Everyone always says that time heals things, and I can't disagree with the sentiment. It took time for me to wake from stasis. It took time for the bruises and cuts inflicted on me by mobile suit detonation to disappear. It took time for my bullet wound to heal completely, and presently it looks much better than it once did. In fact, if you were to look at me now compared to a year ago, if you were to strip me down and judge me based on outward appearance alone, you might never know that I had endured such physical trauma. But time doesn't heal everything. It can't. Time can't bring back the dead. It can't undo actions or take back words. It can't make right what is fundamentally wrong with the lives we've led. In that way, time complicates things. It forces us to look ahead and figure out how to make amends for what we regret.
The time following my return to colonial airspace passed in a blur. I spent the first seven days in hospital, per my own request, as a method by which I could escape the media frenzy that would no doubt follow such a juicy story as the Preventer standoff. While there, I was tended to gently and by strangers who did not judge me by what had happened in the past. Try as they might, Quatre and Sally could never make such a bold claim as that: They knew me too well to provide the kind of objective treatment I really needed. I took no visitors and had no contact with the outside world except for one phone call from the Commission for Veteran's Affairs requesting my permission to send a representative medic to assist in things like psychiatric analysis.
But a lot of things happened while I was cut off from the world. For one, Captain Charles Benning was taken into custody and the next day gave an account of events that, as I understand, paralleled that which he told to me aboard the mothership. The conversation was recorded so that it could be submitted as evidence, but I was never allowed to listen to the tapes. They were never released to the public. He was scheduled to appear before courts martial later that month facing charges of war crimes, treason, profiteering, and others. He was going to tell the story to everyone. He was going to exonerate me in the highest military court in the whole Earth Sphere.
He was.
But he died.
Apparently, on the fourth day after he had been taken planetside, they found him strung up to the light fixture in his cell. He used the bed sheets.
I entertained that news on the first day after I was released from hospital, sitting in a stuffy board room at the ESUN headquarters. I had entered that building looking for a place to stay while things settled down (I had caused too much trouble for my friends to bother them with such a request), and had no possessions except for what the hospital had given me: a formal diagnosis of post-traumatic stress, four bottles full of pills whose names I couldn't hope to pronounce, and a weekly appointment with a military therapist which I would keep twice before deciding he was a blowhard. Instead of securing a place to stay, I sat surrounded by generals and commanders and all manner of high-ranking personnel and listened to them telling me that I would still have to face a trial where I would still have to provide testimony. The bright side, if there was to be a bright side, was that I would be provided comfortable but secure housing while I awaited my date, not under arrest, but under surveillance, as I was unanimously ruled a flight risk.
The trial went well, I suppose. It was almost completely uneventful, except that it was the first time I had seen Howard and Heero and Quatre and the rest of them since docking on L3 on the day of the siege. Benning's tape had provided all the proof that was needed to clear me, but they still called O'Keefe in to corroborate the story. He looked like hell, all loose-skinned, pale, and trembling. He walked with a noticeable limp at which I recall Heero grinning and looking smug. O'Keefe did as he was told, though it certainly implicated him, and I was let go. I was not guilty, at least on the charges of murder. I was, however, fined for inciting riots and ordered some paltry amount of community service, which was later written off as "for show," and "to appease the press."
After the trial, Relena resigned her position as Secretary General and cited her desire to start a family as her reason. Howard went to stay with some old friends he knew from way back until he could find a place of his own. Quatre and Trowa went back to their real lives, wherever those are, and Wufei, Sally, Noin, and Zechs enlisted to help rebuild the Preventers. Hilde has come and gone, been in and out of the hospital for complications of her injuries, but we've stuck together as much as we can.
It's been eight weeks since then, and as much as I'd love to say that I've been using that time to relax and recuperate, I can't. Immediately after the trial I was called in to a reenlistment meeting where the head of the Air and Space Forces petitioned me to join up again, stating that he had an offer that would be hard for me to refuse. Without listening to what they had to say, I told them in wholly unprofessional terms exactly what I thought about their idea and left the building believing myself to be as civilian as a guy could possibly be. I invited myself to Heero's for celebratory drinks, and got an earful I'll never forget.
I never thought I'd live to see the day that Heero advocated for my staying on board with the ASF, but he laid out arguments that I couldn't argue. After blasting me for having not listened to their offer, Heero began to reason. Having served for almost eight years already, it would only be another two years and change before I'd have a small pension and full post-service benefits. I wouldn't be able to live off of the money, no, but it'd be enough to make life supremely comfortable, and the more years I served beyond the initial ten would just pad the account. Further, it seemed entirely possible in the wake of the war for independence that a promotion or department transfer would be in order, and considering my weak-mindedness (or what I perceived as such) I might've been offered a non-combat post. All of this would come with a continued steady paycheck and built in support system.
