13-Oct-2003
Title: Street Of Dreams
Author: Lasha Lee
Email: anakerie@cinci.rr.com
Part: 29/??
Disclaimer: Some of these people are not mine.
Warnings: Description of violence
Pairing: 1x2, various
"It'll be good for you, that's why."
"I'm not exactly in a partying kind of mood these days, you know?"
"Neither am I." My brother peered at me through his bangs, blowing them up and away from his face. "Which is exactly why we need to go. It's what Dad would want. He'd be miserable to think about us all sitting around in our sackcloth and ashes. Can't you just hear him?"
I laughed. "I'm not dead yet! Knock that off!"
"Exactly." Gage shrugged. He was wearing a black sweatshirt that was too big on him, and it slipped down one shoulder. "He'd be pissed enough to know I've put my classes on hold. He'd want us to remember that we're young, and that we won't always be young, and that we need to have a little bit of fun while we are."
I looked at his crazy living room, and his crazy pet (which was at the moment gnawing on the remains of a children's book called 'Stev is Afraid of the Transport'), and his crazy self, and I knew that he was right.
"Can I just spent the evening in your VR again? That's my idea of fun."
He bent down and picked up Flour, making the little animal wiggle in happiness. "He has this thing for the Stev series. I'm not sure I understand it, but he's enjoyed Stev is Afraid of the Monster Under his Bed, Stev is Afraid of Shuttles, and Stev is Afraid of the Ocean. Nadia thinks Stev is a complete and utter moron and donated the books to the Bonatar Education Foundation."
"Is Stev afraid of everything?"
"It appears so." Gage glanced at the remains of the book. "I'm thinking of writing my own with Stev as a teenager. 'Stev Is Afraid his Girlfriend is Pregnant'."
"Very cute. So can I get out of this stupid party or not?"
"No. The entire family is going to be there. Well, except for Luke, but who knows with him these days. Miracle of miracles your mother even convinced Meg to come along, although God only knows how she managed to pull that one off."
I shook my head. "She's not as bad as you think. This is just really hard on her. I'm not excusing what she's said or done but... "
"It's okay. I'm trying not to take it personally." He smiled, but his eyes became distant. "I gave Meg six kinds of holy hell her entire life; I can't expect her to get over that immediately. Can I, Flour?"
Flour licked his chin.
"God, it's so frustrating sometimes." I sighed. "I just want to go around and break something or attack someone or... "
"Same here." He nodded. "I mean, look at me. I spent most of my life gearing up to be a criminal mastermind. It's there... " He touched his chest. "It's like I'm constantly at war with myself. I know what I'm supposed to do, and I do it, but there's this other part of me that just wants to chuck it all and run wild again."
"So how do you cope with it? How do you handle it? When it gets too much?"
"VR. Or I just have Shan's father yell at me. But the VR part was Shan's idea. He said that I could do all the crazy things I wanted to in there, and no one would ever get hurt. It's not exactly the same, but I have fun with it. Sometimes I scare myself, though."
"How?"
"Well... do remember that old cartoon show, the Poff Tops?"
"Of course." The Poff Tops had been a community of fuzzy-haired, yellow people who had lived on roofs and in storm drains. They were always under attack by a group of bald, green-skinned people called the Vugees.
"Well, I've found recently that I really get off on watching the Vugees raping and enslaving the Poff Tops."
"Excuse me?" I sputtered.
"Look, I was telling Shan about the show and he'd never seen it. So I did a VR for it, to show him what they looked like. I don't know exactly what happened, but suddenly the Vugees were doing a lot of things that would have never made it past the Saturday morning censors. I mean, I had poor Perry Poff Top servicing all the Vugees, except for the two that were roasting Baby Poff Top alive over an open flame, and... "
"Stop!" I put up my hands. "That's... "
"Sick? Disgusting? Wrong? Criminal? Exactly. I just sort of let my subconscious take over, and that's what it came up with. I'm not denying it, and I don't think it's healthy to hide it. But it scares me."
"Exactly how many new episodes of the Poff Tops are there now?"
"About 30. Shan won't watch them any longer with me. He just kind of gives me this little smile and tells me whatever makes me happy."
"I'm really not sure what to say about that. It's healthy, I guess. As long as no real Poff Tops are hurt. And you're focusing on cartoon characters and not people."
"True. Every time I get the urge to see something really vile, I focus on cartoons. One time I had Dino going after Wilma... "
"Gage!"
"But it was consensual, I assure you." He winked. "If I'm using real people, I just scare them a little bit. Sometimes Shan comes along for those; or sometimes he volunteers to be the victim. He doesn't mind getting virtually roughed up a little."
"So what do you do?" I figured I'd probably regret asking, but I was intrigued. He was my little brother, and I'd known him my whole life, but I was reminded now that in a lot of ways he was a stranger to me, and I got a feeling that he needed this conversation as much as I did.
"Pirates." He said after a minute. "Pirates are always fun. Although I have to be careful; I've brought Jack Sparrow into the scenario a few times, and we got along so well that Shan got jealous and challenged him to a dual. Jack ended up hitting him over the head with a bottle of rum and tossing him overboard. Shan refused to speak to me hours afterward."
"I can imagine... "
"My favorite is Highwaymen. Well, Highwayman, since I've never been able to sell Shan on the idea of robbing stage coaches. He's usually the driver, or Lord So-and-So, something dull. I get to ride around on a nice black horse and rip necklaces off the throats of fat rich women."
"And you enjoy this."
