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"Alternative Directions: Options "Written By: Karina Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the lovely
boys and their girls in the series. Wish I did. Please don't sue me.
I haven't even got a brass razoo to give you. Rating: Deffinately PG in Australia, at the moment,
but probably safer to say R for later chapters. Not sure about international
ratings Warnings: It will be 6x2, even though it does
not start out that way. After all, Zechs and Duo never met in Gundam
Wing and only spoke briefly over a com line in Endless Waltz. I've
tried to keep them in character as I saw them in the series. A bit
of language creeping in under stressful conditions. Pairings: eventual 6x2, past 2xH, 2+H,6x9, 1+R
Summary: Directions is set post Endless Waltz
and roughly 2 years have passed. Zechs and Noin are on Mars and Duo,
after spending some time with Hilde in a relationship leaves L2 to
join Preventers. Hilde was not happy about his decision. I guess enough
said. Here t'is, and I hope you like it. This is also AU for the standard
setting, as well as the series and Endless Waltz. Spoilers: Gundam Wing Series and Endless Waltz Many thanks to Dulin for volunteering to beta this. //... // thoughts
"Alternative Directions: Options"
2nd March AC 198 Sanc Stephansbourg The Coachman’s Rest Time: 03:45 Quatre //He has to be wrong but … What if Heero is right? What if … What if there is something in what he says?// Heero still stared at the rafters, still looked miles away, lost in thoughts that Quatre really did not want to know. The entire day seemed dreamlike. Nightmarish. //Heero has never been a dreamer. I have never known him to be disposed towards flights of fantasy. He has always been so grounded, so down to earth … except for his tendency to want to blow himself up. Ah, that was war time and we were all young and confused. I know I was. I thought I was so sure of myself. So certain of my facts … I … I sometimes think that we all are infants up to the time of our death. It all changes with the years. We look back on what we have done and we wonder how we could have been so stupid to have taken those steps and thought ourselves so knowledgeable. // The war had taken its toll on everyone. No one on Earth or in the colonies had been unscathed by its touch. No one had escaped some aspect of the terror of it. Certain people had ensured that everyone would feel it. Everyone would know it. Everyone would hate it. Treize Kushrenada. Milliardo Peacecraft. Those names kept recurring like an echo down through time and he was sure that they would still echo in a hundred years or more. Between them they had changed the outlook of mankind. But not them alone. They had all featured in the changes that had written a peace that everyone wanted to last. Everyone? Could he honestly say everyone in the ESUN wanted peace? // One thing at a time and this is not the time for that. Preventers exists for a reason. With each year it should become easier once the initial changes are in effect and accepted by the people. It’s this damn one nation policy that is the stumbling block.// Relena was an idealist. She had been reared with the Darlians and taught to believe in one uniform nation, no borders, everyone sharing the same national identity. A wondrous dream but one not shared by enough people as yet. It would take perhaps two generations for that idea to be accepted. Two generations before people began to see the light but the foundations were there for something wonderful and he felt proud that he had had a hand in the laying of those stones. He and his fellow Gundam pilots. Despite the manipulation, the misunderstandings and the warped views of those who controlled them, despite the fact that they were certain they would die, they lived to witness the birth of the peace that they had fought for. //Not even peace for the entire ESUN. I know I fought for the colonies. The colonies’ independence was what was of importance to me. I cared nothing for the Earth … until I came here and saw how beautiful it was. I fought for the colonies, not for peace for everyone. I did not care what fate befell Earth when I started so long as the colonies were free of Alliance control. I thought I knew it all. I still do, even though I know deep inside that I know nothing. I have not yet numbered the same years that Zechs had at the beginning of Operation Meteor or faced the thought of what I will be doing, what changes will have been made within me by the time I reach twenty four, the age when Kushrenada died for peace.// He so desperately wanted to sleep. To get away from the weight of events that surrounded him and to escape from the empathy that always was a deeply seated part of him and that was, it appeared, not natural. // I am tired. I want to sleep and all I can do is think. I was genetically modified to be an empath. There is nothing I can do about that. It was done long ago. What Heero suggests … I know that my empathy was induced, manipulated by scientists for their own purposes. A purpose I as yet do not begin to understand. Empathy is only one aspect of an extensive list of psionic abilities. Clairvoyance is another aspect and it is, in its way, even more frightening than this ability to feel the emotions of others. If I believe Heero … He has always seemed so down to Earth since the war ended and we found normality … I hate that word. What is normal? Some days Heero has seemed too down to Earth. He’s always seemed rock solid and has had set goals and an intensity that narrowed his field of vision to fact with no room for What If. What if … I am beginning to hate those words too. What if and Heero is a frightening combination.