All of creation exploded. The universe went out in one grand, spectacular blaze of glory and faded into nothingness.
Actually it wasn't the universe, it was just the Vayeate...but it may as well have been. I wanted to scream, or hit something, or shoot something--preferably Quatre--but I was too stunned.
I couldn't believe he'd actually done it. He shot Trowa.
Even after I'd spent the entire trip here trying to convince him there was real danger, I knew neither of us really believed it. It was Quatre. Even at my most jealous and irrational, I had enough faith in him to believe he wouldn't attack the one he loved.
He'd gone crazy. Anybody could see that--Trowa could, I heard it in his voice, that faint tremble that I'd finally learned to pick up on. I'm the one who told him "act on your emotions," and he did, and it fucking killed him--and it killed me too. What the hell was I thinking, telling him that? Look at all the good it did. When I said it, I wanted him to love me. The result? He tried to blow himself up, tagged along my little suicide trip around the world, rejected me, and got himself killed.
My track record was not good.
It had taken me weeks to confess to him what I'd meant when I said that, about acting on my emotions. I honestly think it came as a surprise to him. I don't see why--anybody who's ever seen Trowa has to have been stunned. He's amasing. I think the clincher moment for me was watching him flip off that motorcycle and land on the clothesline, then just walk away like it was nothing. I think my heart did a full 360-degree flip before it started working again, and I'm not the easiest guy in the world to impress. But a graceful body and a pair of dark green eyes, and all of a sudden I was ready to start living again. Not that it mattered. I was not the one he wanted.
"I love you," I told him. We were somewhere in Europe at the time, and the entire Noventa family had finally convinced me they didn't want me dead yet.
He just looked at me, startled. "Everybody says that to someone," he said, "but I don't think they really know what it means."
"I do," I said. "Otherwise I wouldn't be saying it. You know me that well, at least."
He did smile at that, a bit. But he didn't love me back. And I knew why, even if Catherine hadn't passed on to me what he'd told her--that a certain blonde, Arabian Gundam pilot had turned his world upside-down.
For one minute, when he caught me trying to sabotage the Mercurius after infiltrating OZ, I was afraid. His eyes were cold, colder even than mine, and he had a gun pointed at my heart.
"Do it," I told him. "Act on your emotions. It's not like it can hurt any worse."
I thought I saw something, then--a flicker of regret, or maybe that's just wishful thinking. Whatever it was, I decided he was still my Trowa, as much as he would ever be mine, and I didn't try to run. I was trying to show him how much I trusted him--he had my heart, and now my life, in his hands. What would he do with them?
Even if he didn't love me, he came through for me. He got me out of that cell and into the Mercurius; gave me a chance to vent some serious frustration and blow up some mobile dolls. I'd never seen anybody as adept as deceit as he was--he had gained Colonel Une's complete confidence, made all but one Lieutenant think he was the brightest star in their tyrannical little sky, and all the while he was helping to destroy them right under their noses.
Hey, if Heero Yuy is going to fall in love with somebody, they better be a damn special somebody.
That's why my heart shattered so thoroughly when the Vayeate exploded.
Trowa knew. I don't know how, but he knew, that seeing him die would be the one thing that would snap Quatre out of his lunacy. It was just a new and different approach to self-detonation; and I heard the sad, quiet calm in his voice as he tried to talk the boy he loved out of a path of destruction.
The world exploded, and I wanted to scream. No, that's not right. I wanted nothing more right then than to kill Quatre. He chose you!! The rage, the jealousy I felt were too overwhelming to be described, or even recalled. He chose you, and you shot him!! HOW COULD YOU?!
And Quatre--oh God, poor, good, innocent Quatre, innocent somehow even after destroying two colonies--watched with the same horror I did, and started to cry.
"Trowa--Heero, Trowa's going to die--" He was practically screaming.
"I know! And you killed him!" I shot back, venomous. All the fury boiling in my body aimed itself in that moment at Quatre. It wasn't fair! The one person I had given my heart to had chosen him, and instead of taking that love and cherishing it, he'd destroyed it completely. "Quatre," I promised, "I'm going to kill you."
It didn't turn out that way, of course. I was too wounded and the Wing Zero--and Quatre, because I can't underestimate him--were too damn strong. Even when he told me to hurry up and kill him so I could save Trowa, I was too weak to carry through with my threat. In the end, I collapsed and he ended up nursing me back to health. Talk about fucking irony.
At least he realised it, when it was over. It doesn't begin to make up for what he did, but I think he knows that. Finding Trowa, recovering him, making sure he was alive--it became an obsession for Quatre, and I encouraged it.
I have another plan, too. He can't die. Quatre can't be killed, not even if I have to take his place myself.
I love you, Trowa. Let me do this one thing for you. Let me reunite you with the one you love.