Choices, Consequences and Responsibilty

"Choices, Consequences and Responsibilty"

The third in the Shakespeare trilogy.

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't now nor have I ever owned Gundam Wing or any of it's charactors. The afore mentioned show, manga and charactors are the property of Bandai and Sotsu Agency. Don't sue.

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He quickly scanned the area for any possible threat or danger. Nothing. As usual. The grounds and perimeter were well secured, especially for a school. Heero suspected that this was the case simply because said school housed and protected one of the most important individuals in the free world, even if she would never admit it.

What Relena did was important, even he knew that. He wasn't sure what the world would do without her, so it was his job to make sure that nothing ever threatened her or the peace she upheld that he had fought so hard to bring about. Besides, patrolling the school grounds kept him in condition and gave him an outlet for his energy and training. At least he felt like he was doing something useful.

<Area secured. No immediate dangers detected. Mission accomplished, heading back to base,> he thought, his mind automatically switching into mission report mode. Relena would be safe in bed at this moment and-

Hello...What was this? He looked over at a small secluded spot over on a hill that looked out onto a vista of nothing but trees and stars. He could just make out the shadowy form of someone sitting there alone in the dark. The outline looked familiar.

Yet there she was, simply sitting there with her knees curled up under her chin and her arms wrapped around her knees, just staring out into nothing. She looked troubled about something.

<It's not any of my business. Besides, she'd probably insist on talking about it.>

He was never in the mood to talk, or more accurately, listen. Relena was good at talking, it's what she did. Even if she seemed to be naive as the day she was born, she at least had the strength to stand up for her convictions. That could not be said of everyone, he had met plenty of people who, when the choice came, chose to bow down to the powerful and let them rule over them.

He continued to watch, almost frozen in place. Whatever it was she was thinking about, they were weighty thoughts. Perhaps he should go over there and inquire...just to see if there would be any trouble in the near future. She /might/ be thinking about a recent political upheaval, those were always trouble. Those things caused wars. Wars in which he would be forced to fight again, forced to kill again.

<I'll just stay long enough to see what she is thinking,> he told himself. It was his one besetting sin: curiousity. Even his training had not managed to train it out of him. He wanted to know. Always. That was why he was such a good hacker. He wanted to know.

The universe was full of mystery and his one minute weakness was one of simple curiosity, that of the child and the closed box. When the universe put a mystery before him he would quite happily plumb it's depths, as long as it did not interfere with his mission. Sometimes he would act to solve the mystery, even if it did. The time he had let Relena live when she was head of the Romafeller Foundation was one such time. He had been curious. Curious to see what she would do; what she /could/ do.

Now his curiousity was aroused again. He would investigate.

Heero walked up onto the hill and crouched down next to where Relena sat in silence. She glanced over at him, nodded to herself and turned back to her contemplation of the stars. This was not going how he had intended it to. Usually /she/ was the one to initiate the conversation, if only so she would not hear the sound of silence.

He had heard of a phrase one time. One that was supposed to make people talk about what they were thinking. He had never actually tried it, now was as good a time as any. How did it go again? Oh, yes...

"A penny for your thoughts?" he said.

Relena looked over at him in some small surprise. Then turned back to the stars. It didn't look like she was going to answer. Part of him was growing hurt at her rebuffal of his one friendly advance-

"I was thinking about Shakespeare," she said quietly. He tone was subdued. "Two quotes of his actually. One from Macbeth, the other from Hamlet."

"Both tragedies," he commented. Then waited.

Relena took a deep breath and exhaled. A small cloud of vapor rose from her mouth, the early morning air was cold. She had a small mug of tea with her, she took a sip and made a face. It was cold apparently.

"Chamomile," she remarked irrelevently. "I drink it when I can't sleep. My mom and I used to brew two cups when we couldn't sleep and we'd sit down and talk."

She sounded sad. Ah, yes. Heero remembered now, Mrs. Dorlian had passed away at around the end of the Mariemaia incident. Relena had been a bit broken up about it but had carried on with her usual strength.

"Anyways. I was actually thinking about three things, but they're really all inter-related."

<Well?> he thought but didn't say so aloud.

