This Promise (written for Father's Day, 2004)
Pairs: 4-5... maybe. It's meant to be friendship--nothing more, nothing less.
Warning: sadness, angst, post-war, facing-old-demons-ness, family matters? (bad joke)
It's Sunday. June twentieth.
Quatre knelt with his hand to his heart, looking solemnly at the statue towering above him. It was all so poetic in a way, so utterly poetic to the point of losing his mind. Quatre knew he needed to do this; he'd waited long enough. He wouldn't hate him any longer. He knew it was wrong to hate a dead man.
But he promised Wufei that they would do this. They would both make peace with their ancestors. They promised each other on an honor that could not be broken.
Quatre felt a hand ghost over his shoulder and he sighed. He could feel it, Wufei was nervous. He didn't want to do this anymore than Quatre did, but still, they promised.
One does not dishonor the dead, it's against all morality, and religious or not, it damns your soul forever. So Quatre set the marigold to rest on the pedestal of the statue and tightly closed his eyes, fighting the images running through his mind. Somewhere back there, he could still smell the smoke.
He could still see the fire.
The red…
The blood…
He shook and opened his eyes again, studying the statue towering over them, looking for a sign of penance. The marble man was adorned in wings though dressed in a casual business suit, a strange play of modern and ancient clinging together for one perfect ideal. The man held a book in his hands, looking down to Quatre as if judging his fate to the pearly gates. It was meant to be Mr. Winner. His father. Winner had never been Muslim; he'd been Christian. It was Quatre who switched. He'd changed after meeting the Maganacs; Rashid had struck something inside of him that made him try for another God. It felt right for him, even if he'd broken nearly all of Muslim's religious laws. But he was ready to suffer for that, so as long as this man, this angel, could accept his reasoning. He didn't really want forgiveness. He wanted acknowledgement.
It wasn't as if Winner didn't warn Quatre, and when it happened, his entire family nearly disowned him for ignoring every word. Strange, really. Quatre never knew how important family was until he'd finally lost it. Trowa, Duo and Heero couldn't understand that because they'd never had a family. But Wufei could. Wufei understood everything because he was hurting too. Wufei needed someone to tell him that.
And Quatre needed Wufei.
So now here they were, at Winner's grave to pay last respects on Father's Day. There was a mass memorial for the victims of the L5 colony on L4, and that was their next stop, after the two Winners made their peace.
Wufei told him that it'd be right for Quatre to do this first. Quatre knew that Wufei was only delaying the inevitable, but a part of Quatre also knew that it needed to be done. He'd never hated his father, but he didn't like the things that man had done to him. He didn't like the lies he'd been told, and he didn't like the fact that his own father wouldn't support him when he left for the war. He didn't like being known as the next "Mr. Winner," he didn't like being the heir of WEI when he was the youngest of thirty children. He didn't like being the womanizing figure. He didn't like being raised to believe that women are weak, that they can't handle money and by Allah, if you ever had a child, make sure that it's a boy; no matter what. He didn't like the fact that his father was never there for him, he didn't like how it all went down, how he finally died, and yes... he didn't like how he'd never been able to tell that man the real truth of everything. He didn't like being Quatre-Raberba-fucking-Winner.
And the only one he'd ever needed to tell that to is dead. The man got himself killed in a war, and it was he who damned Quatre for trying to do the exact same thing. A faint and bitter smile crested his lips. Isn't that sweet? Sometimes you need to fight to protect the ones you love.
Quatre shuddered his anger away and clenched his fists, and Wufei slipped back, giving the other boy some room to vent his thoughts.
After a long moment of willing the adrenaline back to normal levels, he took one last look at the angel of judgement and gritted his teeth. "I'm giving it to Iria, father. I'm giving her everything. You know how I don't want it; I've never wanted it. I won't live a life that I don't want to live. I won't, for her sake or yours, father. She deserves it more than I do. I hope you'll understand that some day."
