Originally posted:June 10, 2000
Revised: February 11, 2001
Title: It's the Pilot Part 3/18
Author: Truth
Archive: The usual places and, as usual,
GW Addiction - www.geocities.com/fenris_wolf0/
AU - Wherein the Gundam pilots have known each other for a little while, but the war is still stalled back before the pilots return to space. Meanwhile, the five mad scientists have had second thoughts about some of the pilots. Probably OC as well, but I did my best. First person stream of consciousness/POV.
Rated PG-13 at least.
Warning: Not this time.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing belongs to somebody else, sadly.
Feedback, comments and criticisms cheerfully accepted at dhaunea@yahoo.com
Things have been very unhappy and unsettled of late. Duo's disappearance hit all of us hard, although some of us hid it better than others.
When I went looking for Wufei this morning, he was gone. I found a stack of papers on his bed with a note addressed to me on the top. With a nasty, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach I sat down and read them all.
I suspected as much.
It had to be Wufei, in the end. I don't think that I could have gotten either Trowa or Heero to take the proper steps to resolve the situation before it was too late. I was pretty sure that I could reach Wufei, though.
Wufei's very self-contained and he dwells on things far too much. However, this same introspection is what gives him his strength.
I tried very hard to push him in the proper direction and it had been remarkably easy. All it took was a quiet request and a heart-felt plea. The 'innocently adorable' look (Duo's phrase) didn't hurt either.
I'm not really terribly manipulative. People just tend to respond better to gentle requests than to brusque orders. Why be unkind if you don't need to?
At any rate, I read through Wufei's note, his interesting little vignette (I'd been wondering about that coat) and the letter from Duo. This was not good. It explained a lot, however. Duo can be rather remarkably resourceful sometimes. Luckily.
I am grateful that he sent us this warning. I was relieved to hear that he was still alive and in one piece. I was very, very upset...
Zechs Merquise is not someone that any of us want to tangle with, not without our Gundams, anyway. Heero has a healthy respect for the Lightning Count and his combat tactics that he was quick to share with the rest of us. More worrisome, to me at least, is Zechs' rather nasty habit of turning up at the right place at the wrong time.
Duo is in a very nasty spot, right now.
I took the entire sheaf of papers downstairs and began to work my way through them a second time, paying special attention to Duo's letter. That's when the first message arrived.
S wanted to know if I'd seen or spoken to Wufei recently. I replied truthfully that I had not neither seen nor spoken to Wufei in several days. I then laid Duo's letter aside and turned to Wufei's note. There were a number of things that he needed from me and very little time in which to do them.
Over the next two hours I buried myself in money transfers, sponsorship papers, courier arrangements and travel permits. Wufei had left a detailed list for me of exactly what he required for this operation. Smart, very smart. Among the countless couriers employed by my sisters and my father, what would be one more? Wufei knew what he was doing.
So did I.
When I was finished, I picked up Duo's letter and began going over it again. There was something about it that was bothering me. I wasn't sure quite what it was yet, however. Aside from the obvious, that is.
That was when the second message arrived. S wanted to know if I could creep away and bring Sandrock back to the colony. I was forced to tell him that the other two pilots were keeping a close eye on me, and that I would not be unable to escape undetected.
I know a trap when I see it.
What I had told him was also no less than the truth. Heero and Trowa were prowling the house like a pair of caged tigers. Or lions, as the case may be. Their restlessness gives me new hope. Perhaps we really are more than just a group of people thrown together by chance. Perhaps we _can_ make a difference....
Rashid says that I worry too much. He's probably right. I'll tell you something that you probably didn't know. Heero worries just as much, if not more. And I'm not just talking about in terms of 'the mission'. He's been on edge since Duo disappeared the first time.
Heero never struck me as the 'mother hen' type, but he is. He's willing to go to truly ridiculous lengths all in the name of a 'mission'. He's trying to 'mother hen' the entire human race.
He's not the only one, either.
I don't know exactly what Trowa is thinking, he rarely opens up. But he's been wearing this rather sad frown ever since we discovered that Wufei had vanished as well. Our little group is being whittled away, one at a time.
Wufei disappeared because he has finally seen something which I knew all along. Something that Duo realized early on. Something that I think Heero and Trowa are finally beginning to be able to admit to themselves. The mission is us. We are the mission.
