25-Jun-2005
Title: Fealty
Author: Hope of Dawn
Feedback: Critical commentary desperately desired. Hit me with your best shot!
Archive: GW Addiction at http://www.gwaddiction.com
Legal stuff: None of these characters are mine. Gundam Wing belongs to Bandai, Sunrise, and Sotsu Agency, among others. For time-wasting purposes only and not for profit, so don't sue, 'kay?
Summary & Warnings: The Gundam Wing story from an OZ-centric POV, focused around Lt. Otto. This story starts a month or so after Operation Daybreak in episode nine. Warnings for foul language and a certain amount of violence.
Writer's Notes: Since there are no details available on the OZ, the Specials, and how they function, I've sort of reinvented them, using a combination of historical and modern military protocol to keep the 'feel' of the Romefeller/OZ/Alliance structure.
Notes: Well, it's done. Or close to it... I'm in the final stages of finishing this monster, so I figured I'd better start posting it. For those who don't know--this is the third part in a trilogy that started with 'The Prince' and 'The Knight'. It's Otto-centric, but I hope everyone will give him a chance, despite the lack of Gundam pilots. :-) And I apologize to everyone about the massive wait on both this and Longest Dream--this fic has been eating my brain. Hopefully now that it's mostly out of the way, I can start working on my other stuff again...
Anyway, I'll shut up now. On to the fic!
Even now, I don't remember much of what happened after Sanc.
Oh, I've heard the stories--a bunch of dreck about my 'heroism' and all that crap, turning me into some sort of martyr for OZ. Yeah, right. All that story is good for is getting me free beer. I'm still not entirely sure what my reasons were for climbing into that cockpit, but I can assure you that the 'glory of OZ' was not one of them. What did take me there... is something I don't really remember.
What few memories I have of afterwards are a disjointed, jumbled-up mess. I remember being in the dark, and as cold as I've ever been. I couldn't hear much--I think my eardrums were pretty much shot at that point--just the raspy, rhythmic hiss of escaping air. Not sure if was from the Tallgeese or if it was just me, deflating like a week-old balloon.
I do remember Zechs swearing. And not just a polite 'damn' or 'bloody hell'--he was cussing up a blue streak. I think it was the sheer weirdness factor of hearing Zechs yelling '--the hell he's dead! Cut him the fuck out of there right now, goddammit!" that made it stick with me, even if I was busy dying at the time. Would have warmed my heart to hear, if the damn thing was still doing its bloody job. No pun intended.
There was a whole lot of nothing after that. I remember random beeping noises, the clicking of shoes every now and then. Soft voices talking around me like I was a pinata or someone's forgotten stuffed toy, which should have made me resentful, but didn't. Time didn't really exist in that long, featureless darkness. It just rolled me under like the sea, leaving me floating and numb. The only distinct memory I have is of a rough-edged voice saying, "There's nothing more we can do. He's gone, sir." It pissed me off... but even that was vague and far away.
I was awake long before I realized it. The doctors told me later that this was normal; that most coma patients will open their eyes, blink, and move long before anything else. It was like rebooting a computer. It doesn't matter how advanced the computer is, how powerful--or in my case, how damaged--they all have to start from square one. I am a computer. I am a XLR Veridian 8 computer. I am a XLR Veridian 8 computer with three terabytes of RAM...
End result? No overnight miracle recoveries for me. It took my brain two months to do what a computer could do in seconds. Early on I can only remember recognizing bits and pieces, slotting pictures to words. Light. Bed. Chair. Nurse. It took me almost a week to just figure out my name, rank and serial number. I am a person. I am a person in a bed. I am a person named Otto. I am Otto, a second-fucking lieutenant in OZ... The longer I stayed awake, the more I realized I was looking for something. I couldn't figure out what, though--there was no picture that I could attach a word to. So I concentrated on the things I could figure out: thinking, talking, walking. Walking proved to be the hardest. I watched the news compulsively, discovering more of what my brain had forgotten to tell me: I knew Mobile Suits. And I mean I *knew* them the way some guys know football scores, or doctors know vital signs. Leos and Aries, CV joints and Haskins-Giekel subprocessors--I could see them all in my head, feel them under my hands. I could have taken one apart blindfolded.
