His Story

"My name is Heero Yuy. I know what you are thinking and you're right. It's the first thing anyone thinks when I say my name nowadays. I'm not from Earth."

He looked around the room. His eyes straining from the dim flicker of the fluorescent bulbs that tinted everything in the room a sterile green. It was a far cry from the warm glow of a thousand candles that lit the sanctuary. But he understood. Heero understood why they were relegated to the basement rec room of the church. You don't want a bunch of murderers and war criminals sullying the sanctity of the holy places.

Heero could see it in their faces, in their solemn expressions and lifeless gazes. Young and old, male and female, people from all across the Earth, gathered in one place, perhaps to commiserate, perhaps just to share in their misery. They stared back at him the way he look at them. There was guilt in their eyes. There was anger. But mostly, there was a deep unmistakable sadness. And even if he couldn't quite rationally understand it, he could relate to it. They were the lost and the damned, forgotten by this world, condemned by history. Even here, in the house of mercy, they were not forgiven.

Heero played with his plastic cup, recently emptied of its contents. Hot water, not coffee. He already had trouble sleeping and caffeine would only compound the problem. But it seemed to be a ritual to have a non-alcoholic drink in your hand at these meetings and Heero had no objections to taking part.

"You've probably seen me around. I know some of you already. I've been coming for the last couple of weeks," Heero said as he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "This is my first time speaking."

There was a response of polite applause, signalling a subtle encouragement, and an implicit understanding of significance of the step he was taking.

"First of all, I'd like to thank you all for being patient with me. The truth is I've never been talkative. It wasn't the war that made me like this. Or maybe it was. Fuck, I don't know anymore. I used to think I knew a lot of things, about life, about war, about people. About the times we live in. Now I don't think I know anything. I never realized how different I was from everyone else until the war ended."

The sun pierced her eyelid at an unfamiliar angle, jolting her awake. It took her a few moments to realize that she was in her suite at the Royal Windsor Hotel. She hadn't slept in that bed in quite some time. Relena didn't spend quite as much time in Brussels these days. She had forgotten how large her bed was here.

Relena's penthouse at the Royal Windsor Hotel was a gift from the world government for her crucial role in ending the war. It was a large space, roughly the same size as her townhouse. Its furnishings were far more austere and masculine than that of her place in Vustgaarde, as such despite the amount of time she had spent there in the past two years, it had never really felt like home. Despite this, it had become a sort of home to her as it became her de facto base of operations during the post-war months as her job kept her pinned to Brussels, leaving her very little time to return to the Sanc Kingdom where her mother had relocated.

She sat up. But nothing more. For a few moments, she merely stared at the patterns and curves of her duvet as they contoured her legs underneath and flowed effortlessly off the edge of her mattress. She was still half-asleep and she'd be lying if she said that she wasn't at least a little hung over.

Noin's party had gone on longer than she had expected. Relena had forgotten, that despite their uniforms and their gentlemanly appearance, many, if not most of the Preventer Agents were former soldiers of the Alliance or OZ. And being such, partied like soldiers. They liked to drink, and they liked to drink in excess. It was all Noin could do to keep her male colleagues from getting too rowdy. The owner of the establishment had threatened to throw the party out.

Everyone wanted her attention, which in itself was not so unusual but the attention she had received on that night was quite different than the usual fare. Every male Preventer Agent wanted a chance to dance with Relena. Reluctantly, but politely she offered each of them one song. For the most part, they were polite and respectful, probably just awestruck by the charismatic and beautiful Vice Foreign Minister and former Queen of the World. Most of them had ever only known her from a distance, a symbol of peace, and icon of their time. But a few of them were more bold and tried to take advantage when the DJ threw on a more sensual song. Noin was quick to step in and put an end to it. Even if there weren't any reporters and even if was just an innocent dance, Noin was still her protector for that last night and she couldn't have some blurry cellphone picture of Relena and a Preventer Agent getting a little too cozy getting out.

The sudden vibration of her phone against the hard surface of the nightstand snapped Relena out of her early morning trance. She wondered what that could be. She hoped that it wasn't work. It was Saturday and despite the fact that weekends were when she necessarily had to do her job, she just wasn't in the mood for it at that moment.

