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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: Wu Fei + Duo + Milliardo + Stephen and Treize + Lucrezia Notes: Challenge 100. Baby Series 3 #69. Takes
place seven hours following Midnight Flit. Many thanks to ShenLong for her work betaing
this fic.
Tears Pagan, ever efficient, had everything prepared. A car had been waiting at the terminal and Duo had picked it up, driving around to a discrete entrance where any stray members of the press would not note the signature pale hair of their charge. Wu Fei remained with the King, speaking quietly to the security agent assigned by Pagan to meet them and give to them the keys to the house he had had prepared. They would be in Italy for one day and one reason only. How Pagan had arranged it all in such a short time was merely another indication of how indispensible the old man was. The airport was a small one, tucked away in a remote village close to where Milliardo and Lucrezia had made their home following their return to Earth. It was also close to the cemetery where she enjoyed eternal rest. He held his son gently but firmly against him, the child sleeping still. Soon enough they would need to see him fed and before then Wu Fei wanted to have them safely ensconced in the small cottage Pagan had arranged. Before they could visit the cemetery Stephen would need to be bathed, fed and made comfortable in clean clothing. Everything they would need was at the cottage and the early morning sunlight was bright and promising a warm day. Milliardo refused to think of what might be happening in Sanc. He suspected Helen Butterworth would be fronting Pagan, not over his disappearance but over her being left behind. It would have been more difficult to spirit the woman away, not that she would wish to hear it. Anything would seem warm after the snows of Sanc, Duo decided, but Italy had a far kinder climate than his new home; though the scenery of Sanc appealed to him more. It was a short drive from the airfield to the picturesque village that claimed more than two thousand years of existence, and then on to the cottage a little out of town. Pagan’s agent assured them security was attended to and that everything they would need was prepared, and through it all the King remained silent. He had greeted the agent with a nod of recognition, offering no comment as he had settled Stephen comfortably against his chest. He made no comment on their efficiency in being bundled into the car, or on the familiar scenery passing them as they drove. He merely waited, accepting the events that had returned him to the place he had left his wife. At the cottage he showered and changed into fresh clothing and to please them he ate what they placed before of him. He permitted Chang to feed Stephen, smiling at the child’s antics as he interacted with the two who were more than merely friends. Who wanted to be much more than simply friends. Once deadly enemies they were something more than friends now, the Gundam Pilots. Not just these two, but all of them. Yuy might become his brother, certainly Relena intended it be so. He did not see much of Quatre or Trowa, though he dealt almost daily with messages from Winner concerning some business details which would best benefit Sanc’s future. He knew the man felt the pressure of forcing him into the situation where he accepted a throne he had not wanted, but done was done and he wished Quatre Winner would get over it. Of course Wu Fei was not making it easy for Winner to move on. The Dragon of the Chang Clan held all the fire of the mythological beast and he had allowed his displeasure to be known. He had known the inevitability of his fate and he accepted his place, though that did not mean he had to enjoy his new found position. It was simply the price one paid for being born a Peacecraft. Had those who lived before, his ancestors, looked forward in time and realized the lot they cast for their descendents? For so very long the Peacecrafts had sat the throne of that small kingdom tucked away and isolated, and by fate thrust into the eye of the world in his father’s lifetime. An eternity, according to the dictionary, was time without end and he had to ask himself if the Peacecrafts would sit the throne until time ended. He had thought their eternity of servitude to the people had come to an end with the death of his father, but no, they were carrying on, he and his sister, taking responsibility for the people. Giving of themselves to others who did not know them as more than a name. Some days the weight of it and the inevitability of it threatened to send him to his knees. Stephen was more than happy to come into his embrace once again and did not mind their return to the car. Duo drove and Wu Fei rode beside him, attentive to the scenery. Pagan had trusted them and they were not betraying that trust. At any time they might have made inappropriate advances, but neither had appeared to give it consideration. They had stepped back from being would be suitors to being friends who understood what the significance of this day was to him. Yesterday was Stephen’s day of birth. Today was Lucrezia’s day of death. Tomorrow he would be King once more. Everything had a place and Pagan, blessings on the old man, had understood his need to grieve today of all days. It was a restful place, the cemetery attached to the ancient church. Lucrezia had come to this village, claiming to have spent time here as a girl, before the Alliance wiped out all she had held dear. For her it had been a homecoming and she had been happy here. They had been married in the church, with only the old priest and some villagers as witness. Neither of them had wanted a big wedding and they had felt they were merely formalizing the bonds that tied them together and it had been an intensely private thing. He had buried her in the ground she had walked on, knowing that here, for some small time at least, she had been happy. There was an ancient olive tree, gnarled with age, its wide canopy shading her grave and a rambling stone wall, at least a thousand years old, bordered the cemetery. Weathered headstones, in no set rows, marked the graves of the villagers who had lived and died here through the ages. Her gravestone was of marble, as uncommon as the woman whose passing it marked. The marble Angel was diminutive in height, only a metre tall with wings arched forward, over the angels bowed head. Delicate carved hands held a plaque engraved simply with the name Lucrezia Marquise. There were no dates to mark her birth or death; no inscription. Words at the time had failed him and no one had known her as he had, so their words would not have sufficed. Lucrezia had once told him she wanted no special treatment in death. She would live her life to live, to feel the adrenaline and hope to make a difference for the better, not to die a hero. She had wanted her epitaph to be her deeds in life. They left him, moving away to permit him to stand at her grave with only Stephen for company. He hoped, in later life, his son would come with him to this place and understand something of his mother, whom he was sure Stephen had inherited his zest for life from. Lucrezia had lived life for the joy of it, even after the Alliance had torn her world apart she had not lost the ability to take each day as it came and to see the good side. He did not care that the words still would not come. He did not need to say them to feel them and somehow he knew that she would understand. She would probably not be pleased he wept for what they had lost and for what she would never see, but she would say nothing and if she could have she would have hugged him, he and their son, to her breast and simply stood with them. —————————- On the far side of the grave the tall immaculately groomed spirit held the shade of the woman, accepting her soft weeping in his own sorrowful silence. The day was coming, in the future certainly but not an eternity away, when they who stood apart from the living would welcome into their embrace the one who stood beneath the gnarled old tree. On that day too they would weep, though not for long and they would not be tears of loss. ~ * ~ |
