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BROKEN TIES
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The Leader
It
took me an hour before I finally voiced the words. "Who did invite him?"
It
had been a nice day for the time of the year, weather wasn't that bad, a few
drops perhaps on the face of the earth, but besides that, it wasn't bad. It was
a couple degrees above 0 and a good day to do some last-minute Christmas
shopping, like I had to do. I was always like that when it came to buying gifts,
waiting until I could really not postpone it any longer. I hated buying gifts
for any occasion.
I
arrived at the well-decorated place at six-twenty-seven –we had all agreed to
be there by six-thirty– carrying a bag in which I had put 5 wrapped-up
Christmas gifts. I looked up at the huge place I had visited a few times before,
but had never seen so beautiful. For a private party, Relena had really gone out
of her way to organise things.
Christmas
decorations hung all over the fore-front, little lights placed an accent on the
outlines of the building as well as on all the doors and windowsills, green
leaves seemed to be pasted everywhere against the building, two of the windows,
in a symmetric position, had a green banner hanging down, showing that it was
Christmas we celebrated. Mistletoe hung above the front door –the butler must've
loved that idea– and the huge pine tree in front f the house was decorated
with red and golden decorative, Christmas balls, Christmas lights, Christmas
bells, anything you could stick in a tree was there, in the colours red and
gold.
I
rang the doorbell and turned back to stare amazingly at the tree. It was already
pretty dark outside, so the lights lit everything up beautifully. I figured the
whole picture would look coming straight off a postcard if only it was midnight
and the stars shone a bit brighter than they did today.
I
didn't even hear the door open, but whet I heard a cough behind me I whirled
around and came face-to-face with the stiff butler in his usual black suit.
Relena's old butler, Percy… Parmon… Pagit… or whatever his name was,
retired four years ago, but even though I'd only met him so few times, I'd
always liked the cheery guy. At least he was up to a conversation. This guy,
with his brown hair always combed flat, his brown eyes, always watching you even
after you closed the door on him, his lips always drawn into a thin line, his
big nose always standing out, nostrils flaring every now and then, this guy was
plain scary.
I
looked up at him, for he was taller than me and even slimmer than Trowa –okay,
that was just the muscles Trowa had that this guy lacked, but still. I used to
be very small when I was a little boy, mostly due to my circumstances, I figured.
And though it always helped me getting by on the streets, I didn't like it one
bit. I wanted to be big, like Solo, so older boys would be afraid of me instead
of laugh at me. So, when I started to grow in my puberty and I grew fast, I was
pretty happy with that fact, only to loose that joy around the age of sixteen,
when I stopped growing at the height of only 162 centimetres. Even Wufei was
taller than I was! It sucks being small.
Anyway,
the butler. He was older than we were, but with his twenty-eight, still pretty
young. I didn't like him very much, his grim face aside. I didn't know how much
Relena had let him in on us, but he always seemed to look down on any of the
boys who ever visited Relena, as if we were filth in the household he leaded. Of
course, that was less when the visitor went by the name of Winner, but still I
caught him scowling at Quatre as well.
He
raised an eyebrow as I stared at him, waiting for him to let me in. I gritted my
teeth silently as I realised he pretended not to know me, and I kept myself from
following my feelings and punch him in the gut.
"Duo
Maxwell, here for Relena's private Christmas party."
The
man finally stepped aside and as I entered, I remembered the mistletoe and
grinned. This was one way to get back at him for treating me like this. Before
he knew what happened, I'd pushed myself onto my toes and planted a kiss on the
beardless cheek. Then I walked on, grinning, fighting another urge, this time
the one to wipe my lips as I walked trough the door.
I
put my hand in the air as in waving at him in a dismissive way. "Don't worry, I
know where to go!"
It
took several seconds before I heard the door slam shut and several more before
footsteps moved away from me.
I
wasn't the last one to arrive, at six-thirty-one, the doorbell rang and there
was Trowa. For some reason, that guy was always late. However, he wasn't the
only one who was late. Quatre usually arrived at least ten minutes before time,
yet at six-forty-five he wasn't there yet and at seven, when dinner was supposed
to be served, he had yet to arrive and we were starting to get worried. Quatre
was a big boy, we were sure he could look after himself, but this was very
uncharacteristic of him, the least he could've done was call us and say he'd be
late.
Relena
sent word to the kitchen to try and hold the food until the last of us arrived.
The presents under the Christmas tree were lying patiently, waiting until after
dinner to be unpacked. We were really starting to worry now, as we all agreed it
had been clear that half past six had been the agreed time.
