24-Feb-2003
Title: Street Of Dreams 7/??
Author: Lasha Lee
Email: anakerie@cinci.rr.com
Disclaimer: I don't own GW.
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4, various.
He was being stared at.
Not openly. He couldn't tell who was doing it, but he could feel the eyes on him anyway. He wished he could believe that he was just being paranoid, but he knew that wasn't the case. Here, there was no such thing as being too cautious.
Still, he tried to mask what he was feeling as he sat across from Jazz and Linra and chatted with them. Mostly he and Jazz listened as the sisters caught up with each other's lives, and Rosie demanded stories about Nadia. They couldn't see his heart pounding, of course. They didn't know how truly afraid he was; and they weren't going to know.
Not for himself. Although he loved his life, his friends, his family, he was not afraid to die. He wasn't sure that he believed in the human idea of a glorious heaven, but if there was such a thing, even a small chance, then at very least he'd get to see his mother again. No, death didn't scare him.
It was living without the people he loved that terrified him.
If his Wronith blood lend to violence, Rylan was afraid of those around him getting caught up in it. If the Deran Pure hated anyone more than Wronith, it was people who sympathized with them. Or in the case of Rosie, married them. They'd kill her as quick as they'd kill him, and everything inside of him screamed to get her off of this planet and back to the security of Earth as fast as he could.
"You okay?"
Jazz's voice startled him, and Rylan jumped a bit. "Yeah, sorry. Just... not all here, I guess."
"Rylan... " Rosie asked gently.
"I'm okay." He tried to give her a reassuring smile. "A little edgy. That's all."
Jazz didn't press, he noticed his young brother-in-law was pale, and that his long fingers traced absent patterns on the table-cloth, and he felt a wave of pity that he knew Rylan would hate.
He remembered the skinny, terrified little boy he'd pulled out of an air duct all those years ago. How brave Rylan had tried to be, how he'd put aside his fear to do what he knew he had to. Like tonight; he was determined to give his wife a celebration dinner, and nothing was going to stop him from doing that. It didn't mean the fear was any less.
"Sorry about your wait. Can I take your order?" A kid; Jazz pegged him about 18, had finally made his way to the table, and he didn't meet their eyes.
The women ordered, and a motion from Rylan indicated for Jazz to go next, but when the older man was finished the young waiter began to quickly walk away.
"Hey." Jazz called. "One more here." He nodded to Rylan.
The boy finally turned around and shuffled back toward their table. Jazz rolled his eyes and Rylan had to smile as he gave his own order and the kid left.
"Dad and Papa got me a job in a seafood place when I was 17." Rylan remembered, laughing. "I was horrible at it. I kept tripping over my own feet and spilling drinks all over the place. I lasted about a week before they fired me."
"Wait. Quatre let someone fire his precious baby boy and didn't pitch a fit about it?" Jazz teased.
"Oh, he wanted to. But Papa wouldn't let him. He said I had to learn from my mistakes. I was pretty ticked off about that; I felt like the owners of the restaurant were just picking on me. Papa let me rant about it for a little bit until I started saying it was because of... because I'm part Wronith." He closed his eyes briefly. "As soon as I said that he just went off on me. I mean, Papa doesn't lose his temper that often. You know that. But he did then. He told me that I was never to use that as an excuse for my own failures. It touched a nerve. It made me able to distinguish between real bigots and the ones I'd been seeing everywhere."
"When you're that age, everyone is out to get you." Linra remembered. "I blame our parents, though. I mean, we grew up believing we were little princesses and princes. Then all of a sudden bam, we're adults, and we're not cute enough to get away with murder any longer. It's a shock."
"You'd think they'd give us some warning." Rosie complained. "But you're right; they overprotect us for years, and then act all amazed when we don't have a clue how the real world works."
"Try spending the first nine years of your life on a spaceship." Rylan shrugged. "The first time I saw a thunderstorm I panicked. I thought Earth was being invaded. It took Dad and Papa three hours to find me; they were freaking because they thought I was outside in the storm. Talk about culture shock! Growing up felt exactly like that."
The young waiter returned to their table. He sat down a plate in front of everyone, except Rylan, and turned to leave again.
"Excuse me." Rylan called politely.
The kid muttered something under his breath, and Rylan flushed red to hear him say "No excuse." He turned to leave again.
"HEY!" Jazz jumped to his feet and grabbed the kid's arm. "You stop right there, you little punk!"
"Jazz, it's okay." Rylan was shaking. "Don't make a scene. Please."
"Let go of me." The kid was trembling. For one thing he was about half of Jazz's size. For another, Jazz looked ready to commit murder.
"I want your manager. You have 10 seconds." Jazz spat. "9, 8... " The kid took off, and Jazz sat back down.
"Ry?" Rosie put her arm around him, but he jumped to his feet, brushing her off. "I'm not hungry any more." He felt the eyes of the other diners on him as he stalked toward the transporter, and he wheeled around to glare at them, enjoying the fear in their eyes. Good, let them be afraid. Let them think he was a monster. For a moment the Wronith in him surged, drowning out his mother's tamer Setan blood.
A strong arm closed around his waist and led him firmly outside of the restaurant.
"Take a breath." Jazz ordered. Rylan glared at him as well, but Jazz wasn't one to tremble for anyone.
"I want them to die!" The younger man whispered. "Help me Jazz. I wanted them all to die."
"I know. But how are you going to change how they feel about Wronith if you just prove all their stereotypes true?"