// Heero stirred, moving to lightly run a hand over his face, for a moment covering his eyes and then rubbing at the stubble on his chin. "There is a great deal now that does not make sense to me about that time and even more that I think I am just beginning to understand. I never thought about it at the time he gave me the suit but now … I can remember Kushrenada telling me when he gave me the Epyon that it was not meant to be a weapon. There was something … something in his voice … Something in his eyes at the time that I missed. I did not notice those things then but I do now. The more I think about that time the more I notice and I wonder that I could be so blind. I was taught to observe, Quatre. I was taught to look for the hidden and I failed so miserably on so many occasions to do just that. Everyone lied, everyone cheated, everyone was false … but true. I know it makes no sense. I don’t begin to understand it but … he warned me, Quatre. He told me it was not a weapon. If the Epyon was not in truth a weapon then what was it?" The Prussian blue of Heero’s eyes stared at him from that other bed and he wished he could sink lower under the warm cover and blot out the sight. How was he meant to have the answers? What was it Heero wanted of him? This was not the war but it was something else. Something even more important. It was the aftermath when they were to examine and formulate new ideals and see in the peace that was brought with so many lives and dreams. "Why, Quatre? Why would he design something like that mobile suit that had so few machines in existence capable of contesting its abilities? Why build a mobile suit at all if that machine is not meant for war?" Quatre took his turn in staring at the ceiling beams to escape the piercing intensity of that blue eyed gaze. Why indeed? He luxuriated in the comfort of the bed, feeling the enfolding softness of the mattress and the luxurious warmth of the eiderdown. It was a warm and safe cocoon in a world where he fielded questions he did not feel himself qualified to answer. //To disguise it, perhaps? From who? Why? That makes no sense. To have it blend in with the times … again I am not so certain of that. Perhaps to protect the pilot? Well of course to protect the pilot. A shell. I do not know the man himself. I can not evaluate Him into the picture if I do not understand him … and from what I have learned, no one really understood Treize Kushrenada.// He had never met Treize Kushrenada face to face during the war. Never talked to him, never learned something of the man not the myth that had surrounded him. Myth? Mystique certainly. Wu Fei had met the man himself and had come from that meeting profoundly shaken, nor had he ever spoken to Quatre about what had happened when he had met the leader of Oz. Wu Fei had been and still was a profoundly private person with his own fiercely adhered to views on everything from how to tie a shoelace to how the Earth Sphere should be run. Heero too had come face to face with the man who had, it seemed, orchestrated the world shaking changes that had resulted in this period where peace could be guided into existence. Heero too seemed shaken by that meeting, though it appeared it had taken some time for the realization of that meeting to strike him. It took quiet a lot to shake Heero and his barriers but Kushrenada appeared to have done it … or was that simply the memory of the zero system rearing fresh within his consciousness? If anyone would recognize the zero system it should be Heero. He had used Wing Zero the longest of all of the pilots and he had used the Epyon. Quatre shook his head, pressing his face into the pillow, trying to blot out reality if only for a moment in time. There was no avoiding the issue and he knew it. If he ever wanted any sleep this night then he had to deal with this now. It would haunt him until he was driven insane and there was Heero, lying there in that bed staring again at the ceiling beams. Patient. Waiting. Waiting for an evaluation from the group’s strategist. Epyon was the zero system. That was what he had assumed since learning of the suit when Heero had appeared with it in Sanc. Why had he not asked questions then? Why had he just accepted that the strange demonic looking suit was equipped with the system he had built? Of course he had been working from the plans that had been left in the computer system within the bunker built to construct Sandrock in secret. He had assumed that there were other computers containing the same design specifications for the mobile suit and for the unique new generation operating system. He could never forget the horrors visited upon him and that he in turn had visited upon others as a by product of the zero system. Their pain, their fear, their anger, their despair, their striving to ignore what was impossible to ignore … It all had been manifested within the embrace of the Zero system. It all had come into his mind, his body, his