Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Waiting It Out ❯ Waiting It Out ( One-Shot )

Waiting It Out

By: Kiamirei

~I'm not claiming to own Gundam Wing. Please review this, or email me with your comments. Thank you!

They had escaped. It had taken what seemed like forever, but Duo had finally gotten free, and had brought Heero and Wufei with him. Afterward, Trowa had hid the three of them until they stopped being hunted. It wasn't long. No one cared about a couple of messed up pilots. Then Duo had gone to live with Hilde, and now it was just the three of them. And the rest of the circus. Heero had to admit that Catherine was a kind woman. After their arrival, she had taken steps to make sure that no one bothered the two guests, and they were all pretty much alone with their thoughts. Perhaps that was not such a good thing. She made them breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day and did their laundry for them. She tried to strike up conversations from time to time, but was unsuccessful, and did not try it often, correctly sensing that they wanted only to be left alone. Like Trowa. But she dared not leave Trowa alone, because without her presence the boy would lose himself, and call himself Nanashi again. The time he had done that - it had been for a period of about two months- had been particularly frightening for her. She wanted so much to help him, to get him to snap out of it, but knew that there was nothing that she could do. Knowing this, she instead hoped that the Gundam pilots could somehow help each other to heal.

"And as for me," she would say to herself, "I can do nothing but support him in what he does, and show that I care for him, show him that he is needed, by me if not by anyone else."

Heero and Wufei were eating dinner outside by the fire that had been lit. In a few minutes Trowa joined him. They ate in silence, washed their plates in silence, fed the animals in silence (this was their single job, aside from Trowa's duties acting as a clown and as Catherine's target), and sat back down by the fire in silence. They were quiet people. They were also dangerous people, and every one at the circus knew it. The first clue had been when Heero had been screaming from a dream of the Zero System and had fired the gun he kept with him at all times. It had only been a single shot, but it had woken up the entire camp, and if anyone had been standing in front of him they would have been shot in the head. The second clue had been when Heero, Wufei, and Trowa had gotten in an argument. Just the prospect of Heero and Trowa actually arguing would have been enough, but the three had drawn their guns on each other, and all three had threatened to shoot whoever tried to interfere. When Gundam pilots made threats, it was obvious that they were deadly serious.

Despite this, Catherine saw that they were making progress, and she listened to them from her trailer. Eavesdropping was not something she particularly liked, but she felt that it was needed at the moment. Trowa was aware enough that if she tried to watch them, he would know. That gave her some comfort, though it was disturbing that the other two were not as aware, and disturbing that Trowa didn't realize that she could hear them.

"It's a full moon," Wufei remarked. There was silence from the other two, but that was how their conversations worked, so he continued. "I love the full moon. It's depressing and lonely up close, but it's beautiful from earth."

"Like peace," Trowa commented. No one talked for a long time after that, contemplating on just how true that statement was. When Wufei spoke again, Catherine had fallen asleep in her bed, the rest of the camp had fallen asleep too, and the fire had died.

"But it's good that the moon is there," he said. "Otherwise we would have nothing to look up at when it's dark. Even if it saddens us to actually be on it, we need it. I think that Nataku would agree."

"For others, it's a welcome change from the earth," Heero said. "But I hate it unless I'm staring up at it while laying on top of a mobile suit that's laying on top of a grassy hill."

"So do I."

"And I. It's the fate of soldiers that know nothing but war."

There was silence again, and they went to bed. Unlike the other two, Trowa did not sleep in his trailer but instead went to bed on top of the lion cages. If he fell they might hurt him -wild animals, he knew, were never really tame- but it was comfortable to him and he did not mind the risk at all. His entire life had been composed of dangers. He supposed that the real problem came when there were no more risks to take.

* * * *

Sleeping outside, Trowa woke at the first moments of dawn, and sat up, keeping his balance on the bars of the cage. He yawned and cracked his back. Emerald eyes gazed down at the inactive lions impassively, and he ran a hand through his bangs. Without a second thought he jumped down, landing about an inch from the male lion's head, and exited the cage, giving the beast a pat. It opened a languid eye, then closed it again.

He met Heero while walking to his trailer, and they nodded at each other in greeting. Heero sat down at the unlit fire while Trowa went to go wash up and get dressed. The former pilot of Wing Zero hoped that the clown had not noticed the bags under his eyes and his pale skin, but it was too much to ask. Of course Trowa had noticed that Heero had gotten little sleep the night before. Heero knew that the other boy probably knew, also, what had prevented him from getting sleep.

Zero System. It was always the Zero System, that all knowing force that showed futures, induced insanity, gave back memories, haunted dreams, made pilots bleed, identified enemies, predicted deaths, and seemed at once both a pure and evil power. They all dreamed of the Zero System, except for Trowa, because it had been kind to him. But Trowa, he knew, had other things to dream about involving the Zero System.

