By Chustang Sundust
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Epilogue
The watery pink blossoms that fell around the stormy gray tombstone were as light on the wind as feathers, and they decorated the cheerless place. Sunday morning that day was indeed sunny to its name, and the fresh and clean sunlight knitted itself over the soft trees and a figure could be seen walking away from the grave. The figure paused and looked back at the rose bouquet on the grave. Jim turned, and walked toward the red ship shining off in the distance.
Aisha suddenly twisted up her face, eyes crossing, and let out
a cute sneeze. The entire house of cards she'd been working on teetered
dangerously, but settled safely back. The Ctarl-Ctarl heaved a sigh of
relief. Lying in bed hadn't been or was fun; it had hurt like hell trying
to reach the box of cards on the bedside table even. With the house of
cards propped on a large book, Aisha leaned back onto the pillow to admire
her work. She'd have to show this to Jim, once he got back.
After a week in the hospital and another two recovery weeks at
home, her legs had still much aching to endure. Aisha had had three fractures
in her right leg, the left one had broken twice, her kneecap was sore from
wear, and the fight with Gene had left her intensely drained. Aisha felt
as weak as a Terran, which she commented on fervently everyday. But it
was her last recommended day in bed, at least. Tomorrow she could be roaming
the ship as usual and having fun. The crew might need it, after the death
of…
"Good Morning Aisha!" Suddenly, the door swung open to her room
and the slight wind kicked up by it hit the cards. Her blue eyes went wide.
"No Mel!" she said breathlessly, but it was too late. The cards
scattered around her bed and fell silently to the ground. Aisha slapped
her palm against her forehead, muttering a sharp, "Doh!"
The bioandriod reverently blushed and said, holding one hand
up to her lips while the other held a plate, "Oh, sorry Aisha… Here's your
breakfast, anyway."
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I said I wanna touch the earth, I wanna break it in my hands
I wanna grow something wild, and unruly
I wanna sleep on the hard ground, in the comfort of your arms
on a pillow of blue bonnets, in a blanket made of stars
Oh it sounds good to me
I said,
Cowboy take me away, fly this girl as high as you can into the wild
blue
set me free, oh, I pray, closer to heaven above, and closer to you
Closer to you
Exert from Cowboy Take Me Away by the Dixie Chicks
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Playing cards in the open sunlight of the bridge seemed to make
a long lost emotion resurface in all of them. Even the incredibly sore
Aisha who sat stiffly wrapped up in a thick quilt seemed to remember it.
Relaxation. Melfina smiled secretively to herself, and then suddenly turned
her head at a noise. She placed her hand down and said to Jim and Aisha,
"Be right back. I think someone's at the door."
Aisha blinked, watching her stand up, and looked to Jim. "I'm
going to quit," she said, throwing down her hand as well.
His blue eyes lit up with surprise, beneath the tossed mat of
blonde hair. The young outlaw asked curiously, "What? Can't we keep playing
Aisha?" Jim hid his cards in his hand, stopping to listen to her answer.
A toothy grin came across her face, and the Ctarl-Ctarl playfully
punched him in the shoulder. "I always lose to you, Jimmy!" Aisha said
in a high-pitched voice. The tiger girl stiffly helped herself stand up
by placing her hand on his shoulder and staggering up carefully. She drew
the blanket around her, and smiled down at him. "Besides, I want to see
the look on Mel's face when she sees the surprise."
Jim blinked in surprise, gasping as he realized what Aisha was
poking at. The kid flashed an anxious glance to the calendar. "Oh my gosh,
I totally forgot! Is it July 6th already? He's back; that's him at the
door. Quick!" He jumped up, scattering his royal flush across the pile
of other cards, and helped Aisha to run quietly to the door. They crouched
at the door to the hallway, where Melfina stood, unlocking the door to
the outside. Both held their breath, knowing who was there but not what
would happen, and had to resist giggling.
Melfina finished undoing the last lock, and it opened with a
loud click, as she pulled the door open. She closed her eyes and nodded,
saying, "Starwind and Hawking, how may we help you?" as she'd been taught,
before she realized just who she was looking at.
"Hey Mel, come on. You don't have be all formal with me, you
know," a low and nonchalant voice said, as a gloved hand came up lightheartedly
to pinch Melfina's reddening cheek. The guy walking with a slight wince
to his originally arrogant step gave a smile to Melfina, drawing her to
his shoulder for a second, and then went to the smirking Aisha and Jim.
"Hey Jim," he said nonchalantly, leaning forward to mock punch him. But
the smile he lifted underneath unique scars turned into shock, as Mel blinked
again, and exploded with happiness.
"Gene!!"
