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BROKEN TIES
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Blind
Habbits
Contact
between the five of us became less and less after that Christmas where we forgot
to invite Winner. I, too, am
partially to blame for that, but like any human being, I sought excuses. My work
got pretty heavy as we discovered a plot to revive certain mobile suits and it
did take us a lot of time to take care of that. However, I see now that this
should never have been an excuse to let my friendship with the others become
such a thin line, to be broken so easily.
Winner’s
loss was a shame, but something told me that it had been his choice and I
respected that. He had become distant over the past year anyway, always smiling,
telling us the good part of his life while he left out things that went less
than good. He used to be concerned when someone wrote lies or something bad
about his company or himself, but lately he had been getting an attitude where
he didn’t seem to care. I thought he was just starting to grow into the hard
business man he’d have to be if he wanted to keep his company up for the next
fifty years or so.
But
it wasn’t that what was going on. Maybe somewhere deep down I realised it
already, but as Winner and Maxwell were the ones who kept up the contacts, I
didn’t want to bother about it, figuring that Maxwell would be able to pull
the blonde pilot back. Even after that Christmas I trusted Maxwell to make
things right again, with his jester mask and his ever-cheerful optimism. Hell,
even being captured by Oz didn’t seem half as bad as it really was when
Maxwell was there.
That
was one compliment I had to give the annoying boy, he knew how to play his part.
Like that time in outer space when we were captured and I was starting to be
convinced that Barton had gone over the enemy. There had been a silent
communication between pilot zerotwo and zerothree that I had missed, after which
Maxwell conveniently gave Barton an opening to prove to the enemy that he was on
their side while he gave us those updates on our gundams.
That
was one clever bastard, Maxwell, even if he didn’t look it. And so I counted
on him to bring Winner back into our circle.
I
realised, of course, that Maxwell was starting to mail me less and less. How
could I not see it? Until recently he took pleasure in mailing me bombs that
would overload my mailbox or other stupid jokes I did not appreciate and
referred to as ‘childish’. Yet, when the ridiculous trips he’d planned for
us, which we never really took anyway, and the occasional photos and
tips-on-how-to-look-cooler stayed out as well, I was beginning to worry.
I
contacted Yuy once and asked him when the last time was that he had heard from
Duo and he told me that had been almost two months earlier. However, this was
precisely the day before I got that huge assignment from Sally and thus I hardly
had time to think about it.
The
mission didn’t go too bad, we accomplished our goal though it took us nearly
three months to get everything done and in that time I had received no e-mail
whatsoever from Duo and I hadn’t mailed him either, telling myself I was too
busy to do that. But then again, a mail only had to take five minutes.
So
it was my fault that I didn’t take the time to keep my friendship with
Maxwell. However I didn’t really miss him, since I’d met a girl on the job
who worked for the preventors as well and I had fallen in love.
Love
can be a dangerous thing, it can really make you blind. This time, not only was
I blind towards my girl and did I find no flaw in her whatsoever in those first
months, I was also too blind to realise that I still had friends to hang out
with and one in particular, whom I had to mail now to get him back.
By
the time I realised what I was doing, how much time I actually spent with Katie
and how little I heard from anybody else who was not involved with my job, it
was too late. After those first blind months, when we finally gave each other
some time to breath by not spending every evening either in each other’s
touching company or else with each other on the phone anymore, I hadn’t heard
from Maxwell in six months and Winner had been gone even longer.
Of
course, the latter was never gone for real as we saw his face on TV every now
and then. I even found whole school projects on the guy, telling how he was only
fifteen when he officially took over his father’s business and how since then
he had only made more money. We read about how he spent lots of money on charity
and other events, how his company sponsored several sportsmen and sport teams
and how he helped some companies save themselves from going under. That guy was
always busy, so it was easier to let him go.