It was a text message.

53-99-80-43: Had fun last night. It was really nice meeting you. Hope we can meet up again sometime.

She was utterly baffled for a moment. She didn't recognize the number.

53-99-80-43: At least give me credit for trying. You know how nerve wracking it is to ask you out? Even by text message.

It took her a couple more seconds to connect the dots. Her memory of the previous night was a little bit hazy. And there had been so many men that tried to flirt with her. Relena had almost completely forgotten about the charming man in the navy blue business suit that actually bothered to buy her a drink. She tried to recall his name. Normally, she was good at pairing faces with names but the alcohol in combination with the sheer number of introductions that had been made the night before, made the task significantly harder. Colin DuBois. He wasn't a Preventer like the others. He was a lawyer, as she recalled. He worked for the city. In fact, he had been the architect of some of the bills that she had signed into law over the last two years. He was charming enough and admittedly rather handsome. He seemed sincere and perhaps a little bit naive. He was roughly her age but shared none of the usual signs of war that were so common amongst her age cohort. He must've been an aristocrat, she surmised.

She was a caught a little off guard. She had forgotten that she had given her number to him the night before. Matilda seemed to approve when they went to the bathroom together. But if she was honest with herself, Heero was still on her mind. Still, she wondered if she should text him back.

"I was never normal. I guess I always knew that. Other children spent their childhood shooting at each other with their fingers. I did it with actual guns. I've been fighting all my life. It never bothered me. This was the life I was born into. You can't choose that. That was… until things returned to… normal. I wasn't prepared for this. I wasn't ready for normal. This peace. This tranquility. This deafening silence. The unbearable stillness. Like an itch you don't know how to scratch."

Sensing his approach, the automatic lights of the gym turned on. It was late and therefore it was empty. The door swung open by itself as Heero drew close. The Vustgaarde University Athletic Center was a state of the art fitness training facility. It was originally a gift from alumni who had joined OZ, it was the intention of the Alliance to use Vustgaarde University to bring up their future officer class. The gym was a modern facility made of steel and glass. It housed thousands of pieces of physical training equipment, an Olympic sized swimming pool, several basketball courts, and an indoor football pitch. It originally also contained an extensive firing range, used to train future officers in the handling of firearms but after the signing of the armistice, that area was converted in studio space for yoga and dance classes.

Heero made his way passed the treadmills and airdyne bikes, through the free weights section, to the heavy bags. He dropped his gym bag on the ground and removed his hoodie. He sat down on a bench and began to take off his boots. Placing them aside, he dug through his bag and pulled out a pair of boxing shoes, white wraps, and his 14oz gloves. He quickly slipped on his shoes as he began to unravel the tangled mess that was his handwraps.

As he began to apply the cotton material to his knuckles, he looked around to make sure that no one was in there with him. This was his sanctuary. This was his oasis. After a week of attending meetings at St. Andrew's. In one on one time, a former soldier had told Heero that he should try boxing to relieve stress and to help him with his insomnia. Heero had learned the basics of fighting from Odin Lowe and received further hand to hand training under the tutelage of Dr. J. But he never considered it a hobby or even a sport. It had always just been part of his repertoire for combat scenarios.

He took the man's advice. He bought himself a pair of boxing gloves and hand wraps and went to Vustgaarde's gym the very next day. After the first session, he was hooked. He had forgotten the feeling. That feeling of his knuckles colliding against a solid mass. That sense of strength; the ability to affect change by sheer muscular force. He felt powerful in a way that he hadn't felt since he breached the presidential bunker's defenses with Wing Zero's buster rifle. He had come to acknowledge what he had been feeling all along. He missed it. As slammed his hooks into the heavy bag, he remembered the early days of his training, when Dr. J would force him to go out into the streets of the colonies and pick fights with the local gang members. It took him three months of constant beat downs, bloody noses, and black eyes before he managed to finally beat one of them. But it was worth it. In the end, all of that torture and punishment was worth it.