Dinner
was served twenty-five minutes later anyway, the cooks complaining that if we
waited any longer, it would be spoiled. But before we started dinner, I was
beginning to wonder, I had heard Heero talk to Relena about the other boys
accepting the invitation, but had I heard Quatre's name? I couldn't recall it,
but then I couldn't recall the mention of Quatre at any time...
Then
I finally voiced those words. "Who did invite him?"
All
their eyes were on me for a moment and then Wufei turned to Relena. "You sent my
invitation, didn't you?"
"I
had two cards laying around," the blonde spoke, "so I sent them to you and Trowa
and asked Heero to invite the others."
Heads
turned to Heero. "You sent it to Trowa?" He asked her, as if not believing her. "Why
send a card to Trowa when you're closer with Quatre as business partners?"
"That's
just it!" Relena said matter-of-factly. "We're business partners and the card
was too personal to send to a business partner."
"So..."
I began slowly, "you're saying Trowa got a card and an e-mail invitation while
Quatre got neither?" This brought a silence to the table, broken by me. "Fuck!"
"That
about sums it up." Wufei answered. Trowa was already on his feet, going for the
nearest phone.
"What
are you doing, Trowa? He's probably having Christmas somewhere else by now." I
walked up to the tallest of us, figuring that if he were anything to Quatre on
the phone as he was with me, t would not help the situation. See, Trowa tended
to assume people understood looks rather than words. He would probably say
something like ‘we're at Relena's place having dinner' and then he'd just try
and will Quatre to understand he was supposed to come celebrate with us. If the
boy was within reach, that was.
But
Trowa was right, we had to apologise to our fellow-pilot and it was best
done now and not tomorrow, even if he had gone somewhere else to celebrate. We
tried his cell-phone first, but he didn't pick it up. On good luck we tried his
home number where Darla, a woman in her thirties who worked for Quatre, picked
it up. She told us Quatre was in his privet quarters and if we would hang on
while she connected us trough. Soon enough, a pale face –even for Quatre's
doing– appeared on the screen.
"Hello,
Duo, Trowa." He said
almost as if he had been expecting us to call. The others kept out of sight
until we had told him what was going on.
What
I figured would happen if Trowa did this by himself, happened. "We're having a
Christmas dinner at Relena's place." I could slap him for his bluntness.
"Really?"
Quatre said, sounding just a little bit too surprised to me. "I didn't know."
Quatre
was a good liar. He could always get away with telling Oz everything back in the
war, he could have told them about giant ants mutating into mobile suits that
looked like gundams and then claiming his innocence and make the story
believable. He could tell any of his business associates anything he wanted to
get them to do as he wished, but after being friends with a guy for years, you
get to recognise the signs sooner or later. After six years, I could see right
trough him. I didn't know about the others, but I knew I could. And I saw he had
been hurt.
He
refused to come over, even after I explained the situation, saying he had work
to do and he had already eaten anyway.
"Working
on Christmas eve? Come one, Quatre, you can't do that to yourself!"
He
just shrugged and muttered something about work is time and time is money or
some shit like that. Like he hadn't enough money already. Skipping one evening
wouldn't make him go bankrupt!
"Then
at least come and open the presents we've got for you."
"I
can't Duo." Quatre, lied. "You can send them over here if you like, but I didn't
get you anything. I'm sorry." His voice sounded apologetic, but his look was too
formal for me to believe it. However, if he didn't want to come, we couldn't
make him.
We
sent Quatre his gifts, but we never received as much as a note back. Soon enough
the only times we saw or heard about him was trough television or Relena who
still had some business relations with him. For weeks afterwards I mentally
kicked myself for not seeing it. Quatre had been acting strange since a few
months prior to that Christmas. He had been too friendly with me and every time
I'd asked him how he was he had said he was good, he was fine, though I knew
that once every now and then he had his mental down-time where he remembered the
war and needed someone to talk to. He came to me for that and to me only but I
never forced him into anything. So when he stopped coming after all these years
I guess I just hoped he was getting over things, that I so wanted to believe he
was indeed fine as he said he was, that I was foolish enough to forget to look
beyond that mask he wore so easily.
I
should have tried to keep in contact with him after that December, I knew I
should have, but unconsciously I started to follow his example. For quite a
while now I had felt as if I didn't belong. Actually, I think this all started
those four years ago when Relena's dear butler Pagrin retired and was replaced
by this ‘dazzling youth' as I had once heard a woman in her late forties call
him. It was easy to see how he looked down on me and slowly, that guy began to
affect me.
