Unity

Title: Unity
Author: Zimmerie Kanoah
Warnings: Unbeta-ed! Trowa’s P.O.V. Language, abuse, self hate, references to M x M sexual intercourse, references to multiple partners between men, SAP and FLUFF.
Genre: Angst!!!!
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or anything associated to that show. Please do not steal this idea. I am simply writing this story for the enjoyment of doing it and the enjoyment of others when they read. I am by no means making any kind of money.
Author’s Note: Thanks to everyone who stuck with me to the end. I know that this has been a long time coming and the first couple of chapters were rushed and didn’t make a whole bunch of sense. Anyway I’m dedicating this to every one who read this story and then reviewed first of all. The second group I dedicate this to is all 1287 of you who simply read this story. I would have never been able to finish this damn thing with out any of you there encouraging me. I hope all of you enjoy this Fic and I hope the ending lives up to you’re expectations.
Archive: If you feel that this fictional story is good enough for you to archive on your own website, or you want to recommend it to someone else’s site just send me an email and let me know where it is so I can pimp the website and all that jazz. Plus letting me know about it would just give me a lot of joy. KishkaMaxwell@aol.com

Chapter Six
Slit the Lips Up at the Corners
To Get a Smile


Christmas is just right around the corner, and while everyone else is running around buying gifts and decorating their houses and trees, I just sit here in my apartment staring out onto the snowy streets. Everyone so busy with their lives thinking they are more important than the regular joe next to them. I’m not sure why watching other people live their lives intrigues me as much as it does, or even if intrigue is quite the word I should use for my strange behavior. Yet for the past few months that’s all I’ve done, maybe I’m envious of those around me, they know who they are I don’t.

I take in a deep breath and breath it out onto the cold window pain and watch it crystallize in odd sporadic patterns. Fucking Quatre, this is all his fault, I haven’t been able to go to work since I came home a few months back and saw him sitting on my couch in the dark. He left me just like the others did. Who the hell did they think they were, leaving me behind like this? Was I not apart of the group? Apparently I had been wrong and I wasn’t.

I turn away from the window and the outside world walking towards the back of my two bedroom apartment, Preventer issued, glancing at everything that I’ve covered with cloth and painted over with black matte finish paint. It hadn’t always been like this in my apartment, I used to be able to look at the pictures on the wall, look into everything that reflected and see a man I could recognize, but not anymore. It had started small, my sudden need to cover up the unknown man that looked back at me, just a painted brass knob there, and cabinet handle here. It just got worse as they all left and disappeared away into the world to never be seen again.

The day I went crazy was a week after Quatre had shown up on my couch, I’d woken in a fright sweat soaked skin and my hair matted to my face. The only thing going through my head was what am I, who am I. My heart was pounding and I felt as if the walls were coming in on me. Everywhere I looked I saw some guy looking at me his emotionless eyes starting down at me, into my soul, judging me and my every move. Quite suddenly I had found it rather hard to breath and I kept yelling at him to stop looking at me, I had done what I needed to do. It wasn’t my fault that I had to do what needed to be done to stay alive, it had been everyman for himself but he only stared at me uncaring of my argument. That’s when I had dived for my dresser and started grabbing shirts, ripping fabric, and tossing the cloth over everything that I could see him in. I painted everything else then just laid on the floor, paint smeared over my nude body, staring up at the ceiling as the cold set in.

I’m not sure how long I had been there, could have been seconds maybe minuets, or even days. I don’t really want to know how long I had laid there, its not something anyone wants to dwell on. I simply rose from the floor, numbly walked to the bathroom, and took a shower.

Belly flopping onto my bed I bury my face in the pillows and blankets trying to stop my brain from thinking. Maybe if I concentrate hard enough my heart will stop and I can just not exist at all. Wufei can slow his heart down to the point it’s as if he’s dead. Heero can make it seem as if he’s still comatose, why shouldn’t I be able to just stop my heart.

Why, why did they have to leave, why couldn’t they just suck it up like everybody else. That’s what people do, they just half exist, pretend they are truly happy. Some are lucky and they get to live in this world and be happy, but the rest of us have to just be. You can’t just stop living the regular life, you can’t just run away because you don’t like what you see, what you’ve become. What kind of cowards had I been friends with anyway?

