SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING

SAINAN NO KEKKA
Heroes: Wufei

By the time night fell, there was only still one major fire burning that they couldn't seem to put out, no matter what chemicals they used. The rest of the base was quiet…too quiet, almost. There were no planes in the air, no vehicles on the road. Most of the buildings had been sealed off for "decontamination" and would be kept locked till security forces could determine which ones, if any, contained possible threats.

He wished he had been above ground for the attack, but Wufei had been in the hospital at the time having a follow-up examination, and when the alarms had gone off, he'd been hustled off with the other patients to an underground bomb shelter. He could have helped…he knew he could have helped, but by the time they let everyone out of the shelter, it was nearly dark and the attacks had ended hours ago. All that was left were the shards, the burning remains, the destruction that was a part of the aftermath of any battle.

It didn't mean he had to like it.

He went to find Quatre. He'd half-feared that the blond Arabian would have been whisked away to some secret bunker by his bodyguards, but to his relief he found the Sandrock pilot seated in the foyer of one of the few buildings near the main tower. The cluster of offices had been opened to take in those who were not able to return to their lodgings. Namely, that meant everyone who had been in the VOQ, since those had been cordoned off for decontamination as well.

He was about to step into the room to speak with Quatre when one of his sisters - a dark-haired Arabian beauty that he wasn't sure he'd seen before - motioned him aside.

"Quatre's a little…preoccupied right now," she whispered, jerking her head over her shoulder. He followed her gaze, saw him deep in conversation with the family matriarch…Jaffa? "I'll tell him you came by, but…it's family business, really." She looked apologetic.

"Oh," he said, not sure what else he could say. "I'm sorry for intruding, Ms. Winner."

She giggled. "Call me Reeshya, please." Her smile faded a little too quickly and he realized she looked very sad. All the Winners did, he thought, glancing from face to face. They were hiding it well…but there was something. Something had happened.

She must have seen him preparing to ask, because she quickly took him by the shoulder. "I know they're asking for volunteers to help with the clearing out of some of the…debris at the south entrance. They could use you."

Wufei nodded, accepting the end of the conversation. "Please tell Quatre I will be back later."

The air smelled unnaturally of smoke and something foul still, even hours after the battle. He supposed it couldn't be really called a battle, since it had been waged by terrorists with homemade weapons against trained troops. He'd gathered that much from his trek from the shelter to the temporary housing facilities, by the way the base had been hit and the way the attack had seemed to have been carried out. These were terrorists, but they were untrained terrorists. Most of them, he wagered, had never killed a man before this.

And now they were dead.

It wasn't fair, really, he reflected as he walked slowly down the sidewalk. He'd been a terrorist too…but in the end, it had been they who had been the heroes. And now, two years later, he was a terrorist again in the eyes of some and still a hero in the eyes of others. Strange how the same events could be interpreted so differently.

The entire south gate had been cordoned off, with entry and exit control at only one point along the long stretch of barricades. They weren't taking any chances, it seemed. They'd brought in some heavy equipment to help, and it wasn't until Wufei had gotten closer that he could see why exactly that heavy equipement was needed.

In the beams of the floodlights he could see that the entire road had been blown to pieces. The concrete was gone, and so was any shrubbery and grass that had been planted there. The personnel and visitors' center that stood just inside the gate were empty shells, with large, gaping holes where bombs had blown the walls apart. It was amazing that any of them were still standing, but they loomed silently in the glare of the lights, silent witnesses left crouching in the shadow of destruction.

The main gate was gone as well. The terrorists had evidently not planned too well. The entire operation spoke of too much attention focused on getting into the base and not enough attention to what kind of firepower was needed to hit the buildings that needed to be hit. The main tower had probably been a target. The hangars probably had been as well…but it looked like the terrorists hadn't gotten far enough into the base to even reach the residential section.

"Excuse me," he said to the guard at the control point. "I was wondering-"

"Get lost, boy," the guard grunted, pulling him to the side and waving a large bulldozer through. "We've important things to do around here…where's your family?"

"I don't have one," Wufei said patiently. "I heard that you needed volunteers down here and I-"

"We're asking for military personnel to volunteer, not civilians," the guard said. Wufei noticed the master sergeant stripes on his sleeve.

"I'm not a civilian, sir," he said.

The sergeant frowned at him before recognition dawned on his face. "Mr. Chang!" His tone changed quickly. "Er…we'd be glad for you to help, but I'm not sure that there's anything too pretty to do around here. It's all the dirty gruntwork. Not suitable for someone like you…"

Wufei clapped his hand on the sergeant's shoulder. The guard stopped talking and glanced at him, and Wufei smiled slightly.

"I'm not a general," he said. "I'm a soldier like the rest of you. I'll help out where I'm needed."

He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw something flicker in the sergeant's eyes. Respect? That bothered him, and he opened his mouth to ask what exactly the other was thinking, but there was a shout to his left.

"Chang Wufei! Hey, over here!"