The doctors and the nurses at the Alliance VA hospital were pros--they didn't so much as breathe a word of any of this to me. Loose lips sink ships and all that. But it didn't matter. Mobile Suits were only the beginning. I soon figured out that I knew a helluva lot more than the average grunt. I knew about Operation Daybreak. I remembered Walker, and Corsica.
I remembered the Tallgeese.
I remembered the Gundams.
I remembered Sanc--and that's when I remembered Zechs.
I was still trying to wrap my brain around that whole mess when the paperwork finally caught up to me. Apparently now that I was no longer a drooling vegetable, I was now free to sign my own damn medical releases. Typical bureaucratic logic: throw reams of legalese at a guy while he's still shellshocked and bedridden, and watch him sign his life away. I found it interesting that they weren't planning on dragging my butt into a court martial--apparently there was some fancy legal quagmire surrounding around my momentary lapse into insanity that the Powers That Be didn't want to touch. Either that, or Zechs had pulled strings again. I remember thinking that I wouldn't have put it past him, as I turned a page--
--and then I realized just how many strings he really had pulled, as I found out I was no longer a member of OZ.
Apparently I had been granted a medical discharge at some point during the time I was under. It was an honorable discharge, with full benefits--I now qualified as a wounded vet. They'd even awarded me a medal--me! For conspicuous bravery or some such shit. The idea would have made me laugh if I hadn't been so pissed. I looked, and found the person who had signed off on my discharge papers. My commanding officer. Zechs. Of course.
That bastard hadn't even waited a week before he'd written me off.
I threw the papers across the room. When a nurse appeared to pick them up, I demanded to be released from the hospital. She refused. I demanded again, at a louder volume this time. She refused again, and round and round we went until she stumbled out the door, crying. I promptly did the same to her replacement, who was made of sterner stuff--she simply stalked out of the room in a huff. Then I worked my way up a succession of battleaxe nurses until I'd finally ticked off the staff enough that an actual doctor was forced to come in and gave me an ultimatum. Which was what I wanted, but not quite in the way that I got it.
"Lieutenant, the only way you're going to leave here is by walking out on your own two feet." He stared down at me, stony-faced. No lecture, no compromises. Just a flat, unadorned bottom line statement.
I glared up at him. I knew a brick wall when I ran into it, and this guy had 'immovable object' written all over him. Besides, what else was I going to do? I had nothing to threaten him with, short of a hunger strike. But never let it be said I was a gracious loser.
"You want me to walk? Fine, I'll walk." I carefully ignored the fact that I had limp-noodle legs, shaky knees, and feet that were still pretending that they weren't really attached to the rest of me. "Get a therapist in here, then, because the minute I do, I'm outta here."
"That's fine, Lieutenant." The doctor scribbled something on my chart, utterly unimpressed by my bravado. I snarled at him as he left... but in his position, I supposed I would have been the same. No doubt he heard something similar from every arrogant flyboy who ended up in his ward, much less a guy who'd spent the better part of a month imitating an eggplant. Even so, I'd be damned if I'd spend one day more than I had to in this place. I didn't care if I had to drag myself around on my knuckles like Otto the Ape-Man. I. Wanted. Out.
At least my little temper tantrum wasn't totally pointless, because after that they started taking me seriously. And by seriously, I mean that they brought in the Physical Therapist From Hell. This guy was (I'm told) thirty-two, and the top therapist they had. He looked barely twenty, all elbows and long fingers, with a mop of red hair and enough freckles to pass for Tom Sawyer without even trying. He also had hands of steel, and his idea of a 'therapy' was something that he must have concocted while interning in the deepest pits of hell. I suspected foul play.
