January 26, 2001
Sequel to 'Have You Ever...'
Standard Warnings and Disclaimers apply.
They neared the two crippling ships, surveying the damage. Duo was the first to break the awed-silence.
"Whooie!" he exhaled. "It looks pretty well embedded."
Trowa nodded in agreement, taking into account the proportion of Peacemillion, which was thoroughly now a part of Libra. "It will be difficult to destroy just the Libra," he pointed out to the others.
A window opened on all five of their screens. "This is the Peacemillion," Sally's voice fed through their com. "While there's no threat of explosion... our engines are dead."
On their screens the blond boy nodded. "Understood," Quatre told the former Alliance doctor. "We'll try to seize control of the Libra from within. We'll destroy their Mobile Doll operating system and call for the White Fang's surrender. And..."
Quatre spared a brief look towards the longhaired boy on his display screens. "There's still the matter with Relena and Heero.... "
But the braided boy didn't seem to hear him. "Demolitions eh?" Duo looked down his chest, his face glowing with a light the others had begun to associate with 'Shinigami'. "Just like old times," he purred.
The uni-banged boy wasn't surprised when the serpent gundam broke away from the three others, though it was enough to catch Duo's attention. Trowa watched as Duo called after the Chinese pilot, watched the confused expression on the boy's face when the other brushed him off.
"Hey! Wufei!" Duo called, but Wufei didn't bother to respond.
"Let him go," Trowa told him, almost gently. "He has an old appointment to keep." 'Regain yourself, Chang Wufei,' he thought.
"Let's hurry to the Libra," Quatre urged them, eager for this whole mess to be over with already. The four remaining mobile suits began their descent into the depths of Libra before the white Taurus pulled away. "Noin?" Quatre called, concerned for his friend.
"I'm sorry... but... I..." the dark haired woman's soft voice came through their speakers.
"Please, go then, Noin...." Quatre told her, praying for his friend and the turmoil he knew she was suffering. A hangar door blasted open before them, and the three remaining gundams slipped inside, ready for some of that demolition Duo promised them.
~"Well, well, well. Look what I found."~
He was already on his fifth glass of--of whatever the hell it was he was drinking. It tasted terrible, but, after the third or fourth cup, he couldn´t taste it at all anymore. Everything was terrible. Horrible. His whole fucking life a screw-up. He knew. He didn´t need anyone to point it out to him. And today was just the icing on the cake as far as he was concerned.
The mechanics he´d hired to work for him had quit--every last one of them--when he refused to pay them up front. They´d simply set down their tools and walked out; leaving him alone on a completely deserted satellite with all the mobile dolls he´d promised Quinze half finished. Fine fucking dandy, he thought, tossing back the rest of his drink.
And then, this. The door to his office--if you could call the impromptu room decorated with some of his things, that.
And in the doorway, framed in hellish reddish light, was the bane of his existence. His little sister.
He hated her.
Complete, unadulterated hate. She represented everything wrong with him. Everything he hated and despised, was her. She self-assurance, her natural command, natural authority. Everything he lacked. Everything he was supposed to be.
***~~~Flashback~~~***
{SMACK}
The young boy fell to the floor, holding his scalding cheek. 'You are a disgrace to this family,' the dark-haired man boomed. 'To let a *girl* beat you!'
'But Daddy--!'
{SMACK}
'You're weak! Pathetic! How to you hope to become a man if you can't even keep a *girl* in her place!'
The blows rained down upon his small form. No one intervened.
*
The fourteen-year-old boy swallowed nervously. He and his half-sister, Doce, were the only two left. After his stepmother's funeral, all his little half-sisters were sent away, fostered out to different family and friends on different colonies, in different countries. Doce was still here, but she was scheduled to leave tomorrow. That would mean... he would be alone.
Most of his older brothers and sisters were away at boarding school. Most hadn't even bothered to come home for their stepmother's funeral. But he hadn't been accepted to any schools--his scores weren't high enough for the schools his father wanted to send him to, and so the boy was reduced to home tutoring until his scores improved enough for him to get out.
