Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ New Beginnings: Different ❯ One-Shot

Different

By Red Pearl

The noise of the party is grating on my nerves, everywhere I see there are mind-numbing chatters and laughter. Leaning on my arm, Relena is talking to some bureaucrat while I'm getting more and more bored by the conversation.

I turn and glance around, spotting a pale face that stands out from the glittering crowd. I find myself looking into a pair of familiar violet eyes, something inside them… raw and aching… catches me in their depths, drowning me the endless pools. Then a shutter come down over them, they wink and the heart-shaped face splits into a happy grin.

It tugs at my heart…

Relena tugs on my arm and I shake off the feeling, follow her towards another politician that I don't care to meet. I'd rather not be here but Relena is beaming with pride as she introduces me to the other man. So we shake hands and I pretend to listen to the nonsense he utters, besides me, Relena practically glows with happiness.

It makes her look beautiful. It still startles me, the fact that she is happy being with me. The thought that I could make someone happy simply by being is amazing.

I never could make Duo this happy…

But then I had never managed to understand Duo. Despite the closeness we once shared, he remained an enigma to me.

I still remember the way his mouth opens under mine, warm and soft and enthralling; the way his body entwined with mine, hot and sweet, welcoming me inside of him with a desperate yearning… I still remember the way his eyelids flutter open in the morning, as he turns and give me that sleepy smile… the way he holds on to me each night, with his head bury in my chest and arms clasped around my waist that couldn't be pried open with a crowbar…

Tonight, seeing him again, bring up all those memories again. Maybe Relena shouldn't have invited him, him and all the other pilots. Every one of them is a reminder of a life that had been, and could never be again.

Duo was in love with me.

It was something I had always known, even before his confession. I had never understood why. I was brought up to be a solider, a perfect killing machine. I had little experience with emotions. Love, was something that I never really understood.

Why did Duo fallen in love with me? What was it about me that he find lovable?

Every time when I felt him trembling in my arms, heared his shaky whispers of love, I asked myself those questions. Every time when he cling to me, and stared into my eyes with that longing gaze that bared his whole soul, he made me just a little bit scared.

Duo needed me desperately.

He looked at me as if I was his lifeline, as if I could provide the testimony of his whole life, and I felt… inadequate… to answer those needs. There was a void inside him that could never be filled, no matter how much I tried to love him.

I did try. I just didn't succeed.

Duo needed too much.

Relena also loves me, but she doesn't need me. She has a life, family and love. She doesn't need me to prove that life is worthwhile. Being with her is safe, pleasant and undemanding. I can make her happy, but I don't have the power to break her heart. And that, after my failure with Duo, is a comforting thought.

I do like her. I think I may even come to love her. I admire her courage and idealism. Her innocence touches me in a place that's never being touched before. I want to preserve that innocence and that unfailing optimism. I want to protect her while she tries to protect the world.

In the end, perhaps this is the best I can make out my new life after the war, even if once I had imagined something quite different…

Or someone quite different…

The End.