|
|
BROKEN TIES
-
Then
end of the war brought difficulties for me. I had never expected to survive it,
not even after I’d blown myself up and found out I was still alive. After the
war in 195 I had no idea of what to make of my life and I took the incident at
the end of 196 as another chance to die. But I didn’t succeed, I didn’t die,
I survived. And now I had to stay alive with no reason or meaning in the world
at all.
It
was this knowledge, the emptiness I’d felt between the two wars, that made my
decision to do as Relena had asked and become part of her bodyguards easier. At
the least it was something to do, giving me less time to think about why I could
possibly have survived.
Duo
was the one who kept in contact by spamming us all the time, doing stupid things
just to get some attention. But he was also the one who actually stopped by my
place now and then and at those times we almost seemed like normal friends. How
he saw it, I don’t know, maybe it was just plain obvious to anyone, but I
found it hard to let all my conditioning go. Whenever we were in a restaurant, I
would know everyone’s exact spot, what they wore, whom they were with, when
they entered and left and even what they’d ordered. If a man in a suit went
behind the scenes, I was suspicious, thinking that he might be a drugs dealer or
some other kind of threat when he could just as well have been the manager of
the place.
Duo
noticed, he was the only one who noticed and he offered to help me socialise
with people in order to become less suspicious. Strangely enough, this helped. I
began to realise not everybody had something evil going on in their minds, I
learned what normal meant and knowing that, I became more and more aware that I
was overreacting. Our faces had been shown to the public, but our names had not
and a face is something people tend to forget. Especially when said face has a
history like ours.
Thanks
to Duo I saw how foolish I was, looking back all the time, scowling at everybody
I saw on the streets, as if daring them to try something. I stopped pushing
people away and it became easier for me to do my job, as Relena’s other guards
started to trust me now that I was no longer so suspicious of them.
Quatre’s
departure was perhaps inevitable, as he was so different from the rest of us. He
was at the top before any of us had even begun making our way up and sooner or
later I knew he was going to leave us be. I expected it and, returning to my
training even though Duo had tried so hard to train it all out of me, I kept my
distance. When he didn’t show up for that Christmas dinner, saying he had work
to do, I knew it was over and I was ready to accept that.
However,
when Duo started to distance himself from me soon after, that was something I
was not prepared for. Granted, I was glad that my mailbox was no longer
overloaded with crap every other day, but I missed the presence of his normal
mails as well. Just those simple mails like ‘hi, how are ya? I’m good, why
wouldn’t I be? Just wanted to let you know that there’s this new hair die on
the market, it’s purple and I think it would suit Trowa with his circus
outfit. Bye. Duo’ Those mails were crazy, but I loved them and had all of them
stored in a document, even though I hardly ever replied to any of his, what I
referred to others to as ‘nonsense’.
But
Duo’s mails stopped coming every day, soon it was reduced to a simple
one-liner once a week and one week, even that didn’t come. I waited the next
week for that mail that would state he was ok, but seven days later, my mailbox
was still empty of a word from Duo. And the week after that, no mail again, same
happened the week after that. And the week after that. And the week after that.
I knew he was alive, Wufei had called me once, asking me when the last time was
that I’d gotten word from Duo and he told me it had been a few weeks with him
as well. Obviously he was abandoning us.
I
didn’t know how to deal with this. Duo wasn’t one of those people who would
one day disappear on you, he was just one of those who would always be there. So
when he went I knew it was the end of the five of us as friends and I knew my
life would never be the same.
I
stayed as Relena’s guard for a couple more years, making more than enough
money and having no means of how to spend it. So when I was twenty-nine and I
wanted a year off the work to think for myself what I wanted next, I could
afford it. However, that choice hadn’t been as good for me as I’d thought.
Again, I had too much time on my hands to think and too few contacts to spend
time with. Last of the boys I had been in contact with was Trowa, who had mailed
me that he had finally left the circus, but that was over a year ago. The last
of them I’d actually seen was Wufei, a few years before when I had another job
at the preventors and Wufei was the one to inform me. We had talked a bit then,
but hadn’t bothered to keep in contact afterwards.
So
when I quit as Relena’s guard I had almost no friends left and absolutely
nothing to do. The first few weeks were pretty good, I finally had time to surf
the net a little, learn some new stuff, see what was really going on in the
world, but soon enough I was bored with that as well. Yes, I actually got bored
with my laptop!
That
was when my life went all the way downhill.
I
started going out at night, getting drunk more often than not. I met some people
in the pubs I hung out with, had the occasional one-night-stands, wasted my
money on those trips out and got no happier at all.