He turned his head in the direction of the sound and saw a familiar face behind a large pile of rubble. It took him a moment to place before he recognized Machida Varis, the Preventers agent that had picked him up in Europe two days ago. Had it only been two days?

"Are you hurt?" Varis asked anxiously as Wufei trotted over to where he was attempting to clear away a large chunk of concrete.

"I was in the hospital and they dumped me in a shelter before I could even blink," Wufei replied dryly. "What are you doing?"

"We're attempting to see if there are any more survivors and clearing away the worst of the debris." Varis grunted, straightening and stretching, wincing as something popped in his back. "I doubt there are any more survivors, or even bodies to be found here…it's a small area and they basically went over it with a fine-toothed comb looking a few hours earlier, but…well, you can never be too careful. Those human bombs did a lot of damage."

Wufei narrowed his eyes. "Human bombs?"

Varis started to say something, then stopped. "I forgot. You were in the shelter." His face twisted. "Human bombs…some of those terrorists were strapping explosives to their backs and jumping on vehicles…people…buildings…whatever. Kamikazes, basically. The bomb blew them to bits. We had a hell of a time gathering up the body parts from those poor devils."

Wufei winced. "I see."

"It's a messy business, war," Varis said. "Here, help me with this."

"Shouldn't we wait till they bring the dozers over for this?"

"We could, but that would be wasting time. Time is money, you know? You've heard that before."

Wufei nodded silently before rolling up his sleeves and grasping the other end of the concrete block Varis was attempting to maneuver from the ground. There were still yellow stripes on it…evidently it had been part of the road.

"One…two…three!"

He heaved and the slab teetered, moved. There was a slight moan.

"Dear Lord," Varis said, looking astonished and frightened at the same time. "We found another one."

The man who had been trapped beneath the slab was unconscious but still breathing. One of his arms was obviously broken, as was probably his rib cage from being crushed by the concrete, but the most gruesome part was his right leg, which had been blown off slightly below the knee, leaving a bloody stump. Wufei checked the man's pulse, then motioned to Varis. "He's alive but won't be for long. I don't know how he's managed to survive this long with losing so much blood."

Varis brought his left arm up and Wufei saw that he was wearing a digital communicator on his wrist. "Machida to Chief," he said quietly but urgently. "One to transport to medical."

There was a reply, too garbled for him to hear over the noise of the bulldozers, and Varis said "Urgent. Send medical attention immediately." Looking down. "Terrorist or Preventer?"

Wufei glanced over the man. His clothes were singed and almost blackened beyond recognition, but it was obvious that he had on civilian clothes. "Terrorist, "he said quietly. "Does it matter?"

Varis paused. "I don't know," he replied.

It was barely half a minute before they saw the lights of the medical shuttle above them, and they backed away, directing the small craft to a landing spot close to the injured man. Two medics emerged with a stretcher while a third one took Varis aside to converse with him for a brief moment, during which Wufei saw Varis point to him. The medic motioned him over.

"You are Chang Wufei?" It was obviously a rhetorical question and Wufei nodded. The medic swallowed and opened his mouth twice before he finally said, "Thank you for your help."

"You're welcome," Wufei said, watching as the man moved away back towards the shuttle, as the craft lifted from the ground with a whine of hydraulics and headed towards the medical center.

"He was in awe of you, you know," Varis said from beside him.

"That's the feeling I got from the sergeant at the control point, too," Wufei murmured. "Why?"

Varis remained silent for a moment, pursing his lips and folding and refolding his arms. "It-" he began, before a beep on his communicator interrupted him. "Yes?"

"Machida, we need you at the north gate. Bring someone with you - it's manual labor."

"Acknowledged," he said, before the vox clicked off and he nodded to Wufei. "Come on. We'll take a truck."

The guard at the control gate only glanced at Wufei twice before letting them pass, and they climbed into one of the already running trucks just outside the barricade. Apparently, most of the base had been barricaded off except for the residential area, and they remained silent until they had passed two checkpoints and a vehicle search.

It was only till they were speeding along a relatively deserted stretch of main road, past the darkened main tower, that Wufei turned back to Varis and asked again, "Why?"

"I think you know why," Varis said. "You're a hero."

Wufei snorted. "I'm not a hero. I'm a terrorist."

"To that boy in charge of the medic shuttle…and to the sergeant at the checkpoint…and to General Brown and General Une and a thousand other Preventers, you're a war hero. Don't tell me you don't know this."

"I had no idea," Wufei said honestly. "I haven't been back to the military since the war ended…and when the war ended, no one knew my name."

"I was a guard aboard the Peacemillion, you know," Varis said. "Every night I would stare up at those Gundams in the hangar, wondering when it would be my turn. When it would be me who would go up fighting to save the world, or maybe go out in a blaze of glory."

"And then?"

Varis smiled grimly. "And then I grew up. I realized that there was no blaze of glory, no saving the world. That war wasn't all they had told me it would be. I knew that, I guess, aboard the Peacemillion, but because you…all of you…were there, it didn't seem that death would ever touch me. I guess I was naïve."

