I finally seriously thought about what I was doing and almost laughed. I'm such a hypocrite, aren't I? I hide from everyone, and here I am, continuing to hide. I'm running back to Faulkner and I'm hiding in there. From Quatre? Sure. Trowa? Definitely. Myself?
... Yeah. Myself as well.
The night was a little cold. Why did the colonies have cold seasons? I mean, who likes them? It was so cold I could see my breath. That was a little much. Man, I hate the cold. Have hated it since I was a kid. It was always there – L2 certainly wasn't a rich colony – far from it. More often than not, it was cold. The heating was too expensive. And we rats ended up hiding in abandoned buildings, where the ground was freezing and the air was frost on your skin. We learned to sleep in that cold, even as it tried to steal feeling from your extremities. We would huddle together to try to maintain warmth.
I shuddered in remembrance.
The sidewalk had streetlamps periodically dotting the night, like little spotlights. There was no one out – not like L2. Night was when the colony of L2 had come alive. Hookers sold their wares and an abundance of people, men and women both, came to see just what was being offered. Drug dealers crawled out to sell their own items. Bums came skulking around searching for food or a quieter place to sleep. This place was respectable. Most people were probably heading for bed, for God's sake.
I wondered if anyone saw me as a traveled alone through the spotlights on the ground. What were they thinking? Did they wonder why I was alone? Did they think of me as some sort of evil stalker, or was I a gang member? A juvenile. I almost laughed at that; if they only knew.
After the war, Duo finds out that he isn't who he thought he was and searches for himself. In his search, Duo meets an enemy he can't defeat alone. Will he have to?
My notes: CW for suicidal behavior and serious depression. This is the quintessential old-school Gundam Wing fic. It has it all - first-person POV, angsty depressed edgy Duo who hides his pain behind a mask and fricking *writes angsty poetry* about it while distancing himself from his friends until they Finally See Through His Mask, wrapped up with an actually complex plot and some decent space drama. This is it, Gundam Wing fandom in a nutshell in all its emopo glory. And we *lived* for this stuff. You can't run from your past. Sometimes you just gotta embrace it and go, yeah, we sure were that dramatic, weren't we? No regrets. YOLO.