Coming Home
by 0083
//There is no place like home.//
After the second war wound down and we won yet again,
I felt that it was time. Time for me to head home.
I've been running around for ages now, from colony to
colony, to earth and back. I'm homesick, you know?
So after the war ended, after Mariemeia became Une's
responsibility.. I just packed up and left for L2.
L2, the place I grew up in, where I had my closest
friends die on me.. the place of memories and pain.
Home.
My first steps onto the colony was rather surreal,
almost strange in its normality. Where I expected to
see children huddled around the shuttleport looking
for easy targets for pickpocketing or begging, I saw
well dressed teenagers giggling and having a smoke
behind their parents' backs. Where I thought I should
see a hotdog vendor selling badly made dogs (and I
think they really were dogs back then, you know), I
saw a small restaurant terrace filled with coffee
swilling businessmen and their guests.
Home seemed very strange from my first step.
I walked through, looking for Hilde's address, knowing
that she was waiting for me, but I couldn't shake the
feeling that my home was different.. so much more
than I thought it would be. My feet took me through a
busy business district that my head insisted was
supposed to be a drug haven filled with prostitutes
and thieves. My eyes glanced over buildings shiny and
new, overtaking my memories of dark, decrepit
structures.
My home never seemed so foreign.
Hilde greeted me with enthusiasm, dragged me through
our apartment in a torrent of words and movements and
insisted that we go out to the bazaar for dinner. The
bazaar.. was there such a thing when I lived on L2 so
long ago?
It was such a busy place. People were everywhere,
haggling, selling, buying.. they were lively, lit up
with the fire of commerce. The small hot bun stand
Hilde loved was on an intersection between the
vegetable vendors and the jewelry sellers. I was
overwhelmed.
That night, I couldn't sleep. I lay on my clean white
sheets, crisp and scented lightly, thinking about my
first day back home. I knew, believe me, I knew that
L2 had changed before I came back. I knew that there
wouldn't be whores and thieves on every street corner,
that the buildings had been rebuilt by corporations
ready to make profits, that the nooks and alleys of my
childhood were no more. I knew. But I didn't
believe.
Somewhere deep in my heart, I was looking forward to
seeing the home I had envisioned and harbored in my
heart for a long time. The filthy streets, the gangs
of children, the kindly priest, the loving nun, the
church.. I wanted to be where the streets were
familiar, where my memories were, where my heart was
lodged. My past, my vision, my home.
But they no longer lived here. My home did not exist
on L2 anymore.
//You can never come home again.//
I spent a few weeks on L2 in a daze, working with
Hilde at the junk yard, eating, sleeping, doing all
the normal things. But somehow, the feeling of being
home never arrived. I was a tourist on my streets of
childhood, a visitor in the place of my heart, an
on-looker in the corners of my memories. L2.. why
couldn't you be home for me as you were before?
Why am I not happy that the people on L2 are happier?
No starving children, no depraved asses preying on the
weak, no dirty streets, no abandoned buildings. They
are good things, damn it. They are what I fought for,
you know? Shouldn't I be at home in this place I
helped to make?
But I keep looking for dark alleys.. I keep looking
behind me, seeking my past home.
Or more specifically, my Father and my Sister.. and
my sanctuary.
My home.
I finally got the nerve to visit the Maxwell church
and what I saw devastated me. The church was no
longer there. The rubble, the fallen beams, the
darkened and sooty stones were all gone. There was a
park there now, a grassy field with trees and flowers
that shot off vibrancy, and the only remembrance was a
plaque.
A bronze plaque.
My home.. The only home I had ever known was L2. The
streets, the gang, the church. Even after they all
died and disappeared on me, I always believed that
when I came back, I'd be at home in L2 because of my
ghosts. My memories would make L2 my home forever.
But.. there is nothing.
I can't come back to the home I knew.
//Home is where the heart is.//
Few more weeks went by and I knew what Heinlein meant
by being a stranger in a strange land. Yes, L2 had
become a strange land and I its only stranger. I
walked the streets, detached from everything and
everyone. Nothing was familiar, even after all this
time.
That should not be a shopping mall, damn it.
And that should be filled with water catchers, not flower pots.
Why so many cars?
So many things, so many doubts.. that is never home.
Hilde knew something was wrong and she tried to help
me out, but really.. she's a native here. She has
favorite places to shop, knows of a great linguini
place just off this street and that avenue, and can
wave a friendly hello to people walking by. I.. I
can't.
I asked her how she felt so at home here, why it was so dear to her.
She couldn't say, but she looked at me and smiled
sadly. She held my hand and spilled a lone tear for
me.
I knew then.. that I had to move on. That I had to find a home of my own, like she had.
But then there is the question. What is home?
It isn't L2. I know this. My memories and ghosts
have all gone, leaving me desolate on a floating metal
fortress in space. For me, home was no longer where I
could wallow in my past, remember things.. no longer
a place where I can say 'I remember that store, I used
to do this and that with such and who.' Home isn't
where I grew up.
So, where is my home?
And with that question, a pair of exquisite and warm
cobalt blue eyes swim to the surface of my heart.
//Home is where you make it.//
I have never been so hurried before. Hilde helped me
pack. Okay, she helped me throw my shit into my bag
as fast as her arms could move. And I was on a
shuttle to L1 before I could say 'goodbye' to L2, a
place that had been home but was no longer.
I had found the answer. Heero. I would make a home
with him.
Anywhere. Somewhere.
Because.. my home is where Heero is.
The old cliches are right. Every last one of them.
You can never come home again, because places change.
But a person.. Heero would change with me, never
without me. He would grow with me, mature with me,
grow old and senile with me. He would never leave me,
not like my ghosts, memories.. not like L2.
Home is where my heart is.. Heero. It is where I make it. Anywhere with Heero.
And so.. in the end, there is no place like home.
Or is it there is no person like home?
I'm coming home, Heero. Have the welcome mat out for me, love.
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