07-Sep-2002
Title: Understanding
Author: Truth
GW Addiction 2002 Angst Contest Entry
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing is copyrighted by Bandai, Sunrise, etc. GW
does not belong to me in any way, shape or form.
Warning: Angst, as requested. It is, however, relatively mild in
nature. I think I used up all my angst/darkness on my other project.
Timing: Quite a bit post EW
Pairings: If I ever decide to write a sequel, it'll be interesting.
Three people do not a pairing make. However, this story has no
pairings save vaguely implied.
Note: This story will be more than slightly incomprehensible,
methinks. My apologies, but it was thrown together very quickly.
There are no original characters and a large cast. POV, as if there
were any doubt. I need to stop writing stories that have three or
four other stories going on underneath.
Wealth brings with it privilege, I have discovered. Some people see nothing more than that. I have learned that privilege brings responsibility and responsibility brings pain. There are many kinds of pain, however.
I have spent most of my life trying to make up for the pain which I have brought others. It will never be enough. In my efforts I have carefully avoided exploring my own pain, my own humiliation and ignorance. I buried the past deeply, not wanting to think about it or explore it.
I think that I have finally grown up, grown into my responsibilities. I do not want to hide anymore. I will face my own pain and embrace it and perhaps that will help me to move on.
I planned today with utmost care, inviting the first of my unsuspecting victims to visit me while I worked in the conservatory. I offered her refreshments, a seat on a nearby bench. We talked of idle things as I worked on the flowers. It took every ounce of courage I had to finally stop beside her and lay forth my plan.
I could see the anguish blossoming in the back of her eyes, an ache so much deeper and stronger than my own. I thrust aside any sympathy or pity and took her hands. Without her assistance, I would never find the answers I was so desperately seeking. Without her, the others would not listen to me.
I am a recluse by choice, but I know what the world thinks of me. Even isolated as I am, I have heard the whispers, listened to the stories. I don't want people to see me and remember, I don't want their anger and I don't want their pity but that is all that they seem able to offer. I can't think about that now. I can't afford to lose this chance. I put everything that I had into my eyes and my voice; pain, anger, desperation and fear.
"Will you help me?"
I watched her leave, hours later, wondering at the numbness inside myself. Our conversation had been crippled by both the shock of my question and her reluctance to speak. I had to take her by surprise, however, or she might have tempered her answers or even refused to speak at all. I didn't want gentleness or understanding, I wanted honesty. It had felt a little like an interrogation, a little like pulling broken glass out of her soul. Time does not heal all wounds. Left alone, some of them will fester. I had aggravated her injuries, but perhaps now they will fully heal.
She gave me a list, finally. I wasn't sure if she would. While the answers I sought were painful for her, the list was something else again and classified material with a capital "C". Some of the names were well known to me, some were not. It was a priceless gift, these names and addresses of people who were at best difficult to reach and at worst presumed dead.
I wondered what they would make of my sudden reappearance in their lives. I wondered if they hated me. I wondered if she would give my name and address to them, should they ever want something from me.
I waited only until I was sure she was truly gone before making my way to my study. I took the list of names, organized them by what I judged would be their willingness to speak to me. I could see my hand shake as I reached for the telephone, wondering what each reaction would be.
"You seem to be keeping well?"
Trust her to twist a convention into an interrogative. I nodded, waiting as the servants laid out the tea things. I had been shocked when the first person on my list had taken my call personally, further shocked when she had placed everything to one side and declared that she would take tea with me the following day.
I can picture the mad scrambling of her assistants as they reworked several weeks worth of appointments so that she could leave the capital to have tea with me. I'm actually surprised it didn't make the newspapers.
"I can imagine why you wanted to see me," she began as the door closed behind the butler.
I raised both eyebrows and put down the teapot I had just lifted. "You can?"
She nodded, tucking her hair behind one ear and leaning forward. "I've been waiting to see how long it would take you to start asking questions." She smiled then, a soft, sad echo of the one she showed the world. "I owe Heero quite a bit of money because I thought it would have come much sooner than this."