very being had been overrun with it and he had been unable to even recognize that it had all started with his grief and anger over his father. Why had his father not made any effort to understand and accept him? They had wanted the same thing … It was just that they did not see the matter in the same light. He was not a shadowy copy of his father. He had had his own light and he had refused to be consigned to the shadows, pushed beneath his fathers glory. Such glory too. Manipulated by masters the very people who had adored his father had turned on him. He who had been The Winner had lost it all. Including his life when he had, to Quatre’s thinking, gone against the very ideals he had taught by acting like an errant and spoiled schoolboy and blown up that resource satellite. So many people had died that day, not just his father. Not just Iria. And for what? There had been only a short delay before they had another satellite in position. Old history best left alone. //It’s all too much. I want to shut down. Forget about it all. I don’t want the memories to come back.// But he could see Heero still laying there, waiting for answers he was supposed to devise from the mess. Zero he knew. He had built the system after all and he had used it even if he had been deranged at the time. It was true that it had not been designed by him but it was he who had constructed it and in that construction he had learned its functions. He had experimented with it and become one with it. He had to wonder if they, those interfering old men who were geniuses at getting themselves and others into trouble had actually ever intended to have the suit built. Had they ever really planned to construct it and give it to a pilot to use? Zero had responded to him in such a fashion that he still had nightmares of being within its embrace. It was not the suit that caused him to shudder. No not the suit that he still entertained nightmares over. The operating system lingered still within him in some almost but not quite locked away fashion. A ghostly echo of what had been that he could not dispel. //Trowa, I wish you were here. I would not fear sleeping if you were here to bring me back from that place.// His partner, his more than lover, his soul mate alone could understand what Zero had done to him. It was Trowa who held him through the worst of the nightmares until he could wake from it and know that the world was real and solid .That there was no longer the war to be endured until he died or he had killed all of those who projected their despair onto him. Trowa was not here. Trowa was far away and there was only Heero. "Zero was a weapon." he murmured, frowning at the dark ceiling beams, trying very hard not to hear the blizzard raging out in the night. "Zero was intended to be a weapon." The storm beyond sturdy old walls seemed to be increasing in intensity and he was thankful that they had not tried to go on in the night to reach the safe house. Stephensbourg had undoubtedly saved their lives. Earth was so different to the colonies. He had been resident on Earth more than in the colonies for the last two years and he still marveled at the extremes of nature. They would never have made it over the pass had they continued and to be struck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in these mountains and in this weather was a death sentence. //I wonder if I will get any sleep at all? The wind is howling out there.// "Yes." Heero’s voice was low, a whisper in the night. "Zero was designed as an advanced weapon system. A new generation system designed to enhance the pilot. It was meant to get the most out of him, to enhance his every reaction to the point that he was … perfect." He could hear the fear in that whisper and he did not want to acknowledge it. One did not think of Heero Yuy and fear in the same thought. Heero had always been the Perfect Soldier of their group. They had all had their places in the group once they had banded together but Heero had been the Prefect Soldier. So strong, so focused. He did not need to know that Heero was in truth, just like him. Imperfect. The Perfect Soldier could not, should not be emotional to the point of insanity and capable of screwing up on as grand a scale. // Allah.// Did he really want Heero to be that superman? Cold, unemotional, focused … Perfectly inhuman? //Oh, Allah, when will it all end?// He knew what Zero had done to him but he was an empath. His space heart had never been understood and could not ever be dissolved into calculations and incorporated into the system. How could anyone reduce empathy down to cold facts and figures and expect to understand it? No. The designers of Zero had never thought that it might have different effects on different people. It was a machine. A computer. A tactical calculator. "Zero system was a combat system designed to wring every ounce of emotion out of the pilot and focus him into becoming a calculating tool. I … When I used it … It was too much. The antithesis of what my space heart had always meant to me. Somehow it changed, adapted I think to incorporate something of the empathy that I could not block and it could not understand or work with. It became a focus for me, drawing in all that was a part of me and … and … enhancing it? I’m not sure that that is the right word. It is so hard to describe