. Another bitter smirk when he looked up. "So, I suppose, you could say I'm afraid of that."

I frowned. Of what? Killing civilians? Retraining? I didn't speak it aloud, though. I already had enough problems convincing myself of my sanity. He answered the question, though.

"Afraid of more death. Afraid of failing..." His eyes tightened into a glare. "Most of all...afraid that if I want to retain me, I'll have to fail. And failure..." His face was sharp, now, the glaring of his eyes so intense to me. "Failure isn't something I can let happen." If he were wont to give out laughter, he would've then, I think, a laugh full of the bitter feelings I could still sense, or the twisted features of his face. "But then...my life's not worth much, is it?"

The recording cut out after that, without any pause. He must've edited it, to get it so close to his last word. My last, final thought on him, before I went on to Trowa's, was that it felt desperate, like he was grasping at straws. I wondered how many of us were, already.

Trowa's was short, and to the point. I expected nothing but that, though. How odd, Trowa. He forced himself so hard into conforming to some picture in his mind. So perfectly controlled. Commanding everything about himself to be this image he held.

His calm face came up on the screen, his visible eye open, and staring at me.

Was that what people saw about us all, this intensity? Because all of them, minus Wu Fei, whom I hadn't seen yet, on this recording, were so intent, their gazes harsh, and unforgiving. Was that a part of their draw, to me? Was that what they saw, of me?

No introduction, no quibbling, or hesitation, here. He went right for his answer. "Staying nameless." And he was gone, the screen going to the strings of code, letters and numbers where his face had been.

Nameless. Weren't we all? For all that Wu Fei and I had true names, were we really any different from the other three? Oh, Trowa. All of us had many names. It was Duo who said that names were something other people gave you right? So the world knew us, individually by something different, and so, Trowa had, apparently, as he'd said, no true name. But together...we all had the same name. We were Gundam pilots. A group. But we were individual in there, too. Trowa was 03. That was him, and him alone. None of us, no matter if we had Heavyarms or not, could be him, in his own cockpit. But maybe...it wasn't our—my—place to tell him that.

And there was something else to it, too. No matter how many other names he ever used until the day I no-longer knew him, I'd always know him as Trowa. So, to me, he had a name, and it wasn't something that would ever change.

For the first time in awhile, I felt a smile not tinged with bitterness spread across my face.

That was everyone, but one. I needn't have worried, though, because it wasn't too long before Wu Fei's answer got picked up by Sandrock.

Characteristically—or so I was beginning to believe—Wu Fei didn't seem to have the patience, or the want, to really be a part of this idea. He'd agreed to it, yes, but...well, so far, he hadn't answered or even asked a question. He'd drop answers, but they were all along the lines of, "This isn't worth my time." So, no, I wasn't expecting one in general, but from the amount of data listed for his recording...it looked like I'd gotten at least some sort of answer, even if it was just a more long-winded version of all the other "answers" he'd dropped.

He always got all the questions I sent out, because he was the pilot after me, "in-line", and, no matter the fact that he wouldn't actually answer any of them, he "faithfully" passed them all on to any "drop boxes" he'd be near, or come across.

They weren't physical spots, because that was basically just begging for trouble, we all agreed on that. They were electronic email boxes and chat rooms, and simple ftp sites, with our little recordings mixed in with all the real stuff there. They didn't even look like they were coded that heavily, but they were. Tricky things that were nasty if you actually tripped, they'd rip through the hard-drives of nearly anything in a very small amount of time. We used simple passcodes, usually a phrase, we had a list of about a thousand of them, that we'd compiled for different times of the day, for different days, months, everything. Rather amusing, in a morbid way, since we never actually felt the need to go over and recreate the list...I guess we never thought we'd live that long. Mortality...for some reason, I didn't think I'd be getting any of the responses as "death", because it was something we'd really, truly given up on.

So maybe it was a last, end result, avoid at...some costs, idea for most of us...I shook my head. All of this over Wu Fei's apparent answer, or the lack I was expecting. It seems that I have a lot of expectations...if they kept coming true... I felt a bitter smile bloom from my emotions. Maybe I should check for that possibility, too. Oh, wouldn't H get a kick out of that. I shook my head at that, and began the sequence for Wu Fei's response.

