Merc

_________________________________

As independent as he seemed at the base and subsequent pursuit, I didn’t expect him to come with me. I kept waiting for him to realize he was following an absolute stranger to an unknown location and for the truck following mine to turn around and disappear. But it didn’t.

He followed my lead when I hid my transport truck among the trees about half a mile from the circus. It was late when we arrived; most of the performers had turned in for the night. I grabbed a couple of chairs and set them up around the fire pit. The coals were still smoldering, and I easily stoked them enough to get a flame going and set a coffee kettle on top.

The other pilot and I sat in silence, both torturing ourselves over our respective failures until Catherine walked up.

“Gee, you two. You call that fun, just sitting like that? You haven’t said a word for two hours.” Had it really been that long? She was carrying a tray, from the smell I would guess she made soup.

“What do you want?” It came out harsher than I had intended, but I was being pretty harsh with myself, hard to switch gears that quickly.

“Nice greeting. And here I thought I’d be doing you a favor bringing you this.” She set the tray down in front of me, two bowls of soup and two coffee mugs. “Eat it right up before it gets cold.” Was there ever a time when she wasn’t smiling? “I’ll just leave it here, so you guys help yourselves. And clean the dishes after you’re finished. Gotta learn your manners while you’re still young, right? Bye.” She walked away leaving the two of us alone again.

I didn’t want to slip back into my self-deprecating thoughts, so I reached forward and took the kettle off the fire to pour 05 and myself a cup. “This might not be the best java.” And it wasn’t, but it was sufficient.

“I’ve got no right piloting the Nataku.” He spoke as he took the cup offered.

“Oh, yeah?”

I waited for him to expand, but all he said in return was, “Thank you.”

Silence overtook us for another moment before I spoke again. “It seems to me that we all underestimated our enemy.”

“I did not underestimate him!” His voice was a fervent outburst until he took a second to compose his response. The next phase was calm but full of self-loathing. “I was not strong enough to defeat him.”

And I understood then why he followed me; his defeat made him feel weak, vulnerable. There was strength in numbers, and he needed someone to be close to while he tried to cope. “There will always be someone, somewhere that is stronger than you.”

His eyes shot me a vicious glare, but he couldn’t negate what was said so soon after his defeat. I continued, trying to make my point. “No one can be the best with every weapon in every environment under any condition. There are too many variable parameters.”

“When the options are victory or death, excuses are not an option. You have to rely on your strength to prevail.” He misunderstood me; he thought I was trying to give him an excuse for failing to kill Treize.

I nodded, agreeing to an extent, but his view of strength was narrow-minded. “True. But my strengths are different than yours. If I am to fight to the death, I’m going to manipulate the situation to suit my strengths rather than my opponents.”

“I understand your intentions,” his voice was calmer than I had ever heard it, “but there is a flaw in your logic.”

I waited, allowing the silence to set in for a moment, wondering which flaw he was focusing on. “Some logic doesn’t work for everyone.” I stood and took the dishes to the trailer.

Catherine and I had shared a trailer for the first week I worked at the circus, but since then, I had acquired my own. I needed the privacy when missions came in. As I looked back, dark eyes followed me. I opened the trailer door and motioned with my head for him to follow me, and he did.

“Bathroom is through there; the bed is yours.” I pointed out the major structures as he entered then made my way to the couch.

“I’m not taking your bed from you; the floor is fine for me.”

I stripped my turtle neck off, pulled my gun from its home at the small of my back, and slid it under the couch cushion nearest my head. The shirt served its purpose during the day, but it was really too much material around me to sleep comfortably. My jeans stayed on; I’m always ready to jump up and fight if need be. It’s a habit that’s too ingrained to leave.

As I lay down on the couch, as realized he was still standing, and I sighed. “In some cultures, refusing someone’s hospitality is considered the ultimate insult.” I knew it was a cheap shot, but I also had learned enough about this pilot to know that he wouldn’t insult someone he had some respect for.

I was a fellow pilot; I had covered his pursuit of Treize; I had eliminated all enemies accept for those directly in his path, watching his back and protecting his retreat. I had earned some respect in his eyes, and proof of that is his following me back to the circus.

And I was too damn tired to sit here and argue about who was sleeping where.

I heard him shift followed by the rustle of bedclothes moving, and I shut down for a few hours.