what it felt like. I doubt that what you experienced when you used it was similar to what it was when I used it. I think Zero changed with each pilot that used it and I believe that it took a rare individual to master the system and have it work for the pilot, not use the pilot. There were flaws within the system. It was meant to be an aid, I think, not to be the dominant component within the partnership. And I think it was meant to be a partnership. A merging of the pilot and the system to produce something extraordinary." Heero slid deeper into the bed, a controlled flexing of the tight muscles seeming to give the impression that he was almost oozing within the embrace of the eiderdown. He continued to scowl at the ceiling, his eyes following a darker seam in the wood of one of the beams and Quatre thought it was merely an aid to give him something to focus on. They were both tired, beyond tired, but their minds were not as yet content with the answers and would not relax enough to permit them to sleep. What he picked up from Heero was fairly simple to understand at this moment. Heero was tired and his emotions suggested that he thought of himself as being far from perfect this day. "It was not easy to master Zero. It was not easy but after that initial struggle for control … Quatre, I found it to be so easy. After that initial period where it was all so new and I did not understand what it was … It was so easy to use. Zero had something that I think was very close to an intelligence but I think that it was a very focused and limited intelligence." The blond grunted softly, recalling his own experiences with the machine and the operating system. He needed to always remember that the machine was just that … a machine. It was the operating system that made the Wing Zero something special. Zero had not used him but it had enhanced what lay within Quatre Winner in ways that still frightened him. Perhaps it was only because he had lost his sanity when he had witnessed his father’s death that day and that loss of control had permitted his empathy to run rampant. Perhaps it had had nothing to do with the system. Everything had come crushing down on him, the homecoming had not been what he had hoped it would be, then his father’s death, making of himself a martyr at a point when everyone on the colony had been deluded and killing which was against everything that he had always taught … And to compound it all, Iria … He had not known she was a sister when first he had met her. Even now he did not know them all personally but at that time he had not known what more than a handful had looked like. He had had twenty nine sisters. Now he had twenty eight and the one that he thought he might have liked best was gone. Dead. Killed as a result of his father’s actions. Insane action. He did not understand so much about his family. He did not understand the man who had sired him. Why had his father had such an interest in him and in controlling his thoughts, beliefs and everyday actions? His father had made no attempt to see the war from his view point, instead forcing on him his pacifist ideals. At the same time he had seemed to allow his sisters to go their own ways without much in the way of supervision. Had he finished indoctrinating them into his beliefs and believed that he could concentrate on the much awaited son and making of him some never to be known tool for peace? He was to be the good little boy who was to listen attentively, believe implicitly in all he was told and not have an original thought of his own. He was to be the one who stayed at home and learned how to run the corporation that … No. No, he would not go there. He had promised himself repeatedly that he would not go down that road again. Done was done. He would never understand his father and as heartbreaking as it was, that was the truth. Let it lie. Iria was dead. She had died as a result of her … their … father’s actions. Certainly he would not have intended to kill his own daughter. What Quatre’s empathy had been picking up that day had been a confused mix. A jumble of hate and confusion and anger and the brilliant beacon that was his father’s rage that all he had built and intended be used for peaceful expansion would instead be used for killing and destruction. //He had planned so much … but did anyone else believe what he so implicitly believed? He seemed so like the King of Sanc in many ways. Pacifists to the bone and head blind to the way the world works … No. No, I can’t judge anyone by my own limited knowledge. I think differently to how I did three years ago. In ten years from now I will look back and call myself an immature brat who presumed to know so much. He was not thinking clearly. He did not know that the explosion he set off on the resource satellite would resulted in a shock wave that saw Iria die to protect her little brother. How was he to know that we would go after him? How would he not know that we loved him enough to follow? Did I know him at all? After all, he set off the explosion despite knowing that we were in range of the shock wave.