19-Mar-2000
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing and the G-boys are someone else's property. I'm just
renting them.
Hi hi...fic for you! Nanashi Chronicle is pretty much what it says, it
takes place on the space-hangar-thingie that Trowa lived on while
Heavyarms was being built. Umm the style is a little different because
I was trying, in my own sad pathetic way, to convey Trowa's lack of
self (which I always thought was his main problem. He didn't lack
personality, he just believed that he did). Umm...I got the story from
stuff I've read online about the pilot's pasts, so if I got anything
wrong, I'm terribly sorry (really! I hate getting stuff wrong, I'm so
anal that way). Anywho...um, I don't own GW, feedback appreciated and thanks for reading!
"You okay?"
Nanashi looked up. A tall blonde man bent over him, a half-smile on his face.
When he failed to reply, the man crouched beside him, elbows on his knees and hands dangling between, weaponless. "My mother always told me," he confided, still almost-grinning, "'If it's on the floor, pick it up; if it's dirty, clean it; if it's hungry, feed it; and if it's sad, cheer it up.'" Now the grin appeared in full, lightening the rough-hewn face and sending sparks shooting in the blue eyes. "You look like you could use 'em all. Where do you want to start?"
Nanashi did not smile, though the man was quite engaging. He placed aside the tool he was cleaning with an oily rag, and began another. However, his one visible eye did not leave the man's face.
After a moment, he was presented with a thick-fingered hand. "Trowa Barton," he was told proudly. "What's your name, little guy?"
"He doesn't have one," another man answered, passing by. "Pay him no mind. If he bothers you, just tell him scat; he goes quickly enough when it suits him."
"No bother yet." Barton stood, watching for a response from the boy. There was none. One agate-green eye turned back to his work. "What's wrong with him?" he asked the scientist with the strange nose-piece.
"He can hear you quite clearly," the scientist told him drily. "There is nothing wrong with him except that he knows how to hold his tongue too well for a boy his age. The simulation is ready for you. Are you coming?"
Barton nodded. He tossed a two-fingered salute to the boy. "See you later, no-name." He strode away, a man full of confidence and in the prime of his life.
The scientist paused in the act of following the pilot. He gazed back at the boy, for a moment wondering if there wasn't something a little strange about him, after all.
Then Barton called his name, and he put it out of his mind. There was still a great deal to accomplish, and less and less time to get it done.
Nanashi awoke to the sounds of the great space-bay doors opening.
He recalled that they were receiving a shipment of the precious materials they were running so dangerously short on, and the Sweepers who supplied them with those semi-legitimate resources were good men, boisterous and friendly and unphased by the cold space that furnished their livelihood. Nanashi rather liked them... that is, they never bothered him.
Ah--but there was a boy with them this time!
Nanashi stood in the shadow of a giant broken furnace and watched the Sweeper boy help unload the first round of replacement tools. He very rarely saw children his own age, and then always at a distance. How strange this new boy looked to Nanashi.
He was small, smaller even than Nanashi, though he seemed about the same age. His hair was very long, tied back in a smooth chestnut braid that swayed gracefully with his movements. He wore a ratty blue sweater and he laughed often.
To Nanashi, it was all utterly foreign.
The unloading went slowly, held up by the lack of organisation and the mercenaries' determination to be useless. Nanashi helped, and the Sweepers were kind to him because of that, slipping him little pieces of candy and patting his shoulders or ruffling his hair. But he didn't see the boy again, except for a swishing tuft of chestnut hair flying around a corner, or a flash of faded blue.
The Sweepers retired to their own ship by nightfall, and the mercenaries, who had really done very little all day, gathered in a group in a corner of the space-hangar. Nanashi, in no mood to join them, set himself to finding a broom and sweeping up all the dust that had been stirred by the day's activity. He applied himself with such concentration that he didn't immediately hear the music.
The mercenaries had procured--likely from the very Sweepers who were docked here now--a radio. Nanashi was very fond of music in general, and his curiosity pulled him back toward the men despite his intense reluctance to be near them. And so he saw the boy again.
Dancing.
He was in the very centre of the men, a slender figure in that frayed blue sweater and loosened trousers, undulating provocatively in time to the heavy beat of the music. The men were hooting and laughing, gathered thick around him to slip credits into his pockets and pull at his long braid until it fell apart into a glowing curtain that swirled madly with his movements.
Nanashi held his breath, unaware that he was even doing so, and stared wide-eyed from the darkest shadows. There was something sensual and seductive about the boy, a smoldering lushness even at his young age that he was probably aware of, but unsure at that young age how to use properly. Even as he whirled and swayed his laughter rang out in the quiet, almost innocent, almost pure. But the thrusting of his hips had become deliberate and suggestive. Sweat gleamed on his face and his eyes were huge and bright, and now and then he missed a beat in his dancing as one of the men would catch his arm or steal a kiss from his breathlessly parted lips. Nanashi hid in the shadows and stared, wondering how the boy could endure those touches, those burning gazes--how he could throw his head back and laugh as voices rose shouting offers of money, each one raising the price in hopes of winning him.
How could he finally slip away into the darkness with the highest bidder, already shedding his clothes and tossing that heavy chestnut hair in blatant invitation?
Nanashi wondered if he was glad he couldn't see any more, or disappointed.
The Sweepers stayed two more days, completing the unloading and keeping to themselves during the "night" hours. They had been barred from exploring the cavernous hangar, in fear that they would discover the giant Gundam machine being built, but the Sweepers were interested only in their profit and asked no questions. Only the Sweeper boy ever ventured beyond the dock, and then only to dance for the men and bed with whomever paid him highest.
Nanashi liked the Sweepers. He thought it wouldn't be so bad to be one, but he knew that he would never be allowed to leave the hangar, with his knowledge of the secret construction. So he merely watched.