After a week, I was also convinced that this guy had missed his true calling. He should have been an OZ interrogator. If we ever did manage to capture a Gundam pilot, the poor bastard wouldn't have stood a chance. The Therapist From Hell would have had him spilling his guts in ten minutes, tops. Instead I had to spend the better part of a month with the man, which just proves that there's no justice in the world.
That month was just the beginning. It took me a long time to pull myself together. I was a mess; between the internal injuries, the surgeries, and the oxygen deprivation, I was a pasty ninety-pound weakling. Nothing worked quite like I remembered, inside or out, and every day seemed to be a different struggle to overcome my own insubordinate body, which pissed me off. It gave me something to focus on, however, and I used that pain mercilessly. Thinking... led me to places I didn't want to go. Better to focus only on fingers that wouldn't uncurl, or eyes that didn't work properly. Detached corneas--too many Gs, the doctors said. They had operated, and managed to repair the worst of the damage, but... . They never told me outright, but I figured it out soon enough once I found a pair of eyeglasses on the tray next to my meds. I could see--but I could forget about ever piloting again.
At least they didn't try to send anyone in to try and get me to talk about my feelings and shit. Normally it would have been standard procedure. OZ didn't want their vets getting released from the hospital, only to go home and blow their brains out with their service issue, after all. Or worse, climbing a clock tower to blow a few civilians' brains out first... bad press, to say the least. But the VA was running on a skeletal crew as it was, what with the Alliance falling apart at the seams in the aftermath of Operation Daybreak. It seemed like there was a new shipment of wounded every day, and they barely had enough doctors to save the ones they could. Holding our hands and cooing over mental boo-boos was definitely out. Thank the war for the small favors, I guess.
Besides, as stupid as it sounds--my anger was all I had left. Stuck in that fucking hospital, helpless, with its starchy sheets and starchier nurses, its worn blue walls and stomach-turning antiseptic smells... . It made me angry. The fact that it was my own stupidity that had landed me there made me even angrier. And I used it, every time I felt like I was going to collapse, every time the Therapist From Hell pushed me into one more supposed bit of 'therapy' that just made me want to curl up and die. I didn't want my family to see me like this. I had no place to be, nowhere I wanted to go. I just knew I didn't want to be there.
Another month or so, and I was walking. Not well, admittedly; the most I could manage was a slow, careful navigation from point A to point B. I took my victories where I could get them, though, and ridding myself of that stupid wheelchair was definitely one of them. Getting out of the hospital was another.
My doctor wasn't happy when I informed him I was checking himself out. I didn't bother to listen to the lecture. I knew I wasn't fully healed, that I stood the chance of pushing myself too far and crippling something permanently. I just didn't care.
Getting dressed drove home how things had changed. My uniform hung uncomfortably loose, a reminder of how scrawny I'd become. My trousers were bunched up under a tight-cinched belt to keep them from falling off. I'd gone through my meager stash of civvies in the hopes of finding something better, but no luck. I hadn't changed sizes in years, and now I looked like someone's poor cousin, forced to wear castoffs two sizes too large. Looking in the mirror was a bit of a shock. I'd gotten used to avoiding them during my hospital stay, but now... . I raised a hand, ran it through the grey in my hair, the new lines on my face. I looked like my father. I looked... old.
It didn't take much effort to set myself up afterwards. Refusing to avail myself of the benefits offered an ex-Ozzie, I did most of it on auto-pilot. I picked a city at random, mostly by wandering around until I found one where people didn't spit on the sidewalk as I passed. Operation Daybreak had done little to endear OZ to the masses.
A place to live, a job, a bank account... they were all easy enough to acquire. I'd been running for so long on adrenaline, from mission to attack to mission to hospital, that I'd almost forgotten how easy it was to lose yourself in the mundane. Get up, shower, go to work, go home, eat, sleep: day in and day out, rinse and repeat. One day faded into the next, with nothing to distinguish itself. I never bought a newspaper, or watched a news vid; you could have dropped a Leo on my head, and I wouldn't have cared. The war no longer existed. Not for me.
