The Deadbeat Eccentric

Frozen Teardrop Vol. 10 - Concerto in Serendipity Pt. 1

Dissonance in Forgetting

MC-0022 NEXT WINTER SNOW WHITE COCKPIT Voice Recorder File Stored in the ZERO System’s Internal Memory Speaker: Heero Yuy

I had been lost for as long as I could remember. I possessed nothing. Space had stripped me of everything, my parents, the Leo model toy I once treasured, and in the end, even my sense of self. I had become no one. The first man I killed was a terrorist, a rival in trade. His bomb took the lives of Vingt Khushrenada, the young leader of the Romefeller Foundation, and his mother, Angelina. I could have stopped it before it happened. But I didn’t. My heart was too weak. That moment’s hesitation condemned them both. “Don’t dwell on it,” Odin Lowe had told me. “Everyone’s first time is like that. From the second, it gets easier.” Since then, I’ve taken more lives than I can count. I learned to endure it, but it never became easy. To step beyond the sin of killing while knowing the weakness in my own heart required something more thaninstinct, it demanded a deliberate resolve. I followed Odin Lowe, a freelance sniper, from colony to colony. He taught me every way there was to survive, and how to live unrestrained by anything but my own emotions. When he died and Doctor J found me, there was still no peace in my heart. A young girl and a puppy, both innocent, had died because of a mistake I made. When I took the name “Heero Yuy,” became a Gundam pilot, and descended to Earth, the missions I accepted were wretched things, and they repeated themselves without end. I was deceived again and again, betrayed again and again. The more I tried to live as myself, the more I brought misfortune to others. Until I met Relena Darlian, I had never truly been me. Life is cheap, especially mine. But this is the only way I know how to live. War devours life.

Humanity has never forgotten that grief, yet it never stops fighting. Blood and tears spilled in war become little more than ceremonial decoration. History has its turning points that can only be told in the language of battle. Fighting for peace, those are tired, faded platitudes, repeated countless times over centuries.

The fighting grew more intense, and somewhere along the way I decided: protecting Relena would be my mission. It gave me a reason to live. When I finally found someone to protect, the hesitation that had always shadowed me in battle was gone. I despised those who couldn’t do the same. I hated the weak, those who flinched at the thought of attack, who were forever glancing around in fear, unable to trust anyone, unable to say what they truly felt. I could never forgive them. Milliardo Peacecraft once told me, “It’s the strong who make them that way.” He was wrong. There are no strong. All of humanity is weak. And I was weak too. I was a loser. In the wars of this era, there were no victors. Knowing that, I still chose to live in this time. In AC-196, Mariemaia Khushrenada led a rebellion against the newly formed Earth Sphere Unified Nation, a rebellion that invited the fragile peace into an “endless waltz” of conflict. “To throw away weapons and seal away soldiers, that is not peace,” Chang Wufei, another Gundam pilot, had said. He was right; peace built on sacrifice cannot be called just. But the truth is, we had already sacrificed too many. Someday, an age will come when soldiers like us are no longer needed. Peace will never be something granted from above, it will be chosen by people themselves, when they cease to be weak and afraid. One day, a mature humanity, worthy of freedom and peace, will appear in this world. I believe that. And until then, I will keep fighting.

At the beginning of AC-197, Relena decided to run in the next presidential election of the Earth Sphere Unified Nation. I warned her, “If you run, do it as Darlian, not Peacecraft.” The name Peacecraft was nothing but a heavy cross for her to bear. If she was to act by her own will, she needed to remain a Darlian. Had nothing happened, perhaps her dream of a peaceful world would have been realized. But on April 7 of that year, reality crushed that dream. Dixneuf Neuenheim and a group calling themselves the Epyon de Telos, the supposed “next government,” seized the Sanc Kingdom castle, taking two hundred hostages. Wufei, now with the Preventers, gathered the former Gundam pilots. Two days later, on April 9, we took action. We drove Dixneuf out, but Relena was gravely wounded. Worse still, the terrorists had armed the castle with a nuclear time bomb. Disabling the device would trigger another trap: the Perfect Peace Program, a forced obedience system that reacted to medical nanomachines. Every part of this disaster was my mistake. Only someone of the Peacecraft line could enter the password. With Milliardo absent, that left only Relena. She unlocked it. It was the only way to save me, stranded in Sanc Kingdom Bay, from the nuclear blast. But it also meant returning to the name Peacecraft. I told her to stop. “Life is cheap, especially mine,” I said. She didn’t listen. “You haven’t lived your life to its fullest. Live more. And one day, show me the moment when your soul shines its brightest.” “Is that an order?” I asked her. “It’s my wish,” she replied. The comm link went dead soon after. I never learned exactly what happened next. April 9, AC-197, a day that ended in nothing but anguish. And that same day, the Perfect Peace Program was set in motion. Once active, it would slaughter much of humanity, triggered either if Relena herself gave the “SET” command, or if she met a death she did not choose. A few days later, when Relena Peacecraft entered the cryosleep capsule known as The Little Prince, she never once looked back. Perhaps she had already frozen her tears. I stood before that capsule, staring at her face, frozen in time. Once again, I had failed to protect her. I thought I would spend the rest of my life watching over her in regret and self-reproach, growing old, decaying alongside my own guilt. That was enough for me. If Relena remained preserved in that moment of brilliance, I would be satisfied. Even in the endless silence, she would be the perfect conversation partner for someone as taciturn as I was. And I, someone incapable of making his own soul shine, could accept that.