it always begins with a dark evening, blood running, guns blazing
"Wufei said I always counted on you too much." Duo looked up from the cheeses. "Not that you couldn't deal with it," Heero said, "but that I couldn't."
"I think we've established that Wufei doesn't know fuck-all."
"No, he was right about this."
"No he wasn't. You don't count on me except as friends do, which is absolutely fine, and I'm absolutely fine with it."
"I did. That's how I made my mistake with you."
That was worth a few minutes of silence. Duo took his time choosing mozzarella, and then stayed eyes-down dragging out a selection of hummus. Then, he threw his head back with an explosive sigh. "I never said it then, though I should have. I'm sorry I let it get that far."
Maybe not every one of their conversations should be so life-or-death. Heero didn't know why it always seemed to happen like that. Maybe one day they'd run out of significant things to say to each other. Maybe it would be this day. What was there to say after this, except that neither of them ever made the same mistake twice?
Except about where to have a private conversation. Which was no more the supermarket than it had been the kitchen sink in Trowa's apartment. "You're just like Chang." He binned the coffee, and took Duo's basket from him instead. "Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to try to apologise and have it thrown back in your face?"
Duo's eyebrows went up under his fringe. "I accept," he answered evenly. "Now let me apologise for flirting with you for a decade because you were my back-up guy."
"Yeah." A woman went by pushing a crate of eggplant. Heero watched her pass. "That did kind of confuse the issue."
OH JESUS HOW DID NO ONE EVER TELL ME ABOUT TB AND MARSH AND THE CODE OF SILENCE SERIES. OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS IS EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER WANTED FROM A GUNDAM WING FANFIC EVEN IF 2x3x2 HAS NEVER, EVER, EVER BEEN MY PAIRING, EVER.
---
On a whim I went out looking for Gundam Wing fanfic, because I found that fandom in like 2000 and never really read anything since. Trust me, my taste when I was like 12 was as shitty as you would expect, and upon rereading them today, all I could think was how did I ever take myself seriously? So I ran some very basic google searches for GW fic recs. The one that brought me to "Code of Silence" said that the story was such a mindfuck the reader couldn't even bear to move onto the sequel because they were so afraid of it. Mindfuck? People being awful to one another? A long plotty dark story? Unrequited 1+2? I am all over that shit like white on rice.
Except what I found wasn't a mindfuck at all. Yeah, it was plotty and dark, but it didn't make me feel afraid the way the word "mindfuck" usually makes me afraid. Instead, it was one of those wonderful, intelligent, gritty, and horrifyingly dysfunctional stories that take all the trappings of the Gundam Wing world and made them real, adult, human, instead of Sunrise's happy fun dollhouse world of fake politics and plastic issues.
The plot in "Code of Conduct" is simple. Duo is found at the scene of a murder. Heero and Wufei arrest him, partly because they're Preventers, but partly out of a sense of personal betrayal. It soon becomes obvious that Duo is covering up for someone, and that it's one of the pilots. But who? Duo calls on Trowa for help, and Trowa calls on Quatre for a lawyer, and before you know it, everything is a perfect storm of legal battles, relationship drama, and leftover trauma from the war that no one wants to talk about. There's past shit that went down between Duo and Trowa, of course, and Trowa's motivations are vague, if not out right opaque when it comes to what he wants from Duo and how far he's involved. While most of the mysteries are revealed about halfway to two-thirds of the way into the story, I still found myself holding my breath and banging my head against the table all the way down to the very last scene. The pacing is masterful and the writing, while nothing mindblowing, is still enviable, if only because it makes you want to buy into a world where Trowa would call Duo "baby".