Most evenings found me at Ozzies, the local watering hole. The place was named after the owner, a quiet guy by the name of Nathan Osbourne. I had been going there for quite a while before I found out that Osbourne had formerly been Captain Osbourne, albeit long retired. Of OZ, of course. That made the name of the pub kind of catchy, in a bad pun kind of way: Osbourne the Ozzie. Who could resist?
Ozzies was a place without pretensions--no beautiful people there. Just good beer, greasy food, and people who minded their own business. It was a huge step up from the silence of my dingy little flat. As it turned out, most of the regulars were ex-military of one stripe or another, come to drink, tell war stories and play pool. I didn't mind listening to the bullshit, though I refused to add to it. My preferred spot was the second booth back from the bar, where I could drink and watch football in relative peace.
Given all that, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when Zechs' name popped up. But I was. It was my own damn fault, I guess. It had only been a few months, but it seemed like years. I'd gotten too used to my grey and anonymous life; I'd stuck my brain in neutral and left it there. It was only a matter of time before I got blindsided.
The guy who ended up doing the honors was a punk by the name of Meizer, an Alliance engineer temporarily assigned to Marquise's squad, from what I could tell. The existence of the Gundams was old news by now, especially after what they'd done to the Alliance doves--but not too many of the bar patrons had actually come eyeball-to-eyeball with one. Meizer had, and now that the story had been declassified, he did nothing but gush over his chance to serve with the great 'Lightning Count'.
"--so after we blew the dummy of 01 to pieces, we shipped the real thing off to the Antarctic base. It was too valuable a find just to lose to some idiot general's ego, you know, and the colonel knew it too." I could see heads nodding all around the bar as Meizer held court. Like those idiots had any idea. Even Osbourne was buying into it, lingering nearby and polishing perfectly clean beer mugs. He'd also turned down the volume on the football game I'd been watching. Now *that* pissed me off.
"We reconstructed it--which took some work, believe me! But you wouldn't believe the power in that thing. The gundanium armor, and that beam rifle... " Meizer shook his head. "I never got to see it in action, but trust me, Zechs knew what he was doing. That Gundam... in the hands of a pilot like the Lightning Count? This war would have been over already."
What an utter moron. He honestly thought Zechs was doing all this to win the war? Fuck that. That asshole wasn't chasing Gundam 01. He was still chasing that damn pilot, even after the bastard had died and deprived him of his 'glorious' duel.
Meizer polished off what was left of his beer, and Osbourne obligingly gave him an unasked-for refill. "--hey, thanks." He grinned at his audience and hoisted it in a mock salute. "Anyway, after we've been there awhile, the original pilot shows back up, this time with Gundam 03 right behind him. Freaky kid... I dunno how he survived, but apparently the colonel did. He'd arranged to have the kid picked up and brought to base. So the pilot marches right up to Zechs and demands his Gundam back--and you won't believe what Colonel Zechs did next!"
I grimaced sourly and picked at the label on my beer bottle. Why the hell was I still listening? I could tell them exactly what Lt. Lightning-rod was going to do.
"He gives the kid a chance to get his Gundam back--but only if he can defeat Zechs first!"
Bingo.
"For some reason, the kid decided to fight in Gundam 03," Meizer must have seen the puzzled looks, because he elaborated, "The orange one with all the artillery. I don't know why... maybe he didn't trust our repairs."
"Smart guy," I muttered at the table.
"It really didn't matter in the end, though. You should have seen them go at it. It was amazing! The Tallgeese facing off against that Gundam--you could feel the ground shake every time they landed a hit. Heck, with all that armor I don't think they even noticed. They just kept going at it, fists, beam sabres... you name it." Meizer waved his hands to illustrate, slashing lopsidedly at the air. I snorted into my beer. I swear, Zechs has all the self-preservation instincts of a depressed lemming. The fact that he was still alive was further proof that God looks after fools and children, no doubt.