That sounds awfully zen.
The five of us were sent here to be soldiers, warriors. But underneath it we're people, just like the people we are fighting to protect. And like those people, we need each other to survive, to keep the nightmares away. To keep each other sane.
Perhaps the 'mad scientists' as Duo calls them, did not bargain for this little revelation. As long as we were separate, we were prepared to fight and die alone. But now that we're together, we draw strength and support from one another. We are stronger now than we were. More complete. We rely on each other's strengths when planning our missions and we cover each other's weaknesses.
It would have been suicide to fight OZ as we were, separate and without support. Well, Duo and I had support. Anyway, going up against the OZ specials as individuals would have spelled our death very quickly. The OZ organization is terrifying, not because of their firepower, but because of their very autonomy within the Alliance. They are only restrained by the limits of Treize Kushrenada's imagination, and he strikes me as a very imaginative man.
Which leads me to another realization. Before Duo disappeared, the OZ specials were very busy. The amount of activity which they were generating reminded me of an over-turned ant hill. But since we lost our Shinigami....
They've been quiet. Very, very quiet. This means one of two things. Either they were behind Duo's vanishing act, or his disappearance and our own subsequent activity screwed up some major operation that they had in the works.
Guess which idea bothers me more.
If OZ is really pulling our strings to that extent, Duo is not the only one in imminent danger. Worse, the activity level of the Alliance military has not changed. This would indicate that there is more going on with OZ than even their so-called overlords are aware.
This could get very ugly.
The strength of the Gundam pilots lies in our anonymity and unpredictability. If OZ can predict our moves we are that much closer to the death that we have promised to embrace for the freedom of our colonies and of the Earth itself.
This is not a good thing.
We've begun to see the merit in living, and we're not so willing to recklessly spend our lives when there's even the slightest chance of salvation. Perhaps that is the danger that the scientists see. If that is indeed the problem, then they are blind. We may be less willing to throw away our lives, but that same feeling that binds us ever more closely to life and to each other fuels our determination to stop OZ and the Alliance once and for all.
It was at this point in my ruminations when a third message appeared. S wanted me to drop any efforts to find Wufei and destroy the records of our search for Duo. I was to keep all information regarding this last exchange of messages a closely guarded secret.
Feeling a bit unsettled, I decided that a cup of tea might help me think. I wandered off to the kitchen, a need for Jasmine tea calling me onward.
After my first leisurely cup of tea, I still felt unsettled, and made another. By the time I finished my second cup, I decided that I might as well begin dinner.
In hindsight, perhaps I oughtn't to have left that stack of papers resting by my laptop. I should also probably not have left that laptop sitting on the table in the living room. And I simply can't think how I could have been so careless as to forget to erase that last message which I had left blinking on the screen.
So maybe I am a manipulative little bastard (Duo's words again).
Heero and Trowa were even quieter than usual over dinner. I kept up a light, pleasant conversation despite their silence.
After dinner I was able to assure S that all the records had been destroyed and that the other pilots would not hear of any of this from my lips.
I serve my people. More than that, I am fighting for an eventual peace for all people. Trust is an internal part of that peace. My life depends on being able to trust my comrades and on their being able to trust in me.
Trust cannot be granted without trust given in return. I had not thought that they would attempt to replace me, but I would have thought the same about Duo or Wufei. To attempt to replace any of us....
It's not the Gundam. It's the pilot.
They are making a grave mistake. Perhaps I have made a similar error in the course of action which I have chosen, but I did it for trust and for love. I couldn't abandon Duo, but nor was I the best choice to save him.
And that admission hurts me badly. I guess Heero's 'mother hen' problem is contagious.
I finally pinned down what it was about Duo's letter that was bothering me. I hope that Wufei is prepared for what he may find when he reaches the end of his journey.
Trowa, Heero and I will wait here, guarding each other's backs. Hopefully we will hear something soon. They will be watching us now, and I do not think that we will be given a chance to escape that Wufei had.
He was right, however. Writing everything down can be terribly therapeutic. I'll have to let him read this. It'd be 'unjust' to have read his own ramblings and deny him the chance to see my own.
End Part Three
Truth
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