Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ A Different Circumstance ❯ A Different Circumstance ( Chapter 1 )

It was too quiet.

 

Heero couldn't hear anything but the muffled sound of his own footsteps on the slightly muddy grass; the drizzle had stopped when he had pulled up and parked alongside a tree, and there was nobody else to be seen.

 

Five years. A whole five years since he had left, not knowing if he would return. There were too many memories he had rather he forgotten, since it was easier than facing up to them, and facing up to what they meant. Even now, when he had returned, it had been a hesitant, unwilling, fearful affair.

 

Yet, in a hotel room empty of warmth and company, staring at the phone, his fingers had reluctantly traced the familiar number, and dialed. Despite all the doubts and insecurity, he had wanted to see the other again. Just to see him, of course. Heero had lost the legal right to do as he pleased in this sense the moment he had married someone else.

 

There had been months of something closer than friendship, but Heero didn't want to think that it had been love. A mutual understanding, rather, so deep that it had scared him; and sacrifices, all the sacrifices, at three in the morning, in tangled sheets, on sweaty skin and in breathless parodies of kisses that only served to make Heero burn a little more inside when he had to let go.

 

Die a little more inside, each and every time he had to let go.

 

He wondered briefly, as he walked, if things could have been any different. Perhaps in another lifetime, in which Heero Yuy wasn't the president of a multi-national conglomerate, wasn't in the public eye and watched like a hawk, wasn't married, and didn't have responsibilities and obligations every which way. Another lifetime, in which the rakish, sexy, sarcastic intellectual he had taken into his bed on a whim late one Friday night, long ago, wasn't a whore, wasn't tied to his own many obligations, and hadn't been disappointed so many times that feeling had no longer been an option. Another lifetime, where there would be none of this distracting paperwork and mandatory presence at humid, endless baseball games on Saturdays.

 

Another day, another age, in which Heero could do as he pleased. Different circumstances, in which it would be right to fight for what he needed, wanted, and had lost.

 

The memory of a dark, teasing gaze, low laughter, and the smell of cigarettes darted out of the confines of his mind, and quite against his will, he stopped and closed his eyes. Letting it wash over him; too briefly allowing himself the grace of remembering.

 

He dropped to a crouch, and looked, to be sure he had the right place. Fingers slowly reaching out despite himself to trace the engraved letters on the marble stone. A car accident, he remembered what they told him, and he looked at the date there on the side. About a year after he had left, then.

 

His throat felt scratchy and unused, but he couldn't even bring himself to mourn, because really, their ties had been severed long before...

 

Only memories remained. And all of it rang hollow here, next to Wufei's white grave.