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"Evolution"Written By: The Plotting Housewife Disclaimer: Gundam Wing belongs to Bandai, Sotsu
and associated Parties. This work is written for pleasure not profit. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: AU, yaoi, quasi-dark, genetically engineered
pilots, test tube babies, lab-created Gods, pseudoscience. Pairings: 1x2, 3x4, 5x13, 13xUne Summary: Zayeed Winner, founder of The Human Perfect
Project, makes miracles happen in the laboratory by creating genetically
engineered children. It's only when it's too late that he discovers
playing God can result in catastrophic consequences. " Evolution" Chapter 4 - The Silencer
If Zayeed had to pick a favorite as far as personality went, it would be Trowa. He was, hands down, his least high-maintenance child. Probably the most "normal" out of all of them, but that still didn't mean he was actually normal. Like Heero, he was very calm in demeanor, but mild in a way that Heero was not. He was by far, the most mature out of all the boys, often playing the big brother role despite them all being the same age. He was extremely well-read and spoke more like an adult than a seven year old child. He rarely caused any problems aside from the fact that he nearly gave Zayeed a heart attack over his obsession with walking the three story railing that overlooked the foyer. "Trowa, you are not a circus performer and that is not a tightrope. Get down, please." The boy would glance over at him with a raised eyebrow, then usually jump off, flipping in midair, and landing gracefully on his feet onto the marble floor of the foyer. Then, he would simply walk away, leaving Zayeed standing there with his hand over his chest as he tried to bring his heart rate back down. The morning before Trowa's seventh birthday, Zayeed was strolling through the entryway, mug of coffee in hand, on his way to get the paper off the porch when he heard a strange tinkling sound above his head. He looked up and gasped, mug dropping from his hand and shattering on the floor, splashing hot coffee onto his bare feet. Trowa was hanging upside down from the large chandelier, swaying gently back and forth. "Trowa! How did you get up there? Get down this instant!" Trowa gave him a nonchalant upside down look and before Zayeed could shout a protest, he simply unhooked his legs and dropped headfirst, thirty feet down. Zayeed shrieked and held his arms out to catch the child. Trowa flipped at the final second before impact, landing in Zayeed's arms bridal style. They stared at each other for a few seconds before Trowa squirmed and Zayeed set him down, his nostrils flaring from his heavy breathing. "Are you insane, son? Don't you ever do that again! You could have been killed!" Trowa was seemingly unfazed as Zayeed railed at him about how dangerous that was. He shrugged and said, "But I wasn't," then he turned and walked away. By design, Trowa grew faster than his brothers in both height and weight percentiles. He was tall for his age, but nimble and light on his feet. Zayeed often never heard him enter a room until he turned around to find the boy a foot away, effectively scaring the shit out of him. When he talked, he was usually soft-spoken. The only exceptions were in reaction to his brothers, particularly Quatre. Trowa shared a connection with his biological son that was both special and extremely private. They gravitated towards each other like a binary star system. Oftentimes, they would disappear together for hours at a time and Zayeed was almost never able to garner what it was they talked about, or did during those times. He would walk into the playroom to check up on them, frequently finding them with their heads close together, whispering in their own secret language. Zayeed was charmed by their closeness, but also unsettled, and possibly a little jealous that he could not connect with his own flesh and blood like that. Trowa was a mix of Romanian, Russian, and Czechoslovakian. He was a handsome boy with startling green eyes that were amazingly observant for someone so young. One of his blood donors had been a circus performer and Zayeed had honed in on that while working with Trowa's DNA profile. As a result, he developed the gift of agility and a penchant for acrobats. He received no training, no tumbling classes as a small child. It developed as a natural part of him and he was exceptionally good at it. Zayeed found himself increasingly impressed, albeit somewhat unnerved when witnessing his stunts in action. Amazingly, Trowa almost never stumbled, or lost his footing. He was inhumanly flawless and by the age of seven, Zayeed had built him an extension off the back of the house where he'd installed a balance board, trapeze, climbing ropes, rings, a pommel horse, and horizontal and parallel bars. Trowa spent a lot of his time in there, honing his skills, easily surpassing his professional level peers. He developed an upper body musculature that was both powerful and more adjacent to someone twice his age. Zayeed had been completely stunned one morning as he snuck in to watch, to find him holding himself up by one finger as he stood upside down on the horizontal bar. Quatre was down on the floor encouraging him, bouncing up and down with excitement. Neither noticed him standing in the doorway as the two boys were far more focused on each