There are so many wonderful places TB and Marsh have taken the pilots and the supporting cast, and that it's all so believable is what makes "Code of Silence" frightening. Quatre's naive and heartfelt compassion is still preserved, every inch of it, but it's deepened, made world-weary, and paired with a very tender portrayal of the pragmatic romance developing between him and Relena. Wufei has all his edges, his egoism, his arrogance, his perverted sense of right and wrong, but years of working in the Preventers and growing up and rounding out is palpable from every pore, so that he's a compelling character even if he never becomes sympathetic. Duo in all his absurdities and honesty issues and neediness and charm and brashness and insecurities has never been more on display, nor better displayed. TB and Marsh have transformed Heero's dogged focus, his cookie-cutter heroism, his woodness, into the perfect vision of a man who is still caught in limbo, between a childhood that forced him to be an adult and an adulthood spent trying to develop real emotions like a child. And Trowa, god, Trowa. When I was rewatching Gundam Wing at Rice with one of my freshmen, it struck me more than ever that of all the pilots, Trowa was the one who was most convincing at pretending to have it all together but was actually the one who had already lost his marbles long before the show even started. And in "Code of Silence", his restrained maniac tendencies, his completely inability to trust in someone or to connect on a human level with other people in a meaningful way, even his cold-blooded dedication to calculating the right persona for every situation, is so perfect
But the best thing is that when it comes to the post-war world of Gundam Wing and the post-war unit of the Gundam pilots, "Code of Silence" is pitch perfect. As fans we often forget that the pilots were never given time to just chill out and be friends; the closest we ever got was Quatre and Trowa's somehow instinctual ability to befriend each other despite lack of communication or personality similarities. And "Code of Silence" is unflinching in examining just what the Gundam pilots mean to each other when they're no longer all piloting Gundams or even fighting a war. How can they handle the fact that they both know each other too well and don't know each other at all? That they've seen the best and worst of each other throughout the years, maybe never see each other at all anymore but are sick of each other all the same? That they both want to have nothing to do with their shared history and yet know that that is the realest connection any of them will ever have with another human being? This push-pull, whether it's between Wufei and Heero as Preventer partners who are forced to arrest one of their own, between Duo and Trowa as ex-fuck buddies who maybe are trying for the second time for something more, between Quatre and Relena as leaders of the new world who understand all too well the emotional blindnesses that gripped them when they were younger, is never forced, but seem so naturally part of the world that you can't believe it was never really examined in the series itself. That's how effortless "Code of Silence" seems.
Every semi-relationship that may have been established in the series itself, "Code of Silence" takes it and runs with it to this new landscape, this complicated tangled minefield of discomfort and imperfections. Quatre and Trowa's almost-too-pure-to-be-believed friendship? Unraveled and bandied about with Trowa kissing Quatre in a courtroom during Duo's trial (then further pushed in "Code of Conduct" with a heartbreaking kind of clarity). Relena and Heero's frequently mocked but never completely dismissable romance? Part and parcel of her and Quatre's courtship. And as the excerpt suggests, there is enough exploration of Heero and Duo's hopeless and yet frustratingly hopeful relationship to last a whole series of LJ posts. "Code of Conduct", the sequel, is no less enthralling for the same reasons. What happened to Zechs and Noin? Where do we put Dorothy in relation to Relena and Quatre? What about Wufei and Duo? "Code of Conduct" even features a reprise of Trowa and Heero's post-self-destruction talk, one of those pivotal 1x3 moments that no good slash fan forgets, and it comes complete with musings about Catherine and awkward jokes that make Trowa laugh.
"Code of Conduct" is unfinished and was last updated in 2008, so I don't really hold out hope for it to be completed any time soon. Still, though, I wouldn't not read it just because you're stuck wondering what's going to happen. For one, "Code of Conduct" very thoroughly and mercilessly takes you past the happy note, if not completely Happy Ending, of "Code of Silence". I mean, when you have two characters like Trowa and Duo developed the way TB and Marsh do in "Code of Silence", it's impossible to expect their relationship will be puppies and rainbows forever. And it isn't in "Code of Silence." The sequel isn't about trying to break your heart. What you get is the sense that there's more that TB and Marsh wanted to do in "Code of Conduct", but that they were restrained, by the plot and by the need to establish the fab five just the way they wanted. So "Code of Conduct" is about expansion: about giving Duo a point of view after he's merely observed all through "Code of Silence", about examining more of Trowa's reasons for being the way he is, about pitting the domestic healthy happiness that Relena wants to achieve against the frenzied turbulent mess that is everyone else's past with each other, about how far behind them the characters have left the war, if at all. It's a great continuation of "Code of Silence", and I devoured it with the same enthusiasm as the original series.
TB and Marsh may be masters of angst elsewhere-- I haven't read anything else by them. Yet. But "Code of Silence" and its sequel aren't really angst. It's just that their authors aren't interested in giving you any easy answers. The show gave you easy answers, first in the series' ending, and then in the OVA, where it seemed that when the war ended, everything would be sunshine and happiness. But you know realistically it can't have been. Ripping a couple of kids out of their lives and making them pilot large war machines, then letting them be pawns to a 14 year old trying to be Napoleon, never ends in sunshine and happiness. So "Code of Silence" is more like an exercise in the tenacity of the human spirit. They're odes, however multi-layered and tortuous, to the ability of people who are almost damaged beyond the point of repair to still find one another. At one point Trowa compares, guiltily, all of the pilots to rats. Scavenge, survive on next to nothing, he says.
"We don't ever talk about this stuff," Duo then replies. "Why didn't we ever?"
"I don't like dredging this shit up."
"You don't like dredging any shit up."
"No. I don't." Duo had his therapists, Quatre would have Relena... Wufei could go fuck himself, and Heero too. Trowa said, "Sublimation is comfortable."
"Only until you can't avoid a confrontation any longer."
"I'm talking to you now."