The next morning I woke before dawn, grabbed the shirt I had discarded last night, and quietly made my way outside. There was a community water trough set up in the middle of camp for those who want to wash their face or hands without having to run all the way back to their trailers. I went through my morning routine as best I could without having a toothbrush and made my way to the lions’ cages.

The alpha cracked an eye, but otherwise didn’t move, so I made the trek out to my gundam. The other pilot was already there as I walked up. Dawn was breaking as he packed up his suit. I climbed up and began repairing the damage the torpedo did to Heavyarms’ shield.

He stopped before getting in the truck and looked uncertain, hesitant.

I stopped and lifted the welding visor, nothing from him. Raising a gloved hand with a flick of the fingers, I bid him farewell and put the visor back down. I caught his return nod just before the welding torch flame blocked him from my sight. Soon after that his transport truck pulled away.

The Khushrenada situation had totally rearranged his psyche. This was not a person I would ever label as hesitant, but it seemed that even the smallest decision, like what to say or not to say to a fellow pilot after taking advantage of his hospitality, was giving him problems.

Hopefully, it was only temporary. He was a good fighter; it’d be a shame to lose him to his own insecurities. I wondered if he could pull himself back together. The mental strains of war can bring down even the most skilled fighters.

If he fell in battle, I hoped, for his sake, he fell because that opponent was just that much better or just got that lucky, not because 05 gave him an opening with his internal doubts.

I finished running a systems scan to see if there was residual damage from the roof collapsing and found nothing. All I needed to do now was reload the ammo when it arrived later that day.

That night I felt restless. The other pilot’s presence left me unsettled. How could one defeat throw him so off balance? Had he never faced a loss before? Impossible, one had to learn a craft somehow either through repetitive trial and error or by instructions from someone better, stronger than you. So why?

It wasn’t my issue, but it left me puzzled. Why did his turmoil affect me? I had my own problems, like playing the pawn again. No, but that had been somewhat resolved. My decision to infiltrate Oz had settled my inner demons somewhat.

I felt vulnerable, so I took the high point again, jumping to the lowest tree branch and losing myself among the foliage. The ammo had been loaded an hour or so earlier; I had retrieved it from an anonymous pick up point, and there was no show scheduled, so there was nothing to do. But I was restless.

I studied the trees around me, calculating distances between branches, weight tolerance, height from the ground. Then I did something foolish; I ran.

I ran amongst the branches like I had ages ago, like I had after last time I found I had been played. Only this time it was more reckless. I flung myself at the higher boughs, catching and flipping myself over them. Feeling the skin on my hands shred against the bark. I kept waiting to feel an unseen branch beat my head and black to cloud my vision, but it didn’t.

In the dim light of twilight, I was swinging like a monkey through the trees, adding flips and turns, making everything more and more difficult, taking my body to its limits.

I wanted to forget, needed to forget, just for a moment. Forget kind, blue eyes, forget the seething, rippling feeling of being manipulated, forget the dark pilot and his shame.

And I did, for a moment. That flying feeling that I used to get when falling from my suit overwhelmed me and I felt free. There was a weightlessness that swallowed me as I flung myself through endless branches. It was like being in space again, for the brief period I was there.

That night I slept well for the first time in years, dreaming I had wings. The next day there were three performances, and Catherine took advantage of the time backstage to ask me about “my friend.”

I used the time to teach myself how to juggle; it gave me an excuse to ignore her, feigning intense concentration. I had seen one of the clowns do it enough to understand the concept, and I knew my reflexes and hand-eye coordination were more than sufficient; it was a matter of synchronizing the throws and catches.

I picked it up fairly quickly, but faked the mistakes in order to keep Catherine at bay.

Besides, with the big shoes, baggy pants, and suspenders, I looked like a clown anyways; I might as well learn the tricks of the trade even if I wasn’t going to act like one. Heads would roll first.

I had gotten through the performances without any more conflicts; it seemed the death wish was just a fleeting thing. I didn’t want to die, did I? No, I didn’t really have any reason to live, but then again I never did. Life was just that, do what has to be done. If life was nothing more than one battle after the next, so be it.

But then there’s what the pilot had said…Am I tired of meaningless battles? What battles had meaning? I had never cared for a cause; I fought because I followed orders. The orders themselves meant nothing to me, so what meaning did the subsequent battles have? Answer: none, not to me, anyway.

