After three years I have finally allowed myself, forced myself to release. To let go, and all of the battles and bloodshed are behind me now. Every battle I fought for others, but now it is time to put away my own battles.

    Heero once said that the only way to live a good life was to act on your emotions. I understand what he means, I have always understood. I told him how I felt, once, latched my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek and whispered in harsh, rushed tones that he was my sexual orientation.

    He responded in his own way, and I do not regret a moment of the past year. Well, it is almost a year. Tuesday marks the three hundred and fifty sixth day we will have been together. We’re going to spend it together, dawn until dusk.

    He promised he’d show me his favorite place, and that he’d keep me company, all day long, if I’d let him nap in the sand a bit. I hope it’s somewhere warm, and not in this early-spring climate being simulated here. I feel as though I need my thermal gear again. It’s freezing to me here. I don’t know how I stood this temperature as a child.

    Heero says that L2 was always colder than the other colonies, and doesn’t understand why we’re staying here if I’m uncomfortable.

    I can look back on it all from this vantage point. Atop this hill, laden with white crosses that mark the graves of the innocent, and remind the inhabitants of the colony that the peace of the world has come at a heavy price. One cannot hope for peace and expect to gain it through a bloodless revolution. So therefore one cannot expect to attain peace without soldiers.

    Aspirations are only dreams, dreams are but the culmination of hidden desires and chemical imbalances. To dream alone signifies and changes nothing. A deferred dream brings about no sorrow but the heartache of the mind, which lacks a heart to yearn and pine for the lost dream itself.

    I kneel before the simple gravestones.

    The other graves are marked by the white crosses, the souls of those children who were naïve, and had no choice in their lives or death, other than to chose life or death to act upon. But no, this simple marker shows not the grave of a child, but the life of a woman.

    Sister Helen Constance, AC 157-190. She died eight years ago tomorrow.

    Father Peter Maxwell, AC149-190. For on you I shall build my church, and they shall call you The Rock. He died eight years from Tuesday.

    I’d love to be here then, for the celebration, and the commencement ceremonies of the school. St. Maxwell School for Orphans, and the Convent of Helen.

    May your amazing grace live on in these hallowed stone halls and buttressed arches for all time, a lasting memorial to the lives you lead, and the examples you preached in your lives and deeds.

    Ironic how I will be enjoying the life of the upper class tomorrow, experiencing seclusion in nature, as all the great poets saw through indirect means. Here lie my humble beginnings, I gently make the sign of the cross in the dirt, to signify what they passed to me.

    Even without active belief in religion, for God does not meet up to my standards of god, anymore, it is possible to believe in the morals and examples it sets forth. As Heero has said, I do not believe in God.

    He meant that he does not believe in the Christian god, the All Mighty, the omniscient and omnipotent magnanimity of a being so powerful he took six days out of his schedule and created the world. I can understand that, it seems plausible reasoning to hear him tell it, but it is not my reasoning.

    I have not lost my faith in god, but instead I have lost faith in the people of the world who are supposed to follow the golden rule. In the sense of my religion, I have lost my faith in god.

    I’m a homosexual. God doesn’t permit that. I wear my hair long. I feel like god doesn’t permit that. I’m in love; I feel as though that in itself is a crime, and some of the things I’ve done since running out of that burning fire where my biological parents were bleeding to death would even make Heero a bit unsettled.

    If only I could go back to the beginning, and if only I had agreed to go to the amusement park as my mother suggested, or to church as my father wished. Maybe if I had done those things, those simple, trivial things, God would not have punished me for so long. Maybe if I had agreed to be more docile, when my mother suggested I attempt to restrain myself, perhaps then I would have enjoyed this wonderful happiness - the completion I feel in his arms - sooner, and lived my life differently then I wouldn’t be as I am today, kneeling before a grave marker, brushing away the growing moss.

    “It is easier to believe in hell than in heaven.”

    I look up from the markers, and before I even turn to look at the gate I know that the curate has followed me up on my lonely pilgrimage. It would not have been a difficult thing to do; I left footprints in the flower-laden avenue that leads up to this tier of the cemetery.

    Not many people have ever experienced a cemetery as I have.

    For a long period of my lifetime, I found solace only in places such as these, where reside quiet and contemplation and acceptance. I would wander among the grave markers, the tombstones, meander amidst the crypts. The dead ask no questions, there is no right or wrong in a cemetery, rather the celebration of a life ended, or the sorrow of one. In either case, the sentiments of the journeyer are united in reverence for those gone onwards, for those who are no more.

    “Those two don’t oft receive visitors,” the curate says.

    “They deserve more than me.”

    “In two days they’ll have all of the remembrance any of our weary souls have.”

    “The school, and the nunnery.”

    “Yes, you’re right.”

    I stand, brushing my fingers over the final words.

    “No one ever did figure out who is funding all of this, do you have any idea?”

    I shove my hands into my pockets and look up at the sky, “It’s going to rain,” I mumble to myself. “I hope the festivities aren’t cancelled, that would be a shame.”

