Templum Bellonae

(Link is to GWA main page)

Also Quatre/other.

A Quatre-centred fic, miracle of miracles. You may have realised that 1×2 is my OTP, but I like all the pilots, so this story is a refreshing chance of pace.

Feeling stifled and trapped in his role as businessman, Quatre takes a year off to go to university.

Nothing Like The Sun by Sol 1056

(Link is to GWA main page)

Five years after Endless Waltz, Heero hasn’t kept in touch with the other pilots. When he hears that Duo and Trowa have disappeared, he decides to go looking for them himself.

This is a very long and satisfying story. I’m particularly fond of post-war stories where one of the pilots (usually Heero, which is pretty much canonical) has been out of contact with the others, and has to work to understand the changes that have taken place in his absence. Sol 1056 makes the best of that plotline in this story; she doesn’t oversimplify and never takes the easy way out.

The Drums of Heaven by Sol 1056

(Link is to GWA main page)

This isn’t a story that’s easy to summarize, so I’ll let the author do it for me, as I so often do:

This story grew out of my wish to respond to the seemingly endless number of stories revolving around the topic of slavery, especially those that focus on breaking or torturing a person past their point of resistance. Sometimes reading those becomes excruciating, since so many seem to revel in a concept that I find personally abhorrent, when put into reality: removing all free will from a person, and destroying their spark of individuality. And worse, few investigate the process involved in surviving (let alone healing from) such an experience. So I decided I would.

Part of the bleakness will be as the back-story becomes clear. Expect physical abuse, violence, torture, and possible squick situations. Also expect gallows humor, surprising light-hearted moments, and behaviors that make no sense from a rational point of view.

It is not a pretty picture. And the simple fact is that I can’t necessarily promise a happy ending in the traditional sense, where everything ends up back to ‘normal,’ because I can’t find anything in the medical or psychological information that indicates that a person – after surviving such an intense psychological breakdown – will ever be truly ‘normal’ again. You’re also going to read a lot of questions raised by performing such a horror, and the two main characters will also be raising ethical questions about their own roles in the recreation of an individual. Some of their positions and conclusions may surprise you, and some may upset you.

I’ve done a great deal of research for this story, and I’m trying to stick to as realistic an extrapolation as possible. Now that you’re braced for impact, I will assure you that I believe in the strength of a human being to come up with a way to fight even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. To paraphrase Trowa’s words in the first chapter, none of the characters in this story are going to go gently into any damn night.

This story is less romantic or sexual than psychological, but it’s none the worse for that.

Broken Jade by Sol 1056