by Neko Nasai
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing and all associated with it are
copywrighted to the people who created them and all that other
stuff. Moira Amoureux is my own creation, as it the story line.
Extra Notes: The first thing Moira quoted about Kali-Ma was
something called "The Charge of the Dark Mother", I
don't know the author. The second two were excerpts from poems
about the goddess Kali-Ma by Swami V. If you like it, please let
me know!
~Neko Nasai~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part 3
No one was more surprised to find Trowa and Quatre apart a few days later, than Moira. They weren't speaking to each other, looking at each other, they didn't even stay in the same room together. She had tried to talk to one or the other, but they always ended up finding a way out of it and leaving her too. She didn't know what was wrong and it was starting to really get to her, because neither of them seemed to want her around anymore.
That was when she went to Kali-Ma. Kali was always there, as though Moira were Shiva; Kali the physical and Shiva the consciousness, one could not be without the other. She would listen to her, no matter whether she understood or not, and she would always need Moira like Moira needed her now that the Gundam was so much a part of her life.
And as though all her talking to Kali was a prayer, Kali seemed to bring her something to help her through it all. She brought Duo.
"Hey, there, beautiful," came Duo's voice.
Moira looked up to see him perched on Deathscythe's shoulder.
"Mind getting Kali to get touchy-feeling with Deathscythe again so I can come over?"
Kali reached over and punched in the coding and Kali reached over to Deathscythe. Duo was in front of her in moments, sporting a big smile. But he dropped to his knees in front of her as soon as he saw her distress.
"Hey, what's wrong?" he asked, putting a hand on her arm.
That was when she burst into tears.
"Oh, God, what happened? What's wrong?" she could hear worry in his voice and that seemed to get the tears to subside enough that she could explain to him how she felt about Trowa and Quatre being broken up.
"You sound like you're blaming yourself. You aren't, are you?"
She nodded and sniffled.
"Oh, no, Moira, how could you think that?"
"They won't talk to me, Duo--they used to tell me anything. Even if we'd only known each other a couple o' days."
"That is strange, Moira, but you can't blame yourself--you don't really know."
He sat himself down beside her and stretched his arm around her shoulders, trying to give her what comfort and reassurance he could.
"Here, why don't we get your mind off of it?"
"How do we do that?"
"Well... Tell me why Kali's name is Kali-Ma. What's it mean?"
"Well... Do you know anything about the Hindu religion?"
"Uh-uh. Not one single thing."
"Well, Kali-Ma is one o' their goddesses. She is called the Dark Mother. She's the god Shiva's wife and is the manifestation o' him an' she cannot exist without him. But he also cannot exist without her. They need each other, not only for the order o' the universe, but cause they simply can't exist without the other one." Duo was paying extreme attention to her, so much so that his arm had relaxed and instead of it being around her shoulders, it was slung around her hips. "Kali-Ma is a dark goddess, she represents many things that are opposites, but have everything to do with each other. She is the goddess of Death an' Rebirth, virgin an' experienced, innocent an' sensual. She destroys so that more can be created. She is a wrathful warrior but also the caring, gentle mother who protects an' avenges."
"Wow, that's a lot."
"Aye, but it's not everything... It's very hard to explain it all. Except maybe something I memorized about her once."
"Tell it to me?" he whispered to her.
She nodded and thought for a moment. When she spoke, she spoke with almost no accent at all, trying to be the clearest and most respectful of it that she could.
" I am the shadow in the bright day, I am the reminder of mortality at the height of living. I am the never-ending veil of night where the Star Goddess dances. I am the Death that must be so that living may continue, for behold, Life is immortal because the living must die.
" I am the strength that protects, that limits. I am the power that says no, and no further, and that is enough. I am the things that cannot be spoken of and I am the laughter at the edge of Death.
" Come with me into the warm enfolding dark. Feel my caress in the hands, in the mouth, in the body of the one you love, and be transformed.
" Gather in the Moonless Night and speak in unknown tongues. I, the Dark Mother, will listen. Sing to Me and cry out, and the power will be yours to wield.
" Blow me a kiss when the sky is dark, and I will smile, but no kiss return--For my kiss is the final one for all of mortal flesh.'"
Duo's heart was hurting in his chest. He felt so akin to Moira, more than he had ever realized before. He wondered that of all the people that could have been another Gundam pilot, it was this red-haired girl who was as dark and related to Death as he was, who could understand him and Deathscythe, because she and Kali-Ma were very much like them. Duo thought Moira was beautiful, divinely beautiful, and he knew that if Deathscythe could be as conscious as a human, that he would find Kali-Ma the same.
Duo opened his mouth to say something, but alarms started going off and he recognized them as the warning against incoming Mobile Dolls. He stood up in a heartbeat and looked down to see the other pilots running in and climbing into their Gundams.