// Allah. He was so fed up with it all. He hated the Winner legacy. The Winner legacy was supposed to be a legacy of peace. His father had been a pacifist but in acting as he did to Quatre’s view he had broken away from the very tenants of pacifism. The irony of it all. Quatre did not see his father’s actions that fateful day as being in line with the pacifist doctrine that he had been taught. Hard core pacifists preferred to die rather than raise a weapon against another human being. The kingdom of Sanc had been a lesson in what a total pacifist culture would do should they be attacked. Having someone kill them, a harmless pacifist, was supposed to get the message across to the multitudes that killing was wrong. Which it was, he admitted. It was wrong but how could it be right to stand back and allow another person to murder you? Was that not just another way of going out and committing suicide? He had thought of himself as a pacifist when he had decided to enter the war. Contradictions surrounded him. Pacifists committed suicide on a grand scale in the Sanc kingdom, not even raising a hand to stop the slaughter. Had anyone there fought back? He should ask those in the know, he mused, if anyone who had survived had decided in that last moment when death stared them in the face, that they would fight to survive. Had his father not considered that what he was doing was suicide? Suicide and murder too as others had been killed. Had their lives not featured once in his thoughts? Had his father been blinded by emotion? No. No he had felt none of that from his father in the lead up to that horrible day and his empathy had been wide open to everyone and that was a contributing factor in his resulting brush with insanity. Anger. That is what he had sensed from his father. A burning, blinding beacon of anger. The Winner patriarch had been furious, absorbed in his rage that everything he had worked for was being taken from him. Taken from his control to be used to further the ideals of men in high places who made it their life’s work to manipulate others. It was in anger that his father had resolved to remove the resource satellite from them before they could use its wealth and Winner employees to further their ambitions. His father had envisioned the weapons that would be constructed from the ore mined from the satellite. He had envisioned the weapons and the machines of destruction that would be designed to further the domination of Oz in space. He had resolved to put a stop to that and why, oh why of all the possible things he might have done had he decided to detonate the satellite? He had not been thinking. Quatre knew it. He had not been thinking clearly of repercussions, of lives lost, of winning back control and showing everyone that the peace could work if you worked to achieve it despite the odds. All he had sensed from his father that day was the rage directed at everything around him. There had been no distinctions. It had simply been rage and the determination to do something about it. Something with a big impact that would make them all see that he was not a fool and that he was capable of taking action. Martyr. He had intended to make of himself a martyr. //It was stupid. It had no meaning, Not really. It deprived those gaining power of the satellite but they had another in place within weeks and there were people working on and around that satellite at the time he had detonated it. He killed them as well as himself and are their names immortalized in the lobby of the Winner Corporation on L4? Who remembers them? No one. There is no memorial to the ones He killed to make his name remembered. King Stephan and Queen Katerina are considered martyrs too, but they never killed to achieve that distinction … they only died and left a ruined country and a son who like me, saw the world through different eyes. Why, Father? Why did you do it? I don’t think I will ever understand. The debris caused havoc in the surrounding area. It damaged the colony and killed more people and their families now whisper your name because the corporation employs them and they don’t remember that they thought you had too much, owned too much and they had too little. Why, Father? I honestly don’t understand. The great pacifist caused the death of over forty people because he was not thinking. Iria was only one of them. You never had to face the consequences of your actions. // To this day he dreamed of what had happened and it still tore into him with the same intense pain that had sent him into insanity. He just had better control now and he was better able to shield, but he was being a hypocrite. Who was he to talk? After all that he had done just who was he to talk about pointing fingers and casting blame? Under the agony of that great outpouring of emotion, his own and that of the others who had watched, an entire colony had screamed in denial as they had all watched that great ball of rock explode and rain down debris upon them. Was it any wonder that he had gone insane? Heero was waiting but he had to settle in his mind how much of it had been the Zero system and how much of it had been himself. His empathy and youth and disbelief and desire for it all to go away so that he need not face the horror of it. He had thought he had dealt with it. They had all been at fault. That was what had settled into his mind within the murk of his madness. Everyone, everywhere was at fault. He had felt their anger, their despair, their sorrow, their disgust, their lust, their … He had felt their guilt. They had all needed to pay. They had all needed