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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: Anastasia + Pagan Notes: Challenge 138. Baby Series 3 #187. Takes
place after immediately following The Colour Of Blood. Many thanks to ShenLong for her work betaing
this fic.
The Fates Willing "What is it you expect of him, Anastasia?" Ah, so the gloves were off, formality was put aside and they would speak on equal terms. She was well enough pleased with that. Anastasia bit into the rich, ripe flesh of the cherry and savoured its sweetness. For a long moment she held her peace, considering how best to approach this conversation and decided it was best to be frank. Hunter was not, after all, one to play word games with if there was no need and, given they were both on the same side and wished the same long term result, it would be wasting precious time and breath to play that game. "I expect him to restore Sanc to its roots." His back was to her, that mop of grey hair darker from the shadows cast by the fire. He was silhouetted against the naked flame, a shadow against flickering red and gold, orange and yellow. Sparks cracked and leapt up the chimney and he reached for the poker to break up the ashes of the papers he had burned. "You expect to restore Sanc to what it was in Stephen's day?" "No. One thing age teaches you is that you can never go back, you must go forward. However, going forward does not mean you must discard the past. Doing so is nothing more than a demonstration of ignorance." "You expect him to `restore' Sanc, yet not return it to what it was?" "Stephen's reign was far from a Golden Age and you know it. Sanc is far older than a few generations. In these modern times mankind gives little thought to the past and yet it is in the past where we can best find the answers to the questions we will ask in the future." "What is it you want?" He would not face her and that suited her well. He would be frowning into the flames, counting her words, listening to the undertones, accounting for what she did not say even as she spoke. "He wants it too, else he would not stand still as he does now and take the beating dealt to him by those less than pleased he sits the throne. He bides his time, he does not surrender." "And you think he wants… what?" "We have talked and we will continue to speak of what he wishes to leave behind him. Restoration of all that Sanc has stood for since it first began. Once we were a centre for learning, open to the best minds civilisation could produce. We boasted a library containing the rarest of books, the finest of inventions and the most beautiful of artworks. We were a cultural centre of learning and, the Fates willing, we will be so once again." "His University." Pagan sighed. "That is only the first stage of what he wishes Sanc to become. Knowledge is the key to the future of mankind, not the endless round of wars, not the complex dance of politics and one upmanship that even now rips into the solidarity of the Council of Representatives. They will see him as a threat, failing to understand anything of the motivations that have driven him since he stumbled, a child bleeding and frozen, into a forest clearing and into my hands. They see only the warrior and they do not understand that the very greatest of warriors desired peace and stability." "Is this Milliardo's will, or is it the will of an old woman who would think for him?" Anastasia looked at the crimson stains on her fingers where she had held the cherry, its juice dripping onto her aged flesh, darkening and staining age paled flesh. "Cerise stains, Pagan. The stains sourced in fruit, but so easily could they be mistaken for blood. One must not take for granted, or make assumptions about what one does not understand. Not having been present to witness the various plays that forged a life we would miss too much to judge him and others miss too much of our life to fairly judge us. What is truth is that we all share the same blood, the same bloodlines if the major religions of the world are to be believed. What is important, and what no one can deny, is that we are all the children of the Earth. We were all born of this Earth and it is to the Earth we will return." "No doubt certain colonials would be horrified at the very thought." "I prefer to feed my native soil than float forever, a frozen corpse in the vastness of space." "Are they your thoughts, this centre of learning, or are they his?" "He is a brilliant man, Hunter and should not be
underestimated. He will never be one to be led around as a bull is
led by a ring through the nose. He is a Peacecraft, after all."
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