"Well, Shinigami, time to depart Heaven to bring Hell down on the heads of the enemy," Duo muttered to himself before turning to a bewildered Moira. "There are Mobile Suits over the house and hangar--"
"They say they'll leave the surrounding area and people alone if we'll fight them outside the atmosphere!" called out Trowa.
"I guess we're fighting them... Think you're ready to show everyone else what that awesome goddess of yours can do?" he asked, turning to Moira again.
"I don't think I have too much of a choice. I'm not going anywhere without you guys."
Duo waited until Moira was in her piloting hatch and the door securely shut before he patted Kali and whispered to her.
"Take care of her, Kali-Ma, I don't want anything to happen to that wonderful girl in you."
Just then the bindi-jewel glowed to life and he took that as his cue to run back down her arm, to Deathscythe.
Hiro had taken off first, followed closely by Wufei. Moira knew that Trowa and Quatre were looking at each other, but she didn't know what was going through their minds. Then Quatre took off after the other two and Trowa waited a few moments before doing the same.
"Ready, Moira?" came Duo's transmitted voice.
"About as I much as I can be, I suppose, for my first real fight."
Duo heard Wufei snort over the transmission frequency and made a mental note to smack him around sometime later.
"After you, Dark Mother," said Duo and Deathscythe lifted his arm skyward.
Moira smiled and Kali-Ma shot up into the air like a dark streak, graceful but terrifyingly swift.
"In love yet, Deathscythe?" Duo chuckled and finally left the hangar after the rest of them.
~~~
There were hundreds of them up here in the dark of space outside the atmosphere. The Mobile Dolls faced the Gundams in a wide semicircle, all guns targeted. The moment of attack from the Gundams was agreed on at the same moment, without any words. Moira sat in Kali with gigantic saber-toothed butterflies in her stomach.
The Gundams moved positions, getting ready for their offensive attack. One moment, Moira could see all the Mobile Suits like a swarm of ugly bees, and the next moment, Deathscythe blocked her vision.
"Don't worry about fighting, the rest of us have done it before. You can just watch."
Duo was sincere and it was incredibly sweet to Moira that he didn't want her uncomfortable. She nodded and kept quiet as all five of the male Gundams struck out at the Mobile Suits.
Kali-Ma lifted up higher and backed away some, to give the battle a wide berth. But as the moments passed Moira found herself snapping her nails off at the quick every time a Mobile Doll went at one of her friends. She was frightened for Quatre, worried about Trowa, feared that Duo would miss one and shed have to watch them die, she was even nervous about the possibility that Wufei would get hurt.
But they had destroyed at least half the Mobile Suits by now and were thinning out the rest. Moira had relaxed a little, confident that her companions would overcome this enemy easily. And that was when she spotted the over-sized, over-equipped, twice-the-size-of-any-of-the-others Mobile Doll. The butterflies in her stomach ran in fear and left her stomach muscles tightened into a hard, marble ball in their wake. It was the ugliest mechanical thing she had ever seen and the boys didn't see it coming.
"No!" she screamed and everyone froze as they watched a dark streak fly across the battlefield and spread itself between the giant Mobile Doll and the rest of the Gundams.
"What in Hell is that?!" screeched Wufei as he saw the Mobile Suit that could be described in no other way than looking like a normal Mobile Doll on steroids.
"That," began Duo, a smile in his voice. "Is the Goddess of Death and Destruction about to kick that ugly-ass thing back into the Hell it came from."
Duo could hear Wufei's faint "oh", but he was paying more attention to Kali-Ma and the red-haired girl who wielded her.
The Mobile Giant sent large rocket flares at Moira and she dodged them easily enough, so that a few of the little Mobile Dolls were caught by them instead.
"That," she laughed, "was pathetic."
The Mobile Giant was fast, though. She hadn't expected it to be that fast, but then, so was Kali-Ma. The Giant collided with Kali's shoulder and wrapped it's mechanical arms around her, intending to break her apart. Kali was slender, much more slender than the other Gundams, and slid through the crushing grip just enough to slam one of her fists into it to dislodge it from her while the other one launched a fireball into a small collection of mechanical joints.
The Giant was deflected from her, but to Moira's horror, the explosion in the concentration of circuits didn't slow it by much and it was coming at her again. She deflected it again, without much damage to it. Moira was starting to freak, because she was taking on this thing all by herself and she wasn't doing much to it at all. She was at the point of snapping, but which way she was going to go she wasn't sure.
The Giant decided that for her, though, when he suddenly went after the other Gundams. Hiro was the one who got suicidal and decided that sacrificing his life in a collision to destroy the thing was the only thing he could do. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your disposition toward the pilot, the Giant swatted him out of the way like a fly. And right before Moira's eyes she watched the Giant damage Wufei's Nataku so that it couldn't fire weaponry anymore, kicked Quatre's Sandrock away with a nice little dent, and pulled some circuitry out of Trowa's Heavy Arms. It was when the Giant was against Duo that Moira's head finally cleared.
