“Christmas? Bah Humbug!” Heero said as he concentrated harder, working on the Zero system for his Gundam. Duo had turned up “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” and was singing along in the garage.
“Oh, come on, Heero—you really should come to our Christmas party—Hilde and I would really like you to come!” Duo insisted, but Heero turned and glared at him.
“Christmas—what’s so merry about it? Kids screaming about what they want, people spending tons of money on junk, those damn people ringing the bells by store-front doors—and the stupid songs—bah humbug!”
“Well have it your way, then,” Duo muttered, turning up the music even louder, then singing his own version:
“Heero, the spandex shorts boy
Had a very shiny Gundam
And if you ever saw it
You would really say you’d want one
All of the other pilots
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Heero
Join in any Gundam games!
Then one foggy Christmas Eve
A princess shouted from Earth
‘Heero with your Gundam so bright
Won’t you come and rescue me tonight?’
Then all the pilots loved him
As they shouted out after a while
‘Heero the spandex shorts boy,
It’s about time we saw you smile!’”
As Duo finished the last verse a shot rang out near his head, hitting just above him. Duo fell to the floor as Heero laughed. “Hey man, that could have been my head!”
“Then don’t sing next time,” Heero replied. Duo got up and dusted himself off. He knew he probably went too far with the line about Relena. He wondered how long it had been since Heero had seen her.
“Well I’m calling it a day,” Duo told Heero and began to pack up to leave.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Heero asked him.
“It’s Christmas Eve, Heero. I’m not sticking around to work on my mobile suit when my kids are waiting at home and Hilde’s got her hands full. You should call it a day yourself.”
Heero grunted. He looked over at Quatre, who had stopped working on his Gundam a little earlier. “I suppose you’re going, too.”
“Yes,” Quatre answered. “It’s a holiday and Heero, you should learn how to celebrate.”
“Bah Humbug!” Heero replied.
*****
That night as Heero brushed his teeth he heard someone moving in the other room. Quickly he grabbed his gun, but there was no one there. A little bit later he heard it again, and spinning around with his gun saw a figure in the dim moonlight. He shot at it three times before realizing it was a ghost.
“Heeeeerrrrrooooo,” the ghost howled, followed by a familiar sound of clinking metal.
“Dr. J.? Is that you?” Heero asked, lowering his gun slightly.
“Yeeeesssss, Heeeerrrrooooo. I have come baaaaccckkkk to waaaarrrrnnnn yooooouuuu!”
“Can’t you talk in a normal voice?” Heero asked him. Dr. J. shrugged.
“I guess so. Anyway, Heero, I came back to warn you. Don’t turn into a crazy old scientist like myself. Don’t waste your life away working on your Gundam. The wars of old are over. It’s time you learned to live your life, learned to be kind and good to others.”
“But Dr. J., you always taught me to be ruthless, that feelings get in the way of our judgment!”
Dr. J. laughed. “So I did. You were damn good at it too, kid. But look at me. I am doomed to wander the rest of eternity as a ghost with a metal hand. I’ll be the stupid ‘Metal Claw Man’ in children’s ghost stories for years. No one will ever know my great mind, because I was cruel and cold. You don’t want to be the ‘Spandex Shorts Boy’ of ghost stories, now do you?”
Dr. J. paused for a moment. “You will be visited by three spirits tonight, the first one at one o’clock in the morning. Listen to them well. Change your life, Heero, before you are doomed forever, like I am. Remember, the first spirit will visit you at one.”
Dr. J. vanished. Heero found himself in bed, the lights off, his gun put away. “It must have been a dream,” he told himself before he went to sleep.
*****
At one o’clock, Heero’s watch beeped. “Funny, I don’t remember setting the alarm,” he muttered. Then he noticed he wasn’t alone. A familiar presence was in the room with him.
“Quatre?” he asked.
The figure nodded. “Tonight I’m the ghost of Christmas Past. I’m going to take you back, remind you of how you once were, how you came to be this way, wretched and miserable… and uncomfortable in those spandex shorts!”