"Immensely and completely. You should try it sometime. You'd enjoy it... "
"I don't think... "
"Come on, Amy, live a little. Just once." He leaned forward, a gleam in his eyes. "You don't have to do anything; just ride along at my side. I'll take care of all the saber-waving and threatening."
"Just once... " I couldn't believe I was agreeing to this, even in VR.
"Awesome."
The knock on the front door woke Duo up from his nap, and he blinked at it, hoping he'd heard wrong.
Whomever was on the other side knocked again.
"Christ." He untangled himself from Heero's sleepy embrace. "No, you have to let me go, baby. If I don't answer that they'll never go away."
Heero muttered something under his breath.
Duo pulled the front door open, letting in a blast of cool air, and blinking again at the man standing on his doorstep. "Can I help you?"
"I'm looking for a man named Rylan. I've heard he was staying here."
Heero sat upright at that, and was at Duo's side in a heartbeat, glaring at their visitor. "What do you want with Rylan?"
"Heero, babe, I doubt he's a member of the Deran Pure." Duo pointed out gently.
The man was watching them impatiently. "Is he here or not?"
"Are you a friend of his?"
"That's not an answer to my question. My business is with Rylan, not you." The man's lips thinned. "Unless of course you have a problem with Wronith entering your house?"
"Wronith, no. Rude assholes are another thing." Duo snapped.
"What is it?" Rylan asked from behind them. "Who's there?" Before Duo could stop him, the young man had squeezed between them, and stopped short at the sight of the visitor.
"Brin?" He whispered.
"Well, look who went and became a man while I was away." The Wronith was smiling.
Rylan laughed and suddenly threw his arms around the Wronith. "I can't believe this! What are you doing here?"
"Right now trying to breathe."
Rylan pulled back, looking a little dazed. "I'm sorry." He glanced back at Heero and Duo. "This is Brin. He lived on the station for a while until they sent him back to Wroni. He was my friend."
The man could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty; with the Wronith it was difficult to tell. His hair might have been black, but it was cut to short that that was hard to tell as well.
"I'm not sure that's the correct term for it." Brin shrugged. "I was usually sent to track him down when he'd wandered off again. This boy gave me more trouble than ten children. But I know now he had his reasons."
He looked over Rylan again. "Rylan, you know me. You know I never would have agreed to what happened to the others, if I'd been there. I would have gotten the children out."
"The Wronith children? What about the Setan girls?" Duo asked, and Rylan glared at him.
"I'm not apologizing for doing my job." Brin didn't even look at Duo. "Nor am I condoning it, but what's done is done. The reason I'm here is because of what you said in your letter, Rylan. I want to talk to you about that. About a lot of things."
"Wait. How could you get here from Wroni so fast? That's not possible."
"I've been on Seta up until now."
"That close?" Rylan asked softly. "I wish I'd known. I would have come to see you."
"I wasn't sure that you'd want to." Brin rubbed his hands on the sides of his white, shapeless pants. "After everything that happened, I wasn't sure that you'd ever want anything to do with any of us again. But I read that, and I thought that perhaps I'd give it a try."
"I'm glad you did. You were my favorite Guardian." Rylan smiled at the memory. "Hell, you were the only one that I even liked. I cried for weeks when you left."
"I tried to convince them to let me take you with me back to Wroni with me, but they wouldn't let me. I should have taken you anyway."
"Are you his father?" Heero looked the Wronith in the eye.
"No." Brin laughed loudly. "His father was a Seeder. Only the best of the best were chosen for that. Genetically speaking, anyway. And it's no good asking me which one of them fathered him; I haven't a clue."
He took Rylan's hand in his own. "But we were close, he and I. I took care of him for seven years. I taught him to walk and talk."
"And he regretted the walking part every minute afterward."
"True. Rylan, I know you're busy plotting war with the Deran Pure, but do you think you might be able to spare an hour or so for dinner with your old Guardian?"
"I'd love to. And you have to meet my wife! There's so much we have to catch up on. She's at the other house. Come on, it's just a short walk." He put his arm around Brin's. "Duo, Heero, I'll see you at the party later, okay? How long have you lived on Seta? What do you do there?" They heard Brin answer something as they walked away, and Duo closed the door behind them.
He walked back over to the couch, and his eyes flickered up to meet Heero's. "You know, I just realized something."
"What?"
"I still hate them." Duo stared at his hands. "Not Rylan. Of course not Rylan, but the older ones. I probably hate them as much as the Deran Pure do. I've tried to hard to forgive and forget, but... I can't. I can't forgive what they did to our family."
"You're nothing like the Deran Pure. You're not out trying to kill them all off." Heero sat down next to him.
"But I'm no better. When I opened the door and saw Brin there, my first instinct was to look for a weapon."
"He was a complete jerk to us, and then when Rylan showed up he was all sweetness and love. That bothered me." Heero admitted. "Look, I'm not very comfortable around them either... "
"It's more than that." Duo frowned. "I don't like it, Heero, but I can't deny it. I hate all of them. And I've tried to stop and I know it's wrong, but I can't seem to do anything about it."
"Well, let's focus on one Wronith at a time. This one took care of babies; he may not have the best social skills but I don't think he's a danger to anyone. And Rylan obviously loves him."
"Why did you ask that, about him being his father?"
"Déjà vu, I suppose. I kept thinking of Gage and Zechs. He was looking at Rylan the way Zechs looked at Gage. But I believed him when he said he isn't; all it would take is a split-second DNA test to catch him in a lie, after all."
"So do we trust him or not?"
"Heero, right now I'm all for not trusting anyone."
End Part 29
(:./lasha/street29)