He was right. Heero is always right about these things. I contacted the board and asked for another meeting, and they gladly accepted. They sat me down and explained that the newly independent colonists had been restless and wary of dealing with the Earth Sphere, and since I was the one who had called them to action that I should be the one to help clean up the mess. They asked me to serve as First Colonial Ambassador, effective immediately.
I barely recall the conversation I had with Relena the day we made our first broadcast together, but one of the things I do remember, and vividly, was that she told me I could no longer be a mechanic, because now I had to be a politician. She's always been full of rhetoric like that, full of pretty words that don't mean much once everything is said and done, but those words rang true in the end. I guess I am a politician now, though I still don't feel like one.
Needless to say, I accepted the position. An obscene twenty percent per year pay raise and guarantee of non-combat service roped me in. On top of all of that, once I feel up to putting my nose to the grindstone I'll be eligible for all of the academic and aptitude testing needed for promotion from enlisted personnel to officer. In the meantime, I'll begin working as mediator for the newly independent colonies, helping them draft their final constitutions and formally elect their governing bodies. I'll serve as liaison between the colonists and the Earth Sphere Unified Nation to make certain that the interests of all parties are seen to, particularly with regard to trade regulations and legislation. I've got a lot to figure out in the next few months, but Heero and Howard both reassured me that if I try hard enough, I'll be okay.
And isn't that the kicker? Amongst all of this good news, those three words are what drag me back to reality.
I am not okay. I'm better now than I was six months ago, and six months ago I was better than six months before that. But I'm still not okay and I don't know that I ever will be. I spend my days busy with my head in the books learning about things like tariffs and checks and balances and amendments, and I spend my hours listening to this and that colonial representative praising me for a job well done while simultaneously complaining that life is harder now for colonists than it's ever been in the past. I relay their messages as best I can to the higher ups on the ESUN governing council because that's all I can really do for right now, and I return the council's feedback to the colonists who I spoke to in the first place. I keep in contact with the others somewhat by force. Between all of them—Heero, Quatre, Trowa, Wufei, all of the Peacecrafts, Sally, Hilde, and Howard—I get a phone call or video conference once or twice a day. I contemplate getting into contact with that shrink, but invariably decide that there's just not enough daylight to squeeze it in. I'm exhausted, physically and mentally, and the longer it goes on the more convinced I am that I just wasn't ready to move on so fast.
Not enough time has gone by.
So yes, time does heal things. Time does make things better, but it takes a lot of time to do very little. I lay awake at night, sometimes until the tiny hours, thinking about the time that's gone by. I can mark it by the change in my verbiage, in the way that I refer to the detonation of M-204. It's no longer, "I destroyed the colony." Now, it's, "the colony blew up" or, "the colony detonated," or some variation on the theme. Subtle, yes, but still there. I can tell myself that distance exists between events, that I should be on the upswing, but sometimes I still wake up in cold sweats, startled by terrifying dreams rooted in reality. Sometimes unbidden thoughts about Sister Helen pop into my head like tiny explosions that render me temporarily unable to think or speak. Sometimes when I'm sitting at a computer in a dimly lit room, I'll forget myself and my surroundings and reach for the throttle of the gundam I built with my own two hands, and remember that it was destroyed only when I grasp at thin air. I've had two catastrophic panic attacks which, thank God, no one was around for, and I don't know what triggered them.
I'm a hot fucking mess.
In my stasis dreams I saw Helen, and we carried on a tentative conversation. She, or the she I imagined, told me that it was time to move on from things, that I shouldn't dwell on the past. A lot of things were said, but many more things were left unspoken. I think that what she, or her apparition, was telling me was to stop being so hard on myself. At the time I was too confused to understand that she was not merely discussing the church massacre, but that she was referring to everything: She meant that I should forgive myself for the church, yes of course, but also the One Year War, the failed coup by Marimeia Khushrenada, the destruction of M-204 and all the subsequent turmoil, and all of the mistakes I have made and will make in my future.
My list of grievances is long and storied, smeared with dirt and stained with blood. But that doesn't necessarily mean that my future has to be that way, too, and having drawn that conclusion it's been just slightly easier to begin forgiving myself for all of it. I spent a long time in space by myself, and at first I believed that I had done so to follow through on my threats of war, but after a few missions, after fighting faceless soldiers and whatever incorporeal enemy I found in Charles Benning, I realized that those were not the reasons I had gone. Not really. I had gone to find myself the way I had always wanted to, but had never had the courage or the time. I had gone to spend the time I needed to think, the time I needed to understand, and the time I needed to heal. During those precious weeks I was able to forgive myself for what happened at Maxwell Church so many years ago, and I was able to forgive myself, at least tentatively, for the many lives I took during the One Year War. I began to heal psychologically. I made progress because I gave myself time. And now I've stopped affording myself that luxury and my progress has screeched to a halt. Even though the courts have forgiven me for M-204, even though the surviving families have forgiven me, even though my own friends have forgiven me, I can't yet forgive myself.
I still need more time.
-First Ambassador Duo Maxwell