I looked down at my hands, now clenched tightly around the spout and handle of the porcelain tea pot. I let go, hastily and stared at the linen tablecloth. "I... what do you think that I want?"
She reached out, across the table, retrieving the tea pot and deftly pouring for us both. "I think that you want to know what really happened, beyond all the politics and the diplomatic spins. I think that you want to know who he really was and why you were never allowed to know him."
Tears fell then, I could see them spotting the delicate tablecloth. They were born of relief, I think. I did not have to tell her, did not have to allow her to touch the pain. She came here knowing what I needed, and she was extending this to me.
I had never really believed in her forgiveness until now.
I looked up to see her smiling at me over her gently steaming tea cup. I wanted to thank her, but couldn't find the words.
"Will you help me?"
She set down her tea, rising and moving to my side. She pulled out a handkerchief and carefully wiped away my tears. She was still wearing that wistful smile and I could see tears in her eyes as well.
"Of course I will. All you ever had to do was ask."
She left me with a wealth of impressions, all of which I added to the small book I had begun the night before. No single person or set of events is seen the same way. My best chance of figuring out exactly what happened was to question each person who had been a part of it, each person who knew him and knew me.
I had a set of books now as well, written by the soldiers and survivors of the war. She had brought them with her, spread them across the tea table and told me about each one.
These were her favorites, the ones that she felt spoke the most clearly and truly about what had happened. She gave them to me because she knew that I would not be satisfied until I had every possible scrap of information.
The books had all been carefully selected to exclude any mention of me. It had been deliberate, I knew, and couldn't decide whether to be touched or hurt by the gesture. I know what they say about me and 'manipulated' and 'brainwashed' are the things said by the people who look at me kindly.
I showed her my list before she left. She looked at it for a long time before adding two more names. I think that my surprise showed, because she laughed at me.
"They saw him, spoke with him and, I think, knew him in a way that the rest of us never will. They may be reluctant, but you are not the only one with unanswered questions. Reaching out to someone is sometimes just a way to allow them to reach back."
Tomorrow, I will try the next name on my list.
He was expecting my call. The donor of my original list probably let everyone know that I was finally searching for answers. I had expected that and, in a way, it made things both easier and much more difficult.
He came to take me for a walk, of all things. We were moving slowly beneath the trees behind the estate before we actually spoke.
"I'm not sure what you're looking for," he told me. "And I'm not sure how much of what I know will be useful."
I bit my lip, knowing that the wounds here were possibly even deeper than those of my first, unfortunate victim. His wounds, like hers, were in great part self-inflicted and part of me did not want to drag his anguish out into the light.
The rest of me would not give in.
"Just, talk to me," I told him. "Tell me what you remember, what you felt."
There was a long silence and we drifted to a halt. I could see him struggling with the memories, trying to pick a place to begin. I reached out to catch his hand, looking up into his eyes.
"Will you help me?"
He smiled, a bittersweet twist of his lips. "I could never deny you anything."
I knew that he wasn't talking to me.
My little book is half full now, he had almost a lifetime's worth of memories and observations to share with me and I think it surprised us both at how easily they came to him.
We spent most of the day beneath the trees as he explored every memory of the long years when he had been someone else. It had been fascinating and frightening to hear the other side of some of the things I had heard during the previous days. There was a darkness there that echoed faintly but I could see the tension he had brought with him begin to ease.
He brought me pictures.
That shocked me. I had few pictures, all of them formal and posed. These were snapshots, laughing, frowning, playing, sleeping... I found myself crying again, tears running down my cheeks as I looked at the images of something I would never, could never know.
He gave them to me, all of them. He was smiling when he did it, as much at my expression of delighted disbelief as with his willingness to let go.
They are in a box now with the books. I kept a particularly good one, young, handsome and half-asleep in a windowsill, and fixed it carefully to the cover of my own book. These are memories, real, true moments from his life. I want them all, the good and the bad, and I won't rest until I have them.