It was perhaps inevitable that the Sweeper boy would find him. In a way, Nanashi had hoped he would leave and be forgotten; in a way, he was very glad that he would have a memory of the boy to keep. It was late at night and the Sweepers would depart with the morning; the boy had danced and disappeared into the shadows with two different men. And now the boy had come into Nanashi's little dim workplace and settled beside him, for all the world as if invited, though Nanashi never said a word.
"Hello," the boy said, grinning widely. He had a dimple in his right cheek and his eyes were violet, not blue like Nanashi had thought. Dust shook from his wild hair with every movement.
After a moment, the boy repeated his greeting, in Spanish, then French, then a language that Nanashi didn't recognise. He realised the boy would keep trying until he responded, and that uncommon persistance startled him into replying.
"Hello," he answered finally, in English.
The boy laughed a little. "You're Nanashi," he announced. "I heard them call you."
Flat agate eyes followed the constant movement of the slight warm body beside him.
"You must get pretty bored out here--always the same view. How did you end up with the mercenaries? I'm from L2--sort of. I was born somewhere else but I don't know where for sure anyway and so L2 it is. Are you from Earth or one of the colonies? I want to see Earth. But someday I'll go home, to L2 that is, and that's what I really want, you know? Just to go home."
Nanashi did not reply to any of this, but it seemed the Sweeper boy didn't really expect answers. He just seemed to like to talk--like Barton, when he was in the mood and wanted Nanashi to listen.
"I bet if I could stay longer, we'd be friends," the boy said. "I don't have many friends my age. There aren't any other kids here, are there?"
Silently Nanashi shook his head. Only Nanashi and the Sweeper boy who whored himself to mercenaries.
Somehow the boy seemed to guess what he was thinking. "Does it bother you?"
He shook his head again, but more slowly. No, it didn't matter what the Sweeper boy did--but Nanashi knew he could never have done it. He could never had found enjoyment in those heavy hands on his body--couldn't have pretended to.
The Sweeper boy was watching him with his bright violet eyes. "You should always make them pay for what they take, somehow. That way, you're always the one in control. That way, you don't ever have to be afraid of them."
He could never take money for that.
"Not just money," the boy said, and his voice was very hard. But then he brightened again. "What works for me doesn't always work for--other people." He stretched and cracked his spine repeatedly. And then he surprised Nanashi for the final time by leaning toward him and kissing him very gently on the mouth. Nanashi's eyes widened slightly, and he held very still. It was the first time he had ever been kissed and... ...and found it--not unpleasant.
"Maybe I'll see you around, Nanashi," the Sweeper boy said, and stood. He grinned. "Come to L2. Someday, I'll be there." And then he was gone, running off lightly into the shadows, and Nanashi did not think that he would ever see the Sweeper boy again, nor would the Sweeper boy remember him if they did.
But that was not unpleasant either.
Nanashi's time on the space-hangar was slowly coming to a close.
Nanashi felt it in the air. He could not have said how he knew, or what it meant, or even where he was going--but he knew he was ready. All he had left to do was wait.
He saw Trowa Barton more and more often now. He had known many men like the brash and arrogant pilot; some had been better men, others so terrible that he did not remember them fondly. But there was something about Trowa Barton that made him stand out, in Nanashi's mind: He was the first man, aside from the Sweeper boy, to notice the silent Nanashi in his shadows.
On the lonely, quiet evenings when the mercenaries retired early, Barton would find him alone repairing machinery and would sit down and talk to him. Sometimes, when he liked to drink a little too much, he would pay Nanashi a credit or two to help him back to his room. The other mercenaries stole the credits from him more often than not, but that didn't matter. The times that Nanashi treasured most were their companionable silences, when Barton woud only sling an arm over Nanashi's narrow shoulders, and sit.
Then, one night, Barton gave him an incredible gift. He helped the slender boy climb the scaffolding up to the barred cockpit of the gigantic, magnificent Gundam machine, and let him sit in the pilot's chair. He even keyed the screens to life, and explained their working. Nanashi was enchanted.
Someday, he thought, I could make this fly.
Barton watched his little friend with an anticipatory grin. Oh, that boy's hands were so sure on the controls, you'd think he'd been born in a Gundam.
"Hey, no-name," he said finally, breaking the spell. "Tell me something. You don't belong with those animals you came here with. What're you going to do when you're grown up and don't need them anymore?"
It was largely rhetorical. Nanashi never answered him, even when Barton asked him direct questions; it was simply the silent boy's nature. But this time, Nanashi looked up, his one visible jade-like eye gleaming slightly in the electronic lighting, and spoke.
"I want to go to Earth." His voice was very soft, but precise and lilting. "I want to see the Earth."
Barton nodded slowly. "Yeah. I bet you would. No-name. Nanashi. You know what, I'll make you a deal. You dump these mercenaries and agree to follow my orders instead, and I'll take you to Earth."
Nanashi blinked, the only indication that he was startled.
Trowa reached out and affectionately rubbed his hand roughly over the boy's light brown hair. "Think of it, kid," he laughed. "You and me, with all of Earth and forever."
Nanashi was not stupid. The machine he sat in now was, though beautiful and awesome, a machine of war. It would inflict death and destruction. The man who was to pilot it stood perched on the scaffolding outside the cockpit, his head and wide shoulders blocking the light from the hatch; his wide grin provided the warmth of supreme confidence. In his arrogance this man planned to descend on Earth like an avenging god, and there was no compromise in the blood-shot blue eyes.
Nanashi did not answer. He caressed the controls with sensitive fingers one last time, and then slithered agilely out the hatch. He had work waiting for him.
Earth would wait, too.
End Part 1
(:./erin/nanashi1)