"You know that one line Trowa said in class a few days ago, the one from Hamlet? 'To be or not to be, that is the question...whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.' I was thinking about that one, and I was thinking about the lines fron Macbeth that went 'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps away at it's petty pace unto the last sylable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.Signifying nothing.'
I was thinking about those, and I was thinking about three other things as well...but these three things are all of one."

<She needs to sleep more,> he thought. <She's making no sense.>

Relena continued, trying to articulate all that she was thinking of.

"Well, the three things I was thinking about are very important to me and I guess central to my own personal code of honor. They require much consideration, simply because they are of life itself. But not precisely life itself but of living life correctly I suppose you could say."

Heero carefully took the mug from her and peered down ito it. Then /sniffed/ at the liquid and handed it back to her.

"Just checking," he told her. Relena laughed at this.

"I suppose that's a good thing,"she said, her voice tinged with laughter (it was a surprisingly pleasant sound). "I haven't had the best of luck with tea."

"But anyways," she continued. "I was thinking about the charactors of Shakespeare, myself, and three things." She looked over at him as if about to bestow a great secret. "Choices, Consequences and Responsibility."

"That's all?" he said. It sounded simple enough. Why the big fanfare?

"Don't be fooled. They are important."

Heero looked skeptical.

"Here's why. Throughout your lifetime, you have been forced to make choices...whether you like it or not. As have I, as has anybody. I..." She paused to collect her thought and then continued, choosing her words carefully so the full import would not be lost. "There are pretty much two basic kinds of choices one can make: ones in which you are aware and fully cognizant of the path that you have chosen, or ones in which the consequences of your decisions and actions are not apparent at the time of your decision."

"...?"

Relena smiles, a little wryly. Almost as if she were smiling at some joke only she was aware of.

"I will try to explain, if you will listen. Perhaps soon you will understand."

She paused again to collect her thoughts and began carefully.

"I was thinking about Choices Consequences and Responsibility as it applied to Shakepeare's charactors and as it applied to my life."

"Macbeth made a choice. He chose to kill his cousin Duncan and take the throne for himself. And by this choice he sent himself spiraling downward on a path of darkness and destruction that did not end with killing Duncan, but soon spread to the murder of his own best friend Banquo and his son, and then the slaughter of an entire household full innocent of women and children. He did not have to give into temptation and he knew exactly what he was doing when he made his choice. He was aware of the consequences and he sought to run from taking responsibility for them."

"But why choose that particular quote from Macbeth? It has nothing to do with his decisions," inquired Heero. He had not been encouraged during his training the spend time reading frivolous works of fiction but even he was familiar with the tale.

"But everything to do with the consequences of them,"she said. "It was towards the end... His wife had just killed herself, his enemies were storming the castle gates. He saw his dreams being torn asunder, falling all around him. He knew what was coming. And I think...I think he was tired. He knew he would die, friendless and alone, forsaken by others...and I think he had come to welcome it. Maybe it was his last desperate grab at redemption. I don't know. He just sounded so tired."

"I have made choices,as have you, that have helped shape the destiny of this world. Each time before I would make a huge decision, like deciding to use the Romafeller Foundation to create peace (hopefully before they had me killed), I would sit somewhere and think about my choice and its consequences. I have always tried to take responsibility for my decisions, I believe that this is what sorts the real leaders from the pretenders...integrity. When i became the princess of the Sank Kingdom, it was more to me than preaching the ideals of total pacifism...I became responsible for the lives and safety of my people. That was a consequence of the choice to take up my birthright. Do you understand so far?"

"Yes."

"And when the time came to choose whether I would take the choice offered by Noin and Pagan and escape into safety, I HAD to take responsibility for the decisions I had made. Long ago, I had made a decision to uphold my family's teachings, I had also sworn to protect the people who lived within my nation...I have to admit that when the fighting broke out it seemed like an unsolveable dilema! Should I, as Hamlet so eloquently put it 'suffer the slings and arrows of out- rageous fortune or take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them?' I could not in good conscience oppose my family's teachings, that would have invalidated everything that I had said thus far, but I could not stand by and watch as my people were murdred and my kindom destroyed. I still have nightmares about it some times. I think of my beautiful city in flames..."