I have tapes now, too. I taped our conversation today and it took three of them, but he didn't mind. What I put in my book are the vivid moments, the things that _I_ feel define the life of the man I want to know. The tapes will be more accurate, but the book is for me.
Tomorrow I will call someone else.
I didn't have to call her. She called me. I was just closing my book and debating whether or not to ring for assistance in getting to bed when she called. He had given her my number, told her what I was doing.
I should have known they'd be together.
It wasn't a very long conversation, or very deep. She allowed me to tape it and I'll leave her story there. She didn't mind speaking to me, but we did not have the connection that I had with the first three, and I did not feel right asking too many personal questions.
Tomorrow I will start reading some of the histories and biographies. It will be interesting to see if the memories I have stolen will match with what is being taught to the world.
Historians are liars.
I spent a week reading. The books were good, but they lacked depth for what I wanted to know. The authors tended to generalize, rationalize and gloss over the things that they were not certain of. The accounts were also wildly contradictory in places. Most of them lacked what I felt to be very valuable information on the clashes between the Alliance and the Gundam pilots, OZ and the Alliance.
Taking my courage in both hands, I looked at the first of the two names that had been added to my list. There was no telephone number, only an e-mail address.
It was a short letter, my own guilt making it impossible for me to be more open than that. It ended:
"I am sorry to have to bring myself to your attention, sorrier still for the things that I did. I want to understand what happened and who I am. Will you help me?"
I was quietly engaged in transcribing one of my tapes when a response arrived.
I... I cried again. I'm not prone to these emotional outbursts but this...
He forgave me. Completely. Brushed off my apologies as if there had been no need for them. What had happened between us had been unutterably painful and I occasionally still have nightmares about it. About what I did, what he did, what happened after that...
When I managed to pull myself together, I read the rest of the letter. It was almost as short as mine had been, but it gave me something altogether priceless.
They had met. Incredible as it seems, they had met. Face to face. The details were all there. When it happened, how, what was said... It was something the historians would have _killed_ to know.
"I would have liked to have known him better," the letter ended. "He was an extraordinary man."
Beneath that was another name for my list, someone who had vanished a very long time ago, leaving only rumors in his wake.
I printed out the letter and, hands trembling again, reached for the telephone.
"My God, you're _GORGEOUS_!!"
I could have said the same. Duo Maxwell has been missing ever since... well, I don't like to think about it. Let's just say he's been missing for a very long time. He's in his late twenties, I think, and looks only a little older than I am.
He took my phone call, paused only long enough to get my address, informed me that he'd be on my doorstep by Thursday at the latest and hung up.
The man is a whirlwind. He swept into my house, chased off the servants and proceeded to subject me to the fastest run of twenty questions I'd ever heard. He was forced to act as my personal attendant for the day, because he chased mine away, but he didn't seem to mind.
I found myself showing him the books, the pictures, the e-mail and even my own little book. It was the list that he found the most interesting.
"Is this in some sort of order?" he asked me, sprawled gracelessly at my feet.
I nodded. "I tried to guess who'd be most willing to talk about it."
He shrugged. "It's been a long time and most of us don't really believe in carrying grudges. Let me guess, Une gave you the list. Relena gave you the books and her brother is responsible for the pictures. The phone call has _got_ to be Noin and you got my number from Heero."
I gaped at him and he just grinned. "How did you know that?"
He waved my book at me, eyes sparkling. "Levels of emotional involvement. If you really want to get into this, call the last name on your list. I think you'll find that he's got more to say than you'd think."
I flushed, looking away. "I... I can't. Relena gave me his name, but..."
"You're not still feeling guilty about that, are you?" He moved back into my line of vision and frowned at me. "You are."
I shrugged uncomfortably. "If it hadn't been for me..."
