Disclaimer: If it looks at all familiar, it doesn't belong to me. I'm not making money off this(duh), I'm just another loser who loves Gundam Wing. Anyway, enough with the self-deprecation, on to the good stuff. Read and review, please!!
Shuffle-part2
By Zero's Wings
As soon as Catherine had dropped the foreboding card onto the table, their manager, always excitable and now visibly flustered, barged into their room.
"What are you two doing?!!" he demanded. "You're both on in less than five minutes!"
"We'll have to save this for later, Trowa." Catherine placed the Hanged Man card next to The Moon, Trowa's waxen alter ego.
It was an eventful night. Trowa performed in Catherine's knife-throwing routine and with the lions. All of the events were melded into one nauseating kaleidoscope of deafening noise and vociferous hue in his mind. He was still haunted by the frank portrait that he had received through that tarot card. He couldn't believe that he was treating the whole load of nonsense with such seriousness and reverence. Trowa couldn't stop himself from thinking that he was a deceitful little keeper of secrets. He wanted no secrets kept from his beloved sister. She was all that he had now. Indeed, all that he ever had, his parents left this world before he could even appreciate their presence.
They're just cards, he repeated in his mind. But if they're just cards, why have I become so self-defensive of that fact? He was barely conscious of the blade, which dared closer to his temple than any other in recent memory. And the lion's teeth, which had nearly caught him, left no impact either.
And what does this second card mean? he wondered. Is it a harbinger of my own death? Catherine said it is the person who will have a major impact on my life, other than myself. Will this person kill himself? Or will he persuade me to do so? Trowa doubted both. He believed that suicide, unless committed by a mentally ill person, or for a certain cause that was greater than his individual self-worth, was one of the greatest signs of weakness and cowardice. He did not believe that he would befriend or associate with someone who planned on killing themselves. He also believed that he would never kill himself, unless he found a belief or a movement that was truly worth giving up his own life for, and he was called upon to do so.
*****
The only way to live a good life is to act on your emotions*****
Never give up until the end *****When the siblings finally returned to their cards, Trowa was, much to his own surprise, brimming with excitement. He flopped down heavily in his chair, but the performance hadn't tired him at all. He was barely aware that it had happened. It was the anticipation that had worn him down.
Catherine sat down in front of Trowa and flashed quick smile in his direction. She studied the second card that had been placed on the table.
"What does it mean, Catherine?"
She eyed the card suspiciously and then fell into a trance again.
"The Hanged Man is a symbol of strength and death. It is a restless, unconquerable spirit. A tragic figure."
Trowa almost shuddered. The man, hanging from his noose like an unposed question caught on the end of one's lip, was vaguely disturbing and familiar. The eyes of the hanged man called out to him, but an inner coldness had silenced his cries.
Catherine then drew five more cards and placed them, face down, on the table in a circle around the moon and the hanged man. Each was an independent satellite that revolved around Trowa's secretive figure and this unknown's grim representation.
Trowa's sister turned over each card one by one. The first was a troubled young boy, with blond hair and adorned with luxuries, clutching a heart shaped symbol surrounded by gold flames, and with a single tear precariously dangling from his eyelashes.
"The Son of Cups. He is a known by all to be pleasant, calm, reticent, and shy. However, he has a tragic inner motif and an unusual gift for interpreting emotions and symbols. He cares deeply about a few people of certain causes, and is highly idealistic. His mind has a tendency to be lyrical as opposed to logical. At times he will make errors of fact, but never of values. He will be a good friend, the closest you'll have." Trowa nodded. He could imagine befriending such a person later in life.
*****
Open your eyes, Trowa! The person you have to protect lives there! You were the one who corrected the mistake that I made. I can't let you make that same mistake!*****
We shouldn't fight each other. It isn't right.*****
The next card was turned.
Two nude figures embracing one another.
"The Lovers," Catherine said simply.
"Where does that card go?" Trowa asked anxiously.
"That is not for us to know. The future is not written in stone. We are only to know that there will be love." She winked at Trowa and grinned.
"I noticed that card doesn't apply to the suits or characters." Trowa said. "Is it another Major Arcana? I thought there were only to be two of those cards."
"Actually it belongs to the Minor Arcana, which is invariably mixed in with the standard cards. The Minor Arcana forms a bridge between to suit cards. It's a complicated system, and I didn't want to confuse you from the start."
"It makes no difference," Trowa said darkly. Catherine shrugged and turned over the fifth card. It had ribbons of color streaming over it, pinks and blues and whites mixing together, and a maiden in the center.
"The Princess of Cups, a loving, imaginative humanizer. She is thought of amongst her friends as a cooperative, charismatic, strong-willed woman. She is always caring and concerned, and idealizes her personal relationships. If nothing else, she is constantly empathetic and understanding of the emotions and motivations of others."
*****
Peace is not something that is given to you. Each person must strive for their own sense of resolution and justice.*****
Earth is becoming unified. Is that girl behind it?*****
Catherine's eyes brightened. "I see! These two cards," she began as she drew together the Son of Cups and the Princess of Cups, "are both connected with the lovers card."
"Those two are in love?" Trowa said.
"No, I believe that the Minor Arcana links the two of them to your card and the Hanged Man card."
"So the Son and Princess of Cups are the lovers of myself and the suicidal fellow respectively."