"Melfina! Hey, wait, Mel-"
It didn't take long after piecing her composure back together
for the bioandriod to give the redhead a flying tackle/glomp, screaming
in glee the entire time. Before he could react, she had grabbed him by
the neck and abruptly pulled his face to hers and locked him in a full
blown-out kiss. Gene would have gladly jumped out of his skin at this shock,
but he couldn't even breathe, and he flashed shocked blue eyes to Aisha
and Jim. Before he could even see them, Melfina suddenly yanked on his
neck so hard that he crashed to the ground after her, nearly blacking out
with the lack of air.
Aisha was rolling on aching guts with laughter, and the only
thing to stop her from rolling clear to the moon was when she kept colliding
with the door. The Ctarl-Ctarl was aching with pain, yet laughter had her
in a vice, and it seemed impossible to stop her. Laughter was the best
medicine anyway, and she had just had an overdose. Jim just cheerfully
smiled; scratching his blonde head, then dragged the breathless Aisha from
the hallway. The outlaw saw the button on the bridge side of the door,
glanced back at Gene, the pro who had been just hit on and dragged down
by the amateur, and was probably close to suffocation, and slammed the
button with his fist.
Jim sighed, as the steel door briskly slammed shut behind him.
"Welcome home, Aniki," he said smugly, dragging Aisha behind him as she
squeezed a teddy bear in the unstoppable laughter, until the eyes popped
out. That just made her laugh more.
Melfina breathed in the smell of her late night creation, with
the smoky wisps of steam caressing her skin as it rose to the ceiling,
and lifted the bowl of hot soup carefully down the dark hall. Her liquid
brown eyes looked up from the nearly overflowing, cracker-saturated tomato
soup, to the bedroom door, and she gently kicked the door instead of knocking.
"Jim, I got the soup ready!" she said softly, but with a glowing pride.
"Just the way he asked for it!"
The door slowly slid open, to reveal a dark room with a fake
campfire of flashlights wrapped up in a gray blanket to light it. Jim stood
before her, smiling back, and he said softly, "Smells great Melfina."
"Thanks a lot," the teenager whispered back, nodding, as she
stepped into Aisha's bedroom. Melfina looked around their strange gathering,
around a pretend campfire. A gentle glow came to her face, and her lips
tilted up with a strange, heartfelt simplicity.
"I'm sure he'd love it, Mel," Jim said, walking into the dark
room after her. He shut the door behind himself, letting the place seep
with its blackness again, and gently stopped her by taking a hold of her
arm. "But he can't."
Surprised and not understanding, she paused and twisted around,
cradling the bowl in towel as not to burn her hands. Melfina blinked her
bright brown eyes in curiosity, and possible hurt was knocking at the back
of her mind. He'd never turned down her cooking before, or any food for
that matter. What could be wrong? "Why not?" was the reply, as Jim sighed
and gave a smile, with an untamable tilt of his lips, and turned her back
around gently.
"Because he's sleeping." Jim pointed past the artificial fire
of flashlights, to a lump on the floor. Aisha sat beside it, perking up
her long whiskers and curiously flicking her ears, watching it sleep. Gene
lay on his side, with the sheet from Aisha's bed curled over his shoulder
and the rest of the fabric balled up for a pillow. It only covered his
torso, leaving his legs uncovered. His bare feet poked past the end of
his long jeans, slightly moving as he slept to keep themselves warm with
each other. Certain innocence had surfaced in him, as she gazed at his
handsome face still and messy with uncombed red hair, with his mug of hot
cocoa drank and empty in his limp fingers. Melfina smiled, set the bowl
next to him, and found a spot around the 'fire' beside him.
She cautiously picked up her mug of cocoa, which she had left
to cool as she went to make the exhausted Gene some soup, and began to
silently sip on it. After such a… surprise at their reunion, the fall had
rattled up a burn in his chest, where the ribs had broken, and it had tired
him out for the entire day. A soft smile came to her face again, as Melfina
breathed on the cocoa and remembered Gene trying to 'hitch a ride' by grabbing
someone's ankle and letting them pull him across the floor; it seemed everything
that made him the joking, energetic, and wild outlaw had simply shut off
with a click. He'd be out for a day.
Melfina glanced up, as Aisha lazily played with her tail poking
at the 'fire.' The bioandroid might not of understood emotions yet, but
it felt good now, and she had tried to forget, and nearly succeeded to
erase all memory of pain by now. Besides, no one really understands emotions
anyway, she thought to herself. The teenager flickered her enchanting brown
eyes from Gene, up to Jim, who was drinking his mug.
"How was it at Suzuka's grave, Jim?" Melfina asked out of the
blue, to spark a conversation. It was uneasy in silence for her; people
would begin to think, and see her as an android, a machine, and it just
unnerved her to be looked over like that. Not that the crew did. They were
her only family to her.
