---------------------------
      In the Beginning
~ A Moment in a Dorm Room ~
---------------------------
	God has a twisted sense of humor, you know that?

	I mean, we spent all this time working towards the end of the 
war, right?  Suffered this, that, and the other thing, all for this 
mighty cause, and when we finally get to the big boom at the end of it, 
what happens but he springs *life* upon us.  That's just cruel.

	Now, I can't speak for the other guys, but me?  I never really 
thought too much about what would come after.  It really didn't matter, 
so long as what came after was better than what came before, and not for 
me, but for people in general.  Sounds kinda uppity, I know, but if I'd 
been fighting for me, I would have cared if I lived or died.  It still 
kinda sucked to get shafted in the end, though.

	Coming off the high of that last battle, and hell, of the entire 
war, I guess I can excuse myself for not seeing it coming.  First there 
was just realizing, 'Whoa, I just lived through that'.  Then there was 
the automatic damage assessment of my buddy 'Scythe.  After that, I 
looked over to the side to see my other buddy Quatre bleeding all over 
the place on his way out of Sandrock, and after the initial 'What the 
hell happened to him?' and the glancing around to verify that 'Wow, we 
-all- just lived through that,' came the 'Holy shit, we better get him 
to the infirmary,' followed shortly by 'Does anyone else look like they 
need to get to the infirmary?' and 'Do we even have an infirmary?'

	Like I said, I had other things on my mind.

	Fast forward a whole lot of hours.  We were all gathered on 
MO-II, seeing as how our old ship was embedded in another, and had a few 
bigass holes blown in it for good measure.  And since all other re-entry 
capable craft of any significant size were also down for the count, it 
was a pretty sure bet that we weren't going anywhere for a while.  That 
was pretty okay to me.  It wasn't as if I had anywhere else to be.  We 
couldn't get dirtside, but I suppose we could have taken off in our 
suits for the colonies.  I didn't really want to be there either, 
though.  Yeah, it was great that they finally got off their indecisive 
asses and declared their position once and for all, but I was still sore 
at them for the whole denouncement thing.  Besides, the colonies were 
filled with civilians, and civilians were a complete unknown.  I could 
deal with the guys onboard.  I'd already spent weeks with them; I 
thought I knew what I could expect from them.  At least we were all on 
the same side in the end, more or less.

	All things considered, the aftermath of the war was really 
anti-climatic.  I think most of us just crashed in our bunks for a 
while.  There wasn't any wild celebration onboard, no grand speeches.  
Nope, we were on a miserable little rock and effectively dead in the 
water, and we'd all been running on fumes for the last week or so.  That 
was it.

	Before I became totally numb to the world, I stopped by the 
medical bay to find Quatre.  MO-II being just a resource satellite and 
all, the onboard facilities weren't the hottest, but they were what we 
got.  Luckily, good ol' Sally had had the foresight to bring some 
essential supplies across with them in the evacuation from the 
Peacemillion, otherwise I'm not sure there would have been even a 
half-stocked first-aid kit to treat the wounded with.  While I was 
poking my head into rooms looking for the infirmary, I found some old 
disposable glasses in a lounge -- I'm not too sure what I think about a 
satellite that's got cheap wine glasses, but not a decent med kit -- and 
brought them with me.

	Hilde was in the next partition over.  I stopped by to visit 
her, too, but I was glad to see she was passed out the way I intended to 
be very shortly.  I didn't know what I wanted to say to her.  A big part 
of me wanted to be very angry with her, but mostly I was just angry with 
myself.  I was the one that had sweet-talked her into defecting to our 
side in the first place, so I might as well have been the one that had 
her out there risking her life and getting hurt.  I felt like she was my 
responsibility, and as I turned away from her, I felt very low for 
wishing she wasn't.

	So I checked up on Quatre.  Trowa was with him, and together we 
toasted the peace with our empty, cheap plastic glasses.  I found that 
oddly appropriate.  I left them to get some rest, and on my way back to 
my quarters, I passed by one of countless barren hallways, but something 
made me turn and look down that one in particular.  At the end of it, I 
caught sight of Heero, sitting in a window frame with a brooding 
expression on his face as he stared at the earth.  Something told me 
that was about normal for him.  Those dark, silent types are always 
brooding.  He didn't look like he wanted to be disturbed, so I left him 
to get some sleep.

	A day or two later, arrangements had been made to ferry some of 
us off the ship, courtesy of the princess on board.  Guess they wouldn't 
mind leaving the soldiers up here to rot, but of course not royalty.  
She'd been busy while the rest of us were temporarily out of commission, 
apparently knee-deep in talks with Noin, Sally, and Colonel Une to 
figure out what the hell was going to happen next.  Yup, leave it to the 
womenfolk to clean up after the messes that men make.  An odd bunch 
though they were, they seemed to be making good progress with it.