He fisted a clod of grass and dirt and unclenched his teeth, forcing himself to calm down. "I love you. Happy Father's day."
And he walked away, weight lifted from his shoulders. Wufei followed, not daring to say a word. He had his own demons to rest.
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Wufei caressed the ebony wall, a list of names trailing on for all eternity. Like an endless dragon, he mused. An endless solitary dragon.
First he found the names of his parents. They were near the top, outside of alphabetical order because of their status in the colony. He'd never told anyone, but he had been the heir of that colony. Much like Quatre is... or had been. Funny how they'd both lost it to the war in so completely different ways. But Wufei didn't care for that. He simply traced the two names with his index finger, feeling the etching trace under the tip. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize their faces.
They were old. Stern. Traditional. But they were kind as well. They were determined to see Wufei with a good wife and son, they wanted the best for him and they were more than disappointed when he'd left for the war. They knew it was about honor, they were proud that he left to avenge Meiran's death, but he had still been their only son and they did not want to see him die at so young an age.
Wufei's lips quivered faintly, remembering the garden. It was a painful memory, but one that he would never let himself forget. Yellow flowers, they'd been. Yellow flowers stained with her blood.
Funny, really. Meiran would have slapped him silly if she found him here, now after all this time. It wasn't for lack of trying, he'd just...
He didn't even want to fight. He didn't want to kill Treize. He didn't want any of it, but as Meiran had told him once ...where is the honor in wasting your talents? Honor. It had been something that he needed to do. Chang never breaks his honor.
And at least she'd died in battle as she was meant to do. She would tell him that while they sparred together. She said that she was going to be a hero and she would die by a sword to her heart. Her heart, because she claimed that the man who dies by backstabbing is a coward.
If it's one thing Meiran was not, it is a coward.
He moved down the list, finding friends and distant family and the names of those that he'd never known, but recognized. Names he could have known if thing's were different. He snorted bitterly. It's always been like that. Everyone always wishes for things to be different.
He was having a hard time fighting the image dancing behind his eyelids. He didn't want to think about it, but he knew... he would have to if he was ever going to move on. Slowly, he closed his eyes and let the image assault him, his fingers still whispering their caress of the names etched in stone.
There was a fire. Always fire, always red and always hot. At first, it was so unbearably hot, like the realms of Hell itself. It just seemed to burn and burn, eating away at their skin... melting them... feeding off of them. Them. His family. Taking them away. He could see it with eyes unseeing, the metal bursting with searing molten heat as he thought he could hear screaming, distant but very, very loud. Harsh. Deadly.
It was like an animal scream. The kind of scream a cat would make before someone lops off its head. A butchered scream. It was almost too painful to hear.
But he could still hear it. Even now.
After the heat, came the cold. There was no in between them, the two extremes just changed and he'd found himself shivering before he knew how to focus. His eyes were still staring at the empty nothingness before him, metal debris floating everywhere... and he was shivering. It was cold. Very, very cold. His breath brought ice crystals, his thoughts numb and distant. The screaming had died down to a dull roar, but for the life of him, he still couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Everyone was dead, there was no one left.
No one except for him. They'd spared him for that. They'd told him it wasn't his time.
It was never his time. He was going to die alone.
Solitary dragon.
Shuddering violently, Wufei opened his eyes, the names a blur of black and white before him. The wall was massive and endless. Thousands of names; nearly a million. Maybe more than that. He couldn't remember now. It was endless.
He stepped back and scanned the wall a last time. In the back of his mind, he knew that Quatre was watching him, but he didn't care. He crouched down to the cement sidewalk and gently laid a yellow flower under his father's name.
There was not a word spoken as the two young men left L4. Quatre promised that he was going to visit the memorial of the people killed by the Zero incident, a list of over a million, maybe two million names. Wufei had promised he was going to visit Treize's memorial located near the old base at Lake Victoria. They weren't done yet, and a part of him knew that they'd never be.
But they'd promised each other, and that was enough for now.
--Fini