Quatre grabbed Heero’s hand and they flew out the window, back to the colony of L1. “Why, this is my home!” Heero said, astonished. “This is where I used to run and play! This is before I ever fired a beam cannon or anything.”
Quatre nodded. “Yes. A colony orphan, but still, happy. There you are, playing with the little girl.”
Suddenly Heero turned away. “Don’t show me this, Quatre, I can’t bear it.” But it was too late. The young Heero set the explosives, saw the building crash, found the puppy. “No child should have to die so young.”
“Nor should a young boy have to bear so much pain,” Quatre replied. Heero heard Dr. J.’s voice going over and over in his mind, “Don’t let your feelings overtake you—act on your emotions, but don’t let them affect you inside!”
Quatre grabbed Heero’s hand and whisked him away. Now he was on Earth, in the Sanc Kingdom. Relena was asking to sit beside him. “I should have said something more to her that day,” Heero muttered as he watched himself, reading a book, blind to the beautiful girl beside him. “I should have told her how much I cared about her.”
“But you couldn’t,” Quatre replied. Heero nodded. “Show me no more of this, Spirit. I can’t take it.”
*****
Heero found himself back in his bed, his watch beeping at 2AM. “So I guess the second one should be showing up any time—” Before he could finish, the sound of a motorcycle roaring filled the room. In through the window flew the second spirit. He took off his helmet and a long chestnut braid spilled out.
“Hey dude! I’m the ghost of Christmas Present! Hop on and I’ll show you something cool!”
Heero shrugged. Strange as this was, it seemed very normal to him that it would be Duo who would be the ghost of Christmas present. In his pajamas Heero hopped on behind Duo and they took off, stopping first at Quatre’s. “Yup, here’s the Winner residence.”
“Wait, you’ve got to be wrong, Duo,” Heero replied. “This can’t be Quatre’s place—a run-down apartment?” Duo shook his head. “You don’t know what Quatre’s been through.”
They peered in through the window. Quatre and his sister Iria sat at a table, eating dinner alone. “Happy Christmas Eve,” Iria said to him. Quatre smiled.
“Happy Christmas Eve.” They ate in silence for a while. “Well, I’m sorry sis, that it turned out this way.”
“You did what you had to do, Quatre. He’s your friend, even if he’s ungrateful,” Iria replied.
“But I had to help him out—I had to make sure that he, of all of them, survived. That somehow he was able to keep it together.”
Heero was puzzled. Who was this that Quatre was helping?”
“But at the point that we now have to be in poverty?” Iria demanded of him. Quatre sighed.
“I’m sorry, Iria. It’s not fair to you. I just had to keep a place for him, so he could keep his Gundam. Everyone else destroyed theirs, but he needed his.”
Heero was shocked—Quatre was now poor because of him? Because Quatre had helped him? How could this be?
Duo nodded. “It’s true, man.” Heero got back on the bike and they flew through the air, across town, to a small cozy house. Inside sat Wu-Fei and Sallie Po with their three kids. Sallie was smoking and a thick cloud of smoke hung over her head.
“I will not stand for your habits, woman!” Wu-Fei shouted at her.
“Well maybe if you got out and got a real job, I wouldn’t be so stressed out!” Sallie shouted back. Heero was horrified. “What happened here, Spirit?”
Duo shook his head. “Oh man, ever since Wu-Fei quit the Preventors, it’s been hell for them. Sallie’s worked overtime and everyone wonders when they ’ll end up splitting up now.”
“Why did Wu-Fei quit?” Heero asked.
“Don’t you know, dude? You decided not to join the Preventors because you refused to destroy your Gundam, one of the requirements for joining, and so he felt kind of cheated by that, since he had to destroy Nataku. And because you weren’t there he got paired up with Sallie on everything and well, it was killing their marriage working together and living together. So he quit to take care of the kids but Sallie had to work overtime so they could make it.”
Heero shook his head. “I had no idea.”
“Hey, if you want to feel bad, hold on—it gets worse.” Duo took Heero on a ride back across town to his own house. “Look inside.”