"I wish I could have seen the end of that fight," Meizer said wistfully. He took the time for another long drink, then thunked the mug back down and continued. "It was hard to tell, but it looked like the Colonel had the Gundam on the defensive towards the end, though they were moving so fast that it was hard to track them. But they never got to finish it. All of a sudden we had incoming Aries all over the place--someone had leaked our location to the authorities, I guess. Either that, or they'd followed the Gundam pilots to the base."
My bet was that Marquise had finally pushed Khushrenada a little too far. Being a maverick was one thing. Outright disobeying orders was something else entirely. That particular slap on the wrist was probably long overdue. For some reason, though, the idea didn't give me as much satisfaction as I'd once thought it would.
"Colonel Zechs covered for us, though. He took them all on himself; charged right into the middle of squadron in order to give us time to get out of the line of fire." Meizer was positively starry-eyed as he thought about it. It was pathetic... and I'd suddenly had enough.
"For the love of--" I slammed my bottle down on the table, lunging to my feet. "He didn't give a shit about any of you assholes. He was just trying to prove he was better than the damn Gundams!"
The bar was silent for a few seconds; you could have heard a pin drop. All eyes had turned to me, some of them indignant, some startled. Meizer opened his mouth to say something, then looked at me and shut it again.
Kerzchoff, Vance, Walker... "You should feel lucky. You got out alive," I told him bitterly. Then I threw some money on the table and left, just walked out. I couldn't stand to look at their faces anymore.
I avoided Ozzies after that. I suspected that my little fit of fury wouldn't be overlooked that easily, and the last thing I wanted was to run a gauntlet of uncomfortable stares and questions. The beer wasn't *that* good.
Unfortunately, that didn't stop Meizer, who was bound and determined to figure out who had ruined his little show-and-tell. At a guess, I'd say that he probably hung around the pub for a while, hoping I'd show back up. When I didn't, he went looking, and it wasn't like I was hard to find.
I'd almost made it home when I saw him sitting on the front steps of my building, waiting. He stood up when he caught sight of me; his eyes flicking up and down my grease-stained coveralls and shaggy hair. I didn't look too military anymore, which suited me just fine.
"Hello. I'm--" he stuttered to a halt as I walked past without stopping. Doing my best to pretend that he didn't exist, I pulled open the door and headed inside. He had staying power, though. He followed me inside as I wrestled with the lock on my battered mailbox. A quarter turn of the key and two thumps from my elbow, and the mailbox opened to reveal all the crap the world saw fit to send to me that day. Bills, more bills, flyers, insurance papers... I started climbing the stairs, still leafing through my mail.
Meizer tried again, following on my heels. "Look, I don't mean to bother you, sir. I just really want to talk to you." We hit my floor and headed down the hallway, and he kept right on it. Talk about persistent. "You're Lt. Otto, right? I mean--there's just a lot I want to ask, if you don't mind."
Stopping in front of my apartment, I shot him a dirty look. "I mind. So fuck off." I headed inside, fully intending to slam the door in Meizer's face. Unfortunately, there was a booted foot in my way.
Meizer met my glare with one of his own, his face flushed. "Look, I'm not going away until I talk to you. Talk to me now, and I promise I'll never bug you again. Otherwise... " he trailed off, but I could fill in the blanks.
A moment's consideration, and I let the door go. The last thing I needed was this puppy stalking me wherever I went. Throwing my mail into a heap on the kitchen table, I went to the kitchen to grab a beer. "So talk. What the fuck do you want?"
"Well, uh... " he stammered. I straightened, knocking the fridge door shut with a well-placed foot, and watched his eyes rove around my dingy apartment. Even I had to admit it was a shithole--a cramped little flat with thin walls and stained carpet. Meizer looked uncomfortable, shoving his hands into the pockets of his overcoat. Guess this particular OZ hero-turned-car mechanic didn't quite live up to his expectations. "You are Lieutenant Otto, right? The one who served with Colonel Zechs?"