	So it seemed we were going to make it dirtside after all.  
Sounded fine to me, until we disembarked and were 'escorted' to 
Brussels, center of the interim government.  They couldn't have us 
wandering around unchecked, after all.  One day, we're heroes that 
brought peace to the world, the next, we're the biggest threat to that 
peace.  Figures.

	There was an old military base outside of the city.  They kept 
us there, insisting that we were free to leave at any time when it was 
obvious they would do everything in their power to stop us from leaving.  
That amused me for about five and a half hours.  Then it just got old.  
To their credit, they didn't just lock us in a cell somewhere.  They had 
doctors in to look at us, for our own safety, of course.  The medical 
doctors, sure, but the shrinks were probably more for their own safety.  
I had a bit of fun playing with my shrink, but again, that didn't last 
too long.

	Some of the ladies talked to us, too.  I know Relena managed to 
corner Heero for a while for a private chat.  Woulda been cute, if I'd 
cared.  The rest of them told us about some new international 
paramilitary organization they were going to put together to hopefully 
prevent these sorts of conflicts from rising again.  Sounded like a 
good, if futile, idea to me, so I played along and gave them some input 
when they asked for it.  Even if it ended up being ineffective, it was 
probably a wise idea to give old soldiers a place to die.  Wouldn't want 
them lurking around anymore than us, I'm sure.

	I was still waiting for the punchline, though.  They couldn't 
keep us there forever.  I was grateful that they had decided to keep us 
under wraps and all, but it would have been nice to be able to wander 
off somewhere and disappear, even if I had no idea where I'd wander off 
to.

	It took about a week, but our fate was finally announced.  Yes, 
they couldn't let us wander off, and no, they couldn't keep us locked 
up, so they decided to stuff us all in a school near the capital where 
they could keep a close eye on us and see if or how we adjusted, and of 
course there would be regular check-ups.  We were, unfortunately, of 
school age, which I found hilarious.  After having a significant, 
well-deserved price on my head, it was almost obscene to be nailed with 
truancy.

	School.  Yippee.  I was all for learning new things, but I'd 
never had a good experience with the school system.  I think Quatre 
accepted the decision, but it was obvious he would have preferred to go 
back to L4.  Trowa looked like he didn't really care.  Wufei growled for 
a while, on general principle, I think.  Heero just shrugged 
philosophically.  I was probably the least pleased with the 
arrangements.

	The last time I'd been in a school, it had been something of a 
social experiment designed to make me fail, to make me prove to the 
world that I didn't belong.  This time, it was another social 
experiment, whose ultimate purpose I wasn't quite sure of, but it could 
easily have been the same.  Needless to say, I was not excited.  I 
almost felt sorry for the poor school that had been offered up as the 
sacrifice for us wolves in sheep's clothing.

	Ah, but the real kicker was when they let us know what sort of 
fine institution we'd be holed up in.  It was a private school, and 
considering it was just outside a major political center, it was 
understandably upscale.  I resented my classmates without ever having to 
lay eyes on them, a bunch of brats that were counting on mommy and daddy 
to bail them out when they got into trouble.  And boy, I didn't even 
want to get started on what sort of political propaganda the teachers 
would be spewing.  We'd really have to stay on our toes there if we 
didn't want to have half the school out for our blood, but hey, what 
else was new?

	We were to live on campus.  That was probably a rule for every 
student, but I'm sure they liked it so they could keep us all in one 
place.  At least the last time I'd been through the wringer, I was able 
to leave that miserable place behind me and go home to the church and 
just get away from it all, but not this time.  I wondered if they'd be 
stupid enough to try and restrict us to school grounds.

	It could have been alright, being stuck on campus, if I'd had 
the privacy of my own room to retreat to, but no, of course not.  We had 
to have roommates.  And since they couldn't place us with unsuspecting 
civilians, we had to room with each other.  For some reason, they 
decided Wufei could have his own room, the lucky bastard.  Maybe they 
thought he wouldn't get along very well with the rest of us.

	So naturally, I got Heero 'I am a rock' Yuy for my roommate.  
Woohoo.  I got stuck with the crazy one.  Go me.  At least he was 
quietly crazy, the type of crazy that didn't seem intent on bringing 
everyone else along for the ride.  You know what he did when we were 
informed?  He looked me up and down, nothing more than objective 
appraisal in his expression.  When he finally met my eyes again, all he 
said was, "Keep your hair out of the drain and we'll get along just 
fine."

	'Fine'.  Uh-huh.  Yeah, I could tell, this was gonna be the 
beginning of a beautiful relationship.



_________________________________________
This piece of fiction is the intellectual 
property of the little turnip that could.  
The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, 
Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
of someone else.  The author can be con-
tacted at jchew@myrealbox.com.  This has 
been an entirely automated message.
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 10/28/2003 17:23:19 PST