Last night's dream had been particularly bad for Heero. This time he was not piloting Wing Zero; it was The Little Girl, and he was the Zero System, and his cold, cobalt eyes stared out from the yellowed front screen of the Gundam as if looking through a window. He stared at her emotionlessly as she screamed in terror while in the full throws of the madness brought on by the system, watched blankly as she smacked her head on the controls and lines of blood trickled down her face. Wing Zero, flying in the atmosphere of Earth, fell back to the ground with a loud bang. Heero's conscious mind had been shrieking for the entire length of the nightmare, but in the dream he was still silent, uncaring as her neck snapped, and she was electrocuted by wires that had come out from under panels. Suddenly her puppy was there, licking her face, howling in mourning. Still he was the Zero System, unfeeling, apathetic, and unvoiced. The nightmare ended when he self-destructed the Wing Zero, and the explosion incinerated the earth. The boy had woken up screaming, and hadn't stopped for a half hour.

Heero was surprised that his fellow pilots had not woken from the sound, but they were just messed up pilots, not the perfect soldiers and assassins and warriors that they had been. Catherine had rushed into his room. It was a dangerous move, and the boy had fired his gun at her, but she was a brave woman and in his hysteria he had missed. She had wrapped her arms around him and they had sat like that, on his bed, the sheets soaked with sweat, for an hour. Wufei and Trowa would find everything out later, of course, but Heero knew that they wouldn't say anything. His companions were good people and he knew it. Maybe he would tell them his dream.

* * * *

The three of them sat at that fire all day, every day, except for when they were doing their few jobs or sleeping. It was a small existence, but they felt that it suited them. So the boys stayed there, whether or not the wood was lit, through rain and cold and heat and wind and hail. Catherine had brought lunch; they had nodded their thanks, and were proceeding to eat it silently. Heero picked at his food, not really taking much of it in, debating with himself. Finally he came to a decision.

"I dreamed about the Zero System again last night," he said. The other two stared at him, not showing their shock. Heero rarely ever talked about his dreams. But this time he told them everything, and even told them of his past experiences with The Little Girl. When he was done, they were silent, thinking, and he began to regret revealing so much of himself. In a few moments, however, Trowa spoke.

"I'm sorry about the girl," he said, and the other two thought they heard traces of sympathy in his normally dead voice. "I'm sorry you killed her, and I'm sorry about your dream. But in a way you spared her from an even worse existence once the war started, and you spared her from losing her innocence to guns and soldiers and blood."

"But at least she would have been alive."

"You're alive. Can you honestly say that you don't envy her, envy that she's dead when you've tried so many times to die and failed and now you have to go on living when there's nothing to live for?"

Heero had no answer to that. An hour later it was Wufei's turn to speak.

"I agree with Trowa, and I also agree with you. But we have to be strong. I dream about a girl, too. Nataku. She was my wife. But because of my weakness and my mistakes she was killed by Treize's troops. I realized too late that I loved her."

Trowa then joined in.

"I dream about Midii. She was the only friend I had, and I loved her a little, too, but she betrayed me, and ended up being responsible for the deaths of every one of the soldiers that I was working with. But at least you don't have to live out your nightmare."

Heero looked at him, not understanding. Trowa saw this, and saw that Wufei did not understand, either.

"I'll explain better. All of us Gundam Pilots were chosen for a reason. Duo was chosen for both his skills as a thief and a pilot, and for his charisma. Quatre was chosen for his compassion, empathy, and kindness. Wufei, you were chosen for your passion and your strength, and Heero, you were chosen for your skills as a pilot and as an assassin."

"What were you chosen for?" was Wufei's question, coal eyes curious.

"Me? That's my problem. I wasn't chosen for anything. I'm a fluke, a mistake. The real Trowa Barton was killed, and I was the one who offered to take his place. Since I was a witness to the murder, and since I had been working on maintaining and building the last minor details on Heavyarms, they couldn't refuse. I've been fighting in battlefields for -literally- as long as I can remember, and I have a good memory. This is my nightmare: this uselessness, this lost feeling, this feeling of nothingness. I don't even have a real name. You can call me Nanashi if you wish."

They looked at him with expressions of pity, but said nothing. There was nothing to say. Every word Trowa had said was true, and they knew it, so there were no words of comfort to be spoken. Strangely enough, though, all three of the broken, messed up, useless former pilots felt better than they had an hour ago. They had made progress, had opened up to each other with stories that were hard for them to tell. Perhaps, just maybe, the road would be getting easier and they could learn to enjoy the world they had helped to shape.