Heero peered into the window and saw a very pregnant Hilde attempting to set the table while the nine other Maxwells scrambed about. “Susie, Catherine, Michael, Nathan—it’s your turn to get everything out on the tables, ok?”
The four kids began to set the table while another, older son pulled out a chair for his mom to sit down on. “Thanks Joe,” she told him. Meanwhile, two younger siblings began to fight with each other. “Tommy! Brian! Cut that out right now or Santa’s not going to come!” The two boys stopped fighting.
“I had no idea you had that many kids,” Heero muttered.
The spirit laughed. “I’ve told you about them many times—you just tune me out.”
At that, Duo walked into the house, carrying a little girl. “Honey I’m home!” Duo shouted above the other children.
Hilde smiled. “And how’s our little girl doing?” she asked him as he sat his young daughter down in a chair next to her mom.
“She’s doing really well—Doctor said there’s a definite improvement with the surgery this time.”
The little girl leaned tiredly against Hilde. “You’re so beautiful, Lil’ Lilly.” Heero now noticed that Lilly wore small metal braces against her legs.
“What’s wrong with her, Duo?” he asked the spirit.
Duo became sad. “She was so sick as a baby that she didn’t learn to walk early on and her legs developed problems. She’s had surgery on the bones to readjust her legs.”
“How come you never told me?” Heero asked.
“Because you obviously didn’t care about the other nine so I didn’t feel it worth mentioning to you!” Duo retorted bitterly.
“Do you know what will happen to her?” Heero asked.
Duo shook his head. “Without some help at our house, Hilde and I are going to have a hard time taking care of the new baby and Lilly while I’m at work with you helping you fix Wing Zero all the time.”
*****
Heero shivered, realizing he was back in his room, the window open. His watch beeped again. 3AM. He hugged his arms to his chest, realizing the room was now very cold. A presence was with him.
“Duo?” he asked. The presence shook his head, then stepped into the moonlight.
“Wu-Fei,” he breathed. The presence nodded. “Are you the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” he asked. Wu-Fei nodded again, saying nothing. The walls faded away into the streets of the town. He looked into a window and saw a man and a woman, sitting together, her hands in his.
“Is it too soon?” he asked her. Heero realized this was Trowa.
“No. It’s fine,” the woman reassured him, smiling. He saw a diamond ring was now on her hand. It was Relena.
“Relena’s going to marry him?” Wu-Fei nodded. Heero frowned, realizing that he had lost his chance with Relena. “Why is it too soon?” he asked Wu-Fei.
Wu-Fei pointed. Relena was dressed in black, as if she was mourning. “Did Zechs die?” Heero asked. Wu-Fei shook his head, and led him away from that window.
He saw a blond man sitting outside on a street, obviously freezing. He held a sign up—“Will work for food.” It was Quatre. Heero wanted to stay with him, to help him, but he knew that Quatre couldn’t hear or see him. Wu-Fei beckoned him on.
They walked down the streets towards the town cemetery. He saw a small group of people standing around one grave. It was Duo and Hilde, a newborn cuddled to her chest, and nine others standing around. Only nine.
“First him, now her,” Duo muttered. Hilde leaned against him, crying softly. “Why did Lilly have to be taken from us as well?”
“Who else died?” Heero asked Wu-Fei. “Tell me, I must know!” Wu-Fei pointed to another grave nearby. The gravestone read “Heero Yuy. Born AC 180, died AC 212, of self-detonation. Rest in peace, perfect soldier.”
“Perfect soldier,” Heero muttered.
“You weren’t perfect,” Wu-Fei retorted, finally speaking. “You were weak, selfish, a coward! You deserved to die!”
“No, Wu-Fei!” Heero found himself shouting, shaking his head. “It’s not true! I can change! I can learn to live! I can help others—I can be a good person! Just give me another chance! Don’t let this be the future!”
*****
Heero found himself struggling underneath his sheets. He looked out the window and found it was morning. Scrambling out of bed, he leaned out the window, calling down below. “Hey you—what day is it?”
“What day? Why, it’s Christmas day!” the boy shouted back. Heero smiled. “Merry Christmas, then!”