"Maybe they're not stereotypes." Rylan argued. "Maybe they're right about me. About what I am. Maybe I'm just fooling myself that I can ever be anything else."
"Do you really believe that?" Jazz asked gently. "I've seen plenty of humans act just like that." He leaned back against the wall with one foot. "I was about ten. It was about the time of the first really big influx of people from Earth and the Colonies started coming here. We'd all gotten a little relaxed in those years, I guess. Deran ideas aren't always Earth ideas, and we'd forgotten about that.
"Well, this Earth-style restaurant opened up and Pops and I were in heaven. It'd been forever since we'd had any really good, greasy Irnao food and we counted the days until they finally opened for business. So we all went there on opening day; me and Linra and Rosie and our folks. It was full of Irnaos, and we still didn't think much about it.
"So we're sitting there eating, and Pops has chocolate malt all over his face. Ojisan started laughing and kissed some of it off."
Jazz sighed. "This big guy comes up to our table a minute later, and introduces himself as the owner. Then he tells Pops and Ojisan to get out, that his restaurant is a family place and he doesn't want 'their kind' there."
Rylan sucked in his breath. Either Quatre and Trowa avoided places they knew they'd be unwelcome, or they'd protected him from the prejudice that still remained on Earth. He thought it must be the latter, and he felt ashamed.
"I think Pops might have just decked the guy but Rosie got scared and started crying. He picked her up and we all walked out, and my father turned around at the door, looked him in the eye, and said "Dera doesn't want your kind here either."
"They just left, like that?" Rylan was disappointed. "They didn't even try and fight back? They let him win?"
"Hardly." Jazz grinned. "I'm not sure exactly how they did it, but they ruined his business. He was forced to pack up and go home within a month. But they used brain instead of brawn to bring him down. I had a quick word with the manager. I'm one of his suppliers, you see. I get him good deals on my mutant veggies. Your little friend got sacked as soon as the manager saw whom he ticked off and we got a free meal out of it. Come back inside and eat with us. Please?"
"Okay." Rylan's arms and legs felt like lead. "Sorry for losing it."
"You're allowed once in a while. Now come on. As much as I love you, I am not giving up my dessert. They've got the best buttercake I've ever tasted."
"Stop it! Stop crying! I mean it!"
His hands closed on the little boy's shirt and he shook him.
"I hate you! I hate you! I want my mother! I want my mother!" The child struggled in the iron grasp, and the man reared back and slapped him across the face.
The little boy grabbed his cheek and wailed harder, drawing up into a little ball and rocking himself, sobbing for his mother, waiting for the man in inflict more pain. When the man sat down next to him, he cowered back, and his thumb slid into his mouth.
"Come on." The man said gently now. "You're too big for that. How old are you, three? Too big to suck your thumb like a baby. Look... I'm sorry that I lost my temper, okay? I'm not good with kids. You just made me mad with all the crying."
The child glared at him, shaking.
"Come on. You want to watch TV? Movies?"
"Mama." The child whispered.
"Look, kid. Your Mama is gone, okay? You know that. She's dead. She's not coming back. I'm all you've got right now. Just you and me. I bet your Mama taught you that you were supposed to obey your elders, right? I bet she'd been pretty upset if she saw you acting like a brat."
The boy looked confused, and the man pressed.
"I'll make you a deal, kid. You try and stop crying, and I'll try not to smack you when you make me mad. Give and take. But you live with me now. I'm not your Mama, and I'm not going to put up with you acting like a little cry-baby all day. You're mine now, and you're going to do as I say."
The child began to cry harder.
Heero wandered around the dark house, from room to room, not sure what he was doing or what he was looking for, but knowing that he couldn't stay in bed right now.
Most of the dream had vanished, but feelings still lingered. A pain in his face, fear, loss, loneliness. He tried to grab ahold of it, remember the details, but the harder he tried the more it slipped away.
He'd used the computer earlier to tap into the Earth and Colony databanks, trying to find any birth records fifty years ago for a Kato Dell, but of course it wouldn't be that easy. There was nothing. Either his birth had gone unregistered, or when J had gotten ahold of him he'd known perfectly well who he was and where he was from, and made sure that all records regarding him were destroyed. That seemed the most likely as far as Heero was concerned.
But had he been concerned about what others might find out about Heero, or what Heero might learn about himself? Both maybe?
He had no pictures of Odin Lowe, of course, but now he closed his eyes and envisioned the man's face, as clear to him now as it had been all those years before, when Odin had been all that he'd had in the world.
Nothing in that face was Heero's. Of course that didn't prove a thing, but he didn't think Odin was his real father. Somehow he got a feeling that Odin would have told him if that was the case, used it to his advantage. He was good at that, Heero remembered. Good at getting Heero to obey him without question.
"I'm it, kid!" Odin would say. "I'm all that stands between you and starving in the streets! Got that?"
But he wasn't always like that, Heero thought. There were times when the man had been gentle with him. Not playful, never that, but not as uptight, not as strict. He was proud of Heero; proud of how much the boy could do at such a young age, and like any child Heero had thrived on that pride, lived for it. He loved Odin; he craved any signs that the man loved him in return. They were few and far between, but they were there.
So if Odin wasn't his father, then who was? Where was he when the world ended?
Tomorrow Rosie was going to do the full-memory walk. Maybe tomorrow he'd get his answers.
End Part 7
(:./lasha/street7)
