Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Broken Ties ❯ Invitation Out ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing

Title: Broken Ties

Author: little princess

Archive: fanfiction.net mediaminer.og my personal website and GWFF yahoo group

Rating: PG13

Warnings: Friendship fic and I guess Angst. Talk about loved ones death in the last chapter yet not really a death fic I guess.

Pairings: it's a friendship fic, no real pairings, just the mention in later chapters that they moved on and got married (non-yaoi) to OC's who don't play a big part here.

Summary: At the end of Endless Waltz, we are left not knowing what will happen to the gw boys. In this version, they remain friends for a couple of years, but in the end, their friendship seems to die like most friendships you have at such a young age do.

Author's note: This story was written by me after the last of my final exams, June 3rd, 2004. A few days after I started writing this, I got two women at the counter in the supermarket I work whom obviously hadn't seen each other for years, but now ran into each other again and they left my sight, deciding to go for a cup of coffee together before they went home. I wrote this story, thinking about all the people I met these past six years and whom I would most likely never see again. Here I think back on the people I have spent all that time in high school with, wondering which of them I will still be speaking to ten years from now. It is not a happy fic as it is about friendships that seem so strong at one point, but won't last forever in the end.

Dedicated to all the students who graduated high school in 2004, especially those from that little country in Europe where I'm from, though I doubt any of them will read it.

~*~

BROKEN TIES

Invitation Out

I've always felt I was different from the others. I knew it from the day I met the first of them. It wasn't so much his attitude that made me feel uncomfortable at my own mansion, it was more the fact that I felt and witnessed he was keeping any emotions from showing up in his voice or face. Of course, Trowa was never one for much expression, but still, it kind of unnerved me then.

I saw the way he eyed the Maganacs, the way he looked at the house and every room we entered as if it was a sin to have a place so big, as if any moment trap doors could open or the ground would swallow him and I would be looking down on him, laughing at how he'd fooled himself. I could feel his disapproval but, unsure of whether I was completely on his side or not, he never uttered a word about it. He barely said anything anyway.

I used to hate everyone I met, that was when I was young and way before I knew the truth behind my birth. When I first encountered the Maganacs, they, too, saw me as nothing but a spoiled brat, who could suit their purposes just fine. And I was a spoiled brat, honestly. I came from a rich family, got everything I wanted, never played with other children my age and still I was unhappy and angry about something all the time.

The Maganacs were the ones who changed all that, Rashid showed me what I was really worth and they had faith in me, a kind of faith I still don't think I deserve. They worked miracles, turning a spoiled brat into a boy loyal to his believes and his friends, a boy who no longer needed to hide his thoughts and emotions behind anger. I am forever in their debt.

But even though the Maganacs made a fighter out of me, I am still nothing like the others. For one, I am rich while they have nothing. Duo is the complete opposite of me on that point. Non of them had much money, at least not nearly a percent of what I had, but Duo had no money at all, never had it before either. He grew up on the streets, stealing, fighting, hating everything I was and still am. Oh, he never showed me that, he never did say a word about my wealth or the fact that I had gained it just by being born, he hid every trace of it but yet I knew it was there.

The way he walked around my place, not that time in the village after Heero's self-detonation, but the other time he spent at my place. When he thought I wasn't around, he would pace the rooms, count the steps from the door to the wall and frown, lost in his own thoughts. And even when he entered a room I was in, he walked too casually, hands behind his back, grinning as if the space of it made him feel like he was outside, free. Duo wasn't used to wealth and so whenever he got a taste of it, he acted like the stereotype rich guy, propping his feet up on the table, relaxing in a leather chair that was so expensive, he could have survived on the money for months if it had been spent on him instead of on the chair.

It hurt, to see him act like that.

But I never said a word.

Another thing that made me so different from the others was the fact that I had a family. Wufei'd had a family, or at least people he grew up with, but when his colony was destroyed, so was everything and everyone he knew. When my father died, I had 29 sisters and a lot of Maganacs, whom I considered family as well, to fall back on. But for Wufei all those people, everybody with whom he'd shared his morals, his believes, his life were gone.

In the end, Trowa was the only one besides me who had something like a family left. Catherine and him were like brother and sister, I heard that there was even a chance that they were siblings for real as well. But Trowa never bothered to find out. He was content with the way things were and even if she turned out to his real sister, what would change? He would still be the same, she would still be the same, why hope for something that may not be when you can pretend that it is?

Out of the four of them, during the war I felt most comfortable around Heero. Strange as it may sound, most people tend to run away from him, I liked it when he was around. When he was at one of my mansions, he looked around, checking for the best and fastest exits and not looking at how big it was or what was there or how much money was spent on it. Maybe it was because he was somewhat close to Relena, or maybe because he was most realistic and understood that just because I was rich, didn't mean that I was incapable of fighting, but he seemed least condemning about the circumstances under which I lived, he just seemed to accept it like the others couldn't.

He'd had his reservations about me too, but he was sceptical of anyone. He always had that air about him that told me he refused to get close to anyone, just in case that one ended up turning against him or in a situation where he had to die for `the greater good'. It was a smart choice he made, especially seeing how Trowa's acceptance of me as `that kind boy' nearly killed him in the end. Duo, Wufei, they would have tried to talk me out of it as well, giving me time to hurt them, but Heero didn't. He knew what he had to do and the distance he'd kept between him and me was enough to not be bothered by whom I once was. He knew he might have to kill me and was ready to do it.

Yet I am different from Heero as well. I couldn't get close to him, but I wrongly assumed it was because of the threat called war. So when he didn't change towards me, when he changed so much when it came to Duo and even towards the others, that came as an even greater shock than I should have allowed it to be. I wanted so badly to be accepted by him that I had justified his behaviour during the war simply by the fact that he was raised as a soldier. If he was capable of letting that act go, if even the slightest bit, around others, then why not around me? What had I done to him to make him so distrustful?

What had I done to any of them to make me untrustworthy?

The Marimeilla incident is now almost five years ago, Christmas is coming up. I was the one who risked my life to get their gundams back when they were about to be destroyed by the sun, I have fought just as hard as any of them back then, I have made mistakes, I've shown I am no less human than any of them, I have seen just as much, suffered like they have, maybe even more than some of them because I did have people close to me who got killed. I piloted a gundam, I've been captured, I've more than once faced my own death, I killed no less than they had and I felt the same emotions I knew they were feeling deep down inside.

Yet I did not get invited for their private Christmas celebration held at Relena's place this year. I knew they were all going to be there, Heero, Duo Trowa, Wufei and Relena of course. And I also knew they didn't know I knew, I'd been hacking their mail because I had to know whether it was true, whether I was truly left out and the evidence had been there.

Relena must've guessed the boys would invite me and they must've figured I was on Relena's guest list anyway, right?

Wrong.

Oh, I'm probably just fooling myself. Why would they want that rich bastard over? He had enough business partners to celebrate with and if not, there were always the sisters or the Maganacs he could go to, why bother invite him?

I might look like them, be twenty-one, the same age as them and have fought the same war as them, I might have changed my lifestyle like them to one where the only real fighting was verbally, but to them, I'm different.

I wonder if they'll miss me at Christmas, I wonder how they will react. Yet I know it will only hurt me more. After Christmas, to save myself, I must break with them. I am too different, they can't live with me and I can't keep in contact with people when it is so obvious they can't live with me.

In a few days, I shall give them my farewell.

Quatre Rebarba Winner. Pilot 04 of Sandrock

AC 201, December 20th.