“Merry Christmas to you, too!” he returned.
Heero quickly got dressed—there was so much to do that day!
First he went to the garage and sold off everything that was his. Everything that belonged to Duo or Quatre he put into storage. Then, after placing enough explosives and making sure no one was in the way of harm, he detonated the garage, blowing up Wing Zerro with it.
With the money that he had left over, he looked around until he could find the nicest apartment in the town. After putting a down payment on it, he went over to Quatre’s. “Merry Christmas! Pack your bags—you’re moving!”
“What’s going on?” Iria demanded, a little frightened.
“Nothing to worry about, my dear!” Heero said, laughing a little, startling both Quatre and Iria. “You’re moving to a new apartment—a better apartment! We’re going to invest some money back in your family’s old business and get it going again! Yes, that’s what we’re going to do!”
After helping Quatre and Iria move, Heero stopped by Wu-Fei and Sallie’s house. “Merry Christmas, my old partner!”
Wu-Fei’s jaw dropped. “You mean, you’re going to join the Preventors?”
“Yes, I am—we’re going to work together again, Wu-Fei!” Sallie smiled for joy. At last, their lives could return to normal! Sallie put her cigarette out, knowing that she would now quit smoking for good. With both of them working part-time, they could alternate being home with the kids and enjoy their family life once again.
****
Before making one last stop, Heero returned his key to his landlord. “You can keep everything that’s there—I won’t be needing it!” Heero then continued on to the Maxwell’s house.
“Merry Christmas, Duo! Merry Christmas, Hilde! Merry Christmas Michael and Nathan, Tommy and Brian, Susie and Catherine and Joe—sorry, I don’t know all of your names!”
“I’m Judy!” another young girl piped up. “I’m Patty!” “I’m Tyler!” the last one said. “And you are Lilly,” Heero said, watching the girl walk with a crutch. He extended his hand to her. “I’m Heero—one of you dad’s old friends.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she replied shyly.
“So what’s the occasion, Heero?” Duo asked him. He turned and smiled, handing Duo a large sum of money.
“It’s Christmas—what else? I sold off a lot of stuff—yours and Quatre’s is safe, of course—but I figured since I was going to go back to work for the Preventor’s part-time, you could work there as well, along with Quatre—and with us both working part-time we could help Hilde with all of the kids.”
“What—you help with the kids?” Hilde asked, shocked.
Heero smiled. “Of course! And we can get Lilly the best care she needs!”
“I’ve got to sit down,” Hilde said, still shocked.
Duo slapped Heero on the shoulder. “Merry Christmas, old pal! It’s good to see you in good spirits!”
Heero laughed. Lilly was sitting nearby, and Heero picked her up and sat her on his lap. At that moment, a knock came at the door.
“Oh, our dinner guests must be here,” Hilde announced. Joe answered the door, and Relena and Trowa were at the door. Heero swallowed hard. It had been a long time since he had really seen Relena. She didn’t see he was there at first, but when she did her jaw dropped, seeing Heero with a little girl on his lap.
“Heero, it’s very good to see you again,” she told him, smiling. Trowa smiled as well, though obviously slightly disappointed. Lilly scrambled off of Heero’s lap and Heero stood up to shake Relena’s hand. Then a merry chorus of giggling broke out.
“Look—you’re under the mistletoe!” Tommy and Brian pointed out, laughing. Heero and Relena looked up.
“So we are,” Heero replied. Relena looked into his eyes deeply, and Heero leaned in to kiss her. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to do that,” Heero muttered to her after he broke the kiss. She smiled at him.
“It’s not too late,” she told him.
They all sat down at the table for the Christmas dinner. Sallie and Wu-Fei came along with Quatre and Iria. Trowa sat down at the table, next to Iria, and began to notice that Quatre’s sister was actually very beautiful. Under the table Relena’s hand reached for Heero’s right hand, and he was surprised as a little hand grasped his left. Turning, he smiled at Lil’ Lilly as she smiled back at him.
“God bless us, every one!” she said, looking around the table at the merry friends gathered.
The End and Happy Holidays!!!
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