And
then there was this one woman I ended up in bed with after a long day and a lot
of alcohol. I didn’t even know her last name when we were together to relieve
some stress, but I found it out two months later when she showed up on my
doorstep, pregnant with my daughter, telling me that not only did I have the
right to know, but also the obligation to pay up.
So,
now I was forced to get my life back together again if I wanted to cough up the
money I would have to pay. However, I told her that I wanted to see the child as
well if I paid for her and somehow I ended up as a weekend-father to a little
girl named Nancy
It
was a lot of work, making sure I had a stable house for my daughter so that the
judge wouldn’t take her from me and it was weird to hear her call me ‘dad’
when I’d never had a father or a mother to begin with. But I got used to
having a daughter and even started looking forward to every other weekend
she’d spend at my place. I cared for her in a way that I had never cared for
anyone, but I allowed myself to experiment on this area, because I knew I could
afford to fail. She always had her mother left if I screwed up one night, right?
However,
when she was eight and her mother died, the girl suddenly came into my full care
and I lacked the friends to tell me what to do. First things first, I arranged a
babysitter for her since I worked five days a week. Then I realised that
suddenly I had to spend much more money than I was used to, but I could still
afford it. I had a good job as head of security, not at Relena’s place, but at
some other governmental building. By the time my daughter was thirteen, I
figured she was old enough to be on her own one day a week, so I started working
the Saturdays as well. I knew the nightshift paid better and they’d asked me
for that, but I didn’t think it was responsible for a little girl to be alone
at night, she seemed so fragile sometimes. So I didn’t take the offer and
instead used the extra payment for that weekend day to pay for her school. I
could’ve tried living in an apartment that cost half of what mine cost, but I
liked to live where I did, liked the building, liked the part of the city and
hated moving for her sake as well as mine.
My
daughter Nancy turned fifteen a few days ago but I wasn’t there for her, I had
to work. It was on a Saturday, so she wasn’t up yet when I got up and thus I
left a gift for her at the dining table before I headed to work. She wasn’t
home when I got back, but had left a piece of paper for me, telling me shortly
that she was out with friends. The gift was gone, but not mentioned in the note
and I didn’t hear her come back in until midnight, when I had already gone to
bed. I rarely stay up these days.
It
pains me to see the relationship between me and my daughter and it is those
times I spend thinking of her that I wished I at least still had Duo here with
me. When I was fifteen I was so different from what Nancy is now, she is so
care-free, a real girl in puberty, wanting to be able to be on her own, yet
incapable of discipline herself enough to even clean her room every now and
then. She is a beautiful young girl, but I have no way of getting trough to her.
I don’t understand her world. For me, love was a luxury I couldn’t afford
and I never really dated at all. But she goes out with boys, claiming to be
‘so in love’ all the time. What should I do with that?
I
try hard, I know I please her when I take her to an ice hockey game now and then
as she is crazy about that sport and on Sundays, my only day off I try my best
to cook something she likes and to be there for her, but more often than not is
she out with friends all day and doing some last-minute homework at night. On a
school night she is not allowed out after nine o’clock and seeing how she is
only fifteen and not yet at the legal age to drink or even be in a pub, her
curfew is midnight in the weekends. She has her allowance and some extra money
to buy her own clothes, but besides that I know that too often I slip her a few
extra bucks anyway, as if that way I could win her approval.
Parenting
is so hard. It’s more than just setting up a curfew and some rules, but I
don’t really know what else I can do. We hardly talk, I’m glad I can manage
talking to people my age, but teenagers are not adults and I can’t connect
with her.
I
look at her and long for a friend –I hear a whisper naming this friend Duo–
who can teach me how to be a good father. I miss my friends from back then whom
I know could have helped me and I find myself often thinking if only Duo had
been here, then I could ask him what to do and he’d help me out, maybe give me
some examples as to how I could get closer to my daughter. But Duo broke contact
so many years ago. I have no idea where he is or what he’s up to, I know
nothing of the people I met during the war. I never wanted them to stop
‘hanging out’ with me, but I never found the right words to tell them, I
never knew what to say anyway.
Even
though I care more about Nancy than I’d ever deemed possible, if I could do
things over again, I probably wouldn’t have had her. I would’ve said
something, anything to keep Duo from leaving, no matter how humiliating
it would have been and I would never have allowed myself to get so down after I
quit as Relena’s guard.
No,
life wouldn’t have looked like this at all, had Duo still been here, had any
of them still been here… Though I guess the only one I can blame for not
keeping in contact is myself. After all, I never said a word.
Heero
Yuy. Pilot 01 of Wing Zero
AC224
March 8th.