Jim put down his mug and said, "Fine. The flowers were beautiful,
though." A tension over Gene somewhat murdering the reassuring and curious
assassin seeped back into them, and Melfina was the first to break it again.
"How did Gene survive?" she asked suddenly, feeling more a bit
more comfortable falling into the topic. "I thought he had… died, like
Suzuka. After all, the castor did get him and I didn't ever stop worrying…
after I didn't find him at home. I was too depressed to ask, and afraid."
Low glances brought her gaze back to him, and she tentatively brushed her
fingers along his temples, with a glaze coming over her eyes in deep thought
and emotions. "It was like being afraid of the dark, and when he got shot
and fell like that, it was darker than ever before. As if somebody had
turned off the light-" She pointed to her heart. "-in here. And now, somebody
reached out and turned on the light. I guess I just want to know how he
lived, that's all."
A silence fell over them. Aisha's tail froze and she blinked
heavily, realizing what had just happened. Melfina had just confessed.
The Ctarl-Ctarl glanced nervously around the room, sweat-dropped, and gathered
up the quilt around her and scampered over to the door, opening it. "Oops!
My tuna's burning! Make sure the ship doesn't burn down from the campfire,
Jim!" she chattered quickly, and then darting down the hall with her tail
wrapped around her mug.
"Aisha…" Jim growled, rolling his marble blue eyes as well. "Oh
well. Never mind her. She's still sore that Gene whipped her."
Melfina just stared. "Heh…" She sipped her cocoa, in disbelief.
"I tell you later," he said, brushing the hair from his eyes
while leaning back against the bed. Jim sipped from his mug again then
set in his lap and looked down to his sleeping Aniki. "Well, I guess the
only thing to explain it is that it was really himself who saved his life.
If his future self hadn't given him just the right amount of mind poison,
Gene would have been doomed.
"You see, we've been kinda keeping him being alive a secret from
you Mel, because at first we weren't sure that he would make it. In the
hospital, it was just a big mess. He had uncountable fractures and broken
ribs, both hamstrings pulled and worn down, he had a bit of a concussion,
way too much lost blood, and who knows what else. Aisha and I weren't sure
if he was going to live, and we didn't want you to get false hopes. But
once we saw he was fine, we decided to make it a surprise."
The deep brown eyes of Melfina misted up and she held the cup
close to her face, feeling an icy shock trickle down her spine. She flickered
her gaze back to Gene, and sighed, hearing Jim fade off from the conversation.
The bioandroid looked back to Jim, and said encouragingly, "Go on."
"In the poison, there was also a strong dose of something like
an advanced form of steroids. That's why Gene could actually beat Sukuza
and Aisha. The doctors said it was the only reason he lived. If there had
been too much of it, he would have overworked himself and had a heart attack.
The steroids barely kept him alive, and now they're testing it to see if
Gene's going to have any side affects from it. Hopefully not, though… otherwise…"
"Otherwise what?" Melfina's throat tightened around her words,
choking them and making them come out choppy and hesitant. She widened
her large brown eyes, as if doing so would let her see right into his thoughts
and pull it out quick.
"Otherwise," Jim said nervously, "he might lose his mind, go
into a coma, or just up and… die one day. The doctors said it really screwed
up his nerves, and he supposed to be off drinking permanently." A soft
smile came to his face, with a wryly tilt to it. "Which is going to Mission
Impossible 3 for Aniki." The blonde paused, looking up from his sad-eyed
gaze down at his half-empty cup of steaming cocoa, and turned his attention
to Melfina. "Hey, Mel, you okay?"
The black-haired teenager only mutely nodded, collecting up her
and Gene's empty mugs, and stood up, dusting herself off. In a soft, passive
tone, she replied, "Everything's fine Jim. I promise. I'm really fine,
but I think I'll be going to bed now." As her thin frame paused in the
doorway, she glanced down at her beloved outlaw, her space cowboy, and
held her tongue from talking anymore. Melfina smiled as Jim bid her goodnight,
shutting the door behind her.
Jim Hawking yawned, blinking his marble blue eyes sleepily, and
let his gaze fall back onto Gene. A smirk crawled up his face, and the
kid outlaw crawled over to the bowl of tomato soup before his Aniki. He
stirred his fingers quietly through it, paused to flicker a nervous glance
up at the stirring Gene, and quickly took a cracker from the thick red
soup and stuffed it in his mouth. Impishness was written like a grin across
his face as Jim stood up, after quickly grabbing another one.
"'Night," Jim said absently, walking out of the room and closing
the door to leave Aniki to sleep.
In the hushed darkness of Aisha's abandoned room, it took a few
moments for any movement to originate. Dark with conflicting emotions,
Gene lifted his heavy eyelids to scan the dark. The light from the flashlights
had dimmed from use, and he drowsily clicked them off, and was enveloped
in pitch-blackness. The outlaw blinked the sleep from his steely blue eyes,
cautiously drawing himself to sit up. Instantly, the same stubborn ache
flared up deep in his chest, and a flinch whipped through him.
