This is an essay/explanation of sorts dealing with the frequent emails we get concerning Heero's characterization in Sainan no Kekka. We often get fans wondering why or how Heero could degenerate into the "Wing" character of SnK. It is true that Heero is a very strong character to begin with, and I did not at all mean for him to come across as pitiful, weak, or like he believes he deserves to suffer. The following came from an email I wrote to somebody explaining this:
What I should probably say first is that our backstory of Heero and where he came from and how he got to be the pilot of Gundam 01 differs completely from the one given in Episode Zero. If you've read Act 0, you'll know that we originally place Heero as from the Breaks on L1 as a homeless boy and drug runner.
I mention then in Acts 1 and 2 that Heero, after the war, went back home to L1 to find Doctor J. But Doctor J was dead, and what did Heero have left? He had no home, no family, because Doctor J was the only one for both. I said that the man who had replaced Doctor J, probably an assistant on Operation Meteor, wanted nothing to do with Heero. I don't blame him. He was probably smarter than most and realized that it was only a matter of time before the pilots' identities leaked. Imagine that happening, and then imagine yourself being that man and harboring a named terrorist under your wing. There would be terrible legal consequences for that that most people wouldn't dare to think about.
So then Heero, with no home, no family, and no one to go back to, faced a choice. He could either go back to Earth, to someone who could take him in. I mention that choice, that he had many friends, such as Quatre, who would be more than glad to act as surrogate family and help Heero get back on his feet. There was also Relena. And then Heero could have joined the Preventers.
But Heero in SnK didn't want that, and I really think that's what the Heero of GW would have chosen (obviously, or I wouldn't have written it.) It wasn't so much pride as a need - almost a driving madness - to go back HOME. Everyone else was going home, so why couldn't he? Why did he have to be taken in by someone? That was what he fought for - that the world would be at peace and that people WOULD be able to go home where they belonged. And if he would have asked for shelter from someone on earth, that would be negating his very mission for the past year. He would have failed himself.
Heero's home before Doctor J had been the Breaks. And since Doctor J was no longer an option, Heero fell back on option #1. He went back to the Breaks.
As a former drug runner and having been raised into the Breaks culture, I don't think that Heero would have found it so difficult to slip back into the culture. It's very hard to leave behind the shadow of your childhood when you're raised in that kind of violent environment, and by becoming an assassin, Heero was merging the two "roads" of his life into one - the Gundam pilot and the young Breaks homeless boy. It's hard to remember sometimes that Heero and the rest of the pilots are only 15 in the series, and Heero is at that point in his life where he has some hard thinking to do about who he is, where he is going, and what he wants in life. I don't think I'm wrong when I say that there was little time to do that in the way he was raised and during the war.
I don't think Heero knows what he wants. As long as there was a set mission driving him, he knew, because that was what Doctor J had trained him to do. Heero is a trained killer, an deadly efficient machine, a risk-taker and limit-pusher, and with the war over, he could no longer use most of those skills. One does not simply go from trained assassin one day to peaceful world-builder the next, no matter how hard he or Relena wanted him to.
As for the drugs, I also don't believe Heero consciously made a decision to start using the drugs the day he got back to the Breaks. As I mentioned, the drug culture is ingrained into the Breaks, and Atsuki and Darkflight were into them as well. Perhaps not as much as "Wing" was, but everyone did them. I think Heero would have probably tried to stay away from the drugs at first, but the strain of the lifestyle would have been too much even for him. I think he also felt guilty for sinking back into the life that Doctor J brought him out of. There are many factors to that. But try not to get too hung up on the drugs, because that is only one facet of SnK's Breaks Heero that defines him.
More than anything else, I wanted Heero in SnK to be someone at war with himself. There are two characters in SnK who do that - the other one is Wufei. But where Heero rebels in a physical manner, Wufei does so in a more mental manner. This is why the meeting with the two of them at Wufei's home in China holds such significance, because it helps each of them realize the war they have been fighting with themselves.
I don't think Heero thinks he deserves to suffer. WUFEI believes that he (Wufei) deserves to suffer. But Heero forgets because that is the only way he can go back to the Breaks he knew. He can't be Heero Yuy, savior of the world, and Wing, Breaks assassin, at the same time, because he is ashamed of who he has become and his longing for the past. This is why he renounces Heero Yuy when he goes back to the Breaks, and then again renounces Wing when he releases the memory of Atsuki and goes back to Relena and the Preventers.
Trowa and Duo are the two other homeless orphans in the story, and you will notice that both of them also go back home, to L4 and L2 respectively. They had the same mindset that Heero had: they wanted to go HOME.
What happened that made them different from Heero? Trowa and Duo were kicked out forcefully. Someone gave them a slap and said "What are you doing here? Get out and make something of yourself! You don't belong here anymore!" In Trowa's case, that was his Yakuza oyabun. In Duo's it was Hilde. Both were people who had looked after them, loved them for a long time, and wanted the best for them.
Heero didn't have that. So he stayed.
Do I think my SnK Heero was wrong? Yes, I definitely do. And the SnK Heero knows what he is doing is wrong too, but that doesn't stop him from doing it, because Heero is the kind of person to push himself to the limit in everything he does, to the brink of death, even, because that, in his mind, is the only way he knows that he gave his all.
You might still not agree with me, but I do think that I have very good reason for characterizing Heero the way I did, based on our Operation Meteor backstory. Now, if SnK were completely canon, what would Heero have done? Probably not gone back to L1 and gotten into drugs, because if we take Odin Lowe and Ep Zero into account, Heero was brought up in a totally different environment.
