Warnings: Angst, Heero PoV
Pairings: Mention of R+1, 2+1?
Spoilers: Um... none?
AN: Every time I've heard this on the radio, I thought of Heero. Then I finally found out who sings it, and KNEW it was destined to be a GW songfic. This is the first of a trilogy I'm calling Disarming the Perfect Weapon. I say Weapon instead of Soldier because no one ever calls Heero a soldier in the series (that I remember), but Dr J does call him his weapon.
Disclaimers: Gundam Wing is owned by Bandai. Superman (It's Not Easy) is owned by Five For Fighting (told you they were meant for GW!). I think my cats are owned by me, but that could be the other way around.
lyrics in italics
I hate being a Gundam Pilot.
I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
Duo thought of his Gundam as his partner, his buddy. He saw it as a means to free the colonies and himself. Baka. It was a weapon, nothing more, nothing less. The Gundams were designed for world domination, to enslave, not to free. Oversized puppets, with us as strings, and the fine doctors controlling it all. They could change as many plans as they wanted, but I never forgot the original Operation Meteor, what they intended us to be.
Yes, us. Both myself and my Gundam. Because I'm as much a weapon of mass destruction as Wing, and as much a monstrosity as Wing Zero.
I'm just out to find
The better part of me
Dr J did his work well. I have all the records, and you cannot begin to imagine what I went through to get them. Every test, every experiment, every brainwashing technique and conditioning episode he even considered using on me. I've read it all, and it makes me sick to my stomach to know the truth of what I am.
I'm more than a bird, I'm more than a plane
More than some pretty face beside a train
I don't want to be this thing they've made me anymore. I watch everyone moving on, putting this behind them and living, and I want to do the same. And that scares me. First, because I don't know how, and I've never taken on a mission I didn't know how to fulfill. And second, because I'm not programmed to want anything else. Which means my programming was not quite so thorough as they thought.
It's not easy to be me
I was actually supposed to suicide when the war was over. It's all right there, disc 3, file 187, page 1. "It is unlikely the subject can be successfully deprogrammed at a later date. Safety protocals therefore include a self-destruct sequence, as follows." It's a good thing I didn't, because the others couldn't have handled Marimeia and Dekim by themselves, not with Chang working for the other side. But in the end, that's one more error in the programming. Carefully imprinted orders I didn't follow.
Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
I don't even regret not following my orders. I want to learn why I didn't, and how to keep not following them. I want to follow the advise I gave Trowa so long ago; break down these barriers inside of me and feel, the way normal people do. The way the others do. Trowa's quiet acceptance, Quatre's heartfelt tears, Wufei's deep passions. And Duo's laughter.
Find a way to lie
About a home I'll never see
I'll settle for tears, but some day I want to laugh like Duo. I know there's more to him than that, and he's not so carefree as he'd like us to believe. Still, he laughs, and he means it when he does. Duo means everything he does, he never lies, and that makes me feel easier around him. No matter what's going on, Duo will give me the truth; it's something I can depend on.
I wonder what he'd say about what I'm doing now?
It may sound absurd, but don't be naive
Even Heroes have the right to bleed
What would any of them say? A year ago, I think Chang would have called it weakness, but now I think he'd understand. Quatre would move heaven and earth to try to help me. Trowa? I don't know what Trowa would do. Probably nothing. It's not his way to interfere.
I may be disturbed, but won't you conceed
Even Heroes have the right to dream
I know Relena would cry, and beg me not to. Tell me how I don't need to do this, that I can be normal now. Relena is an idealist to the end. And maybe... maybe she'd be right. So far her ideals haven't failed, despite all the obstacles she's faced. But then, she's never had to deal with a dysfunctional weapon.
It's not easy to be me
Because in the end, that's what I am. A weapon that's lost it's usefulness. Or it might be more accurate to say a bomb that never exploded. Some explosive devise, buried and forgotten, now unstable. It's the part that scares me most, the idea that some day that corrupted program will go off, and I'll destroy everything I've tried to achieve.
Up, up and away, away from me
It's all right, you can all sleep sound tonight
That's why I can't move on. I'm stuck waiting for an explosion that might never happen. I can see myself in twenty years, when the Gundams are half-forgotten curiousities, and the others are listening to their children complain about learning about a war that happened before they were even born. Sometimes I see myself still standing here, waiting. Other times I see myself as one of them, laughing and living...
... and then my programing kicks in, and because I can't leave witnesses, I kill them all, just before I self-destruct.
I'm not crazy, or anything
Neither future is appealing. I can go slowly insane by myself, or surround myself with friends and loved ones before snapping all at once. Sometimes I wish I had self-destructed, just so I wouldn't be here now.
I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
Have I surprised you? It must be something of a shock to discover, really. The unnamed hero who saved the world twice is, at heart, little more than a malfunctioning tool. Just a little boy forced to became something he hated in order to do a job he never wanted in the first place.
Men weren't meant to ride
With clouds between their knees
Do you want to know the one thing that really irks me about this whole "savior of the world" thing? The world doesn't need me to save it anymore. Sometimes I wonder if it ever did. Yeah, I blew my way into Marimeia's bunker, and the others tore through her troops. But all of that would have been for nothing if all the ordinary people hadn't stood together and said, "No," and Dorothy was the one who rallied them. You never hear about that on the evening news and war specials, though.
I'm only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
So that's who I am. A dysfunctional, unstable weapon that's outlived its usefulness. J always told me the only way to deal with unstable munitions was to blow them up, preferrably in a safe location far from anything you don't want to blow up with them. And the soldier in me, the *thing* they programmed me to be, draws the obvious conclusion.
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me
And still, I hope there might be some other option. Hope that maybe, just this once, the simplest solution isn't the best one. I just don't know if I have the time to find out.
It's not easy to be me.
~owari~