You don't need to know a Van Gogh from a Michelangelo in order to pilot a Gundam. You do not need to have read Tolstoy before they'll hand you a gun and let you go kill people.
I wouldn't know a preposition if it bit me in the ass.
And ninety-nine point nine percent of the time... I don't give a damn. But sometimes that academic stick up Wufei's ass gets on my nerves. Most times it just kind of irritates me, but somehow I was finding the whole thing disheartening. I was starting to feel like a puppy getting its nose rubbed in its own shit.
I guess the timing had just been all wrong; after the long time away, immersed in a job that had been far from pleasant, I'd needed to reconnect. I'd felt scraped raw and had been wanting the salve of 'home'. Had needed the reassurance that I still fit where I was supposed to belong. But Wufei's damn superior attitude was making me defensive, was keeping me from letting those walls down. Was keeping me on the outside looking in, when I really just didn't need that.
"I fit so easily in the places the Preventers made me go. Was that because... I wasn't always so far removed? All the things that made me what I was, all the pieces and parts of the past that added up to me, just what was the sum of the equation? What was I?"
My notes: Duo has trouble adjusting to being back after an intense undercover mission. Heero helps him through the worst of it. I like the interactions between Heero and Duo here; this is a Heero who's a veteran, but not the emotionless machine he's often stereotyped to be. He's insightful, and determined, and protective. It's a nice, angsty little fic.