The day his last sister abandoned him was the last day of his childhood. The last day he'd retained any inkling of innocence.
The battle looked uneven to the untrained eye. The sheer multitudes of mobile doll drones attacking the limited number of Earth troops. But Wufei knew the skill of those few pilots outweighed the numbers of their enemies. Still, he aided one of the Earth pilots, destroying the mobile doll that had been about to destroy a human life.
The cry of the soldier almost brought a smug smile to the China man's lips. "A gundam?! A gundam is aiding us?!"
'Enjoy it,' Wufei thought. He slayed another soulless piece of metal. 'While it lasts. Today my fight is not with you.'
"Treize!" he called out over the open link. "When this fight is over... I'll test your justice!"
'And I will reclaim my honor!'
Heero donned the spacesuit with an efficiency that spoke of the numerous times he'd accomplished the task--after helping Relena into hers, of course. The five minutes it took her compared to the minute it took him, wasn't making her feel any bit an equal to the boy who fascinated her so.
"When we get to the Peacemillion, follow Howard's instructions and pull out of this area," he told her, not bothering to look up from his fastenings.
"I want to speak with my brother," she said, watching him snap the last pieces into place, "one more time."
"Impossible," Heero told her. He looked up, seeing the determination in her eyes--which he knew, deep in his gut, *couldn't* be a good thing--and sighed. "Zechs's firm in his resolve," he tried to explain, leaving the locker room and using the lesser gravitation force to carry him to ZERO's cockpit.
He called up to Peacemillion, letting them know he was going to be taking ZERO out.
"Heero...!"
He looked down at the girl, wondering if he should say something else. Reassure her...? When he was heading out to kill her brother? That didn't seem like a very good idea. In the end, he didn't say anything at all; just climbed into ZERO's cockpit and powered up the large mecha.
***~~~Flashback~~~***
'You know, men really can't be trusted with important stuff,' the eleven-year old taunted from the door way, twirling a strand of dark brown hair around her finger and chewing on a piece of gum, loudly.
'Go away,' he told the annoying little girl, staring down at the figures that announced bankruptcy and ruin as his inheritance. He could kill someone. In the three years since his father's death, his older brothers had managed to bleed dry every last penny of the family fortune; first making bad investments, then gambling the rest of it away.
Both his brothers were dead now... Which left *him* with their mess. He didn't see anyway avoiding complete failure.
'Men always find a way to screw things up. I think it has something to do with their genes,' the girl went on, smacking her gum again.
'I said, be quiet.'
'Nope, see, you're already messin' up,' the girl said pushing away from the doorframe. 'You said "Go away", which is definitely different from "Be quiet".'
'Then why don´t you leave!'
''Cause I don't want to,' she replied, chewing on that damn gum.
"You can't even handle a girl!" his father's words weighted upon him. "I'll show you how to handle a worthless woman. They're only good for one thing. Until you can behave like a man, I will treat you like a woman!"
He snapped, jumping on the eleven-year-old, beating her senseless until her cries gave way to silence. He yanked back on the long dark hair, forcing her face up to look at him.
'Women are only good for only thing,' he told her, wrenching her head so far back the he could see her trachea pushing out against the tender skin of her throat. 'Pleasing men.'
She hurled back and spat on him, her blood-clotted saliva trailing down his face. He backhanded her, sending her reeling to the floor and pounced. She flailed at him, attempting to claw his arms, his face, any bit of him she could reach. He slapped her again.
She kicked, screamed, tried to hit him back.
'You Will Mind Your Place!" he screamed at her. "*I* am the head of this family now! You will respect *me*!"
She stiffened, her whole body tense. And then she slumped against the floor, unresisting as he pushed her skirt up and began to rape her body. She took her first out of many mind trips--leaving an empty shell behind.
End of Part 29
Andrea Readwolf
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