I growl and take a pillow throwing it over my head and hold it down tightly, not that I really believe that cutting out external noise will stop the internal racket. How many times, I wonder, am I going to go over Quatre’s last words? Duo’s last words to me? Wufei’s to Duo? Heero’s last to Wufei? When will it make sense to me? Will it ever make any sense? Had I really become that removed from them, and them to me? I just wasn’t getting it and it was driving me insane, quite literally.

Thinking back on my last moments with Quatre, the way he looked, the way he sat. He’d had tears in his eyes, he’d seemed hurt that he was having to leave me behind with nothing more than words to guide me…

“You know where they are.” I said sitting down on the couch beside him.

“Yes, yes I do.” He’d replied staring down at his hands in his lap.

“You’re leaving to be with them.”

“Yeah I am.”

“But you’re leaving me with one of those fucking “clues” aren’t you. Why?” I’d asked.

“I don’t have any other choices Trowa.” He said quickly looking up to me his eyes filling with tears.

“Bullshit. You can tell me, stay here, and we can bring them back.”

“This is why I can’t. Trowa,” he paused placing a hand over one of mine. “I need my Sanctuary. A place to lie down and a place where they can’t reach me anymore.”

I stared at him confused, who were they?

“I’m sorry I have to leave you to do this on your own,” and he was I could see it feel it. “But you’ll understand when you figure it all out.”

With that he stood up and walked out of my apartment as if he’d never been there to begin with. I wonder even now if he’d really been there at all or if it had been my imagination. After that I couldn’t muster up enough of anything to get up and go live my half life. I was barely able to get up and eat or take showers. It was odd to realize how much you grow close to something without knowing it. How much you needed something until it was really and truly gone.

I hear the beep of my answering machine in the front room and Une’s faded voice come on over the speaker. I sigh how many times is she going to call before she just gives up?

“Trowa I can’t keep you on leave any longer without repercussions, if you don’t come in by this Monday I’m going to say you are AWOL.”

Yeah like I really cared about that, it’s not as if she could find me if she came looking.

“Don’t make me do this, just come in. I understand that you feel you’ve lost pieces of yourself, but…”

What? What did she just say? I wonder jerking up from the bed my eyes wide and my heart starting to pound. I quickly pick up the phone in my room and click the talk button.

“What did you just say?” I ask her.

“Trowa? Where have you…”

“Just shut up and tell me what you just said.”

“Which part?”

“The last thing you said Une.” I answer in exasperation.

“I understand that you feel…” she pauses sounding unsure of why this is so important. “You’ve lost pieces of yourself…”

“That’s it!” I say hanging up on her and getting off my bed heading to the second bedroom which I converted into a computer room.

I sit down in front of my desk top and quickly get online going threw all of my bank accounts and start shifting money to different non-profit organizations. I know I won’t be needing money where I’m going. I start deleting everything that can link me to this life, the Trowa Barton the world knows is no longer going to be existing here in a few hours. I don’t know exactly where I’m going just yet, my brain hasn’t connected that far, but I know why they had to so secretive. Nobody would understand, hell I didn’t even fully understand, but I knew now it was important enough not to leak anything. I could do that for them, I could at the very least keep this secret for them. Wasn’t sure of the why’s or where’s but I knew once I got going I would find out. I knew my heart and mind would lead me to the right place.

***

I step off the bus, and my brain switches from auto pilot to manual as the vehicle pulls away from the snowy corner. A smile spreads across my face and I suddenly feel whole again, that I know who I am and everything just clicks. The memories come rushing back from the time we all had to go hide out while Relena sorted out the whole terrorist issue. Back when Heero had been so relaxed, Wufei actually seemed happy, Duo had raved on about how we were family, and Quatre actually slept through the night without nightmares. Back when I realized it didn’t matter what my name was, that it didn’t matter that I didn’t have a past, because I was Trowa to them and that had been all that mattered to me.