I
began to realise what others had again, like I had done in my early youth. I saw
what Relena and Quatre had even though we were the same age and had fought the
same war. I knew they couldn't've chosen their childhood any more than I could've,
but still, I began to notice what I'd tried so hard not to see during the war.
We had to fight together back then, but we no longer had to, we just had to be
friends.
Next
thing I saw was how well Wufei seemed to have made it. He got a great job at the
preventors, working with Sally Po who was not only his boss, but his close
friend and sister figure as well. She helped him get over the war and in a way I
guess he helped her as well. I saw how good he had it, how, even tough his
colony was destroyed and he had nothing to go back to, he managed to survive,
make a living when he was only sixteen but already showing than he could take
the adult life.
Maybe
that was just the way he had been brought up, I don't know. But I envied him for
the way he handled things. He was my age, yet he seemed so much more grown up
and even his childish rants became less as he accepted the world as it was more
and more. I would look at myself in the mirror and see a boy, a teenager, a
child who had seen more, done more than the average adult had and I would see
myself, knowing at the same time that a normal life would be very hard for me. I
was again alone, without guidance of an elder person, the guidance I needed so
much. I found it hard to let go of the mask I wore, even when it came to my
closest friends and I realised I was not grown up at all. In fact, I still had a
long way to go..
Then
I'd look at Wufei and see how he had made it, nice job, money he had earned
instead of stolen from his victims in the war, how he learned where to go, what
to do with his life, how to act around people. I began to realise that Wufei was
so different from me, it almost scared me.
Then
there was Heero, the so-called perfect soldier. The nickname alone was too much
for me to deal with. He couldn't be perfect, no human was perfect, because if
anyone else was, then I would have to be able to be that as well. During the war
I strived to beat Heero at something, anything, it became like an obsession to
me. After the war I found it hard to let that go, but once I realised there was
indeed one thing mister perfect was not perfect with, I managed to finally let
go of the competitiveness I felt towards him and instead tried to teach him to
socialise.
I
fucking helped him becoming perfect again!
He
opened up to me, if only a little, allowing me near him for more than five
minutes, turning his back to me and not find a reflection to watch my every
move. He managed to talk a bit, even if it was just about the weather and he
worked with Relena and her other chosen guards on her security. Then when he
didn't need me anymore to teach him about life without war, a life I only
pretended to know, a style I'd learned from watching too much TV, he began
seeing me less and less. He started working together with adult Wufei more as
the preventors often requested his help with various security issues.
Yeah,
I got jealous. That was me, always jealous of what others had. Jealous of Quatre
and Relena because they had been born into wealth, Jealous of Wufei, because he
had managed to grow up when I was still just a teenager, jealous of Heero
because he didn't need me anymore, jealous of Trowa because he had someone who
cared for him, no matter what..
Honestly,
that woman drove me crazy! She always seemed to keep accusing me of Trowa
getting his memory back and joining the war again. It wasn't my fucking fault
amnesia doesn't last forever! Yet every time the kid fell silent, she would look
at me as if to say ‘you did this to him, you scumbag! You caused this, I know
where you're from!'
I
began to notice more and more as the months turned into years, that I didn't
really belong in this little group anymore. The war was over, I'd done my job, I'd
helped them win, now I was reduced back to a mere boy who paid his way trough
high school and college with money stolen from dead bodies.
It
took me four years and Quatre to realise all of this. But I soon decided to
follow in his footsteps, you know, starting slowly by simply not being the one
to contact others anymore. Quatre was already gone, to my painful surprise,
Heero was next, soon followed by Wufei. I kept in contact with Trowa longest as
he actually took time to reply to my replies, but one day that ceased as well.
Nope, within a year, I had broken with those few people I had counted as friends
during some of the hardest times in my life. Now, non of them even knows that
tomorrow I will receive my diploma from college. And that the day after I'm
moving to America for good to start a new life.
Reminding
me of that, I'd better get ready as Duncan and me decided the day we set foot
into college that the night before we received those things, we'd get heavily
drunk and we'd shave our heads until we were bald as a bowling ball as if paying
respect to the youths we left behind. Yup, tonight I'm making peace with my
past, the braid is finally coming off and tomorrow I will start my new life as
an adult by more than just age.
Goodbye
to Duo Maxwell the teenager, hello to the real world that exists today.
Duo
Maxwell, pilot 02 of Deathscyte.
AC 202 June 28th.