    “I think that whoever funds all of this must be a very pious man.”

    “Perhaps that person is just very guilty.”

    “Oh, no, I doubt that he’s like that at all.”

    Fumbling, I pull out a cigarette, not even offering one to the curate, who’s supposed to abstain from all worldly possessions, and cigarettes are right up there with porn in my book. He folds his hands in an upside-down pyramid, and turns to face the setting sun.

    How late is it anyway?

    I look at my watch, and see that it’s almost time.

    He didn’t ask me where I was going when I got out of bed this morning, I know my stealth skills haven’t progressed enough to allow me to bypass his instincts, so he must have been humoring me. I dressed in the quiet, silent darkness of our apartment. The bedroom hung around me peacefully and I knew I had to go through with it, and braided my hair on the way out of the door, keys to both the apartment and the car jutting from my lips.

    I’m glad he let me out. I couldn’t have told him, and I couldn’t have faced him, if he knew what I am doing. He knows, to some extent, what I have done. We do, after all, share even finances now, so there isn’t anywhere or any way to hide it from him.

    And I don’t want to.

    I take a long pull from the cigarette and tap it with my index finger to remove the ashes, which I stamp out beneath my boot. I sigh, exhaling the smoke of my acquired bad habit, the one thing that he grants me in our current coexistence.

    He broke me of almost everything else.

    My binge drinking he ended by starting to drink with me, and so there isn’t any need for it now. I drank because I was alone, and now that I’m not- it also doesn’t help that he insists on matching me drink for drink and he’s not got nearly the tolerance for vodka that I’ve developed over the years.

    He just plain flushed my drugs down the toilet. I was very angry with him for that month while I was going through withdrawal. He ignored my anger, and bypassed my fighting by not touching me when I shouted at him. That worked well, since I can’t stand to be in the same bed with him and be pushed away constantly.

    And whenever I got the shakes, he’d gingerly hold me to him, and not say a word that I could understand. He murmured something in Japanese, which he’s since translated for me, over and over.

    I never knew he was like that.

    It didn’t occur to me that he was like that, at the time. I thought he was just venting his anger into my ears in Japanese so that I wouldn’t have to hear him curse.

    I hate it when he does that, because he begins to look a lot like he did when he was angry back then, before, and that really scares me. I don’t like to see him angry.

    Finally down to the stub of my cigarette, I snub it onto the back of my hand and tuck it into my pocket. These souls have seen a little too much fire as it is, I’ll keep mine away from them.

    “Will you be at the ceremony?”

    “Who, me?”

    The curate nods.

    “Look, Father, I’m not exactly sure who you think I am, but I’m just passing through,” I turn to go, feeling the sting of that denial here more than anywhere else, “and making amends to some people I let down a long time ago.”

    “The Lord forgives, my son.”

    Those words. I turn to look at the curate, the frail looking old man, with a slight stoop to his back, and I see something I haven’t seen in years.

    Blind kindness.

    This man who knows nothing about me, who doesn’t have any idea who I am or what I’ve done in my lifetime, has forgiven me sins that he cannot comprehend.

    Just like Father Maxwell.

    “Who are you, Father?”

    “My name is Benton. Because my older brother joined the clergy before I did, everyone called me Father Benton.”

    I stare at him, and suddenly it all becomes clear. It’s been eight years, but I still see it. Father Maxwell never talked about himself or his family, but if this guy isn’t his brother, I must be on drugs.

    “Benton… Maxwell?”

    The curate nods absently, and I can tell he remembers his brother whenever someone says his last name. I must have just hurt him badly. He is staring out at the one strip of simulated blue visible in the fake overcast sky. Damn, how the hell does he do that?

    “I’m sure that my brother takes joy knowing that you came to see him.”

    “I don’t think you’ve got the right idea, Father.”

    He continues to look forward, as though ignoring my response. “I think that he’d be glad to know that you’re still alive, and well, Duo.”

    How the heck does he know my name?

    Oh, wait. I had to sign in to gain access.

    Stupid legal proceedings, I’m just one scruffy looking kid. Well, I’m nineteen, but I can still be considered a kid, can’t I? I mean, so I had a traumatic past and I’m making up for it now, so what? I think it builds character.

    Did I sign my own last name? I’ve taken to signing Heero’s lately; I think I’m hoping that he’ll ask. I don’t recall. But then, usually I sign it Maxwell Yuy instead of just Yuy, so who knows? Perhaps I broke my habit.

    “I don’t exactly think that I am who you think I am, Father.”

    “Oh, certainly you are, my son, you’re someone who’s feeling very lost.”

    “That sure is right,” I whisper, brushing my bangs back, “if you only knew.”

    Benton reaches over and touches my shoulder. “Peter spoke well of you, Duo.”

    “I don’t know why, I was never a very good boy, if I recall correctly.”

    The curate gently pats my shoulder, a bemused look on his face, “Aye, I don’t recall that either,” he smiles. “Peter never said that being the master of the orphanage was easy, Duo. At times he spoke to me of wanting to go back into seclusion. He wanted to be a monk, when he was younger, you know.”

