Warning: short mention of slash (past 3x4), lots of het, marriage and divorce, swearing, huge father issues, light angst, older gundam pilots.
Dedication: For lomelinde_sama for a bunch of a reasons, not the least of which is just because I love her. You're one the best people I've ever known, and I wish you all the best in everything you do. ^^
Summary: After his forth divorce running, Quatre decides to confront the root of all his problems—his father.
My mother was a test tube; my father was a knife. --Unknown
Dorothy had taught me the meaning of that old adage, cruel to be kind. Though for me, I suppose it was being kind to be cruel, and that was something my father taught me long before Dorothy Catalonia had ever run a fencing coil through my shoulder in order to prove her points. Thinking back, I'm rather glad that he died long before she ever became an issue for me, because my father would've hated her. He liked his women meek and chained to his bedside, except for the one time that I killed my mother by existing, and then he went into a deep brood for fifteen years, sleeping with other women only out of the casual grace of random pity fucks. I suppose that it made him look all tragic and mysterious, carrying that picture of her around in his pocket all the time (like she really ever meant anything to him other than a convenient warm body to begin with). Every now and then he'd look at me with those unreadable black pools like he hated the fact that I'd ever been born, and though he never quite said as much, he never said he loved me either. And yeah, I know, maybe that thought is a bit unmanly, but maybe I wouldn't care so much if I didn't have the sneaking suspicion my own mother really was far more beloved than he often led me to believe. After all, why lie about the fact that she'd died during childbirth for me, for him? I spent the greater part of my childhood believing that I was expendable and born out of a glass tube, manufactured for the wondrous destiny of carrying on my father's name (and yeah, twenty-nine jealous sisters were thrilled with that one), which I guess doesn't matter so much anymore since it got me the loyalty of the Maganacs, but now even that is a lie in it's own right, and here I am bitching to you about my problems. I hadn't the heart to tell Rashid the truth surrounding my birth, once I'd finally figured it out. He's very proud of his laboratory heritage, that's how we came to know each other in the first place. Truth be told, I've always been kind of jealous of him because of that; it seems so naïve to me, just simply accepting something so debase and unnatural like that. But then, I've been abusing his trust for almost a decade now, so what the hell do I know?
My father made a point of being a hypocrite, so I guess we all know where I picked up on the habit. He often carried out his fanatical opinions on pacifism like some holy savior of God, circa Heero Yuy and the Peacecrafts, and then in the same breath blow some blonde bimbo draped like an ornament around his neck, like he was some literal fucking Christmas tree. I remember once when I was twelve, I walked in on him doing the doggie style with Mrs. Pinkerton, my Math instructor. Mrs. Pinkerton was the primary reason I loved numbers so much; she was my role model, even my savior in a way. She was like a surrogate mother, in ways all those damn nannies never had been. But after fucking my father, Mrs. Pinkerton became dirty in my eyes, and I wasn't even mad at her, I just hadn't respected her after that. It's funny how quickly a woman can deteriorate when you see them taking it back door courtesy of my father's well-known dick.
I guess the point I'm trying to make, and there is one, is that a great deal of my present problems can be traced back to a cold, arrogant man and his neurotic sex drive. Maybe I never intended to be like him... I never intended to be like anyone really, but if I had to choose against a particular fate in life, going by the name of Mr. Winner and sifting through woman after woman was definitely high on that list.
I hate myself.
No, I really do.
Sometimes, I wonder why I even bother with weddings at all... or women, for that matter. Me and Trowa, we had a short run directly after the war for about, oh, a year or so. It ended up with me telling Trowa all the ways in which he could stuff it, and Trowa didn't seem all that interested anyway... at least not where it counted. Oh sure, he saved me from getting stabbed to death by Dorothy, and we had some nice times post-Libra, but all in all there was a huge pink elephant holding a sign with a big, fat zero on it, and we were sort of doomed before it ever started. I mean, you think Duo and Heero had problems? Psh. At least Duo never turned Heero into an amnesiac.
Yeah, I guess there was more to it than that, but our past certainly hadn't helped any. When Trowa left, I was almost relieved, even with my heart violently smashed into a million little pieces.
So after the disaster of Trowa, I took after my father's example and sifted through piles of women, figuring I'd drown my shame in sex and marriage. I have about six children now—or is it seven? I can never remember—five of them I almost never see, one I visit on weekends, and the last is still in the oven, in its second trimester—yeah, seven. Cordy seems nice so far, she's got some decent spunk to her, unlike some of the others, but she's not... she's not Dorothy. She's not Trowa, she's not even Relena. She's just a nice, pregnant wife, with a sweet, Southern Bell smile, and entirely the kind of woman I'm probably going to end up shattering sooner or later with my big fat head and my stupid flabbing maw with its giant Godzilla-sized issues smashing up the town, issues that for all the obviousness, are just never spoken of. You'd think Sandrock had never existed, sometimes.
