5-Jun-2002
Title: Cry of the Stormchild
Author: bonnejeanne (bonnejeanne@yahoo.com)
Category: shounen, answer fic
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: 1+2+5
Spoilers: none
WARNINGS: none that I can think of
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing characters and universe are the property of the copyright owners. Our stuff is ours. No money being made here.
As with all our fics, while our goal is to stay as in character as possible, any discrepancies are our mistakes.
Feedback: welcome
NOTES: This was written in answer to "Lightning on the Sea" because I felt like it ^__^. Dedicated to RavynFyre, a portable miracle in a nice, compact and attractive package, who always understands both the big things, and the little things. And dedicated to Von, whose beauty is so profound that most people miss it. Their loss, my gain.
From "Lightning on the Sea" by RavynFyre:
Howard had suggested that I might want to come inside on the bridge of the ship so I didn't get fried or catch pneumonia. For a second when Heero and Wufei had said the same things a few minutes ago, I couldn't help but smile at how much like Howard they'd sounded. Bunch of mother hens, I swear.
But it's cute, in a weird, over-protective kinda way.
~*~*~
"Contact with the rain and wind is going to lower your body temperature significantly," Heero pointed out.
The braided baka heard, 'You'll catch a cold!'
"Water conducts electricity," I growled.
Duo Maxwell heard, 'Come in before you get fried!'
I looked at Heero, he looked at me. The same thought registered in our heads at the same time: if all three of us stay out here in the storm, on the damn ferry, who's going to carry his giddy ass home and dry him off? And so we left him to delight in the storm, retreated to the bridge where we could stand by the window and watch.
No, not watch the storm. Watch him.
The storm *was* quite beautiful. It really wasn't much of a storm. The deck only bobbed a little, the seas were almost unnoticeable, or would have been to a sailor. To us, of course, our bodies were trained to sense any shift, every effect of gravity, and to endure significantly more shifts in roll and pitch than this little summer shower. There was no need to tie Maxwell to the mast, had there been one. He was in no danger of being tossed overboard. The temperature of the rain was just barely cool enough to sting a little. The lightning strikes seemed all on top of us, but in truth weren't really that close - there were plenty of taller objects stabbing up into the sky to entice the equalization of positive and negative ions that the risks of a strike on this squat little ferry were minute.
But to us it was something that hinted at the hand of a divine presence. Raised on man-made worlds, we appreciated the unlikelihood of life in the vastness of space. But the feeling of being surrounded by a storm on the shifting bosom of the blue planet made the presence of God, or the miracle of existence, something that reached out and surrounded one, live and present, next to the skin.
Maxwell heard what he expected to hear. Heero and I never told him to come in. We knew better, knew our fellow pilot and braided baka better than to even say such words. Watched him through the window as the rain pelted and the lightning flashed and drank in the attitude of his body, the expression on his beautiful face. What he saw in the lightning, we saw in him. Thank God, Heero once told me with his eyes, there is Duo. The unfettered one. His existence an impossible testament that there was hope for all of us. That what we were, what we'd seen and done, what we'd been made or become, might not forever dominate the unfettered souls we'd once been, so very long ago that we couldn't really remember.
Without a word between us, we knew the exact moment to leave the shelter of the enclosed deck, the instant he reached his body and soul out just to the edge of where we might lose him. Perhaps there might come a day when it would be cruel not to let him go, but that time would not come for a long, long while, not if I, Wufei, had anything to say about it. Reaching together from each side, we anchored him, took him back from the storm - no, earth-mother, you can't have him, he's ours, claimed, won, never to be relinquished.
The cry from his lips - an impossible welcome. Though between us we might anchor him, never did he seem to feel the weight as a fetter. The cry from my throat - a moment of freedom, when the rational, the proper, lost their hold on me and a purer self found its voice. The same cry from Heero - another rare testing of his newly emerging soul. The gifts we'd found between us, as much sheltered in the hands wet with spray that we held to so tightly as we had ever sheltered him.
The last roll of thunder drowned all our voices, even as the sky lightened, the rain slackened, and a break in the grey above allowed a patch of blue and a ray of lowering sunlight to turn the slight seas to a momentary sparkle. Rain-washed air filled our lungs as Colony air had merely met our needs. Selfishly, I thought that the Earth was worth saving. Not for those who called it home, but for us. For him. For those two most worthy and myself, who might forever fall short in my own eyes, but who could glimpse myself whole in theirs.
My secret: destiny was found. The rest? The most vital struggle to keep it, and to follow where it would lead. My guides - here before me and in my arms, a promise to be kept, a vow to be fulfilled, an act of courage I hardly dared believe myself capable of, a gift without price as unexpected and unstoppable as the storm.
~owari~
all my love to those who look deeper
Please send comments to: bonnejeanne@yahoo.com