Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ A Holiday Away ❯ Looking Back Today To See Tomorrows Yesterday ( Prologue )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Summery: Even in the middle of a bloody war, sometimes even the toughest soldiers need a break and time away from the death and destruction. And when those soldiers happen to only be 15, then its not just wanted, but needed. A chance to just be the kids they truly are. But learning that lesson itself can be a battle of it own. And that’s the lesson that both Heero and Duo have to learn as they try and take five minutes of silence in a war and turn it in to a holiday away.

Paring: predominately 1x2

Rating: PG-13 to small R for language and violence

Spoilers: Peacemillion, upgraded Gundams, and wing zero stuff

Divergence: Just before everyone takes off to head back out to space, in my little world they had a bit more time then they did in the series. And from there it becomes my own story, though it still does stick to the main cannon ideas.

Warnings: language, violence, and death (not a death fic though) and maybe some OOC-ness, though I tried to avoid it. And an OC.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of the characters or Mechs. All of that belongs to Bandi. I don’t even own the computer that I’m typing this on, it’s rented. But I do have to say that I DO own Holiday. So if you want that, don’t take it, or at least ask first.



A Holiday Away

A/N: The prologue is divided up in to three parts. It was done that way to help and improve the flow and understanding of the story. In other words it was done to make it less confusing to you, the readers. So anything that you are confused on is probably done on purpose.

The room was dark and quite as the boy carefully sneaked back in to it. It was the dead of night, but he didn’t even bother turning on the light. His eyes had already long ago adjusted to the darkness, and besides, he didn’t want to wake up his roommate. The other boy was already passed out cold on the bed nearest the window. His mission had apparently gone much smoother, ending quicker and getting him back to the dormitory first. As he looked over at his roommate he huffed silently. Even in sleep he was a soldier, not make any noise, not moving in the slightest. Never giving any possible enemies the thought that he was right there. It made sense, every last one of them was accustomed to being silent almost all of the time. Sometimes it was the only way they managed to stay alive.

He lightly shook his head as he walked over to his desk. He would never truly understand that boy, no matter how hard he tried. Which was one of the reasons he had given up trying. But much to his own shook as well as anyone else who might have been paying attention, he didn’t care. He had discovered not that long back that he didn’t need to understand him. He was happy just being near him when he could be.

As he sat down at the small cluttered desk, he all but glared at the main computer there. He knew he should be finalizing the mission report and sending it off. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Something else was tugging at his mind, something he had been putting off for too long as it was. And it also was sitting right there on the desk. The smaller computer just off to the right of the main one. The one he had been using as a journal for the past few months or more. The one he had been refusing to update for nearly two weeks now. But he just couldn’t put it off any longer.

Decision firmly in his mind now he reached forward and turned on the smaller machine, booting up the journal program. He started to just scroll down to the end so he could finally update it, when something caught his eye. One of the first entries he himself had ever written in there. And nearly with out his permission he fingers stopped scrolling and his eyes started reading. Taking in just how all of this had truly started, and just how much had changed because of it.



‘Journal Entry 972

The war is still going on. The fighting continues. But now I think I have finally learned something I didn’t think I ever could. I think I finally understand life now. And it’s not about killing and dying and winning, if it ever was. It’s about living. Living even when everyone around you dies. Even when your heart breaks and your world is flipped upside down. It’s about moving on. Finding a way to keep going, to keep moving, and to keep LIVING. No matter what. It’s also about smiling, even when you don’t think you can anymore. It’s about seeing others smile when you thought they never would. It’s about loving. Loving with nothing held back. Even when you think, or even know, its never going to be returned, or at least not the way you want it to be, love anyway. They may never be able to show it back the way you want them to, but they’ll know. And sometimes just that is more then enough.


I know this seems like a lot to suddenly understand. But really its not all that much, and not all that sudden either. I think that it all actually came about slowly, and most of it I had figured out a long time ago. I just never knew that I did until recently. Until I met someone that made me see it all as clearly as crystal. Someone that changed everything, and yet nothing at the same time. Someone that I know no matter what I’ll never be able to forget, and that I never want to either. And they were definitely a sudden surprise in my life. But then again, that’s another thing that I leaned. Sometimes life takes surprises in order for it to happen. Some good, and others bad. This one though, I think it was straight down the middle.


While thanks to everything, and more importantly everyone, I have finally realized everything that makes up real life, I also learned one very important lesson. That none of that is possible, life isn’t possible, unless you have one thing. Belief. Belief in everything and everyone. Belief that people can change, that the world can change. Belief that anything and everything is possible. And most importantly belief in love, and that it can survive anything and everything, and I do mean ANYTHING. And that sometimes, it’s that belief alone that makes it all possible.