He scowled at me. "If it hadn't been for you, he probably would have found some equally spectacular way to get himself into trouble. Everyone has inner demons, kid. If you give them power, they'll eat you alive."
He spent the night, regaling me with stories that had absolutely nothing to do with my search. He was amusing, distracting company and when he left I realized that he had told me nothing at all.
I made a mental note to check the number Heero gave me, but I'd be willing to bet almost anything that it's been changed. I don't think that I've seen the last of Duo Maxwell, however. He made several comments about how nice it was having a wealthy sponsor and a new place to hide out.
Tomorrow I'll try someone else.
Two e-mails and a telephone call later, I had my next visitor.
She came to visit me on a rainy afternoon and I played the piano while she spoke of intrigue and military politics. It was fascinating, although mostly irrelevant to my own, personal search.
I taped her conversation and she went over my stack of books, leaving me with several recommendations of her own. She said that she'd have them sent and when I protested, frowned at me.
"You've spent all this time alone, determined to solve everything by yourself. Let someone else do something for you, for once."
I protested again, but she shook her head at me.
"Trying to rely only on yourself leads to misery," she told me, lips tightening slightly. "Knowing when to accept help and support is just as important as independence."
Obviously one of those personal demons that Duo had mentioned. It surprised me that they were so easy to see in others, and I wondered what people really saw when they looked at me.
I accepted her offer of yet more books and thanked her for her time. She gave me a warm hug and a smile, something that surprised me.
"Shutting yourself off from the world isn't good for you," she told me, "especially at your age."
I shook my head. "I've had enough of the world. Everything that I need is here."
"Perhaps not everything," she told me softly, her smile dimming just a little. "If you ever want an audience for your piano-playing, you can always call me."
Relena had said something similar about tea. Strange.
I didn't have anything to put in my book after she went home. It didn't surprise me very much. I've almost come to the end of my list, and I know more now than I had ever hoped. Something is still missing, however, something important.
My heart still aches. I still don't know why.
I've spent another week taking notes, organizing my findings, listening to the tapes. The picture is clearer and the new books have added depth again, but I'm still empty inside. This isn't the entire story, I know it.
It was at the end of that week that I had another visitor. One of my e-mails had borne fruit, apparently.
He called before he came to visit, apologized for the short notice but said that he was merely passing through. He came to tea, as Relena had, and brought books, as she did.
His books, however, were rather different; loosely bound collections of classified correspondence between his men and himself, between himself and the colonies, between himself and his family. He loaned them to me along with a stack of maps, carefully marked as to various missions and a thickly bound stack of mission reports.
"Attack and counter attack," he told me seriously. "He was a military and political genius and I think you'll find out a great deal about how he thought if you can follow how he read us and how he reacted to the things we did."
This was priceless information, something that had been withheld from the world for years. I stared at him, dumb-founded.
He reached out to touch my hand, eyes serious. "I know that you're searching for understanding, both of him and of yourself. I know that you're hurting and I could wish that you'd reached out sooner."
"You don't even know me," I protested, eyes tearing up yet again. I've cried more in the past month than I have in years.
"I know that you won't misuse this information," he told me softly. "I know that I can trust you."
Somehow, he was right. I cried myself to sleep that night, my book under my pillow. Even the people who haven't been able to tell me what I need to know have been doing their best to bring me understanding.
People I've hurt, even strangers, are coming forward to help me find my way.
It frightens me and I'm not sure what to do.
Today I received the response to my last e-mail.
I checked the account it came from instantly, but it was already defunct. If I had thought the previous information had been the most dangerous to handle, I had been hopelessly naïve.
OZ files, reports, personnel information, troop movements, hidden bases, MS specifications; the sheer amount of information was staggering. Organizational plans, FYO files, personal communications, telephone logs, supply inventories...
People _died_ for this information once upon a time and here it is, in my hands.
No letter came with these files, no personal communication at all. I know who sent them, and that is enough.