She shook herself out of it.

"Anyways, I was thinking about Choices, Consequeces and Responsiblity even when it seemed I had none. I have never beleived that there is no choice, people say that only as a justification. Treize would have said it I think, but it is not for me to put words into the mouth of a dead man. I am uncertain at times whether the world can outlast his legacy."

She grew serious and said

"I have made decisions in my life that have been difficult and I know that you have too. I can only imagine what that must have been like for you."

"As soldiers, we are not encouraged to make decisions based on moral rectitude, but upon expediency and the facts at hand," he said flatly.

"But even so, I sense that you have tried to follow the path that you beleive in. That in itself is honorable, as much as I hate to start throwing the word honorable around."

"And why is that?" he asked curiously.

"Because 'honorable' too is offten used as a justification. Often times you are honorable and your enemy is not, according to those who wish it said so. But that is another matter. I was thinking of choices, consequences and responsibility."

"The decisions you have made are all honorable. You have never lied to any of us. My choises were not as serious."

"Life or death," was her reply. "That is serious."

"I stand corrected," he said with a ghost of a smile. "I do beleive in taking responsibilty for my actions, and for the consequences of my decisions. You are aware of this, the letter you brought me from Mrs. Noventa proves this. I made a mistaken decision that killed a shuttle full of innocent pacifist leaders. I took responsibility for that decision by seeking out his family members and offering my life in atonement."

"See? You /did/ take responsibility for your actions...you have not just walked away because it is easier. When the war was brewing between Treize and my brother, you could have chosen to have nothing to do with it. You could have walked away."

"I have no choice but to fight. It is all I am capable of," he said, as he had so many times before.

"Wrong. You're doing it again. You maintain that you have no choice when in fact you are making one. You make the choice each time you go out to fight." She grinned. " 'Cognative Dissonance Is Our Friend'. You do not have to fight, you choose to so that others will not have to. No one is pointing a gun to your head and even if they were, you still do not have to do as they tell you. You could just let them shoot you."

"Is that why you never seem quite afraid of me even when I am holding a gun to your head?" Heero had always wanted to know why she never seemed to fear him as was the right and proper order of things in the universe.

"Something like that," she agreed. "When you use the application of force, the usual result is that people will fear you. Most will obey you for as long as they are afraid of you. I will not let myself be afraid. No one can MAKE me fear them. They could threaten me, hurt me, even kill me but they cannot touch me. I have already accepted the risks as inherant to my occupation. I know I will probably end up like my father, but it will have been a hell of a ride!" She gave a small laugh.

Heero looked over at her. She seemed so calm about all of this. It had never occured to him that she too would have accepted death as part of her own occupation. He was not sure he liked the idea of her being threatened, or harmed. No, he most definately did not like the idea.

"You do not have the right to die," he told her. There, that should do it. Now she would be less passive about it when the time came.

"Excuse me?" she questioned.

"You do not have the right to die," he repeated.

Relena looked bemused.

"That's a little presumptuous of you don't you think?" she said in amusement.

"..." He looked at her.

"I do not want to get into a conversation with you about my most probable eventual demise but...What makes you say that?"

"You are to important to too many people. You are not allowed to die until your mission is accomplished."

"We are living in a peaceful age right now. Would you not say that my mission has been accomplished? And even if this peace lasts no longer than the last one did, surely you cannot expect me to live forever."

"..."

Relena waited.

"Does the thought of my death bother you Heero?" she asked.

Heero studied the stars above him that were slowly fading with the advent of the sun.

"Do not look away," she asked of him. She met his eyes straight -forwardly. "This life is transitory, a dream of flesh. If I am stolen from you I will see you again... In a place where no shadows fall."

The sky began to lighten into day.

"Oh look," she said. "The sun's come up."

And they stood together to watch the sun rise.

End.

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Authors Note:

At last! A story worthy to be posted with pride. I am not used to writing on the computer so most of my computer writen shorts come out as comedies or song parodies. These are not the best of my work. This peice however is much closer to the level of quality that I expect from myself. Tell me what you think.