Is that what flashed through me that night? Had fighting without meaning, without a cause, fatigued my will to live? Possibly, but I was more willing to go with a momentary lapse in judgment. Maybe…

But if fighting a meaningful battle meant ending up insecure and defeated in mind as well as body, as the last pilot ended up, did I really want to find meaning in a fight? Soldiers follow orders; that’s their purpose on the battlefield. Following orders that only support the ideals you support, following only those orders that you agreed with…that’s not a soldier, that’s a volunteer.

Would finding meaning in battles make me any less of a soldier? If I got emotionally attached to the outcome of a battle, like 05, would I shut down after a loss? Would I make mistakes that could get me or an ally killed, like Quatre had. It certainly seemed like it. No, I think staying detached, emotionally uninvolved would make me a better fighter, a better soldier, able to carry out any and all orders without conflicting emotions.

04 and 05 were skilled pilots, but they weren’t soldiers, had never been soldiers. They follow orders and carry out missions because they agree with them. If their orders were in conflict with their beliefs, they wouldn’t do it, of that I have no doubt.

Meaningless battles? Sure, I can do that, have done that, will continue to do so because I’m a soldier. Its what I’m good at; its what I do.

I was a soldier, to my very core; meaning had no place in my mission. Or so I thought.

The next mission came soon after that. Oz had developed a new system that allowed the mobile suits to learn and adapt to opponents’ strategies. Seemingly harmless and useful, the repercussions could be monumental. What if that system “learned” to override the pilot’s commands? What did that mean for the future of war?

Scanning the transcripts, I saw no choice but to attack while Oz was transporting, the re-supply point was the only vulnerability. With the data they had collected and were broadcasting on the Gundams and strategies to counter us, they could disperse our firepower and overwhelm us even with the most elementary of tactics. And that was assuming I wasn’t acting completely alone.

My mission was to destroy the new Tauruses that carried the system. But Oz didn’t want their new toys destroyed, so they set up two transport routes. In analyzing the data, I realized that the true route to the Siberian base was by air and made plans accordingly. Pulling up topographical maps of the re-supply point made it very apparent that this was a set up.

Oz would use the Tauruses as bait for the gundams. They would rely on their defenses and traps to destroy whatever gundam showed up and leave their bait untouched.

Unlikely.

I was unsure who would show up where, but best to assume I was doing this solo. I laid out what I would do if I was planning for an attack in that location. I plotted out the most likely positions for ambushing suits, land based tanks, and timing of air support, and I made sure to note any alternate ways to set up defenses. It would be a battle of strategy.

No room for wasted ammo in this mission. I made a mental note to try to increase the efficiency of Heavyarms when next I got the chance if I could fit another round in the suit without losing too much maneuverability. It could save my life in the future.

I needed to make adjustments if I had the time after this mission.

After ‘acquiring’ a carrier for Heavyarms, I made my way to the supply point for the air route. Knowing I would encounter heavy resistance, I made sure to use almost all the fuel in the shuttle, so if there was an explosion from the carrier, it would only do minimal damage to my suit.

Sure enough, the shuttle was under fire from a troop of Ares as I exited the shuttle. My guns knocked them from the sky before my suit touched the ground. As Heavyarms skidded to a halt on the tarmac, my target switched to the land tanks. Targets eliminated. Another two troops of Leos were waiting in ambush on my right flank along with a squad of jets overhead. I took those out as another suit registered on the very edge of my radar.

…No, two suits.

Then another three Leo troops showed themselves on my left flank, but their target was not me. The flight model gundam, 01, transformed after taking a hard hit from one of the enemy suits. His beam rifle took out an entire troop with one shot, his Vulcan cannons took out the majority of the last troop, but then the other suit caught up with him.

I had no idea what the suit was, there was no match to any of the Oz suit types. The only thing my system came up with was ‘Leo prototype.’ That suit was fast, darting all over my screen, but it wasn’t targeting me, so I kept my sights on my target: the Tauruses.

I sent a round of missiles at the airfield surrounding the carriers then knocked out some of the Leos still flanking me with my gatling gun. The carriers were still untouched, but I had knocked out the control tower. It should buy me a little more time to punch through the defensive lines and get to the shuttles.

“Calling all gundam pilots.” A woman’s voice blared through my cockpit speakers, breaking through the main communications line. What the hell? “We are now positioned to stage an all-out missile attack on the colonies. We have seized all missile satellites from the former Alliance. Its reasonable to say we control the destiny of all colonies.”

They wouldn’t, couldn’t be so stupid, could they?

The voice continued without pause. “This isn’t a bluff. I demand all pilots to surrender at once and hand over your gundams!”