I start to take slow measured steps through the untrammeled snow, almost playfully so, going towards the place where I was, and had been for years but I had forgotten. I look up into the cloudy sky as snow falls and open my mouth trying to catch the falling flakes on my tongue like a child. I chuckle at myself and my out of character mood, but then again who’s to say this isn’t me. Who can say what isn’t or is me but myself, and seeing as I am whatever I want to be I can do as I please.

I was heading back to the place where I had laughed so hard my sides had ached and tears had rolled down my cheeks. The place where I’d gotten plastered for the first time and done the most stupid things while playing truth and dare with others. Back to where I had had my first kiss outside in the snow much like today. Where I had lain next to someone during the night not for body warmth or there was no other room, but because we wanted to enjoy each other. To a place where I found my family and myself. Back to where everything made sense and didn’t make any sense at all.

I stick my arms straight out to the sides and twirl the black pack hitting my leg and ass when I stop. For the first time in years I’m happy again, I’m comfortable in my own skin. I want to cry, laugh, and scream my wonderment to the white world around but I can only twirl like a little six year old girl.

“Trowa?” I hear someone breath in astonishment.

I stop and look over to see Duo bundled up dragging an eight foot pine tree behind him. It must be for Christmas I think staring at the tree, I wasn’t aware that we would be celebrating that day. I finally raise my dark emerald to his deep violet and we just stare at each other for what seems to be forever. He looks much better than I remember but it has been a few years now. I swallow the lump in my throat, not sure what to say to him.

“I-ah figured it out.” I say quietly, to quietly for anyone normal to hear but I know he has.

“Are you really here?” He breaths swallowing a lump of his own.

“Yeah…”

After that no words are needed we just gravitate towards one another, and I find myself embraced by the one I loved first. The man I had shared my bed with first, hugged first, talked to first and… We shared so many firsts I can’t even name them all.

“My family is finally all here.” He chokes out and I hold him tighter. “You came home Trowa, you came home.”

“Yeah I did. Sorry I was so hard headed it took me this long.”

“So‘kay you are here now.” He replies burying his face deeper into my chest.

With that words are once again obsolete and we just stand in the chilly air, the snow falling about us, holding one another smiles on our faces and hearts warm with joy and content.

***

It’s the following year and we’re all sitting around the dining room table celebrating Christmas and our year anniversary of being a family. Wine glasses are clicking together in a number of toasts, forks and knives scrape loudly on fine china as we eat our ham, potatoes, corn, peas, jello and other assorted foods. I’m pretty sure that this is going to be our only day we stuff ourselves like gluttons, but then again we have Quatre and Duo living with us and everyday to them is something to celebrate about.

Wufei pokes fun at Quatre and he sticks his tongue out at him and we all laugh at the childish antics. I suddenly feel the urge to squeeze Duo’s hand and he jumps slightly and turns to look at me. I smile a small smile and think back on my first night here. He and I had just laid on his bed facing each other our hands clasped in the middle of the it that whole night threw.

We hadn’t felt the need to do anything else that night, not that I believe we would have known what to do regardless, it had been so long. Duo and I got reacquainted , he told me about his struggles with drug addiction and I told him about my fear of myself. The following months after that we found ourselves sleeping together while I got to know the other three again and helped remodel our dream home. We are all together now, but we do tend to stick with our first loves more often than not though we do all share the same bed most nights.

We all share so much already it’s hard for us to not share everything, it just seems to be right to do for us. This of coarse would never be excepted in the world we had left behind, but as individuals we hadn’t been excepted either so this was the only place we had. On occasion we leave our home to do other things. Wufei goes to school, Heero owns a mechanic shop, Duo helps at the local orphanage and other volunteer groups, Quatre goes into town and holds conference calls with his sisters - only after Heero had found away to make sure they were not traced back to us-, and I get rid of people. That’s right I work as an assassin, I know not to different right? But it works for me and I just go out and make sure that certain people who slip between the cracks of our justice system is never seen again. People seem to sleep better and get along more since I started doing this and so I think the ends justify my means.

Looking around the table of my family I just smile never feeling happier in my life. I know it won’t always be easy, hell it hasn’t been a bed of roses thus far, but it is worth the fight. With out the four in each of our lives we are not a whole person individually and because of that we can’t live our lives. So you will all have to deal with this odd family we make, because we are just not going anywhere for a very long time.

~END~