Duo was doing well, compared to the other four who'd just been downed. He had enough warning to get some defensive moves against it, but now the metal hand was gripped around Deathscythe's head and it was preparing the crunch it down to scrap metal, a bloody, ripped up pilot at it's core.
"For Terror is Thy name," Moira's voice cut through like a sliver of ice and Duo found the Giant removing it's hand at the wiles of a very pissed off Kali-Ma.
"Death is in Thy breath," she continued quoting, Kali-Ma's body twisting the Giant around between her hands, actually distorting the metal of the Mobile Suit.
"And every shaking step." She slammed the Giant against a large ship that had shown up during the battle with the littler Mobile Dolls, she could only guess it was where the Giant had come from, and planted her feet on the warped body of the Giant.
"Destroys a world forever." Kali's feet retracted and sprung, caving in the head like a bowl and crushing the central power system.
Kali-Ma pulled away from the over-sized Mobile Suit she'd completely put out of commission and drifted backward away from it. Moira was shaking inside her. She had never fought like that before and the anger that had risen up had given her the ability to destroy something that threatened the people she cared about.
When she looked up, Deathscythe was facing her, and also shielding her from inquiring Gundam pilot eyes and shocked enemy ones. They all heard her whisper, though, the whisper that held a strange truth in them and calmed the girl who spoke them.
" Who dares Misery love/And hug the form of Death/Dance in Destruction's dance/To him the Mother comes.' "
~~~
Later, when the Mobile Suits had retreated from the battle field and the Gundams returned to their hangar unmolested, Moira stood alone in the kitchen. She had set things out to thaw for dinner, but was just staring at them as they thawed. She didn't know what else to do, where else to go. The battle had frazzled her and she figured the other pilots didn't want to see her. So in the kitchen she stayed.
That was why she was surprised when she turned around to see Wufei walk into the kitchen and look at her without any words or explanation.
Moira certainly didn't know what to say, she didn't know why he was there. When she finally did open her mouth, though, to say something, the silence too awkward, he closed the space between them and stood right in front of her.
It was what he did next that she never in a million years would have guessed he was about to do.
His lips were on hers, working as efficiently as they had the first time, but he wasn't quite so fast. He wasn't afraid of this kiss like he's been of the first one and when he finished he smiled, mostly because she was giving him the most bewildered look.
"You're one of us. You may be a girl, but... You're not a normal one. I will always fight by you. For justice or anything else."
Moira's eyebrows lifted in surprised and he laughed a little.
"Don't be too flabbergasted, okay?" Then he suddenly stopped smiling, the subject dramatically changed, and his voice became insistent. "I think you need to go to the hangar... Duo needs you."
"What?" she was automatically worried, she headed to the kitchen door as he followed at her side. "What happened? What's wrong?"
He said a word. "Hiro."
She burst into the rest of the house and ran, growling a promise.
"I'll kill him."
~~~
"But, Hiro--"
"You really are thick-headed, aren't you?"
"I don't understand, though."
"No one can understand me, especially you."
"But I thought I always had."
"Well, you were wrong, then, weren't you, Duo?"
"I--"
"Just get out of my life! God, you're like a hopeless puppy!"
"HIRO!!!"
Duo and Hiro both jumped and spun around to see Moira stalking up to them. Her eyes weren't just green anymore, they looked like emerald daggers ready to plunge relentlessly into Hiro, and her hair was a wild mane of red. She looked like an enraged fire nymph.
Hiro shrugged off his surprised and crossed his arms across his chest, giving her his best apathetic expression.
"What are you doing?!" she screeched at him.
No... not exactly a fire nymph, though she was beautiful angry, more like a wailing banshee letting the household know a death was about to occur.
"What do you mean?" Hiro drawled.
"Do you see this man standing by you?" she asked coldly.
Hiro managed a glance at Duo, then looked at her again.
"Yeah."
"He's the best thing you'll ever be able to get your hands on. You're throwing something away that youll regret. But you know what? Im glad."
Hiro looked surprised. Even Duo looked a little shocked at her words.
"Duo is caring and sweet and protective, but he's also strong--bet you never thought to look at that part, did you? He's got guts, he's got the ability to live without someone like you. He loves you--but you handle it like it's garbage. People like you grow old and completely miserable because they don't have enough luck to die in battle or perform suicide right.
"I'm glad you're getting rid of him, I'm glad you don't want him, because Hiro, you may not see it, but you don't deserve one atom in his body." She glanced up at Duo for the first time since she'd stalked in and found an expression on his face she couldn't read. "Maybe you should ask him if he wants to keep you, not the other way around."
And just like that, she turned back around and left the hangar.
Moira visibly wilted as soon as the hangar doors shut. She took a few steps and leaned back against the wall.
"Oh, Lord, Moira, what are you doing? Didn't you tell Duo you'd be nice to Hiro?" she muttered to herself. "But, come on, you had to tell him something, right? You knew you wouldn't stay quiet forever."
She rubbed her face with her hands and straightened back up. That was when she heard the noise.