It's a sin. I work all day, I kiss my wife, we glow over the new baby, and we both sleep on opposite ends of the mattress until dawn begins the new day and I wake up and realize for about two lonely seconds that, oh dear, my life sucks and I'm so boring and I hate everything that I am, because I don't even love this woman, and though I adore the baby, it's just another mouth to feed and pay child support over later, and I just... want... something. To run away. To blow up on a satellite in some pointless fucking protest so all my sons and daughters can watch what a coward I am, and then go off their nut and build another gundam, and blow up a few more colonies, start another war, maybe... I'd kill my forth wife running and spend the rest of my life in a prison line, where at least I'll find some action once in a while. At least that would be interesting.
But, no, thy name is Quatre Winner, and thou shalt not take a life in vain. That's Duo's job, I'm the nice one. I ask before I blow things up. Even when I'm crazy, I have to be polite about it. So this is how it finally happened:
“Cordy, do you believe in divorce?”
“Ah, I guess, honey, I don't know... why do you ask?”
“Just humor me? Would you stay married to a man if you didn't love them?”
“Err... Are you trying to tell me something?”
“No, just—I'm asking, Cordy.”
“No. I wouldn't.”
“Okay...”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay, Cordy.” Deep breaths. “Cordy, I want a divorce.”
“You want a what?”
“A divorce. I'm sorry. This just isn't working out.”
Yes, she loved that one. Somehow, my love life has turned into irate women, disbanded children, and thousands upon thousands in child support every month. Can't say I blame her, though. She is kind of pregnant. And I did kind of break her heart.
How can one possibly be polite in that situation?
Even after divorcing Cordy, which took nearly a year and a half, and a lot of court appearances, not to mention tons of hate mail and media frenzy, I was still not quite happy. Of course, no one's happy after a divorce, but... yeah. I wanted to choke on cherry pits.
“What you need, Q-ball, is some soul searching. You're so wrapped up in appearances, even I can't tell who you really are anymore.”
Duo had been particular blunt in a late-night phone call post-drama, and I took it to heart, because I knew that he was right. I quit WEI and gave it to my sisters, packed a few bags, and went traveling in a low-key rugged cowboy kind of way to find whatever it was I was looking for. My sisters were all shocked and maybe questioning my sanity, and a few of the Maganacs demanded me taking a few luxuries along, but I decided donning some jeans and getting a little dirty would do me good, and eventually I just ditched the whole damn thing and vanished into the crowds the way only Trowa used to do it. Most tend to forget I've hiked through jungles with a stick and a single cartridge of ammo before, and though all those fancy mansions and huge tents out in the Sahara were wonderful during the war, I was mostly relying on name to get me by, and I'd learned how to survive on the basics. I could do it. I would be fine.
It was a disaster.
I ended up stranded in New Jersey at some point, and Duo drove five hours to come and get me. I remember sitting at the curb in front of some random bus station looking dejected, so far out of loop with the higher world that most didn't even recognize me as I sat glaring down at the pavement. I'd been so focused on feeling sorry for myself that I never noticed when Duo drove by. His heavy black boots entered my line of vision and I looked up, noting out of the blue just how very tall he was. Well, from down low, anyway.
But Duo had managed to fall from grace over the years too, so when he sat down beside me with a sigh of relief, we were both at eye level.
“What happened to you, Quatre?”
I shrugged at him, which he hated, but I honestly didn't have much to say.
“I drove like a bat outta hell to get here, the least you can do is talk to me, asshole.”
Right, then. “Duo, did you ever meet my father?” I honestly couldn't recall. I think Trowa might've, or maybe... maybe Heero, but that whole time period was very disjointed. When Duo never spoke, his blank look was all the answer I needed. So I asked, very tentatively, “Do you remember your own father?”
He gave a very bitter laugh, but he still didn't say anything.
I swallowed away the tension. “Well, I can tell you about mine. Or rather, I can't tell you much. I don't even remember what his first name was anymore. It's always—it always was—Mr. Winner or Father. Never anything familiar. And I always wondered how that was even remotely fair, because he called me Quatre whether I'd asked him to or not. Occasionally, he would call me Son, but that always sounded so... well, phony to me. Like he was making an effort to remember what I actually was to him, rather than being affectionate about it.”