I’ll explain more later, and even write down the whole story that led me to all of this belief and understanding. But for right now I have to go. I can hear a laptop alerting one of us to a new mission, and I should check to see if its mine.


End Journal Entry 972’



Yup, he had said way back then that he would tell the whole story. He had just kept putting it off. Until now it seemed. But even at that he didn’t go right to the end to finally write it out. Instead he continued to skim over his older entries.



‘Journal Entry 984

Another mission, and everyone returned licking their own wounds. At lest most of ours were less severe then what the enemy got dealt. It’s still hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. To see life without this war. But now at least I know what there could be. I know what I can strive for. It may not be much, but I can hold on to it now. I think I could picture it before, dream about it, but now I can see it. Now I know its there. And I want it. And with my new belief in life, I know I can get it too.

Things are finally falling in to place, I think. Everything is working out for once, and the end is coming. And after the wars end, I know exactly where I’m headed for once. And that is a feeling that I like. Knowing for once exactly where I’m headed in life, not just in this war. A feeling I never knew before, not really, not the way everyone else knows it. But now I have it, and I’m not letting go of it either.


End Journal Entry 984’



He smiled at that one. He still hadn’t been focused on anything but the war when he had started writing in here. And the half a dozen entries like that one, and the ones that sounded exactly like his mission reports, were proof enough of that. It took a lot of getting used to writing in a journal, instead of those mission reports. Sometimes he still wasn’t sure if he had it right, but at least now he knew he was getting closer.



‘Journal Entry 1023

Another school. I’m getting very tired of this. I’m a Gundam pilot after all. And I don’t really think that I need to go to school. What are they supposed to teach me anyway? Math? Science? Politics and war? I already know more then I ever should about all of that. You have to in order to pilot and maintain a Gundam, and to fight a war. English maybe. But other then reading and writing, I don’t really need that either. Not for the life that I have, now or ever. The worst part is, I can’t even simply blow it off. I have to look the part of the typical student to keep my cover. Which means I have to go to classes, do homework, and get fairly decent grades. Try fitting an advanced algebra book, scientific calculator, and two notebooks in to a Gundam cockpit with you. Or finishing up two mission reports the same time your trying to write an essay on the importance of Shakespeare. None of that works well. But I have to keep up appearances. This is my cover, so I have to make it look good, or it wont work. Whether or not I like it, that’s just the way it is.


Though I do fear eventually someone will catch on to it. I transfer schools at least every month it seems, and every school I happen to be in just happens to be in area that’s under heavy Oz, and Gundam attack. Until I leave of course. Then the attacks stop there, only to start up again at the next place I’m at. Really the fact that no one has figured it out yet amazes me. I would have by now. Sure, I do give myself more credit then most people, I have more then enough reason to KNOW that I’m smarter then most of them. But still, you would think that someone would catch on after a while. But then again, the longer it takes them to catch on, the better for me.

End Journal Entry 1023’


He was glad that had stopped a little over a month or so back. Both the constant jumping from place to place, and the constant paranoia that had gone hand in hand with it.



‘Journal Entry 1057

The fighting has been intense. But I’ve been at the same school for a while now. I’ve played off some of my longer absences as sicknesses and family emergencies. It makes for a bad record, but I really don’t care what my school record looks like. It’s a safer idea to be a bad student then to be connected to the Gundam ‘attacks’ that are the top news stories everywhere. I hate the fact that somewhere along the line the five of us Gundam pilots became the enemies. But it doesn’t change the fact that I will still fight with everything that I have for peace. Whether or not people like us doesn’t matter to me. Just the fact that what I’m doing here and now will one day let everyone, friend and foe alike, live in peace and happiness is good enough for me.


I really shouldn’t be writing in here right now. I have two over due assailments, a mission report due in less then an hour, and I’m all but failing English thanks to all of my missed school and assailments. Not like it really matters to me, but even now I still do have that cover appearance to protect. But there is no way I can ever see Shakespeare helping anyone out in life, no matter what field they happen to go in to. And especially not for a Gundam pilot. But I guess it’s just what I have to do.


End Journal Entry 1057’



That had been when he first started to not just realize and understand life, but truly live it. To blow off a mission report in favor of hanging out at a basketball game, and to not really care that he did that. The last part though, the not caring part, that had been the hardest. And still was even now sometimes.