to know what it truly was to despair … "Quatre?" The quiet voice cut across the rising storm of memory and the waves of emotion that were taking him down into that darkness. With a shuddering breath he brought his mind back to the present. Heero. Sanc. He was in a country Inn in the middle of a blizzard and all of that other, that horror was in the past. His father was long dead and so was Iria, the sister he was just beginning to know and whom he had liked. The one lesson that had come out of that entire horrible mess was that in the long term one person should not have so much power. Be it a private or public company or a government for a small nation or an entire world one person holding the dominance could so easily lead to abuse. ‘I know what is best for everyone and you had better believe it or else.’ It was sentiments such as this that started wars. He was as guilty of that sin as anyone who had looked at another person and decided their fate. Yet he understood something else now that he had not understood during the days of the war. That entire ‘I know what is best for you’ mentality was natural to the human condition. It was the way the dominant male or female in a given situation thought. Those with the Alpha personality, the leaders took on the responsibility and determined how everyone should think or act or feel and … Those who objected would rebel, become the rebels and fight for what they in turn saw as the way everyone should be. In effect they became Alphas to contest the superiority of the existing Alpha. And the world turned. It was all so wrong and he could not see that so much had changed since the peace had birthed on that fateful day when the Libra and her commander, the son of martyred pacifists, had threatened them all with extinction. And here he was, the son of a pacifist who had committed murder in the name of peace considering the belly button of the universe. Some things took a long time to effect change. Even threatening to wipe them all off the face of the planet took time to effect change. "Quatre?" "Sorry. I was just thinking about the past. About what happened during the war. About constructing Zero and how it amplified my ability to sense emotions. While I was using Wing Zero I could so easily feel the weight of emotion that emanated from the colonies I was near. When I came close enough their emotions would burn into me and I could not block them out. It hurt. It woke the memories of why everything hurt. The hate, the anger over my father." "Zero did that?" "I did that. I did that, not Zero. I think that Zero had something similar to a sentience but it was not a mind as we know it. I think I would have picked up on that. Animals are not intelligent as we are but I still feel something like emotions from them. There was no emotion involved with Zero. It was quite simply a very advanced operating system designed to merge with the mind of the pilot and enhance the pilots senses. It was designed to augment and perfect reflexes and skills in combat situations, to give a variety of scenarios based on available data for the pilot to work with. It had no other purpose." Heero scowled and rolled onto his side so that he could watch the blond. Only Quatre’s head was visible, his eyes just above the eiderdown were open and staring up at the ceiling, bright and full of conflicting emotions. It looked to Heero as though Quatre was far from being ready to sleep. "So … If you do not think that the system … that Zero was intelligent … What do you think Epyon might have been?" "From what you have said … what you have suggested … It had to be something very different. I thought that it was a copy of Zero but perhaps it was not. Perhaps it was in itself unique." Heero glared at his partner for a long few minutes, considering the implications of what had been suggested and what had been avoided. Finally he shrugged beneath the warmth of the bedding. "I don’t have the words to describe what Epyon did while I was using it." "No more than I can adequately describe what it feels like to have this empathy. That is why I think that you may be right when you suggest that Epyon was not the Zero system." "I’m sorry." Heero seemed not to have heard Quatre as he whispered into the night, eyes narrowed and seeing nothing of the room. "I don’t know the right words or how to use them if I did to describe what it felt like. It was certainly similar to the feel of Zero but … at the same time it was different. There was … well … It felt like there was something reaching out. As though something was there, trying to worm its way into my head. Something … intelligent. Something that wanted to … to ... I can’t. Nothing seems to fit what it felt like. Some ‘thing’ was there and it kept on trying to get into my head." That, Quatre knew, was not how he had viewed the Zero system and Heero had never described Zero quite in those words before either. No, he was more convinced than ever that Treize Kushrenada had invented something quite different to Zero … or had he acquired it from somewhere? The man was supposed to have been a prisoner of Romefeller. How could a prisoner have come up with a mobile suit, any mobile suit let alone that demonic looking machine that could have taken apart stone by stone the castle where Treize had been imprisoned? Where and how had Treize