Duo hummed something that was probably supposed to be encouraging. It was rather more humored.
I kept babbling. “All six children call me Father. Not dad, not pop, not daddy, not da. Just Father, with a capital. A title. That's what I am, Duo, I'm Father. I don't even have a name anymore.”
“You're feeling sorry for yourself because your children speak to you with a title of respect? Quatre, you're young, you're filthy rich, you've got the world at your knees, and I don't get--”
“You wouldn't,” I told him without thinking, and he was hurt for a moment. I cursed myself, and said, “You see that? You see what I mean?” My voice rose, and then I stood, glaring down at him, flailing my arms around in horror. “It's my stupid mouth and my stupid fear of commitment and my stupid attraction for stupid scorned women; I'm stupid freaking Mr. Winner with my stupid seven children and my stupid child support! I'm my stupid, freaking, manslut, asshole, fucking Father! With a stupid fucking capital F, Duo!”
I slammed my foot down for emphasis, and Duo stared with a deer-in-headlights expression from his lowly spot on the curb. Then he rose to meet me again, dusting the dirt off his jeans and sighing in that hopeless Nowhere Man way of his that usually managed to score him any chick or guy he wanted within in a city-wide radius.
He smirked at me all devil-may-care and said, “If we're all suffering for the sins of our childhood, I'm in deep shit, Quatre.”
I wanted to tell him go fuck himself, but I was done with the excessive swearing and the hand-waving and the acting-below-my-station. Instead, I just gave him an eye roll and marched to his car.
He followed behind, the keys jingling as he pulled them out of his pocket. When I turned to him expectantly, he tossed them to me and I took over the driving. We agreed to stay at a motel for the night and go back to his place the next morning.
**
I woke when Duo lurched out of the cheap concrete mattress someone had once called a bed, and listened while he made a glass of water and whispered himself down what had been, apparently, a bad dream. I pretended not to listen until Duo dropped all pretense and sat down on the edge of my bed, staring at me with something vague and glistening in his eyes.
“If you become your father, what am I gonna be?”
I was expecting something, but not that. I sat up, straightening the sheets, and gave him a questioning look. When he didn't say anything, merely staring back, expecting an answer, I asked him, “What do you mean?”
“Does it mean I'll be nobody, then? Trowa will be a merc, Heero's some rogue assassin, and Wufei's, what, a scholar? And I'm just... nothing, is that it? Just nothing?”
It was so wrong and so dramatic, even as his voice cracked a little, and I sighed irritably. “Duo, it doesn't work like that. We don't grow up to be our parents.”
“Even when you don't have any?”
That was it. I seized the hand that had been worrying at his braid like some lost little boy and pulled him into the bed with me. He didn't even protest when I held him close, staring into his emotional, dark eyes, and the hidden depths that festered like old wounds.
And then, contrary to everything, he suddenly grinned and said, “So you admit it, then?”
“What?”
“That you're not your father.” He paused for effect—everything about Duo seemed to be for effect—then he added, “Sorry, that's Father. With a 'fucking capital F.'”
I was, of course, furious. “You did all that to prove a point?”
Again, he seemed a bit hurt, though his voice was friendly when he said, “No, but it does work in my favor, doesn't it?”
It was pointless to hold a grudge, so I just shrugged, turning away from him. “Doesn't work like that, Duo. I'm a complicated man.”
“Yeah, Q-ball, that's your freakin' problem.”
His voice was muffled and when I turned around again, I noticed his head was in his hands. I frowned, reaching a hand out to him. He really did seem quite upset earlier, and maybe he hadn't been faking the worry over his origins after all...? But that couldn't be it, Duo had to be long over that by now.
“What's the matter?”
He jolted then, as if forgetting he was even being observed, and glared at me rather mildly. “Nothing. Dream, is all. Forget it.” I dared to put a hand on his shoulder. He tensed at that, but when he didn't shove away, I pulled him back down again. His glare melted into resignation. “You aren't the only one who hates himself.”
“You don't hate—”
And then his finger was over my lips and he was hushing me. “Forget it,” he said, his eyes screaming and his voice hushed with things even I couldn't name. “It's not important.”
But it was. “Maybe we should talk—“
“Did that. S'boring. Haven't slept with anybody in a while though. Move over, will you? You're hogging the mattress.”
With that, I was shoved, and despite whatever sexual pretense he might've implied with the words, Duo had, essentially, decided to sleep with me. He closed his eyes and an arm draped itself over my waist with a bizarre comfort. He was snoring softy in the next ten minutes, and still, all I could do was stare.
For the first time, I thought maybe he was right. Maybe I was being too complicated. Maybe all I needed to do was shut up and relax and let it be.
