Sometimes I think I will never be free of this. Justice has no place on the battlefield, but her spirit wraps me at night, calling me on to her vengeance, and I cannot deny her that honour. It is my dishonour.
A man should be strong, and I know that I am. I can protect the weak, the innocent, I can punish wrongdoers. I know forty-two ways to kill a man bare-handed. I am accurate with my weapons, targeting only the guilty. And yet it is not enough. I fight now in accord with others, and though I feel friendship for them, though we work together towards a common goal, I know that they do not understand.
In my darkest moments I ask myself how I can ever repay the debt of honour I owe. Even were I to defeat my enemy, repay my humiliation with his death and her vengeance, it would not be enough. He would be dead, but others would live. Monsters, animals, men who were inhuman enough to order that attack. To kill her � the strongest of us.
Well, we are all dead now. I alone escaped the genocide of the Dragon Clan at the hands of its leaders, forced into the only choice they could make by the corrupt and power-hungry politicians of Earth. The ghosts of my unburied ancestors will follow me for all eternity, reproaching my failure.
And she will lead them. Meiran, my wife, my lost Nataku.
A man should be strong. He should put himself before those he must protect, so that danger may strike rather at him. He should be strong, that he may withstand it, and powerful, that he may defeat it.
And yet I watched helplessly as she gave her life for the Clan. Always she was stronger than I, her spirit that of a warrior, scorning her scholarly husband. I failed her that day; I failed in m duty as a man, and as a husband, and as a warrior. I failed, and not all the vengeance in the world can erase my dishonour.
It's been a long time. I don't shiver, though it's cold out here. The chill of the air seeps into my bones, calms and soothes me. I smile.
It's easier, these days. The smiling. All kinds of expressions. The emotions are easier to find; they seem to float to the surface of my mind without my needing to dig for them. Feeling is no longer something I have to think about.
Perhaps it's Quatre's influence. He's a creature of emotion, after all, and I know he's changed me. Perhaps I'm still growing. It's a novelty to have people around me, people caring about me, but I think I like it. It's always difficult to tell.
Friends: Heero, Duo, Wu Fei. And Quatre. Always Quatre, with his genetically impossible brightness that goes beyond hair or eyes. I never thought I had it in me to feel this deeply.
Of course, it's a given that even if the emotions are there, the words are buried. I've never felt anything less than awkward about myself; it's always been easier to remain in the shadows, unnoticed. I've spent so long repressing the words that now when I call them they won't come. Quatre says I've forgotten how to express my feelings.
Words are small things though, not really necessary. It's a simple thing, I've found, to carry on a whole conversation with nothing but a few gestures or monosyllables. What Duo decries in Heero he seems able to put up with in me; perhaps he knows that Heero is just using it as an excuse to ignore him. Being ignored is what Duo hates most.
The five of us � we know each other. They know me, and I've found that that no longer scares me as it once did. With them, I don't need to speak to be understood. They know the rhythms of my silences; however hard I work to withdraw, they are always there leading me gently back.
I'm a soldier. Not anything special. I'm neither genetically modified nor emotionally stunted; I just do what I have to. I'm good at what I do, but I'm still just a soldier. Expendable.
I've never understood why people seem to have to challenge that. What is it they see in me that makes them want to make me something else? I'm no one's white knight, no misguided child. I know exactly what I am, I have no illusions about myself.
I'm a terrorist, and a killer. An assassin and a rebel. A soldier first and a person second; that's the way it has to be if I want to win this war. But underneath the weapons and the skills and the things that I have to do � yes, I'm human. Sometimes it's difficult not to forget that, but I know that's what I have to remember. I have to be human, because I'm fighting against tyranny and oppression, against people who would stop at nothing to control others. Against people who think nothing of murdering colonies full of innocent civilians in cold blood.
I can't be like them. The things I have done, the innocents who have died at my hands � they haunt me. In order to defeat my enemies I must be better than them, must be better than anyone, and to do that I must struggle against the instincts that foolish men attempted to instil in me in their quest for perfection. I fight not only the enemies of the Colonies, but myself as well.
We all have our own demons; we all battle for control over ourselves. It amazes me that there is even a 'we' at all. The five of us are so different, even our motives for waging this war are dissimilar, yet we can come together not only as comrades and partners but as friends. I have friends. People who are like me, but different. It's such a basic human thing � something I never had.
There is Wu Fei, who fights for his own sense of justice, and is haunted by the ghosts of his sacrificed family. There is Trowa, who fights because he has never known anything else, and lives in the silent shadows of his own past. There is Quatre, who fights to save the innocent, disowned by his family and unable now to beg his pacifist father's forgiveness. And there is Duo.
At first I was worried by the unaccustomed feelings, but after consideration I came to understand them a little. They are dangerous, yes, but necessary. Love is a part of humanity, and everyone has people they need to protect. Before, I fought for ideals of peace and freedom, guided by the unthinking mission-dependence of a soldier, but now. I have a future to fight for. Love, and a future beyond war. All I could ever want, and more than a soldier could ever hope for.