He finished wrapping his hands. He slipped on his gloves. He approached the bag, loosened his shoulders, and threw a stiff jab.

"I fired my first gun when I was six years old. Shot down my first mobile suit two years later. I've been told… I've been told that they robbed me of my childhood. You can't be robbed of something that was never yours to begin with. I don't miss it, I don't wonder about it. Whatever a childhood is supposed to be, I had no use for it then, I have no fond memories of it now. I know war, its tactics, stratagems, operations, logistics, technologies, and philosophies. That world, that world I understand."

The lecture hall was packed. And it was silent. But that was to be expected during midterms. One last opportunity for those students who had stopped coming to class to test their ability to cram, to see if they could squeak out a passing grade, and hopefully have not waste a semester. Many of them would drop the course the day after with the pre-knowledge that they completely failed that exam. Others would wait until they received their midterm results before dropping. But for those like Relena and Heero, there was no choice. It was a required course for Relena and Heero had to go where Relena went.

Heero hadn't studied. None of this was new to him. To ensure that his creation could not be co-opted by rival parties, Dr. J not only trained Heero in the mechanics and operations of war but also in its philosophies. In the old man's deranged mind, Heero wasn't supposed to be a killing machine but a warrior poet. Ever mindful, and perhaps forever troubled, but his ultimate mission and the reasons behind it.

"But I knew what I was fighting for. That much was clear. I may have gotten lost along the way at times but I always found my way back. I always had a purpose. I suppose I was lucky in that regard. What people misunderstand about me is that I wasn't a career soldier. I was never a career soldier. It wasn't a family vocation. It wasn't a point of honour. It wasn't a path to respectability. Motivations I understand, of course. They are real, I've seen them first hand. They genuinely have the capacity to drive men the way my purpose drove me. I've fought many brave soldiers. I've fought alongside many true warriors. All were willing to sacrifice their lives in the line of duty. I respect that. But I wasn't one of them. Mine wasn't a choice. It was, or at least I thought it was, my nature, my sole reason for being. So, as much as I understood the mission and never wavered from my objective, I knew that I didn't really want to see the end of the war."

An hour and fifteen minutes passed in complete silence before the first person raised their hand, signalling the proctor that he was ready to hand in his exam. That person was Heero. He waited for the test administrator to come by and collect his paper. After he checked that his name, student number were on his test, and that his student number matched the one on his ID, he nodded approvingly to Heero, silently indicating that he was free to go.

He got up from his seat, collected his ID and his pens and stuffed them into his pocket. He waded his way through the sea of students towards the left aisle. He began down the stairs to the front exit. As he reached the bottom of the staircase, he looked back one last time. He found Relena, looking at him, three rows up from the front, where she normally sat during lectures. They stared at each other momentarily. He looked at her as he always did, stoic and expressionless. She offered him a melancholic smile. Perhaps, congratulating him once again on his natural academic excellence.

They hadn't really spoken or seen much of each other since their talk on the day they received the grades for their essays. That was a few weeks ago. Relena was disappointed that Heero hadn't shown up at Noin's going away party. But she wasn't surprised. Heero always hated parties, no matter what the circumstance. No matter, what she did, no matter what she tried, there always seemed to be this distance between the two of them.

"Obviously, this sounds horrible.. And I don't mean to say that I wanted the war to continue indefinitely. I had seen far too many people suffer too greatly to not want it to come to an end. I just didn't want to survive it. I was promised that it would I would die in battle and that I had to learn to accept that. And that's not an easy thing to do, to convince yourself that you were most definitely going to die. That you were okay with that. That you want that. So you can understand that I felt a little betrayed when the ceasefire started and I was left alive, alone, and missionless at the end of it."

Relena was frustrated that Heero had finished his midterm so fast. She had expected him to finish early but not to be the first one out of the exam room. She had meant to catch up him after the exam and perhaps clear the air about the last few weeks. They had left things unfinished. But what was between them had always been unfinished. She knew that. And she wasn't under some naive impression that confronting him this time would fundamentally change something about him, her, or the nature of the relationship. She just missed talking to him, hearing his voice, and the mere presence of his being.

