I am not and have never been a man who admits when he is afraid, not because of any perceived weakness, but because true terror doesn't strike me as something to be discussed openly. Fear is an intimate part of who we are as human beings, and often it is one of the most personal and genuine feelings we know, something that cannot be shared with others in the same way as happiness or grief or other, simpler emotions.

I was not afraid when I heard the call to destroy my mobile suit. I was not afraid when I felt the metal chassis dismantling around me. In the horrible moments before M-204's destruction the only thing I feared was what I had become and what I would be known for in death.

As we grow as people we are shaped by a complicated combination of our own desires, the desires of those who surround us, and the expectations perceived by all parties, especially our elders. I grew up without much of that expectation. My early life I spent working to alleviate the fear of my peers on L-2. The children with whom I spent my days cried over food, shelter, clean water, and poor treatment from the colonial militias and angry street vendors. Long before I was taken in I forced myself to seek the bright side of all things in order to help them cope with the losses in their lives without ever addressing the losses in my own.

During my stay at the church I was called many things—not all of them positive—but chief among them were innocent and happydespite my strange and oddly mature opinions on the contents of Biblical lore. I don't recall how many times Sister Helen or Father Maxwell called me those things, but I do recall that each time they did I felt a pang of anger somewhere inside. Now, in adulthood, I understand they were trying to pay me a compliment despite the early development of my cynicism. Back then I wondered how learned adults could ever consider a child with experiences such as my own to be innocent. How could a person who lost everything, who faced the rejection of prospective adoption two or three dozen times ever be happy? The words were insults, and as much as I wanted to fight against them I let the false happiness shine through for their benefit.

Then they were gone as a result of my naivety, my stupidity, and I was both alone and desperately afraid. No one had wanted me. Nothing had changed. So I ran. I ran to the Sweepers group. I ran to the gundam. I ran to earth, to space, to the colonies, to Hilde, to the military. I ran from that fear without ever truly thinking about what happened that day, and wherever I landed I managed to settle for a time, meet people, and forge relationships that stand to this day. Common among all of these experiences was my ability to sink into comfortable and habitual optimism, a direct denial of that deep-seated, unaddressed fear—anger, even—that sat and festered in the bottom of me. Maybe I forgot it was there. Maybe I knew but couldn't bring myself to admit it.

Now I know it's there. I'm keenly aware of its presence every second of every hour of every day, because I felt it come out with unmistakable force over and over again, and against my will. In the cockpit of that mobile suit, delirious and wounded and provoked, the rage of near two decades of bullshit boiled forth and poured out of me like hellfire, and in the heat of that moment I didn't care. Only in the moments afterward did I realize what I had done, and those moments were too short for a detailed reflection in these pages.

I knew then and in the sleep that followed that I was—am?—a monster, and even though that part of me seems gone for the time being I live with the fear that someday it'll wake back up.

I know for sure that I am not a boastful man. I am not so sure any more that I'm a religious man. Either way, I pray to God that no one is around when I snap again, because I don't know what will happen when I'm forced to relive the moment I fired on that colony. Until then, I'll do what I always have: Let fear hold my emotions in check, and temper that with the undetectably false optimism for which I seem to be so well respected.

I can only hope prayer is enough.

-MSgt. Duo Maxwell