    I look at my watch again, and debate. It isn’t like he can’t commandeer a shuttle for us, or something. Perhaps I should go and call him.

    “Are you late for something, Duo?”

    I consider. Heero might be furious with me for this, being late, but I think he’ll understand, to be truthful. I don’t give him as much credit as I should, sometimes. Hell, most of the time.

    “Nothing that can’t wait, Father,” I say and he nods slowly, as though he doesn’t want to take me away from anything. I look up at the sky again. He is staring at me, with Peter’s eyes, as though he’s just seen a side of me he’s never seen before. I don’t know if I like it.

    “Would you like to talk about it?” Benton asks me.

    I look over at him, turning my head slowly, and see that he’s staring me in the eye. “About what?”

    “I don’t know many people who come to visit Pete and Sister Helen, so obviously you’ve got something on your mind, am I right?”

    I nod, turning back to stare up at the sky. “We should get under some cover, Father, it’s going to rain.”

    “Oh it won’t be too bad, I’m sure,” Benton says, opening his folded hands with palms raised towards the sky, “whereas on Earth the Lord might decide to cancel the ceremonies with the weather, the weather control service knows there’s going to be festivities tomorrow, we should only be getting a light shower.”

    “Still…”

    He shrugs with a benign smile and we start to make our way back to the old, small parish house where the curate normally waits on visitors. I suppose he won’t have many today with the festivities tomorrow being so large.

    “So what’s on your mind, Duo?”

    “I…” I can’t believe I’m doing this. Unburdening my heart to a total stranger, and yet I listen to my own voice letting loose all the troubles I’ve been feeling lately, since the… war. And Benton just listens, with the same kind, blind patience. We make it all the way back down the hill into the small domicile he must live in as I tell my story, the rain picking up lightly as I speak, though we are safely ensconced in the small main room.

    He listens until I’m almost hoarse from speaking, and then lets silence fall between us, giving me a chance to catch my breath.

    “God does not frown upon love, Duo,” he says to me, and I feel the healing presence of my own Father Maxwell in the air. “And all the sins that you aren’t saying are forgiven, if you ask for it.”

    I turn away from him, staring out the window at the gentle shower outside.

    “Whether you believe it or not, Duo, it’s true.”

    “I was a murderer, Father.”

    “Perhaps,” he says with a familiar glint to his eye that reminds me of his brother long passed on. “But I very much doubt that you would do anything without reason.” He pauses again, old eyes wrinkling kindly as he meets mine, “But God has already forgiven you what you’ve done, Duo,” he says, looking intently at me. “The only one, it seems, that hasn’t forgiven you is you.”

    I stare at him for a long moment, and then look at my watch. The ‘sun’ is high in the sky, breaking through the thin clouds, and I stand from the seat I took in the small enclosure. “Look Father,” I say with a grin, taking out another cigarette and lighting it in my lips. “I did the whole faith thing, and it did nothing but get me shot, and put me through a lot of pain. It’s nothing I relish remembering, and nothing I do anymore. I,” my hand reaches up to where the cross used to hang around my now bare neck, “I put that away a long time ago. I appreciate your listening to me and all, but I’m going to be late for a flight.”

    “None suffer quite like the Catholic,” he says softly.

    I chuckle and shake my head, starting out the door. I hope Heero isn’t too mad that I’ve made us late for our trip down to Earth…

    Father Benton remains seated, and calls a greeting after me, one that I do not bother to return, but I close the door quietly behind myself as I step outside into the slightly damp grass. The colonies have gotten a lot more like home since the wars have ended and the people have invested more in living life than ruling it.

    I start back towards the apartment when I see the car.

    And when I notice the car I notice the familiar figure leaning against it, a pair of dark glasses shading his eyes from view under the wild, unruly hair.

    An unintentional smile breaks out across my lips, and there is a bounce in my step as I cross to the car and embrace the man I was afraid would be angry with me. I should’ve known he’d be here waiting for me to finish.

    “You didn’t rush, I take it?” his question is innocent and without sarcasm or anger. So unlike me. I shake my head and he kisses my cheek wordlessly, opening the door to the passenger’s side of the car before rounding it to climb in behind the wheel.

    “Not at all… will we be very late?”

    “Time waits for no man,” his still slightly nasal voice says, but as I glance over, I catch a hint of mischief behind his sunglasses, “but we’ll beat it at its own game.”

    “Forgetting who I’m talking to again,” I mutter with a chuckle, and a comfortable silence descends on the car. I turn back to look at the cemetery as we head towards the spaceport, and for a moment, I think I can see curate standing and watching the car, but he’s flanked by two figures.

    I blink, and they’re gone.

    Heero reaches over and squeezes my leg, just above the knee. “What are you looking at?”

    “Nothing,” I say, turning back to look out the front window of the car, silent goodbyes said to the only people who ever bothered to care about me… with blind kindness… before the man driving me away from them.