"Right," she giggled. That sound reminded Trowa of just how young and innocent his sister was. She couldn't possibly be expected to understand the events going on around her. Trowa knew that there was a movement within the colonies to take revenge for Heero Yuy's death. If the colonies sent weapons to earth, war and massacre would be inevitable. And what was this secret society that the mercenary group he fought with kept referring to? What was its name, OZ, something like that? It was hard to tell with their cockney or often guttural accents, which were a stew-like concoction of many Northern European ways of speaking combined. They whispered about this organization with growing fear yet little concrete knowledge. All of it was a constant, troubling splinter that refused to be dislodged from the back of Trowa's mind.
The sixth card, a frightening, soulless doll suspended on marionette strings, grasped by a great, shadow covered hand, and a tall, dark figure in the background, watching over its insensate slave with greedy slits for eyes. Inscribed upon it was ~ The Puppet ~
"There will be a great conflict. It will be resolved when this figure is banished." Catherine said all of this with her eyes closed and her head tilted back in her trance. It was as though she were in some far off place, blinded by the light of such revelations, and had to transmit the message back to Trowa while blind and alone. She opened her eyes and brought her head forward.
Catherine turned the disturbing puppet card over. She drew a second card and placed it on top of the former, covering it completely. This card was a bright and beautiful sunrise; it seemed to sing with joyous energy. It could not have been any more appropriately titled: ~ Life ~
"A lucky draw," she said, obviously relieved. There will be a great conflict in your future, and the controlled puppet figure will be the final rush, the crescendo that punctuates this conflict. But you and the others," she said while gesturing to all the other cards that she had drawn, "will survive."
"One to go," Trowa said. He was now as entranced by the prospect of his future revealed through these cards as Catherine was from the start.
The final card was turned.
Catherine saw it and almost let out a cry of some shrill variety. The card was predominantly gray and black. It had a huge, towering cloud drawn on it. There were twists of white lighting coming out of its bloated underside, and above, the cumulonimbus was stacked so high with the dark puff-like matter that it seemed ready to topple over as it floated ominously above a barren plain. Of course, it was labeled ~ The Storm ~
For a brief moment Trowa thought that he had simply imagined the roll of thunder in the distance as he eyed the card's vivid illustration. He was quite startled when he heard the thick raindrops begin to land on the canvas of their circus tent. It snapped him back into reality, and his gaze shifted up from the tarot card to his sister's distressed face.
"I guess I was to early in calling that last card a lucky draw. This one is much worse." Catherine brow folded upon itself a countless number of times.
"Don't do that," Trowa said in a rare, kind voice. He reached up with two fingers and brushed strands of hair away from her furrowed brow. "You'll get wrinkles." He smiled at her and his green eyes lit with warmth, transforming themselves from cold, green marble to an emerald hearth.
"It's just-" she began, uncertain, "this card is, to put it frankly, a harbinger of doom."
"That doesn't sound good," Trowa said, only half-serious now. Catherine ignored him and went right on ahead.
"It is a sign of coming darkness, of tragedy or great loss, for all of you!" she yelled suddenly, and made a great sweeping motion over all the cards on the table. She then fell back into her seat and cried into the palms of her hands.
"There, there," Trowa said, trying to comfort her. "They're just cards. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. I'm not going anywhere, not as long as the Barton Foundation is still looking for their missing heir."
She dried her tears and pushed all the cards from the carefully constructed ideogram into a big, confused pile.
"Stupid cards," she sniffled.
The two siblings sat in silence for a while, and then Trowa got up from his seat and made some coffee for the two of them. They drank their coffee slowly from steaming mugs, keeping their eyes on each other but saying nothing. The rain beat down upon their circus tent more furiously then ever, and it was especially noticeable in their silence. When Trowa got up to make a second cup for himself, there was a loud beeping noise. It was his computer, squawking to alert him of an incoming message. He opened up the laptop and hit a few keys. Its artificial blue light flashed soundlessly and filled the room.
Trowa sat down in front of the computer and began typing. After he entered his password to receive the sensitive documents that had just been transmitted, he opened the file with a couple nervous clicks on his track button pad.
Glowing blue text scrolled down in front of his eyes. "Top Priority…Operation M…Weapons Development" Trowa sped through the vast load of information, his heart gripped with a vile feeling of dread. This was the message that he hoped he would never see. The suit, Heavyarms, had been completed. Preparations were set at the LaGrange point and strategic locations all over Earth and the Colonies. This was his call back to the front.
Trowa stood up. His face masked all of his emotions beneath an impenetrable wall of stony skin and rigid muscle. Catherine knew that mask well, and she stood up, gave a quick, little shriek, and dropped her coffee mug. It shattered on the floor with a light tinkling sound. Catherine knew as soon as she saw her brother's face that he would be leaving again. And that cold, deadly look told her he was not simply going out on another routine mission with that band of mercenaries.
Leaving Cathy, and this place, felt to Trowa as though he had just plunged an icicle into his heart. It was horrible. He had no idea what to say, and as he approached her, no words came. With nothing else in reserve, he placed his hands on her shoulders and gingerly kissed her forehead.
"Goodbye."
As big, sparkling tears welled up in his sister's eyes, Trowa could take it no longer. He turned away from her and walked out of the tent into the rainy night. He knew that if he did not leave then, he would never be able to leave her again. Trowa tried with all his might to drive her from his mind, and the effort brought tears to his own eyes. Feeling fortunate that he was walking in a rainstorm, he let the tears roll down his face and he wept openly. His life, his identity, his mind; all were in a constant state of upheaval, and he suppposed they always would be, for a nameless wanderer like him. He gathered up the elements of his life and concentrated them into the confines of his skull. And from there, he shuffled them endlessly on.
End