other. Zayeed felt his heart stop in his chest as he watched Trowa balance on one finger when the impossible happened. His finger lifted from the bar about two inches and he hovered in the air, his body touching absolutely nothing. Zayeed was completely frozen in shock, not even daring to breathe as time seemed to stand still. Just as quickly, the moment was over and Trowa's finger rested once again on the bar. He stayed that way for a second, then his hand gripped it and he swung down, spinning in the air, and landing on his feet in front of Quatre who clapped his hands and embraced the boy. Trowa's eyes caught Zayeed's over Quatre's shoulder and narrowed. Zayeed swallowed hard, blushing to the tips of his ears, and silently backed out of the room. He retreated to his study and leaned against the door, breathing hard, heart thumping like a base drum. Holy shit. Holy shit, I did not just see that. But he had. It was undeniable. He was realizing more and more that the boys had more abilities than the average human. Than even the most advanced human. He'd discovered that Heero possessed unbelievable amounts of strength and lightning quick reflexes when Duo had once jumped onto a piece of large furniture the wrong way, causing it to tip. It easily weighed a few hundred pounds, but Heero had sprung up and grabbed it, lifting it off the floor, and tossing it like a toy across the room before it could land on and likely crush Wufei who'd been sitting on the floor nearby. It all happened so fast, Zayeed's brain hadn't even been able to catch on to the impending catastrophe before it was already taken care of. The now shattered chest had been a family heirloom, but Zayeed was grateful for, though also terrified of, Heero's quick action as it could have killed Wufei. Not only did he have to contend with that and with Quatre's mysterious ability to zap him of his thoughts and his energy, not to mention Duo's strange obsession with Death. Now he had this to deal with. He knew now that Trowa knew he knew, but he was almost positive that Trowa would never bring it up. The question was how to approach him with it and he wasn't even sure he would get an honest answer. Though he had no idea what an honest, or dishonest answer could possibly be. He approached him in the playroom about a week after the levitating incident while he was working on his homework. Zayeed had a difficult time getting the other boys to leave the room, but he'd managed to bribe each of them into compliance. Trowa never lifted his head during the negotiation process with the exception of tracking Quatre with his eyes as he left the room. Something Zayeed didn't fail to notice. Then, he returned to his work without a word. Zayeed felt extremely awkward and unsure, completely out of his league as he approached the table and pulled out a chair opposite the boy, sitting down carefully. He felt more like a child asking his father's permission to go to a concert rather than a father attempting a serious discussion with his child. He had no idea how to go about this. Trowa wasn't any help. He simply continued with his studies as though Zayeed wasn't in the room. Zayeed cleared his throat and watched the boy as he glanced at his text book, then scribbled the answers onto a piece of note paper. "How's it going?" Trowa's eyes flickered up for a moment, meeting his own, then looked back down at his work. Zayeed tried again. "You're doing very good in your academics. You know, when I was your age -" "You and I both know why you came in here, so why don't you just quit with the small talk and get to the point." Zayeed blinked at the bluntness which was skirting the ice into the territory of rude. Get to the point indeed. He cleared his throat again. "Okay, well...I wanted to talk to you about what you did...back in the gymnasium." "What about it?" Zayeed laughed, but only because he was shocked that this was being treated like it was no big deal. Maybe it wasn't to Trowa, but to him, well... "Well, as you must know, it's not something human beings are able to do -" "I'm not a human being." There it was. "Yes...well...I'm having some difficulty coming to terms with that and I -" Trowa set his pencil down and propped his chin on his hand, looking at Zayeed like he was a fly stuck to paper. "What's there to come to terms with?" A muscle in Zayeed's jaw twitched. "I - what makes you say you're not human?" "Because we're not." "How do you know that? What do you think qualifies as a human?" Trowa's lips pursed for a moment. "Humans are a less advanced version of us." "And what are you?" "I...don't know." Zayeed leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. "Did you know that Duo says you're Gods?" Trowa grunted and leaned back. He picked up his pencil and tapped the eraser on the table top, glancing out the window. Zayeed pressed, "Is that what you think? Do you all think that?" The boy's eyes flitted to him, so quickly Zayeed almost missed it, before turning back to the window. "Duo talks too much." Zayeed decided to go for broke. "What does Quatre think?" He'd had the sneaking suspicion for a while now that behind the scenes, when the boys thought no one was looking, that Quatre was calling the shots. Trowa's eyes narrowed, but he didn't answer. Still, Zayeed felt a thrill of elation as the mention of Quatre got a reaction. Nothing ever provoked a response in