Okay, here we go…. (Croik rolls up her sleeves)
What evidence is
there that it could work?
Treize is very pleased with Wufei’s strength and courage after their duel (ep 8)
Treize allows Wufei to kill him (ep 48)
Wufei cries after having killed Treize (ep 48)
Even up through Endless Waltz Wufei is fighting Treize: “I continue to fight him, even now.” (EW ep 3)
Wufei spends a lot of time away from the group, sulking on his own, and it’s not really known what he did during those times. It is possible that he went back to Treize, seeking a rematch, answers, or even consolation. Pilots in this era, especially those with Wufei and Treize's high moral standards, are few and far between. If either realized that they were the same, it's not inconceivable that they would seek companionship in each other.
To Treize, Wufei is someone like him—a soldier that lives up to his perfect ideals. At the same time he is still young, with room to grow and change. Though Treize may often act like a pretty boy, he nonetheless is put under a lot of pressure to uphold his ideals. He may welcome understanding from anyone, even an enemy. To Wufei, Treize is a symbol of power—the first person to best him in combat. He is the ultimate ideal of a soldier, with strength, dignity, honor, and cunning. Wufei would probably accept nothing less than that kind of strength when choosing a lover.
What evidence is
there that it wouldn’t work?
Treize treats Wufei with no better attitude than he treats Heero, and even says to Heero, “Meeting you has been the greatest pleasure of my life.” (ep 3?)
When Treize meets Wufei in outer space during the final battle he says, “Ah, it’s that kid.” If they were having any kind of physical relationship prior to that fight, he probably would have addressed him less vaguely. Maybe “Ah, it’s him,” or “it’s you.”
WUFEI WAS MARRIED. Yes, it was an arranged marriage, I realize that. However, Wufei cared enough for his wife that he named his Gundam after her—all of his Gundams. Everything Wufei does is in honor of Meiran (Nataku). Though whether or not he loved her cannot be fully answered, he certainly puts a lot of faith in her memory. This leads to several reasonable assumptions:
Wufei is not homosexual. Though honestly it can’t be proven for absolute certainty, but he certainly reacts to Sally—a female figure—easier than anyone else. It's also been stated by the creators that Wufei slept with his wife; they did consummate their marriage. Wufei is not someone who does things he doesn't want to, especially when it comes to something as personal as sex; even before he married Meiran, he gives an air of being totally independent, not caring about whatever anyone else does or what they think of him. Neither Wufei nor Meiran were enthusiastic about their wedding to begin with. With two people as stubborn as them, it would have been easy to ignore whatever their parent's wishes were and not sleep together. But they did—a fact which speaks for itself.
Wufei would not sleep with the enemy. The war is his life, his purpose. I find it unlikely that he would be able to entrust his heart completely to anyone given his delicate state of self-confidence, let alone to an enemy—for Meiran’s sake if nothing else. Betraying his mission means betraying himself, and her. And as was stated in the Wufei section, for Wufei to consciously seek any kind of comfort would only increase his feeling of weakness, making matters worse. Wufei is nothing if not honorable.
So why did Treize let Wufei kill him?
Since there isn't really a Treize section to this debate, I'll say most of what I have to say here. Treize is a man of honor. He believes in the glory of the human spirit, the beauty of battles, and the preservation of humanity. Unfortunately, Treize picked the most materialistic and superficial time period to live in. He is surrounded by corrupted officials, selfish dictators, ugly engineers, and every other kind of life-sucking power hungry force in the world. The future is not a world for Treize Kushranada. He fights against it, tries to create soldiers with his same love of humanity and morality, but without success—even Lady Une, who he refers to as "the person closest to me," fails to understand his true intentions until nearly halfway through the series.
There are only a few people that have the capacity to understand Treize's ideals, and even fewer that can live by his same principles. Zechs and the Gundam pilots are those people—of course he attaches to and admires them. They are the only people he can depend on to help him carry through his ideals—ideals he has suffered to maintain through a cruel world.
Wufei was the first of the Gundam Pilots he met face to face—at the end of a sword, no less. Of course he respected Wufei's courage and honor in accepting such a challenge. Wufei is even closer to Treize's idea of a perfect soldier than Zechs. If Treize were going to die, he would accept nothing less than to be defeated by someone he knew was equal (or stronger) than himself. Thus, he allowed Wufei to kill him. He went into battle knowing he was going to die, and Wufei provided him with the perfect end.
However, this right was not saved exclusively for Wufei. Treize offered his gun to Heero in Luxemburg, suggesting that Heero take his life. And in the last battle, Treize gave Zechs the opportunity to kill him. These three are the only ones he would have allowed to do the honors of killing him. After all, Treize fought for a long time in the last battle before Wufei found him. It would have been easy to quietly perish in a battlefield such as that. But he waited for the death he wanted, at the hands of someone that understood him. Were Zechs and Heero not engaged in their own battle, it's probable that he would have allowed either to do the same.
So why was Wufei crying?
Treize is the
enemy. For the past year since
Meiran's death, Wufei has been training to defeat "the enemy." He sticks to the belief that once all
enemies are defeated, peace will come to outer space. In a world where most of the fighting is
done in mobile suits, Treize is the one person Wufei has fought face to face—the
one enemy with an identity. More
than that, Treize is the only one to have beaten him. Once Wufei reclaims his purpose, he
finally has a very specific target to focus on. As the leader of OZ, Treize is the head
evil, the most important target.
Killing Treize is very much like ending the war itself, and defeating
Wufei's own weakness.
Attaching that much importance to a person leads to conflict. Naturally Wufei wanted to kill Treize, but to lose him means to lose part of himself as well—the part that existed only to fight that one target. Treize is the focus of all his efforts. (For example, think of Goku and Vegeta—as soon as Goku was gone after Cell, Vegeta gave up fighting. He could never admit that he "won." Imagine if Saitou ever beat Kenshin—what would he do? Or when Saitou disappeared at the end of the Kyoto arc: Sano wouldn't admit his victory). Continuing to hate someone is much easier than moving on with your life. All of a sudden Wufei has lost his purpose, his center, and it's no wonder he ended up joining with Mariemea later on. His goal was accomplished before he was ready to finish it himself.
On a deeper level, Wufei didn't expect to live through his encounter with Treize. It's easier to die at the hand of someone you know is stronger than you than to continue living without purpose (note: same mentality that Treize had). He may have thought that Treize was more worthy of living than him. He may have been ashamed of himself for having sought death—wasting Meiran's sacrifice for him. There are dozens of different reasons for Wufei to be emotional after the death of an enemy, and only one of those is the possibility that they were lovers. It just proves how deep his character is.
In
Conclusion
Treize and Wufei are
very complex characters, being pulled in different directions and attempting to
validate their beliefs (and therefore themselves) amidst war and chaos. There is no simple explanation for the
bond of kinship they share—it's probably something that not many people will
ever understand, let alone experience.
Personally, I find their interaction not only captivating, but also
beautiful, having nothing to do with an unlikely physical relationship. Gundam Wing is a show about
purity—purity of connection between people's ideals, and these two are an
excellent example of it. They don't
need to be lovers to share that.
On to Zechs and Noin