It's strange how I can feel the mind at work behind these reams of information. I think that I have reached the fringes of the understanding that I seek. It's hard to explain how all the personal details, the military strategies, the theories and the rest are all so tightly bound together in this last set of highly illegal files.
I wonder if he kept them for this day, for me. I wonder why he would bother.
There is just one name left on my list and... I will not pursue it.
It has been almost five months since I began my quest. Every so often another book will arrive, or a visitor for tea or a walk. I have a sporadic correspondence with Duo and, surprisingly, Heero. Once I even received tickets to the circus. I still have not been able to reach out to these strangers, but they are reaching out to me.
I have worked my way through almost all my gathered information, and what I have learned sits in the pit of my stomach like a lead weight. There are things which Une, at least, will still not discuss with me and I can't blame her. She will carry her pain until the day of her death and I feel that our first conversation was enough. I do not wish to make it any worse.
I need more. I need to know _why_, and that is the question that no one will answer for me. I'm not sure that anyone really knows.
That's a lie. Someone _does_ know, and it is the person I have been avoiding. He knows, but it is information that he will never volunteer. I have been thinking about this for weeks now, thinking about what to do and how to do it. I can't simply call him, or write to him. This is intensely personal for both of us and he deserves more consideration than that.
In the end, I had myself driven to the base. I sent the driver away and simply waited at the small park outside the administration buildings. I knew that he would be here today, thanks to Une. I knew that he would leave the building through this entrance.
I knew that he was aware I had been seeking answers and that the only person I had not asked them for was him. I sat quietly beside one of the benches and waited. I didn't have to wait very long.
He's different. Not just in how he looks, but how he moves and acts. There is less anger and tension to him, less pain. It's still there, however. Another personal demon, no doubt, even after all these years. I wonder what Duo would say about it.
He saw me right away and hesitated. I had never seen him hesitate before. I did not wave or beckon, simply waited. I would not ask him to do this for me. I couldn't. If he was ready, if he was willing, the choice was his. If he did not want to speak to me, he could go on his way and I would not try again.
He came toward me, sinking to his heels so that we were more or less at the same level. "Did you come to see me?" He asked me the question softly, as if he didn't really believe it.
I nodded, unsure of what to do next. I had not really believed he would choose to speak to me. Not now, not ever. I said the first thing that came into my head. "I'm sorry."
He scowled at me, an expression I was more familiar with. "I do not wish to discuss it. That is in the past, and it was not entirely your fault."
Guilt. I could see it in his eyes. Neither of us would ever really be able to let go of it, and I felt another sharp stab of pain. He would not have chosen this meeting had I not been actually here. He would have rejected my calls and letters, ignored them. I could not blame him.
"Please," I began, hating myself for coming here and asking this of him. "Will you help me?"
He stared at me for a long moment before answering. "Yes. I will."
My little book is full now, but my heart is empty. There are only a few pages left, and they will probably be filled only with my own observations. I have all of my answers, know as much as I can without having been there myself. I have my understanding now. I know who I am.
I am the only daughter of a very great man.
Some people say that it is not my fault, the things that I did so many years ago. It's not true. If I had been less arrogant, if I had _listened_ to the things they tried to tell me, if I had searched a little harder for answers of my own, I could have changed things.
My father will probably never be understood by the historians, by the biographers or even by the people who knew him. He was an intricate puzzle, driven by passion and logic in equal amounts. The things that he did, the lives that he spent and spared, the dream that he reached for... It is all here now in black and white for anyone to read.
I will never share this with anyone else.
My father died because there was no place for him, no need. He chose to end everything at the hands of an enemy to bring closure, tie away the loose ends. He died because of pain that he hid so well from the world only three people knew of it.
Now I know as well.
I love my father. A strange sentiment from someone who has no memories of him that were not borrowed, cajoled or stolen. When I was a child, I wanted nothing more than to be like him. I saw him as a shining star and I would follow in his footsteps to glory and honor.
How little I knew...