Kushrenada acquired the Epyon and the biggest question of all, of course, was why? What had he wanted it for? How much of a prisoner had he been? "Did it ever … Did Epyon ever talk to you?" Heero’s scowl deepened. "Did Epyon talk to me? Do you mean did it ever talk to me with words as we are talking now? No. No it was more … There was something more subtle involved than words. There were impressions. Pictures in my mind. Everyone was there. Everyone who was in the area was there, in my head and they affected the way that I thought … No. No, even that is not quite right but it’s closer to what I felt." "We were at war. Everyone around you, be they soldier or civilian had an effect, directly or indirectly that impacted on how you saw the world around you. What you just described may not be as far from the truth as it sounds." Quatre mused. "I can relate to that with my empathy. We interact with each other. Every word that we say, every action that we take, every thought that we have will in some way impact on those who are around us. When you acquired Epyon you fought for Luxembourg. You were a soldier and there were others, soldiers around you. You all had one thing in common. Your place as soldiers… you recognized each other. The purpose of a soldier is to fight and that was a link that you all had in common. That is the basic similarity between people in combat zones. You interact." "Pretty basic, isn’t it?" Heero sighed. "Basic and sad." "I am human. You are human. I am dominant human and if you do not like my position we fight and we kill to see who is still standing. If it is me, then I was right and you were wrong." Heero’s eyes popped wide as he stared at Quatre who seeing his look grinned at him and shrugged beneath the eiderdown. "I am man. I have sex. I hunt. I kill. I eat. I have sex. Have you never heard that before, Heero? It is a theory of the evolution of man … specifically the human male and what has remained with him throughout his development. When you think about it, it is very true. It certainly is as valid today as it was twenty thousand years ago." "The basic existence of man." Heero shook his head slightly. "It makes us sound like animals." "That is all we are. Animals. Just like dogs and cats. Just like lions and wolves. Just like … animals." Quatre rolled onto his side, settling himself more comfortably in the bed. "The only difference between what we consider to be animals and us is the level of intelligence that man has developed. Consciousness, some call it, refusing to dub it with the word intelligence. They claim that we are no more intelligent than a monkey. Consciousness makes the difference. The ability to get beyond the basics of survival and to determine the concept of right and wrong. We are barely a notch above the level of bacteria. We are primitive, Heero. We have such a long way to go before we attain something that even approaches enlightenment." Heero rolled onto his back and returned to his contemplation of the ceiling beams. Quatre sighed and reached out for the lamp that rested on the table between their beds. "Okay if I turn the light out?" "Sure." Settling back into the bed Quatre could still see the ceiling above. The crackling fire in the hearth across the room served to give them more than sufficient light to see the room about them. It lent a cheery glow that did much to lighten his mood and its warmth seemed to lessen the sound of the blizzard raging beyond the walls of the inn. The unfamiliar room seemed more friendly, welcoming and delightfully warm to him with that golden glow dancing over the furnishings and up the walls. "Quatre, if Zero was an operating system designed to enhance the potential of an elite soldier by interacting directly with the brain to stimulate physical reaction time, then what would you consider the equivalent machine to be that was designed to enhance the potential of someone with a psychic ability? What would you call that? What if Epyon was constructed to be capable of somehow enhancing the ability of a pilot who could see the future?" // Don’t go there, Heero. I really don’t want to consider it.// He sighed in the darkness and closed his eyes against the flickering light. He simply could not pretend that he had fallen asleep though. He had learned long ago to face the unpalatable. It never went away. It always was there, waiting for you and it was usually worse for having been ignored for so long. "We have only the conversation with an old man we do not know that suggests there may be the possibility that Zechs might … Well, you know what I mean. We do not know for certain that Zechs has any such ability. Even if he has we do not know that it is an ability that would be strong enough to effect change on a personal level let alone a global scale." Heero’s voice was like a thunderclap in the quiet of the room. "Remember the email you received today?" Quatre winced and closed his eyes tighter. // I don’t want to remember the email. Not now. I want to sleep.// "Quatre." Heero persisted, lifting his head to watch his friend who seemed to want to crawl through the bed. "Might that not have been the purpose of the Epyon? To make such an ability strong enough to see enough to make a difference?" Quatre shuddered. "That is … frightening." t.b.c.
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