And really, that's what "Code of Silence" is. It's the pilots, through the mouths of TB and Marsh, talking to you now.
"I think we've established that Wufei doesn't know fuck-all."
"No, he was right about this."
"No he wasn't. You don't count on me except as friends do, which is absolutely fine, and I'm absolutely fine with it."
"I did. That's how I made my mistake with you."
That was worth a few minutes of silence. Duo took his time choosing mozzarella, and then stayed eyes-down dragging out a selection of hummus. Then, he threw his head back with an explosive sigh. "I never said it then, though I should have. I'm sorry I let it get that far."
Maybe not every one of their conversations should be so life-or-death. Heero didn't know why it always seemed to happen like that. Maybe one day they'd run out of significant things to say to each other. Maybe it would be this day. What was there to say after this, except that neither of them ever made the same mistake twice?
Except about where to have a private conversation. Which was no more the supermarket than it had been the kitchen sink in Trowa's apartment. "You're just like Chang." He binned the coffee, and took Duo's basket from him instead. "Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to try to apologise and have it thrown back in your face?"
Duo's eyebrows went up under his fringe. "I accept," he answered evenly. "Now let me apologise for flirting with you for a decade because you were my back-up guy."
"Yeah." A woman went by pushing a crate of eggplant. Heero watched her pass. "That did kind of confuse the issue."
OH JESUS HOW DID NO ONE EVER TELL ME ABOUT TB AND MARSH AND THE CODE OF SILENCE SERIES. OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS IS EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER WANTED FROM A GUNDAM WING FANFIC EVEN IF 2x3x2 HAS NEVER, EVER, EVER BEEN MY PAIRING, EVER.
---
On a whim I went out looking for Gundam Wing fanfic, because I found that fandom in like 2000 and never really read anything since. Trust me, my taste when I was like 12 was as shitty as you would expect, and upon rereading them today, all I could think was how did I ever take myself seriously? So I ran some very basic google searches for GW fic recs. The one that brought me to "Code of Silence" said that the story was such a mindfuck the reader couldn't even bear to move onto the sequel because they were so afraid of it. Mindfuck? People being awful to one another? A long plotty dark story? Unrequited 1+2? I am all over that shit like white on rice.
Except what I found wasn't a mindfuck at all. Yeah, it was plotty and dark, but it didn't make me feel afraid the way the word "mindfuck" usually makes me afraid. Instead, it was one of those wonderful, intelligent, gritty, and horrifyingly dysfunctional stories that take all the trappings of the Gundam Wing world and made them real, adult, human, instead of Sunrise's happy fun dollhouse world of fake politics and plastic issues.
The plot in "Code of Conduct" is simple. Duo is found at the scene of a murder. Heero and Wufei arrest him, partly because they're Preventers, but partly out of a sense of personal betrayal. It soon becomes obvious that Duo is covering up for someone, and that it's one of the pilots. But who? Duo calls on Trowa for help, and Trowa calls on Quatre for a lawyer, and before you know it, everything is a perfect storm of legal battles, relationship drama, and leftover trauma from the war that no one wants to talk about. There's past shit that went down between Duo and Trowa, of course, and Trowa's motivations are vague, if not out right opaque when it comes to what he wants from Duo and how far he's involved. While most of the mysteries are revealed about halfway to two-thirds of the way into the story, I still found myself holding my breath and banging my head against the table all the way down to the very last scene. The pacing is masterful and the writing, while nothing mindblowing, is still enviable, if only because it makes you want to buy into a world where Trowa would call Duo "baby".
There are so many wonderful places TB and Marsh have taken the pilots and the supporting cast, and that it's all so believable is what makes "Code of Silence" frightening. Quatre's naive and heartfelt compassion is still preserved, every inch of it, but it's deepened, made world-weary, and paired with a very tender portrayal of the pragmatic romance developing between him and Relena. Wufei has all his edges, his egoism, his arrogance, his perverted sense of right and wrong, but years of working in the Preventers and growing up and rounding out is palpable from every pore, so that he's a compelling character even if he never becomes sympathetic. Duo in all his absurdities and honesty issues and neediness and charm and brashness and insecurities has never been more on display, nor better displayed. TB and Marsh have transformed Heero's dogged focus, his cookie-cutter heroism, his woodness, into the perfect vision of a man who is still caught in limbo, between a childhood that forced him to be an adult and an adulthood spent trying to develop real emotions like a child. And Trowa, god, Trowa. When I was rewatching Gundam Wing at Rice with one of my freshmen, it struck me more than ever that of all the pilots, Trowa was the one who was most convincing at pretending to have it all together but was actually the one who had already lost his marbles long before the show even started. And in "Code of Silence", his restrained maniac tendencies, his completely inability to trust in someone or to connect on a human level with other people in a meaningful way, even his cold-blooded dedication to calculating the right persona for every situation, is so perfect
But the best thing is that when it comes to the post-war world of Gundam Wing and the post-war unit of the Gundam pilots, "Code of Silence" is pitch perfect. As fans we often forget that the pilots were never given time to just chill out and be friends; the closest we ever got was Quatre and Trowa's somehow instinctual ability to befriend each other despite lack of communication or personality similarities. And "Code of Silence" is unflinching in examining just what the Gundam pilots mean to each other when they're no longer all piloting Gundams or even fighting a war. How can they handle the fact that they both know each other too well and don't know each other at all? That they've seen the best and worst of each other throughout the years, maybe never see each other at all anymore but are sick of each other all the same? That they both want to have nothing to do with their shared history and yet know that that is the realest connection any of them will ever have with another human being? This push-pull, whether it's between Wufei and Heero as Preventer partners who are forced to arrest one of their own, between Duo and Trowa as ex-fuck buddies who maybe are trying for the second time for something more, between Quatre and Relena as leaders of the new world who understand all too well the emotional blindnesses that gripped them when they were younger, is never forced, but seem so naturally part of the world that you can't believe it was never really examined in the series itself. That's how effortless "Code of Silence" seems.