Maxwell,
on the other hand, was a case not so simple. I had lost the guts to admit my
failing him and thus I didn’t dare to mail. I had always taken it for granted
that he was the one to keep in contact and to let me know how the other guys
were doing and suddenly, I had no idea what anyone was up to anymore. Was Barton
still with the circus when he kept postponing his plans to leave? Was Yuy still
a guard to Relena or had she found herself a husband yet? Well, I figured the
latter one out pretty easily since everyone kept talking about the beautiful
twenty-two-year-old single woman with more power and class than any other girl
her age and the press loved hunting her down to scoop pictures of her with any
guy and make it into yet another sappy gossip that she was engaged or something.
Honestly, how people could still believe that crap was beyond me.
And
Maxwell? Did he pass his third year and make it to his fourth and final year in
college or did he fail as he feared he might?
I
decided to wait for my birthday in December, knowing the braided one never
missed a chance to congratulate anyone, but nothing came. Christmas went by
without a word from the guy, same happened with new year.
It
was now AC202 and Katie and I had broken up somewhere between my birthday and
Christmas after a huge fight probably over something small since I can’t
remember it anymore. Suddenly I realised that I was indeed all alone. I hadn’t
spoken to Heero or Trowa either and without knowing it, I too had been on my way
out of the group.
When
I heard from Sally that she had a job for Heero, I wasted no time offering
myself to inform him, even though normally I didn’t take such easy jobs. Sally,
always seeing right trough me, let me take this opportunity and I went to
contact Heero. I decided to discuss details over a drink in a nearby bar and
there we met. However, it didn’t take long for me to realise that he had been
closing himself down again.
He
was always hard to hang out with, Heero Yuy. It took time for him to come and
trust you, but we got there during the war, even to a point where he allowed
himself to rely on me, on any of us pilots. After the war, when he didn’t need
to do that so much anymore, he took a step back, but Maxwell got him to stay
close to us anyway. As we talked, though he tried to hide it, I saw that the
loss of contact with the braided pilot had done him more harm than good. He
really missed the presence of that boy he once called ‘friend’ before he had
called anyone else just that. They’d had such a deep friendship, deeper even
than I thought it had been, and here I was, sitting with Yuy, seeing the pain it
caused him to even hear the boy’s name.
Anger
rose in me, anger at the braided boy who had not carried out his duty, his
mission to keep the five of us together. I see now how stupid it was of me to
assume that he would do all the work while we just got annoyed by him and told
him more than once to stop. Because when he did stop, non of us took over.
After
that one job, I lost contact with Heero as well when I got transferred to some
colony far away to do my work from there. I had never been best friends with
Barton, in fact, he was the only one I didn’t really try to keep in contact
with in the first place, so now I realised I had lost them all. Quatre was the
first of us to jump out and his doing that had scattered us all. We meant
nothing if we weren’t all five of us together.
Nine
years back, I met a girl, Kayo and five years ago we got married. Next week is
our first lustrum feast and for that occasion, I had tried to seek contact with
Duo Maxwell again, hoping that he would forgive my foolishness and help me in my
attempt to get the five of us together again. This action was inspired by my
pregnant wife, who had lost her parents last year. She told me I would regret it
if I didn’t do it, and she was right.
My
hacking skills weren’t as good as they once were when I was eighteen or so,
but still I knew enough to find out that he no longer had an e-mail address.
Every trace of him I could find ended somewhere within the last five years when
he was teaching at a college somewhere in America. At that time he was married
to his first-ever girlfriend, Hilde Schbeiker, whom he had lost contact with at
the age of 17, but obviously ran into ten years later.
What
happened to Maxwell, I don’t know. Maybe he changed his identity, maybe he
turned out to be gay, divorced Hilde, married a man and took his last name, or
maybe he simply didn’t want to be found. I couldn’t track him down and now I
have regrets. If only I had tried this thirteen years ago, if only I hadn’t
allowed him to not keep in touch, if only… but it is too late. Maxwell is
nowhere to be found and I dare not contact any of the others, out of fear of
finding the same results.
Oh
Nataku, such a coward I have become!
Chang
Wufei. Pilot 05 of Nataku
AC
215 November 6th.