**
“I don't need therapy!”
That relaxing thing? Yeah, I was working on it.
“Quatre, don't be stubborn. This is for the best. Everyone's agreed and we're not letting you back until you attend the sessions.”
For all their bickering, the sisters could really gang up on me with a serious and well-formed plan of attack when they wanted. It was no mystery why they'd chosen Iria to pass the news along. She leaned back in the corporate chair—my corporate chair—and smiled so sweetly, I wanted to hate her out of spite.
As a result, I felt and looked like an overgrown child. “I don't need it, Iria.” I even stared down at my shoes and shuffled around a bit. I felt like I was four again, and she was the only mother-figure I'd ever known.
“Yes you do.”
Sometimes I wondered if Iria and I shared the same mother. She was so much like what I'd always imagined my mother to be, she couldn't possibly be only half my blood. I said again, “I don't want to,” and she said,
“Tough.”
I'm sure you can tell where this is going. Eventually, I agreed.
**
My first session was surprisingly helpful. We didn't immediately delve into the Daddy Didn't Love Me Issues—in fact, the doctor, Ms. Black, focused more on us getting to know each other, quietly worming her way into my trust until I didn't realize I was giving away vital information until long after I'd left her office. The second one was a little more vocal, confronting her on the sly plan of attack even when the avid chess player in me loved every minute of it. She even said so, commenting I wouldn't have trusted her any other way.
“You're obviously a man who loves strategy, and you wouldn't have respected me if I didn't give you a decent move to combat against. You see, Mr. Winner, you look at life as a battle plan, and each of us are different pawns in your field. Your enemy is life itself. Life is not so organized, Mr. Winner, which is why you're obsessed with order. You need to realize there is no harm in chaos and unpredictability; otherwise, you will always fall into familiar patterns, stay with that which you know. Such as your father.”
The very thought made me wince. Naturally, I shook my head, begging to differ—I could be chaotic, I could be wild and dirty and unpredictable and oh God why was I thinking of Duo?—but rather than tell her she was a manipulative bitch wasting both my money and my time, I said, “So, what do you propose I do about it?”
Ms. Black steepled her fingers with that Mr. Burns 'eeexcellent' expression I absolutely couldn't stand, and said, “Write a letter to your father and burn it. Classic therapy, usually works for cases like this.”
“Erm... okay. And then?” Because not only did that sound odd enough, but Ms. Black had the full-on Call The Dogs, Smithers to go right along with it.
“Then you be unpredictable about it,” she said. “Break the mold, do something your father would never do, that you would.”
“Unpredictable?”
With an impatient sigh, she said, “Fling the ashes into space or toss it in the ocean or use it in a camp fire; hell, Winner, be wild, be free, do something your father would never, ever do... like, bungee jumping, or—” blowing up a colony “—driving ninety in the desert, getting off to some Nine Inch Nails song—“ What? “—break the mold, understand? Find out who you are and stop wasting time in my office.”
“I... I think I can do that.” Because, honestly. I wasn't sure if I should've been furious or grateful. Most of me was just staring at her like she had three heads.
Ms. Black smiled evilly. “Great. Now get out.”
**
The letter started out short and stilted. It was awkward, because I hadn't a clue what to say. It wasn't like he was actually going to read it after all, right? What was the point of that?
But then I asked him, the ghost-him that wasn't ever going to read this, I asked him, what was his name? What kind of father dies so pathetically, that “I'm running away” speech forever committed to memory, and yet leaves his son wondering what his first name was? I could've looked it up if I wanted, but it wasn't quite fair that I had to. That I felt that someday, my children would have to do the same for me, because I was slowly becoming just like him.
I told him that I hated him for that, because if I'd just learned his name, his first name, the name all his women must've moaned in the throes of passion, maybe he would've been more real to me, rather than this overbearing bitter hypocrite who might as well have been made of the fleshy rubber usually encased around cheap dildos. All his pleasure was ever mechanical when I'd known him, and I couldn't remember a time when he'd laughed just for the sake of it, or expressed a certain joy over something so trivial like a wild flower or the way his son truly, and deeply, craved for his attentions.
I told him that he was a coward, and I never wanted to be like him. His pacifist philosophies were mere excuses to sit at the sidelines and bitch while the world falls to ashes; a way of running with shallow dignity, a way of hiding behind faulty strategy in order to appear heroic, to be the respected liar among fools. That he followed the philosophies of the original Heero Yuy and the old King Peacecraft were not lost on me—each of them, fools, and each of them, dead. Dead for a reason.