Every semi-relationship that may have been established in the series itself, "Code of Silence" takes it and runs with it to this new landscape, this complicated tangled minefield of discomfort and imperfections. Quatre and Trowa's almost-too-pure-to-be-believed friendship? Unraveled and bandied about with Trowa kissing Quatre in a courtroom during Duo's trial (then further pushed in "Code of Conduct" with a heartbreaking kind of clarity). Relena and Heero's frequently mocked but never completely dismissable romance? Part and parcel of her and Quatre's courtship. And as the excerpt suggests, there is enough exploration of Heero and Duo's hopeless and yet frustratingly hopeful relationship to last a whole series of LJ posts. "Code of Conduct", the sequel, is no less enthralling for the same reasons. What happened to Zechs and Noin? Where do we put Dorothy in relation to Relena and Quatre? What about Wufei and Duo? "Code of Conduct" even features a reprise of Trowa and Heero's post-self-destruction talk, one of those pivotal 1x3 moments that no good slash fan forgets, and it comes complete with musings about Catherine and awkward jokes that make Trowa laugh.
"Code of Conduct" is unfinished and was last updated in 2008, so I don't really hold out hope for it to be completed any time soon. Still, though, I wouldn't not read it just because you're stuck wondering what's going to happen. For one, "Code of Conduct" very thoroughly and mercilessly takes you past the happy note, if not completely Happy Ending, of "Code of Silence". I mean, when you have two characters like Trowa and Duo developed the way TB and Marsh do in "Code of Silence", it's impossible to expect their relationship will be puppies and rainbows forever. And it isn't in "Code of Silence." The sequel isn't about trying to break your heart. What you get is the sense that there's more that TB and Marsh wanted to do in "Code of Conduct", but that they were restrained, by the plot and by the need to establish the fab five just the way they wanted. So "Code of Conduct" is about expansion: about giving Duo a point of view after he's merely observed all through "Code of Silence", about examining more of Trowa's reasons for being the way he is, about pitting the domestic healthy happiness that Relena wants to achieve against the frenzied turbulent mess that is everyone else's past with each other, about how far behind them the characters have left the war, if at all. It's a great continuation of "Code of Silence", and I devoured it with the same enthusiasm as the original series.
TB and Marsh may be masters of angst elsewhere-- I haven't read anything else by them. Yet. But "Code of Silence" and its sequel aren't really angst. It's just that their authors aren't interested in giving you any easy answers. The show gave you easy answers, first in the series' ending, and then in the OVA, where it seemed that when the war ended, everything would be sunshine and happiness. But you know realistically it can't have been. Ripping a couple of kids out of their lives and making them pilot large war machines, then letting them be pawns to a 14 year old trying to be Napoleon, never ends in sunshine and happiness. So "Code of Silence" is more like an exercise in the tenacity of the human spirit. They're odes, however multi-layered and tortuous, to the ability of people who are almost damaged beyond the point of repair to still find one another. At one point Trowa compares, guiltily, all of the pilots to rats. Scavenge, survive on next to nothing, he says.
"We don't ever talk about this stuff," Duo then replies. "Why didn't we ever?"
"I don't like dredging this shit up."
"You don't like dredging any shit up."
"No. I don't." Duo had his therapists, Quatre would have Relena... Wufei could go fuck himself, and Heero too. Trowa said, "Sublimation is comfortable."
"Only until you can't avoid a confrontation any longer."
"I'm talking to you now."
And really, that's what "Code of Silence" is. It's the pilots, through the mouths of TB and Marsh, talking to you now.