I wish that I could have known my father. I wish I could remember seeing him look at me the way he sometimes looks in the pictures I now keep hidden in the bottom of my box. I wish I could have just once done something that I feel he would have been proud of.
I wish that he could have loved me back.
What sort of person would I be if he had chosen to live? Would he have taught me how to fence or to dance? Would I not be alone now, in this huge house with only the servants for company? Would I have found peace then?
We can't change the past. That's a hard and bitter lesson that I learned before I was a teenager. The greater the endeavor, the greater the possible catastrophe and the greater the eventual heartache. In trying to live up to the person I thought he was, I did something that would have broken his heart.
Duo wrote to me today, telling me that I shouldn't be knocking around in "that big old house" all by myself. He said that he was coming to visit whether I liked it or not and that he was bringing a friend.
I haven't known him very long, but even I can tell that he's up to something.
I told him that I'd come to the end of my search and that I didn't know what to do. I have no idea what prompted that confession, but I feel better for making it. Duo won't offer me any solutions, but he'll understand.
He'll be here tonight, he and his friend. I wanted a chance to talk to him alone, allow his laughter to distract me from the horrible empty feeling that seems to be eating me alive. I'm not sorry that I started this search, only sorry that I can never be a person that my father could be proud of.
Duo showed up on my doorstep with enough luggage for a week. He brought me a complete set of comm channel backups from his precious Deathscythe. "Something to play with in your spare time," he told me. I never did discover who it was he had thought to bring with him. I did not ask and he didn't bring it up.
We talked for a very long time that night. Rather, I talked and he listened. I've never really sat down and talked to anyone before. Not like this. I don't have friends, really. I have lived apart for the past several years, alone with my guilt and my sorrow. It was liberating, somehow, to be able to simply tell someone everything that I was feeling, to unwrap the ache and the disappointment and the emptiness in front of someone else.
Duo did not offer me any advice, really. He simply listened and absorbed. I was right, he did understand. But he didn't understand enough. The last thing he said that night didn't make any sense at all.
"Talk to Wufei again," he urged. "Go back. This is what you really need, both of you."
I don't know what Duo thinks that would accomplish. I could see the anguish in his eyes when we spoke, pain as deep and dark as Une's and in some ways even more fresh and hurtful. I can't open those wounds any further. I don't want to be the one to make him bleed. Not again.
"You need to let go of this," Duo told me. "All this guilt and unhappiness is going to eat you alive."
I believe it.
I allowed myself to be put to bed with a heavy heart, wishing that things could have somehow been different, wishing that I could talk to my father just once. I want to make things right for the people that I've hurt but I don't know how. I make charitable donations, I work anonymously with various foundations and programs. It doesn't help. Nothing does.
You can't undo the past. You can't apologize for nearly destroying the world. You can't 'make things better' with dead people and you can't fix a relationship with someone you took advantage of and betrayed. Being alone may be painful, but at least this way I know I can't hurt anyone else.
Duo has made his peace with the past because, when all is said and done, he got to choose. Although events may have occasionally spun out of his control, he chose who and what he was. He continues to choose, even now, and that is why he doesn't understand.
People look at me and they see wealth, power, arrogance and the very physical evidence of my mistakes. In the histories they call me 'puppet' or 'traitor' or, occasionally, 'that poor girl'. I have tried to leave the past behind, but I will never be free of it. I had hoped to find acceptance in the memories of my father and in the eyes of those who loved him and in some measure, I have succeeded.
The echoes of my own past still surround me, however, and the wounds I caused may never heal completely. I find myself finally facing the fact that I will never be able to change what happened or atone for my part in it. I can understand my pain now, embrace it and make it a part of me. I can accept it for what it is, but I cannot move past it. My own words come back to haunt me and I know, despite Duo's best intentions, I will cry myself to sleep again tonight and for many nights to come.
Life itself is like an endless waltz and I will never dance again.
Thus ends the diary of Marimaya Kushrenada, age 17.
The End
Truth
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