Darkness wraps about me like a cloak. I don't need to see to find my way; I slip silently through the house while the others sleep, seeking nothing more than solitude.
It's so difficult during the day; living in such close proximity to the others, I can't help but be aware of them � Wu Fei's grief-tinged calm, Trowa's quiet confusion, Heero and Duo's shy delight in each other. And all of them � all of us � the enduring nightmare spectre of a past steeped in warfare. The nightmares, thankfully, are infrequent, but it never takes much to remind Duo of his past or Heero of his training, never takes much to send any one of us into a full-sensory battlefield flashback. The scent of blood seems to linger in the ether around us. Sometimes I think I see it on my hands.
I need the darkness. Secure in the faint dream-traces of my comrades, I can finally let the day go, let down my walls a little. The familiar sounds and scents of the night fill my senses as I move unerringly through the blackened rooms, the only illumination a faint glow from the street lights outside the shuttered windows. I breathe it in, take the darkness into myself and make myself part of it.
Even Duo cannot move so silently, synchronise himself so perfectly with the living heartbeat of the night, but the empathy they call my strength is my weakness. I cannot do what he does; cannot distance myself enough from the humanity around me to slip with the darkness into enemy facilities and bases. In order to make myself the killer I can be in daylight, I must close myself off from the pain of the world, shut myself into my own heart and barricade the door. Zero System taught me that only insanity lies on the other side.
Faint hints of dreaming minds drift towards me from four sleeping boys upstairs. Even Duo slumbers, our night owl worn out by his earlier exertions with his beloved and now sleeping tangled together with him in a nest of blankets and sticky skin. I smile at the thought.
Sometimes I think that that is something I might want for myself, but this war is unrelenting. I see the way Trowa watches me, and I know that were I to allow myself to, I would love him as far more than the best friend and companion he is now. But to let myself love him, I must let down my walls, and the blood on my hands is too thick and new for that. So for the moment I shall be content as I am � wandering the night, breathing it in, and praying for peace.
I never planned for this to happen. Kinda freaked me out when I realised, you know? After what happened to everyone else � the plague, and then the Church � I figured I was better off alone. Shinigami calls his own.
It's just that somewhere in there my partners Heero, Trowa, Quatre and Wu Fei became my buddies Heero, Trowa, Quatre and Wu Fei. That was� disturbing. Attachments are dangerous, when you do what we do. Attachments can get you killed or blackmailed; I'd always thought I was the perfect little terrorist, since everyone I cared about was dead. I was alone, and I liked it that way.
It took me time to adjust to having friends again. At first it was uncomfortable, my memories of Solo and the gang, of the orphanage, seeping through and around these new presences in my life, but after a while they settled into their own slots. Quiet, contemplative Trowa; abrasive Wu Fei; generous, laughing Quatre; intense, focused Heero. Heero, my best friend, the first friend I made on Earth.
I was never so surprised as I was when I realised that in my mind 'best-friend-Heero' was becoming 'beloved-Heero'. Disturbing was not the word, and for a long time I tried to ignore the whole thing, figuring that if it freaked sociable ol' me out so badly, what would it do to Heero?
So it pretty much knocked me on my ass when I found out he liked me too. Okay, loved, but he said it in Japanese, and even 'daisuki' doesn't literally mean 'love'. It was pretty dumb really, we both spent days avoiding each other's eyes and blushing before Quatre got a clue and shoved us at each other. Now, I have it on good authority that we are 'sickening.'
It's weird, you know? I figured no one could love the God of Death � everyone who'd ever tried had gotten killed, sometimes pretty damn unpleasantly. Heero isn't afraid of dying, though, and I find that I'm not either. Not any more.
I'm not afraid of dying � I know my death is all but inevitable, really, in this war. What are the odds of the five of us surviving everything OZ and Romefeller can throw at us, after all? Pretty damn small, I'd say. No, what I'm afraid of is what will happen afterwards. Fei, Quat and Tro will survive, but Heero? God only knows what would happen to him; I've seen the way he clings to me after nightmares, as though I could be ripped from his arms at any second. I could. This is love, but there is no security in it. I very much fear that if � when � I die, Heero will follow me, and I can't find the heart to forbid him that, because I feel the same way. It's frightening how quickly the idea of life without him has become unthinkable.
There aren't any answers. We're both too committed to even think of giving up our fight; millions of people depend on us, and I dread to think what would happen to the civilian colonies if the Gundams were taken out of the fight. Really, the only thing we can do is hope. Hope that there's a future for us after the war. Hope that we survive, that we defeat our enemies and attain peace.
Hope � that's a very slender thread to hang life and happiness on. I'd be tempted to pray, but my God isn't one I want to invoke. So instead, I fight on. I fight for the colonies, for all the innocents OZ has murdered. I fight for peace, and for freedom. But most of all, I fight for Heero, and for myself. Because I love him, and there's nothing else I can do.