Trowa like Quatre did. "Does he believe you're gods?" "He's never said as much." "But what does he think?" Trowa huffed, almost imperceptibly, but Zayeed caught it. "What is your motivation for asking about Quatre?" The boy asked it with a slight air of defensiveness which intrigued him. Still, he wasn't sure why him asking about his own son would garner such a reaction. "Because he's my son. Why shouldn't I ask about him? Why shouldn't I be curious about him? He doesn't talk to me. None of you do. Why don't you talk to me, why won't any of you just talk to me?" He was getting frustrated now, sick of these mind games. "And what is it you would like to know?" "What would I like to know? I'd like to know why Heero can pick up an object that weighs hundreds of pounds without breaking a sweat! I'd like to know why certain people that Duo comes in contact with tend to die shortly thereafter, I'd like to know how you can levitate in thin air, or how Quatre is able to suck my life force out of me from across the room, I'd like to know -" He stopped, his breath hitching. There was a spark of something in Trowa's eyes that made Zayeed lean back, pulse suddenly accelerating. The boy's lip curled up in a sneer, his teeth clenched. There was a minute vibration that Zayeed barely noticed at first, then began to get stronger, more pronounced. He lifted his hands off the table looking down at it, then up at Trowa with shocked eyes. What the hell was that? The look on Trowa's face was terrifying as he leaned forward and hissed, "I don't think you want to know what we're capable of. Are we Gods? I don't know. That may very well be, but I do know that in your eyes, and as far as the human race is concerned, that's exactly what we are. I can see it in you every time you look at us. And you made that happen. You are the reason why we're here and if it wasn't you, someone else down the road would have figured it out. As far as Quatre is concerned, he is the first of our kind. That makes him extremely special and very, very powerful. He may be your son, but he is my responsibility and he is my responsibility because I am the only one who can contain him. The things I can do pale in comparison to what he can do, so I'd suggest you don't go digging in quicksand because you'll find yourself up to your neck in shit that I can guarantee you are not equipped to handle...Father." The vibrations increased to the point that Zayeed's teeth clattered together. Overcome with terror, he barely had time to react, his breathing wheezy and shallow, as the table between them flipped on its own accord and flew across the room, slamming against wall and breaking into several pieces. It wasn't irrational to believe that Zayeed feared for his life at that moment, almost sure he was about to meet the same fate as the table. Instead, Trowa stood up and walked out of the room without another word, the bone-jarring vibrations fading as he left, leaving Zayeed sitting alone in the middle of the room, unable to move. He couldn't even talk to them anymore. He was terrified of doing, or saying anything to them, unsure if the next time, they would actually kill him. He just didn't know what else to do, but offer them what they needed and leave them to their devices. Maybe they simply didn't need him. After all, they were smarter than he was. Maybe he was hindering them by interfering in something he couldn't understand. He felt like an obnoxious pet being swatted away by irate owners. Being the most dominant species for a few billion years and suddenly finding out you are not at the top of the food chain was a hard pill to swallow. Finding out that there were other beings that held unbelievable amounts of power over you was a terrifying prospect and here Zayeed was living it every day. The boys tolerated him only because he provided them with the things they needed and wanted, but once they were old enough to provide themselves with those things, what would happen then? What could, what would they unleash upon the world once they were fully grown? How did one teach these newly born creatures to respect humanity when humanity barely had any respect for creatures they deemed inferior to them? What kind of example was Zayeed leading when he'd been among those who poked needles into innocent animals and injected them with innumerable amounts of experimental chemicals and diseases, all in the name of "science"? He realized that humanity had finally reached the point of no return. The apex in their own evolution where the pinnacle of human advancement becomes their downfall. Where they eventually manage to create something greater than themselves and it destroys them. Where the desire to play God overrides common sense. Where they do what they do because they can, without stopping to wonder if they should. And he'd started it all. With his own two hands. He realized now that it wasn't only his own well-being that was at stake. The entire human race was at risk and it was his fault. His own fucking fault. He dropped to his knees then, the dawning realization that he needed to take action, at war with his need to protect the boys because he loved them...God help him, he loved them. Tears leaked from between his eyes, dripping off the end of his nose onto the carpet as Zayeed finally swallowed his pride. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned..." ~ * ~ |