She couldn't understand why he made such an effort to avoid her. Whenever she did manage to catch him and speak to him, it was never uncomfortable, belligerent, or even particularly difficult. She found it rather funny that the whole world wanted to give her their time and attention and yet she couldn't get it from the one person she wanted it from the most. Attending Noin's birthday reminded her of just how desirable she was. Not just on a professional or political level but as a woman.

She filled in the last few question of the multiple choice section and moved onto the essay section. There were three possible topics to choose from. They were more or less a condensed version of the essays that they had to write earlier in the semester. She considered for a moment, if she was going to take this chance to amend her previous essay to make it more agreeable with Professor Scharenberg's political views but decided against it. Her integrity and her values were not worth a better grade.

"You try to adapt, you try to adjust. But you're not one of them are you? You pretend to be happy and hopeful for the future, but secretly you're desperately clinging onto a past that seems, more and more, meaningless. They just want to forget, all you can do is remember. It haunts your dreams, it fills your idle thoughts. Your past sins, your every victim. Every crime you've ever committed. You didn't have time for guilt then. You were too worried about survival. Now you have all the time in the world. They tell you you're forgiven. But somehow you know that's not true. You can't escape it. You're caught, somewhere between the future and the past. You're stuck, and you don't know how to get unstuck."

The Preventer Archives were located on the second floor of the Valknut on the west facing side. It was an austere and lifeless space, much like the rest of the building. It was a large rectangular room, that was split between an upper and a lower chamber. The upper chamber, the one closest to the entrance was filled with rows upon rows of computer terminals. The lower chamber was where the paper records were stored. A single archivist managed the space, hardly taking notice of Heero as he walked in.

Heero checked out a laptop from the front desk and headed down into the lower chamber. He knew where he was going. He had been here several times in the past few weeks already. He strolled down the aisles of moldy cardboard boxes until he reached his destination in the White Fang section. The paper archives were a collection of intelligence documents gathered from previous organizations where digital records had been lost or destroyed. The majority of the White Fang's intelligence had been destroyed along with Libra. The remainders had been confiscated by the government of the colonies from the remnant cells of the organization.

He found the files from last time, untouched, and still with the pen and notepad that he had left in the box from the time before. He sat down on the floor, booted the laptop, and started to fan out the files in front of him. Odin Lowe. Aoi Clarke.

"I've... never spoken this much about myself before," Heero said as he exhaled slowly, still fiddling with the cup in his hand. "Thank you all for indulging me. Thank you all for being patient."

A polite applause erupted from his captive audience. His story was vague but compelling and each and every one of them there knew a part of Heero's story for it was also their own. To hear the story of a combatant from the opposite side of the war was novel but it only confirmed what they already knew. They were all the same.

The group leader thanked Heero again for his bravery. And she told him in no uncertain terms that this was another milestone in his personal journey, even if Heero didn't quite realize it yet himself.

Soon afterwards, the group broke up for one on one time. Heero didn't feel like talking anymore so he made his way over to the snack table to grab himself a few sandwiches and a fresh cup of water. He did wish that they served something other than coffee and tea but he supposed that many in the group already had trouble with alcohol. Someone tapped him on the shoulder just as he finished up refilling his cup. He turned around to see who it was. He found himself confronted by a young woman with long dark hair and a familiar face.

"That was quite brave of you," she said with a warm smile.

"Everyone has to speak eventually," Heero replied.

"Still," she said. "It was quite the story. My name is Tatyana Milicevic."

He recognized her now. She was one of Relena's friends, one of her four constant companions.

"Yes, I remember you now," Heero said. "You're one of Relena's friends."

"Yeah," she said as she swayed awkward and rolled her eyes. "Guilty as charged."

"There's no guilt in associating with someone like her."

"You speak highly of her," Tatyana said inquisitively.

Heero didn't immediately say anything.

"How do you know her?" she asked.

"Old friend," Heero answered with intentional ambiguity.

"You're one of the Gundam pilots aren't you?"

Heero's eyes widened at the accusation.

