Title: A Peace to Replace Justice
Author: Something Like Human
Rating: T
Pairings: 2x5, past 5xM
Warnings: Nothing that I can think of yet.
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. Right now, I've been taken prisoner by Long Meilan and she is demanding that I write her.
POV: Wu Fei
The next few days were awkward and a little surreal. We settled into a loose routine by the second day. I am not really sure what I was expecting having my wife and my lover both living under the same roof as me. Everyone was walking on egg shells trying not to say the wrong thing. It was kind of weird having MeiLan being polite all of the time.
We set up both my wife and child up in the same bedroom for the time being. An wanted to be close to her mother. I felt badly for my wife. She appeared to really struggle walking up and down the stairs with her cane but she insisted on using that bedroom with her daughter.
"We can shift the bedrooms around," I offered on the second day they were there. "The den downstairs that we use for an office can be moved to one of the bedrooms upstairs and we can move you two down there."
She swung her cane at my head again a that suggestion. "Idiot, I can manage a few stairs!"
"I wasn't implying that you could not," I countered trying to cover my concern for her ability to navigate the staircase. "I was just trying to give you more of your own space."
"That will not be necessary," she replied as she stormed out of the room. It was more like an angry hobbling. It made me sad. She did not want to talk about her injuries at all. She did not want to be reminded that it impaired her in any way. I felt so bad for her when I saw her trying to walk and especially going up and down the stairs. I want to help her so badly because you could just tell that she was in a lot of pain. She wouldn't let me help her though. Despite everything that had happened to her, she still had her pride.
I walked into the living room to find Duo sitting on the floor at the coffee table with my daughter. I was having a very hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that the little person living in my spare bedroom was my daughter. I missed her birth and all of her first steps, and really all of her firsts. People always say that they see their features and such in their children. I was not really sure what I saw in her. She looked almost like a perfect mixure of both of us but still somehow her own person. What was the most unsettling was seeing her facial expressions. I was not surprised that she could perfectly mimic her mother's infuriating smirk but it was when I found her scowling at my lover that I stopped dead in my tracks. The little girl had never been around me at all during her life and there was my scowl on her tiny face.
Maxwell sat there for a moment staring at her with his mouth agape. He saw the same thing that I did. He looked at me for a second and then back at the little girl. He then started laughing his head off at her. An, for her part, realized that he was laughing at her when she was already angry at him, and scowled even harder. Her little hands were fisted and perched on her hips as she stood in front of the lauhging man. It was as funny as it was unsettling.
She started yelling at him then when he didn't stop laughing at her. He tried to stiffle his laughter but, typical to Maxwell, once he started laughing, it was hard for him to stop. It was when her tirade at my partner escalated to her insulting his parentage that I scowled at her. She had not seen me in the room yet since I was off to the side and her focus was solely on the braided man. He looked at me and started laughing again. When she saw him laughing at her again, she struck out with a tiny fist in rage towards his face. His large hands blocked her onslaught. His eyes were wide though as she kept trying to hit him.
"An! Stop!" I said in a very strong voice. When she ignored me to continue yelling at Maxwell, I reached out and grabbed her tiny arms. I tried to not hurt her and to stop her from hurting my lover. He was still kind of frozen in place watching it all take place. The little girl struggled against my hold and started screaming. I held her in place as she thrashed about and screamed herself hoarse. Even on her worst day, MeiLan had never tantraumed like this as a child. I had never seen anything like this. I turned my attention to trying ot hold her still so that she couldn't hurt herself.
"Calm down," I said softly. My voice was lost in her screams. I countinued trying to soothe her. "Shhh, it's okay. You just need to calm down. Don't hurt yourself."
After the longest few minutes of my life, the little body in my arms finally stilled. She was breathing hard and there were angry tears rolling down her cheeks. Her face was flushed and her eyes were still wild. I held her loosely to ensure that she would not try to lash out again.
"Are you quite finished?" I asked with my voice showing more anger than I had intended.
"Let go!" She demanded with a feeble attempt to pull herself away from me.
"I won't have you hitting anyone," I replied. "That kind of behavior is unacceptable! You need to apologise to him right now!"
"No!"
"An!" I said sternly.
Maxwell chose that moment to step in. He eased my hands off of her arms and rubbed them slightly. When she finally was able to look him in the eyes, he spoke very gently to her. "I'm sorry for laughing at you. That was wrong. I was only laughing at you because you looked just like your father when he is angry. But hitting me was wrong."
"I don't like people laughing at me," she replied in a very small voice. The anger was gone though.
"I know that now," he replied with a sad smile. "We're just getting to know each other so we have a lot to learn yet. Hitting me was not the way to let me know what you don't like. Just now, when you told me that you didn't like it, that was the way to do it. Do you understand? It's so much easier to tell me something than to hit me."
"Yeah," An mumbled while looking down at her feet.
"So, can you say that you're sorry to me for hitting me and then we can hug to make up?" Duo asked her while openning his arms up to her. "Then we can go back to coloring pictures."
"I'm sorry for hitting you," the little girl replied before diving into his arms. He held her tight for a moment before pulling back and handing her the purple crayon. They sat back down on the floor at the coffee table to color.
I was kind of in awe with how smoothly Maxwell handled the situation. I watched them coloring pictures for a few minutes before walking out of the room. I could hardly believe the anger that I had seen in the tiny child. I knew that I was an angry child but I had never lashed out towards an adult like that when I was that young.
"I see you've finally met 'An The Terror'," MeiLan said as I entered the kitchen. She handed me a cup of tea. "Welcome to my world."
"Is she like that a lot?"
"Um, define 'a lot'," she replied sarcastically. "Grandmother tended to give her anything that she wanted. When I would try to discipline her, let's just say, that was a small tantraum. She can scream for hours. I just couldn't hold on to her like you did."
"I had no idea," I said sipping the tea. I was at a loss in this situation. I wasn't yet used to the idea that I was a parent and then I find out that she was prone to behavior like this. It was a little daunting.
"Believe me," MeiLan shrugged while sipping her tea as well. "These last few weeks without my grandmother have been a nightmare with her. When I would try to do anything with her before, she would just run to grandmother and that would be the end of it. Lately, it's been all I can do to not hit her with my cane."
"Her world's changed and she's trying to catch up," Duo said entering the kitchen. "Your grandmother was her main caregiver since she was trying to control so much of what was going on for An. She died which is hard for anyone to deal with, let alone a four year old. Then she moves from the only home she's ever known. That's pretty rough, too. Lastly, she's just met her father. That's a lot to handle all at once."
"That still doesn't excuse her behavior," I argued. "She could have hurt you!"
"Yeah, it doens't excuse it," he replied. "I've seen it before though. All those kids coming into the orphanage when I was a kid tended to act like that. Some were worse than others. I was pretty terrible myself. If it wasn't for Sister Helen, I probably would have killed someone. Well, killed someone at the orphanage, let's not count my teenaged years."
"Well, I'm hoping she never has to kill anyone," MeiLan stated. "I just don't know what to do with her."
"Well, it sounds like we're in the same boat," I stated. "You never really got a chance to parent her and neither have I. We have a lot to learn."
"It's a good thing you have him around though," she stated while using her cane to tap Duo in the leg. "He at least seems to have a clue where you're still just an idiot."
"Hey, now!" I exclaimed. I knew I was taking her bait but I couldn't stop myself. We argued and said some very biting things back and forth. Duo just shook his head and left the kitchen. I finally just stormed out the door. I needed to get out of the house. I took a walk down the street and only returned once I had calmed down. My partner was right, it really was a stressful situation in the house. There had been a lot of changes going on. It was going to take a lot of gettng used to.