I told him that you simply cannot have peace without a certain enforcement; that's what Preventers is for, that's why Sanq had fallen twice. That's why Relena has learned her lesson, and that's why Une is the sanest she's ever been since attending the Victoria Academy. That's also why Zechs hides away on Mars, and why men like myself, and Duo, and Trowa, and Heero, and Wufei; that's why we struggle in times like this. We're enforced and outlawed just as well as any gun, and I let my father know just how strongly I held the temptations back. There is something to be said about a man when he misses his flying weapon of mass destruction far greater than his own father.
The letter was over twenty pages long. I wrote it by hand, and I never stopped once until the end. Then I signed it, “Your Son,” and folded it neatly and stuck it in my pocket.
I flew to New York. For some reason, it seemed only right to include Duo in the ceremony—my father would've hated him, and the fact that I loved him was the first step in being what my father wasn't.
**
“I don't get it,” Duo said, scratching his head in a vaguely cute fashion. “What good does the letter do? He's never gonna read it.”
“I don't know, but I already feel better. Like a weight was lifted.” The whole world, more like. “It's not over yet. I have to burn it.”
“Yeah?”
At the very basics of his philosophy, Duo was a very spiritual sort of guy. The moon was not just a rock, it was a symbol, and it stood for everything under the sun. L2 was not just a rotten hell-hole, it was his home, and it was his entire state of being. We weren't just terrorists, we were young men trapped in a situation beyond our control, fighting for what we believed in. The war wasn't just war—it was a playground, it was a zoo, it was a nicely paved road to Shinigami and hell gods and the four horsemen.
Despite how literal he seemed to be taking it outwardly, I knew that inwardly, Duo understood the reasons better than any of us. Still, he didn't seem the like the idea, not when I suggested it for his own demons.
“You should try it. It works.”
Shaking his head, Duo backed away, his hands raised in unconscious surrender. “No, no, I ain't gonna be raisin' no demons--”
“Hey, it's not so bad, once when you get into it.”
“Yeah, well, you never met my demons. They're big and hairy and they smell like the slimy inner lining of a sewer.”
Wincing, I tried to shrug it off. “Whatever you say—hey, you wanna help me light this up?”
I pulled the letter from my pocket and shook the thick, folded notebook pages in his face. Duo sighed and grabbed at them, not daring to open or read them without my permission, but glancing down at the very idea as if afraid what the actions could bring them for himself.
I couldn't blame him—I was sure the dreams would come back when I finished, all those memories resurfacing. But I'd slept more soundly than I had in years.
“Lighter, Duo.” I held out my hand. He dug into his pocket and dropped it, along with the letter, in my palm. We both shuffled to his kitchen sink like two boys doing something particularly dirty that would get a mean scolding from our mothers, if we'd had them, and I held the letter vertically between forefinger and thumb, the lighter poised to inflame it as soon as I drew the courage to act.
This was it; I felt the finality of the moment.
“There should be something to say,” Duo said, his voice hushed as if we were attending some sort of absent funeral.
And maybe we were. I took a deep breath. “Erm. Okay. Uh, even though I already said a lot in the letter, I should probably say...” Another deep breath. My mind drew to a blank. “I don't know, actually... and maybe that's... that's fine. Because I have nothing more to say to the great Mr. Winner. There.”
Hating the awkward moment, I struck the flint and the flame of Duo's cheap bic lighter licked the paper with a hungry burning tongue. I dropped it in the sink as soon as the paper caught fire, and Duo seized my hand when the letters curled and pealed to black, like the ripples of a burning curtain.
When the ashes had finally died out, Duo reached over and washed them down the drain. I sighed, smiling for the first time in a long time, and slung my arm over his shoulder.
“Okay,” I said, “I won't pressure you, but when are you going to write yours?”
“Quat, I said—“
“Yeah, yeah. Okay, Duo, grab your keys.”
“Why?”
“You're taking me fishing.”
Duo stared. “Fishing?”
“Yeah, you know, with the pole, and the bait, and the casting? Those slimly little scaly things that live in the water? I heard there was a three-eyed fish in the Hudson, I wanna check it out.” Duo felt my forehead, and irritated, I swiped the hand away. “I'm not sick, Duo. Can't a divorced man go fishing with his single, bachelor buddy?”
“Err. I suppose. But I don't have any poles.”
“Right, then.” I yanked Duo toward the front door, and he skidded along behind me, bewildered and amused. “We'll stop at Walmart, then we'll go fishing.”
“Okay,” Duo said. “But no worms. Not stabbing some innocent little earthworm with some freakin' barbed hook. S'barbaric.”