"Zero One, I presume?"

"How did you know?"

"A guess, mostly," Tatyana said. "I was a Taurus pilot for Alliance's 145th Airborne. You and Relena, your story, what I remember from those days. It's not hard to connect the dots. We've encountered each other before. Although, you probably don't remember. At the Battle of New Edwards?"

Heero looked down in shame. The Battle of New Edwards Base, he remembered it well. It was one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

"I didn't think anyone had survived that battle," Heero said mournfully.

"I was in the rearguard," Tatyana answered.

"Yes well, please don't go telling everyone."

"I think everyone would be honoured to know that a real life Gundam pilot is among us."

"It's nothing to be proud of."

"The man who shot down Libra and saved the Earth Sphere. Nothing to be proud of?"

"That was instinct. That was survival," Heero said ruefully.

"That's how we all rationalize the war," Tatyana said softly. "But sooner or later you'll have to stop blaming yourself for everything. Sooner or later, you'll have to reconcile what you've done."

"I know what I've done."

"Not, not yet," Tatyana insisted. She took a step closer to him and forced him to look into her eyes. "You've convinced yourself, like many, that you are evil and beyond redemption. That you've killed too many. That your hands are forever stained with their blood. Now I can't speak for your experience. I was just a common soldier after all. Nothing like you. But I do know, that you've done good and that you've saved lives. Sooner or later, you will have to recognize that as well. The hardest part isn't acknowledging your what you've done wrong, but what you've done right."

"And why is that?"

"Because it means you deserve to live. And that means you will have to learn to live. And that's the hardest part. That's always the hardest part," Tatyana answered with a smile.

"So I've been told," Heero said as he took a sip of his water.

"I saw you leave the exam first today," Tatyana said changing the subject to lighter fare. "And I heard from Relena that you did exceptionally well on the essay."

"It is a class about war after all," Heero said nonchalantly.

"And that makes you an expert?"

"I can reprogram that Aries of yours, increasing the output of its twin jet engines by 159%, modify the targeting sensors with a new custom algorithm of my own design, making it 5 times more accurate, all while blindfolded," Heero said. "If that doesn't make me an expert…"

"Impressive," Tatyana said with fascination in her voice. "But Professor Scharenberg's class isn't a course on mobile suit software design."

"Let's just say I was intimately familiar with the course readings prior to my enrollment," Heero said as he looked away.

Tatyana, intrigued, repositioned herself closer and gently brushed the hair out of his face. Heero stared back at her, coldly and without expression. And yet, she could still feel his bitter misery behind the facade.

"My god..." she whispered as she continued to probe his features. "What did they do to you?"

Heero shuffled back slightly and brushed away her hand.

"Well," she said with a sigh, exhaling her curiosity and her previous tension. "Midterms are finally over. My friend Freya is throwing a party to celebrate at her place tomorrow night. Are you coming? Everyone is welcome."

"I don't do social gatherings."

"Of course you don't," Tatyana said as she rolled her eyes. "You know, part of recovery is learning how to deal with the outside world again. Or I guess… for you, by the sounds of it, for the first time."

Heero didn't give her an answer, despite knowing that she was right and that eventually he would need to learn how to integrate into society.

"Come on," Tatyana insisted. "Relena will be there."

"Is that supposed to convince me?"

"No, but she wants to see you. You've been avoiding her since you've started coming here," Tatyana said. "And isn't that the whole reason you're here?"

Heero's gaze shot up.

"It's so obvious what's going on between you two," Tatyana said with a knowing smirk on her face. "The way she looks at you, the way you refuse to look at her."

"There's nothing between Relena and me."

"Well, if you say so. You should come anyways."

"I'm not ready… not yet…"

Tatyana sighed and took a step forward. She took his hands into her own and looked at him, trying to get him to understand.

"You and I…." Tatyana said softly. "We're not like her. We're damaged. We'll always be damaged. We'll always have blood on our hands. We can't change that. We can't ever erase what we've done. But that doesn't mean you can't have a life. Come to the party tonight, she'll be happy to see you there. So will I."