He wasn't one to peter around a subject, or not look you straight in the eye. So concerned with the philosophy of it all, the psychology of it. He was staring straight at me when it began, and it unnerved me much as it had with the others, already. But this was different, because Wu Fei wasn't the same as they were. It was probably that same need to understand, that almost forced him into making me feel like a bug. A small, fifteen-year-old, (nearly sixteen, I'd let this war suck almost three full years out of me, now,) bug with blond hair, making me feel like I was playing at all of this. I knew I wasn't. I had enough training to know that, too many hours, piled on top of each other, seemingly never-ending, to let one of my "contemporaries" push me around with his wordless, opening gaze. But I could feel the want in him for me to do exactly that.

"You finally found a question worth answering. Way to go." That sneer of his...one of these days. Another shake of my head, the ragged ends of my hair brushing across my eyes, only to be swept back. I knew I never would...but I could still think it, right? Right. But apparently, there was an answer coming, so I knew that, despite the part where he decided to just sit there for a minute, he was going to answer. Yay, go me. I got him to answer. Sometimes, I couldn't help but think of what a little asshole he was, and right then...it was definitely one of those times.

But, after sitting there for that minute...he seemed to lose the tension in him that I'd never seen him without, and when he finally opened his mouth, it'd lost that edge to it.

"You'll be getting a file, it's an update on the information that you were originally handed about me." His lips gave a bitter twist, and his hard black eyes bored through the screen. "I can't think of any way to say it."

Then it cut out, leaving me only a blank, fading screen. Even as it was fading out, I got a secure transmission from H, but it was all encrypted data, and it took me a moment to get it cleared. As I looked at it, though...I was not happy to know Wu Fei'd written a protocol that could read my hard-drive, because it felt too "studied", too clean for the download to occur that close to when I'd finished looking at his message drop. Looks like I was going to be doing some interesting programming...after I looked at the updated "profile". Hopefully the answer would be in there, in some form or another, because I was very curious about what would be important enough to Wu Fei for him not be able to communicate it.

For the most part, I skimmed over it, not that much had really changed. But at the end of it (and I had to let some of my amusement about the fact that it was always at the end out) there was a few new notes, quick and dry. Now, that stopped me, and I re-read them about a dozen times, trying to assign them some feeling, or get a reading of them, an emotional feeling from them.

I knew what he was afraid of. And I'd been right, it wasn't a physical thing. Unworthiness. No end to it. Never finding something worth supporting. It made sense, a sick kind of perfect sense, even. If you took it at face value, he was afraid of letting down his wife...but then, I've never let things rest at the surface. I could see another angle to it, in those few words. He wasn't really afraid of being unworthy. He was terrified of not finding his own purpose. His own reason to feel the zeal that she apparently felt, about something he'd found on his own. I think, out of all of them, this answer depressed me the most, because it was really so close to the one I'd come to.

Neither of us...well, I knew I could never live up to the standards that my father gave me. I knew it. I don't know if he knew how much I could feel his love, and his frustration with me. I'd never actually told him I could, because, for too long now, I'd viewed him as being a man I couldn't inherently trust. Now that's an awkward conclusion to come to, isn't it? Not being able to trust your own family. I've hid it, though. There's only so much you can pull out of me, because, as we all did—though, perhaps Wu Fei less than any of us—my face wasn't the one I really showed the world.

I'd have to call my little "experiment" a success. I'd learned more about them, and even myself, really, by doing this. That was the idea, right? To learn, to figure things out, even to assuage curiosity... Now, though...now I had to fight, to run, and hide. And learn to believe in myself, instead of what others thought of me. I wasn't thinking it'd be the easiest, by any shot. And I was really pulling myself back from talking to thin air, here, my mind was swirling around and around, and...I heaved a sigh. But I'd try not to. Who knows who was listening, or could have been, at any moment. Safer to keep it all in my head, where only I could worry about it.