Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Hard to Believe ❯ Hard to Believe ( One-Shot )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

This is classified as angst only because they didn't have an introspection category. I don't know how angsty this is exactly... I'm curious to see if this fic garners a response. It's one of my earlier writings, but I still like it, so I thought, hey, time to share.

Otherwise, I'd just like to say that this came out of nowhere. The inspiration comes from reading a website (that I can't for the life of me remember it's name...something about Gundam Wing being fan raped...Don't look at me that way, I didn't name it!!!!) and it's analysis of the GW characters. It was extremely interesting, and as the info congealed in my head, it formed this random little story. I hope you enjoy!

 

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I love her. I’ve known that for awhile.

It’s not that I never realized what I felt. Simply put, there had never a place for such feelings in my life until now. I grew up making decisions that effected my survival, not my happiness. Survival was rough enough; I don’t know how many times I arrived back at base with massive injuries, that, of course, I could easily repair myself. I was very talented in my line of work. I was also intensely reserved and in control of myself, to a fault it seems. It doesn’t mean that I never felt anything.

I think Quatre was the first to realize just how emotional I was. He told me once, after Trowa disappeared, that he admired my courage, my steadfastness, and my passion.

“Passion?” I questioned him.

“Yes,” he smiled that familiar soft smile of his. “It seems the rest of us always have something holding us back in battle, like we all have different reasons for questioning what we do. I know I’m not the only one who wonders what the point is of all of this.”

“You think I don’t question myself?” I retorted. What kind of robot did he think I was?

“It’s not that. It’s the hope that I see in your eyes. There’s so much more desire there...so much more passion...to see a changed world, to rise above whatever reservations you have. You know what you want and you go after it. And you wonder why we look up to you. We’re all trying to find the strength and humanity within ourselves that we see in you.”

I couldn’t stand to look at him, so I folded my arms to my chest and focused on a gash in the floor left from our last skirmish together. There was a tightening beneath my ribcage then, the same tightening that always accompanies the action of folding my arms to my chest. It never failed that I expected to see the tiny, lifeless body of a puppy in my arms when they were folded like that. But lately when I hugged my arms over myself I was bombarded with her face, not the face of a young girl and her puppy. I couldn’t help it that I saw her. Quatre talking of me like I was some superhero automatically made me think of her.

He smiled at me again, with some hint of understanding in his eyes. “I think it’s only right,” he began again, “that we find our strength in others as well as ourselves. Otherwise, why would we be fighting for peace among all people? If only ourselves mattered, why would we care?”

I closed my eyes and deepened her image in my mind. I wasn’t used to finding my strength in others, and it angered me that I did. I found so much strength in her. I was alive because of her.

“I think it’s time we go to earth,” Quatre mused.

“I agree.” My blood was swarming with anger, and another emotion that I wasn’t quite used to. At the time I didn’t know how to classify it. But truly, I think I was simply in denial.

I learned later that it was more than I first allowed myself to believe. As I slowly grew comfortable with the feeling associated with friendship, I assumed that was where she fit. I had come to accept that I was considered a friend, and that I considered the same people friends as well. Sometimes I played the calm, cool, soldier just to get a rise out of Duo. He’s just now figuring out how fun I think it is to pick on him. It’s because he’s normally so quick with a wisecrack that makes it fun. He’s much more lively than me, and I enjoy his reactions. I think I’m also the only one who knows that his mask is the thickest of them all.

That’s why I figured that she fit into my life the same way the pilots did. She cared for me, as any idiot could see, and I cared for her. She was my friend. I want to say that again. My friend. It amazes me how good it feels to say those words. I felt content when I thought of her, even though I had only seen her sporadically in the year since the end of the Eve Wars. I was slowly finding a life of my own, but I still found my comfort in her. Then her life was in danger. That tightness in my chest returned, but there was no puppy in my arms. I closed my eyes and she was there, safe. It was then I realized that all of the smarmy romance in the epic and sci-fi movies Duo constantly forced me to see wasn’t all Hollywood melodrama. It was annoying, frightening, and real. My heart ached painfully, and it wasn’t because I might loose a symbol of peace, or a friend. It was because I might loose her.

And I knew then that I loved her.

How in the world do you show a girl that you love her? I wasn’t exactly a normal teenager, so I did the only thing I knew how to do. I used a multi-billion dollar, nearly-indestructible, three-story war machine to save her life. I fought with a precise skill that pilots twice my age could never master. I poured my heart and soul into every second of battle, my fear deciding so many more of my actions than during the Eve Wars. I fought against those I thought were my friends. All because of her.

But in the end, she again saved me. Sure, I pushed myself and my Gundam to our last bit of strength, but it was her warmth and light that caused Mariemaia to end her siege. Because of her, I wasn’t required to kill anyone ever again. She took the world and made it what I could only imagine it could be, but more than that, she did the same to me. What I was the moment she held me in her arms was something I could only be in the imagination no one knew I possessed. Why do you think I fell asleep in her warm embrace? Because I could. Because I was free.

I stayed behind a few days after my speedy recovery in the Sanq hospital. I watched her give her speeches with the fervent eloquence and conviction that was uniquely hers. She made me proud, but as I watched her, she also made me lonely. No, I take that back, I made myself lonely. I realized that our lives were much too different for me to be so selfish as to tell her that I loved her. As I watched from the shadows, Quatre’s words came back to haunt me.

‘...We’re all trying to find the strength and humanity within ourselves that we see in you...’

I had always lived by my emotions. I was taught to do so. It was no surprise to me that I felt compelled to share this new emotion with her, since she had taught me what it was like to feel it in the first place. But I was still trying to find my own strength and humanity in this newly peaceful world. I wanted more than anything to understand what it was like to hold that strength in my arms, and brush my fingers through her hair. I am a boy after all. A boy who lives by his emotions. But was I suddenly so weak that I couldn’t let her shine without having her shine directly on me? I couldn’t rely on her like before. The pilots...my friends...didn’t rely on me anymore, and rightfully so. We all had to find our own way. As I again turned to watch her as the auditorium erupted in applause, I knew that I didn’t fit into her journey. I folded my arms, and my heart ached. I had no choice now but to walk away.

Because I love her.