Sounds like Oz’s tricks, but…If they weren’t bluffing…the repercussions would be monumental.

My orders were to destroy the Tauruses; would my orders change now that the consequences have tripled? Countless lives would be taken; I’m a mercenary, a paid murderer, but genocide? I didn’t know, hesitant to do anything.

Before my decision could rise from the depths of my mind, one of my screens blurred and a grey haired man with green eye wear hacked the transmissions of earth. “Attention Oz. I never would have imagined that you people could be so incredibly foolish. The Space Colonies have no intention of fighting Oz. This is my personal battle that I’m staging against you.”

Analysis in progress: the transmission was on an open line from Colony C-1013.

The man continued. “In your eyes, inhumane moves such as attacking the colonies are just if that’s what it takes for you to come out victorious. I have no choice but to surrender.”

Movement on the external cameras caught my eye. The hatch of the flight model opened and a kid my age stepped out.

I’m assuming the old man was the missions coordinator for one of the gundam pilots, most likely the one stepping out of the hatch; he clarified his terms. “I surrender. But I will not hand over the gundams. I repeat. I surrender, but I will not hand over the gundam.”

I watched, knowing what was coming, unable to pull my eyes from the coming scene. The boy raised his arm, detonation switch in hand and pushed the button. Immediately, brilliant lights blazed from the cockpit, down the arms and legs as internal incendiaries obliterated all the important, confidential components of the suit. My screens went white with the overwhelming light and then the battered suit fell to the ground.

My eyes scanned the ground, locking onto the broken body of the pilot.

I felt a spear of pain lance straight through my heart, then stab my body a thousand times, robbing me of my breath, and I knew it wasn’t coming from me. I sent the broadcast out to the frequency Quatre given me at our first meeting. “Can you hear me? We must leave here at once.”

“Trowa! That you, Trowa?” His voice was strained, and I wondered how it was possible to feel his pain as clearly as I was. I knew it was his; he wasn’t meant for this line of work. He couldn’t handle it; if he didn’t leave, eventually, he would break.

We were at a stand still. If we carried out the mission or continued to retaliate, one of the colonies could be space dust. Millions would die, but we would not surrender, would not give such powerful weapons to such a vicious organization. It was a draw with no chance of solution. “Without resolution we cannot fight. He’s accepted all orders.”

I couldn’t leave him. I couldn’t. Respect demanded Heavyarms carry him from the battlefield like a Caesar and his chariot. I lowered Heavyarms’ free hand gently to the ground and picked up the broken body of a fallen comrade. I’ve never described myself as a gentle person, but having a gundanium hand that could crush suits wrapped around that boy…I’ve never been so careful in my entire life.

He was dead, it didn’t matter if I was careful or not, but I couldn’t ignore his sacrifice. I treated that body as if it was the most delicate lace.

My thoughts turned hard as I face off with the Prototype Leo. If he was anything like the woman who demanded our surrender, if he played as dirty as his commanding officer, he would attack while I was vulnerable, one arm useless because I was protecting a fellow officer.

But he did not. I waited as long as I was able, but reports of approaching recruits force my hand. I turned my back, but no attack came. He let me go. Maybe there were some with honor amongst Oz’s ranks.

I retreated to the transport truck I had hidden about fifteen miles from the ambush site, loaded up my suit, boy still in hand, and got the hell out of the area.
___________________________________________

AN: I got some feedback on potential pairings, but not as much as I would have guessed, which is actually pretty nice. I feel like I have more freedom this way. Since I'm following the series so closely, there's really only room for 3x1 or 3x4, in my humble opinion. I have a lot of respect for both pairings, but if any of you readers are too attached to one or the other, I'd warn you to go elsewhere because there's prolly going to be at least a mild form of Shonen-ai with both.

On another note, I try to respond to all my reviewers on my profile page, but I've gotten a bit behind. I'll get those responses, and any new ones, up within the week. Sorry for the tardiness.

Last but not least, I've got a POV 1x2 that I'm trying to finish before posting. I posted it over a year ago somewhere else, but never finished it...I'm close! Yeah for me!! Its tone is much more fun than the seriousness of this fic, so be on the lookout if you like my writing style and want a carefree 1x2. Yea for shameless promotion. lol. I'm such a weirdo.

Thanks to all my readers. Hope you approved of my "Trowa's take on Wufei." Maybe a little harsh at times, but, hey, he did try to comfort the angry dragon. That's a feat in and of itself. Til next time.