Gene ignored the pain and his emotional blue eyes fell dully
to the ground, staring endlessly off into the blackness. But his mind was
more than lit with thoughts, and, as his dark eyes adjusted to the night,
he noticed the steamy bowl of soup before him. He blinked, remembering
asking for it from Melfina, and how she'd willingly accepted every request
from him. Guilt. That's what it felt like.
The outlaw snorted in disgust to and at himself. "I break her
heart, kill her friend, and drag her into the lair of her enemies just
for the treasure she can unlock… and she still makes soup for me," he said
faintly to himself. Gene smiled beneath his disheveled red hair and took
the warm bowl, quickly downing it with only a few swallows. He glanced
out at the door, wiping the soup from his lips, and tilted them thoughtfully.
'Maybe if…'
Morning melded with the violin-adorned country song in her ears
once light glowed bright enough to stir her from dreams. Melfina sleepily
drove the sleep from her dream-saturated thoughts; as the sweet drone of
lyrics seemed to nudge her awake with each new word. Slowly, she eased
her eyes into opening, blinking as the surprisingly bright light of morning
flooded color into her world. She yawned lazily, allowing herself to stretch,
before she sat up and rubbed her eyes.
"'Morning, Mel."
Melfina cleared her deep brown eyes to see a pastel-painted dawn
spreading out in a stunning display across the rolling wheat fields of
gold. Against the raspberry red sun, wisps of dark, blue-tinted clouds
blocked some of it out. She turned, in the bright morning, to cast her
eyes over to the redhead driving an equally red Ehefrau.
"Gene?" Shock wavered like a studder through her speech. Melfina
glanced around at the unfamiliar surroundings. "Where are we going? And
why?" The bioandroid gently brushed some unruly black hair down and her
liquid brown eyes found themselves involving the contents of the backseat,
seeing it fill with the smell of food. She slid her body over the seat,
lifting up a traditional red and white picnic blanket, and gasped in surprise.
Homemade food was staring her in the face, piles upon piles, along with
a lavish, beanbag pillow.
Melfina locked gazes with Gene, as her lips formed, "Did you-"
"Yep," he replied nonchalantly, with the brilliant red locks
of hair whipping in the wind. A smile lit up in his dark sapphire blue
eyes, along his face as well, as he slowed the aging car to a hover that
barely stirred the dirt, and turned it down a neglected country road. On
the radio, a song belted out a message she could relate to. The soulful
voices sang of a girl dreaming of a day alone with her cowboy. Melfina
smiled secretively.
"How long have you been cooking this, Gene? I never knew you
could. It must have taken… hours!" Melfina whispered in amazement, large
brown eyes meeting his youthful blue ones.
"Well, after I heard you… talking to Jim last night," he hesitantly
started, flickering a nervous pair of eyes out to the lush nature. "I felt
guilty that I actually killed Suzuka, and of being cold to you sometimes.
I felt even worse, when I heard about you being so worried. I thought you
would like a day off from all this hassle, just you and me. Listen Melfina,
I promise I'd take care of you, and I have, but I haven't been thinking
of what you might want, not need."
Melfina glanced around once again, trying desperately to contain
her emotions. Tears threatened to roll down her face, but before she could
decide that it wouldn't so bad, they were already rolling down. Bliss lit
up brightly in her eyes, and the fear of rejection was forgotten. There
was no need to say it, when it had been said indirectly.
Gene Starwind slammed down on the breaks, coming to the end of
the rolling gold wheat fields. He turned to Melfina, guiding a genuine
grin to her, and then went instantly blank with fear, noticing the salty
tears streaming down her face in a golden light. "Mel? What's wrong?" Instantly,
his handsome face, lit by the pastel colors, turned to hers and Gene put
a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
Her eyes fell across the quiet, golden-lit stream in the wildflower-lined
below them, over to him, then up to the pale blue eyes overhead. Tears
glistened on her face, as the lyrics on the radio sang to her.
'Oh it sounds good to me
I said
Cowboy take me away…'
"No," Melfina said softly, brown eye flooding with tears. "Nothing's
wrong. Everything is perfect."
End (The real one!)
***************
Author's Notes:
Well, that's it folks. I want to thank everybody who reviewed,
or even took the time to read. Now I have a bit more time for The Dragon's
Cosmic Breath, Starwind and Hawking, and Sword. I'll also be starting a
Gundam Wing fic for Heero called Jaded. It's about him crashing to a little
inhabited planet and finding a girl who takes care of him and his Gundam,
and helps him find humanity. Anyway, please read and review! Tuson tucks
everybody!
Chustang