"Yeah, last time I checked. So?" I stared at him across the counter, twisting the cap off my beer and taking a long pull. I didn't bother to offer him one. He wouldn't be here that long.
A slow, uncertain grin spread across his face. "Wow. I mean... I never thought I'd run into you." He hesitated. "I mean--everyone heard about what happened at Sanc. But most people think you're dead. I know I did--I would've never known who you were if you hadn't said anything."
Well, that should teach me to keep my damn mouth shut. Even so, I found myself asking, "Dead?"
"Well, yeah." Meizer gave me a pitying look. "Everyone said you died fighting to free Sanc for Colonel Zechs. I've worked with a few of your crew... I guess they saw most of your last transmission. Said it was one of the bravest things they'd ever seen."
Holy shit. I didn't remember any of that--what the hell had I been on? More importantly, what the hell did I *say*?
A slow flush burning up my neck, I said gruffly, "Well, obviously I'm not dead. Just goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you hear."
"Yeah, but you piloted the Tallgeese, didn't you? I know you were the one the colonel trusted to rebuild it--hell, without your notes, we would have never gotten Gundam 01 put back together." Meizer paused, and I stepped in before he could fly off into Gundam-la-la land.
"I'm touched," I said sarcastically. "But for the record, Marquise didn't trust me with shit. His High-and-Mightiness doesn't trust people. He just uses them." And throws them away when he's done. I took another deep drink, letting the dark, bitter taste of the beer wash away my bile.
"--what?" Meizer sounded utterly baffled. "That's not true. I mean--he trusted us with that Gundam. And the risks he took for me and my crew--"
"Bullshit. Do you know how many men have died under his command?" It gave me a perverse bit of pleasure to pop Meizer's little bubble. "He disobeyed a direct order in order to rebuild Gundam 01, didn't he? Do you think he ever gave a flying fuck about whether or not you would get court-martialed for that too? Assuming OZ even bothered--you and your crew were Alliance personnel, after all. You should feel lucky you weren't just shot and dumped in a ditch somewhere after Marquise bugged out." I drank the rest of the beer down to the dregs, and leaned back against the counter, arms crossed. "Face it. You were just another chess piece for him and his ego, just like everyone else who served under him. And once your crew was done fixing Gundam 01, you just became extra baggage."
That got Meizer riled. He flushed red, shoulders hunching inwards. "The colonel didn't--" He cut himself off, eyes narrowing. His voice changed, losing a bit of its edge. "Are we talking about me... or are we talking about you?"
"Neither," I snapped. "We're talking about fucking Mickey Mouse Marquise. And if you want to play armchair psychiatrist, you can damn well do it somewhere else."
To his credit, he didn't try any more of that touchy-feely crap. At least he was smart enough to figure out that all that would get him was a one way ticket to the door, courtesy of my foot up his ass. There was an expression on his face, though... one that I couldn't quite figure out. "You don't even know what happened to the Colonel, do you?" he said slowly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Why the hell would I?" Buried alive in a hospital somewhere, doing your best to remember your own damn name, didn't help a person in keeping up with the news. And afterward... well, afterward was none of Meizer's business.
" ...no reason at all, if you don't care, I guess." He watched me for a few long minutes, like he was waiting for an apology or an explanation. When I didn't give him one, he shrugged. "All right. I'm sorry I barged in like this. I just assumed--I guess I just wasn't thinking."
Meizer gave a second uncomfortable shrug, hands still stuffed in his pockets, then turned to leave. Halfway through the door, one hand on the doorknob, he said, "You're wrong, you know. Not a single one of us faced charges for what we did. Most of us got promoted or transferred. Zechs... he took sole responsibility." He wavered for a minute, like he wanted to say something else. Then he left, closing the door behind him.
End Part 1
(:./hope/fealty1)