‘Journal Entry 1103

There hasn’t been much fighting for a while now. I’m almost beginning to feel like a normal student because of that too. ‘Almost’ because I still don’t feel like I belong in a normal school, and also only ‘almost’ because I’m NOT normal. I’m a solider fighting a war, and with that I don’t have the right to just be ‘normal’. But even with all of that aside, I do kind of like this feeling. I’m even actually beginning to pay attention in my classes, and to the people around me. That’s the hardest thing actually. ‘Playing nice’ with the other students. Simply because none of them can ever truly understand the war and the fighting. No matter how close they have come to it, or how much it’s touched their lives, it hasn’t touched them personally. They’re still just happy-go-lucky teenagers. They haven’t spilled blood with their own two hands like I have. But lately, with some advise from a person who turned out to be one of the greatest helps in my life, I’m trying to at least. And with that help, and even more from those still around me, I think it’s starting to work out for me.


I mean just the other day after English class a group of students were gathered in the library during free period talking. Apparently it had started out as a discussion of the last part of Hamlet the class had just read, about where the ghost of his Uncle enters to warn Hamlet(1). But somehow had managed to venture off in to the supernatural and real ghosts in day to day life. And not only did I find myself listening to it, but before I even knew what I was doing, I had joined in. I jumped in when I heard someone say that ghosts were attached to the people and things that held a connection to them. That other people’s memories and emotions, and even unfulfilled promises they had made to the deceased is what kept them coming back to those people. That’s where I spoke up. Only to say that I didn’t agree. The reason why is simple enough really. If ghosts were attracted to other people’s memories and emotions of them, then I would have hundreds around me on a daily basis. Always caring around the guilt and memories of those that I had killed, or had to watch be killed in front of me. Though I couldn’t tell the other students that without blowing my cover. So I just said I didn’t believe it worked that way.


I told them that I felt it worked in reverse. That it was the persons own memories, emotions, and promises they left unfulfilled to the living that kept them here on earth. That brought them back in to our world. And even that sometimes it wasn’t even human ghosts, but memories themselves that became the ghosts of the past. Emotions themselves that haunted the present. And promises yet fulfilled that shadowed the future. And that too was an aspect of life that I had dealt with first hand. I didn’t tell them that last part though, that’s something only I need to know.


Anyway the whole conversation was amazing. From there we ended up talking about televisions portrayal of the supernatural, then just our favorite shows in general, and it just kept on going. And I was a part of the entire thing. I was more then disappointed when the bell rang to signal the end of free period. I wanted to just sit there and keep talking about anything and everything. I just wanted to keep going on and on about anything that wasn’t war related. I wanted to just keep that moment forever. A moment where I was just a teenage boy, and not a Gundam pilot.

End Journal Entry 1103’



That was the entry where it had happened. Where he had first started to simply be a teenage boy, and not run from that feeling but instead embrace it. And he had started writing like one as well. And as he quickly scanned the last few entries he realized that it was time to start writing again. To finally tell the story that he had been holding inside of him for so long now. Because now he finally felt like he could share it. That he could write it in a way that would truly do it the justice that it deserved.

He stole a quick look to his roommate to make sure that he was still asleep, and that the minimal light from the computer wasn’t bothering him. It didn’t appear to be, so he gave a silent shrug and turned back to the screen in front of him. Setting his hands to the keyboard and finally writing out not just what should be said, but what had to be said.


‘Journal Entry 1148

It’s been a while since I last wrote in here. Almost two weeks now. And I know why. I’ve run out of everything I can write about the battles and the war. I can’t write anything else about school and homework without feeling like I’m cheating on who I really am. Because I’m not a student, but I AM a soldier. But one more entry that sounds like a mission report is going to kill me. Which means only one thing now. If I want to keep writing, I have to go back. Back to when I first stated writing. Back to when I first came to the life changing realizations about life and its meaning. And back to that story that I promised I would tell, and that explanation I promised I would give. But that really is just the hardest thing I could ever do. Not only don’t I know where to start, but I don’t know how to either. Oh well, here goes my best shot.


Everything actually started a long time before I came in to the picture, obviously. But I’ve pieced together this and that, and asked questions from people who I knew had the answers. And all of that boils down to a basic understanding at least. And with all of that, I think I’ve got it mostly figured out…



TBC…




(1) Forgive me if this is not quite right. It’s bee a while and my Hamlet is a little rusty. But I do believe it was the ghost of his Uncle who came to warn him. If not, I apologize.