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"Day One: Christmas Cards"Written By: Dentelle_noir Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing AC or the
characters. GW belongs to Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. This
is a work of fiction and written for fun, not profit Rating: PG 13 Warnings: AU, Pairings: 3x4 Summary: Quatre’s teacher had mentioned something
called ‘Christmas cards’ sent out to the people that you
cared about. He thought the card-giving holiday was in February, but
if the teacher said it was in December, then December it would be... "Day One: Christmas Cards" Quatre Winner was Strange: That was what all the kids in his sixth grade class said. He moved to the United States from Arabia in frigid October. Little did he know that November would be worse, and December? It had been downright miserable. Not only did he have to deal with a new country, a new home, and speaking American English when he had always been taught British English by his tutors, but he also had to deal with this miserably cold seasons on top! And he didn’t understand what was going on around him, ever. The teacher kept sending him out of the class to see the special needs teacher who would speak slower for him and use lots of pictures and gestures so he could understand. It wasn’t the work that was hard (he was far advanced in studies), but catching everything the teacher said was just so hard! She spoke so fast! He was out of the room nearly the whole school day, so he didn’t make friends. A lot of people seemed to like him well enough when he was paired with them, but, they didn’t go out of their way to play with him at recess or help him understand the purpose of the coloured lights people were putting around their houses this month, or even so much as play snow-ball fight with him. Some of the kids in his special needs class would talk to him during recess, but that just made the other kids think he was even weirder. It was a no-win situation. Only one kid was nice to him. He was a grade 7, and tall. He had a little group of grade 7 friends and they smoked cigarettes out back during recesses. He had given Quatre a scarf once, in chilly October. It was cold, and Quatre was turning blue while a lot of the other kids were running around in jeans and a long sleeved shirt. But the older boy had been wearing this striped scarf around his neck that day. He saw Quatre huddled by the school doors, and he took it off his neck and wrapped it around Quatre, smiling softly and telling him that weather was different here. But he smiled so warmly, and he told him to keep the scarf. Quatre didn’t know how he knew that he wasn’t from America, but it was obvious that he did, but he didn’t seem to hate him for it. He thought that maybe they could be friends... Quatre asked him why he had bruises on his neck that the scarf had been hiding, but the boy clammed up and then went to smoke cigarettes with his friends. Quatre thought that he had totally blown the chance for a friend, but after recess, he checked on Quatre to make sure he’d made it through. That was when Quatre learned his name was Trowa, and he was a grade 7. And Trowa said he would come over to Quatre’s sometime. They might have been good friends, but he was away a lot. Clumsy, he would say. Or he would say he got into fights. He was always walking into things, or falling down stairs, or slipping in the shower or something, so he always had a bunch of bruises. He was really nice, though, and he let Quatre ask him questions. But he wasn’t at school when the weird lights went up, so he couldn’t ask him about them. Thankfully, his special needs teacher had done a whole week lesson on Christmas and Christmas traditions, and he thought he had a good handle on it all now. And he did like the lights, once he understood. But his father refused to put any up on their house, even after he explained about them, then he made Quatre pray for wanting a heathen tradition. Again. It was getting boring, really. He just wanted to be like the other kids. That didn’t matter, though. Quatre was determined to do something that fit in with the American tradition. His teacher had mentioned something called ‘Christmas cards’ sent out to the people that you cared about, and he remembered hearing about those before! He thought the card-giving holiday was in February, but if the teacher said it was in December, then December it would be. The night before the last day of school before Christmas vacation, he spent the whole time making a pretty card of red and white and pink, just like he remembered the cards were supposed to look like, and he put a snow man on the front holding a heart. He used red construction paper for the card, and pink hearts for the background and white circles for the snowman. He hoped that was right... he’d never really seen a Christmas card before, and he didn’t want to ask one of his sisters, because they would start asking who he was making it for. Then they would tease him, and he might not be brave enough to give the card to his friend. Inside he wrote “Merry Christmas” just like his special teacher told him to do, and then he addressed it to the only person who he wanted to give a card like that to... Trowa. He hoped he liked it. And he hoped that he hadn’t
made some sort of weird cultural mistake again. ~ * ~
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