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"Baby Series 3"Written By: Karina Rating: PG Spoilers: None Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing or the Characters from the series but the baby is mine. Pairing: Duo + Wu Fei Notes: Challenge 133. Baby Series 3 #172. Takes
place immediately after To Be Strong. Many thanks to ShenLong for her work betaing
this fic.
Degrees Of Strength If he was to move beyond the war and make for himself and others a life worth living, then he had to be strong in the shaping of that life. Chang Wu Fei was a vital part of what Duo wanted. He was right on top of Duo's wish list when it came to what he wanted his life to be. A full life, filled with the quality things in life… not material possessions but the truly important aspects of life; friendship and love. Chang Wu Fei had his own indomitable internal strength to have survived the war and the destruction of his home, and emerge from the tempering fire still fighting and prepared to start afresh. You had to be strong if you looked at someone like Milliardo Peacecraft and found it in you to love him, to want him and to actually make a move on the man. Especially to be willing to be open to the possibility of loving another in order to attain what one wanted. He and Wu Fei were willing to deal with each other, to accept each other in their bid to win the other man. He was not, and never would be, an easy man to love. Or like. Milliardo had to be the strongest person Duo knew to stand where he did this day. It was not a physical strength, but mental. He had to have a hide thicker than a rhino's to stand up in front of people and ignore the whispers and accusations that followed him everywhere he went. Duo had never seen him so much as hesitate when in the public eye, or flick an eyelash out of turn. Training, the man himself would say if Duo dared to comment, `stiff upper lip and all that', but it was so much more than that. It was the fortitude of the man; it was what fundamentally made him who he was. Having known Milliardo for so long now, Duo was sure that what he had done with the Libra was not a display of weakness. Milliardo Peacecraft, aka Zechs Marquise, did not do weak. The man would not know how to be weak, but stood tall and straight through whatever life threw at him, firm in his convictions and seeing so far beyond what Duo himself could see it was frightening. Had Khushrenada taught him how to do that? Had Treize Khushrenada himself been like that? Cold and calculating when peering into the variables of actions large and small, sifting through the dross to find the gems of possibility and crafting a plan few people, if any, could claim to understand. Uncaring, they had been called, but had they been uncaring of the human condition? Knowing the man as he did now Duo could not agree. What did they see, and how did they see so far into the future that it had led to Libra? So many lives sacrificed, but a war ended in less than a year after so many long years of fighting. Few lives lost in that period of time when compared to the lives lost over the course of the Alliance's domination of the Earth Sphere. They had been young, yes, no denying that, but neither of them had been fools and both of them had been strong enough to tread the path they chose without flinching. A path that led one to meet his death and the other into a far crueller fate… living with the enmity of a world for surviving. How much of what had happened had they planned and how much of it had slipped beyond their control? If they had been lovers how had they become enemies… or had they ever been enemies? Had it been a very well devised concoction of circumstances that had ultimately been intended to lead humanity to this peace which might, perhaps...hopefully ... last? The two men who had instigated the coup that had taken out the Alliance were far from weak. Both of them had not been averse to taking advantage of any situation that had presented itself through the unforeseen actions presented by others. The appearance of the Gundams had to be accounted for in the equation and surely Khushrenada and Marquise could not have known of the existence of the scientists and the Gundam project. Or had they? He would never know. Duo could not see Marquise telling him, or anyone else, of what was behind their plans; why they did what they did, why they carried it through to the death of one and the ruin of the other. He would take what was past with him to his own grave. Khushrenada' s leadership had seen the coup succeed, and as far as world wide coups went they had succeeded relatively bloodlessly. The Order of the Zodiac had been a tiny part of the Alliance, and the Oz Specials had, in turn, been a tiny part of Oz. Statistically speaking there was no way they should have succeeded, as by sheer force of numbers the Alliance should have won. The young leaders of the Oz Specials had had strengths overlooked by their superiors and the dedication and drive, the strength of character, to make the impossible possible. And if he kept walking down this pathway of speculation he would find there was no way the Gundam Pilots should have succeeded where they had and lived to tell the tale. //Guess we are all strong.// Duo grinned to himself, knowing Chang must be wondering why he was grinning like a fool, but he could not help himself. It was an odd night and an odd feeling of nostalgia, wonder and hope filled him. Sometimes he did not understand himself, but that was alright. Were they all strong, he and the other four, or were they just graced with blind luck to have survived all that was past and take this chance to move on to something that could be wonderful? Trowa and Quatre had each other. Heero was ogling Relena and Chang… well, he and Chang were aiming higher still. //I sure as hell prefer to consider it strength than just dumb luck.//
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