"Then you know that I'm not a hero."

"On the contrary," Varis said softly. "You're still my hero. Everyone needs heroes. Heroes are the ones that will go up against the odds, knowing that they fight in vain and knowing that there is no such thing as a blaze of glory, but one of the differences between them and the rest of us is that they go anyway."

The truck coughed and Varis turned onto a side street. Wufei could see the distant glow of lights to the north at the other end of the base. "The north entrance get hit too?"

"Not badly," Varis said, gunning the engine. "It's a lot more heavily fortified than the south entrance…after all, our planes are there, along with a lot of valuable equipment. The terrorists tried, but they couldn't get through. Managed to cause a bit of a ruckus though, so we've been dispatched to help over there instead."

"You said," Wufei ventured after a moment, "you said that one of the difference between heroes and the rest of humanity was that they go anyway. What was the other difference?"

Varis smiled again. "The other difference is that the heroes don't know they're heroes." He glanced at Wufei for a brief moment before turning back to the road. "Someone who proclaims himself a hero usually isn't one. It takes a special breed of humankind to go out there and do things that no man would be proud of doing."

Wufei shook his head, turning his gaze to the window and watching the road slip by. "When you were talking to your chief…you asked me if that injured man was terrorist or Preventer. Why?"

"He wanted to know," Varis said, his voice suddenly sharp. "They have their reasons, the higher-ups."

"I can't help wondering…if I…if we had lost the war, would you still see me as a hero? Or would I just be another terrorist? Another nameless face with maybe a limb blown off, or an eye missing?"

Varis didn't answer.

"It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it?" Wufei said. "Terrorist or hero. We can be one or the other, but we can't be both. You know, I believe that those terrorists thought they were heroes, too. They were fighting for a cause, one that some people in our World Nation government want very much to believe in. They want the Gundam pilots out of the picture, because we were terrorists to them. Not heroes."

Varis was still silent. Wufei could see him chewing on a corner of his lip, thinking.

"I don't want to ruin your image of me…as much of an image as you have of me, anyway, considering our rather…odd…method of initial acquaintance…but I'm not a hero. I've never considered myself one. If anything, I see myself as a terrorist who just happened to be on the right side. That's all."

"That's not true," Varis said. He turned a sharp corner and Wufei banged his head against the side of the truck, but he kept looking at the Preventers agent, who was staring at the windshield as if it would give him the words to say.

"Why not?" Wufei pressed.

"It's all about human life, in the end. You may have been a terrorist at first, Wufei, but the Chang Wufei I saw aboard the Peacemillion…the Chang Wufei I came to respect and to look upon as a hero…he wasn't a terrorist. You didn't go out to kill, Wufei. None of you did. You went out to save lives."

He felt himself stiffen but didn't answer, simply stared out the window against the tears gathering in his eyes.

"I…" Varis swallowed. "I saw you and Trieze. I saw it, on the monitors. No terrorist would have reacted as you did to Treize's death."

"That has nothing to do with it," Wufei said harshly, but Varis interrupted him.

"It has everything to do with it. In the end, Wufei, what mattered was that you believed. You believed in humanity…you believed in us. Us! The petty humans who had started the war in the first place…you believed that we could be saved!"

Above the rumbling of the motor he heard his tears tick silently onto the metal of the truck door. He clenched his hands. "I couldn't save him," he whispered. "I couldn't…"

Varis' voice was strangely gentle when he spoke again. "You did save him, Wufei."

"I KILLED HIM!" he cried, pressing his hands to his face, feeling the memories rise up from the dark corner where he'd pushed them , flittering into his consciousness and overwhelming him. "I killed him…that's not salvation. That's murder!"

"I don't claim to know what I'm talking about," Varis returned. The lights were brighter here and he could see the faint outline of barricades through the haze of tears in his eyes. "I was only a lowly guard after all. But…those Gundams. I can still see them, standing like sentinels of everything that I believed in. And to this day, I believe that you - the pilots of those Gundams - did save us. And I believe that Treize knew that too. Maybe that's why he let himself die."

Wufei could only shake his head mutely.

"And in answer to your previous question…even if you had lost the war. Even if you had been executed for treason…I would still consider you a hero." He could see Varis turn to him as the truck pulled up to the barricade. "And now…whatever the World Nation decides, you will always be my hero. Because you believed in us."

"Identification," the guard said outside the window in a bored voice. There was a silence as he flipped through Varis' ID, then a pause. "His identification?"

"Wufei?" Varis said questioningly.

He hesitated a moment and then took a deep breath, wiping the last traces of tears from his face and leaned towards Varis' open window. "I don't have any identification," he said to the guard, whose eyes widened as the light fell on his face.

"Chang-Chang Wufei!" the guard stammered. "Are you…do you want-"

He smiled, feeling something heavy lift from his heart for just a moment as he spoke the words. "No one sent me. But I'm here to help."

In memory of all the heroes of September 11, 2001

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