The Children of War
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, but I do own Anya Katsumi, Thomas Parks, Chun Li, and Miyabi Kenji. This particular chapter is going to be very violent with spousal abuse, course language, and blood and gore. There's a reason it's rated R!
Author's Note: If you don't want to be completely confused, go read Gundam Wing: Desecration first.
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Bloodstains ~ Tom's Story
Tom, Duo, Quatre, and Wufei sat in a local bar in an L2 colony, waiting to be served. They had just arrived on assignment from Zechs to attend to some rebellious citizens complaining about a communistic government and felt like they needed a break from the long day of traveling. Well, everyone except Wufei.
"What can I get for you boys?" the waitress who had come to take their orders asked.
"I'll just have a beer, thanks," Duo said, having eaten on the shuttle.
"I think I'll try one also," Quatre said being rather brave compared to his usual self. Wufei looked down at the table.
"Saki," He said simply. The waitress wrote their orders down and then turned to Tom, who had spaced off.
"And for you?" she asked. The former Gundam pilot snapped to attention.
"Oh, uh, just some soda for me, thanks," he said.
"Awe, spoil sport!" Duo joked, elbowing Tom. The young Australian laughed and rubbed the spot where his companion had nailed him, but on the inside Tom didn't feel like laughing. The idea of alcohol made him nervous, he never drank because he was afraid of what he'd do if he were drunk. He wasn't sure why, he just hated to drink.
There was a loud crash from the other end of the bar. The four young men turned their attention towards the direction of the distraction to see a man, drunk and stumbling about. Duo laughed and shook his head.
"Baka," Wufei snorted, turning back to the table.
Tom was suddenly nauseous at the sight of the drunkard. His heart began to beat quickly. Why am I so scared of him? Tom asked himself. The drunken man caught Tom staring at him. The young Aussie locked eyes with the man and was suddenly terrified. He heard someone yelling in the background, or was it in his head?
You stupid boy! You never do anything right! Get the hell outta my sight before I teach you a lesson you'll never forget!
"Tom, you okay?" Duo asked.
"I…I need to get outta here," Tom muttered as he pushed his way out of the bar, trying not to pass out from fear.
James! Don't hurt him!
He tumbled out of the door onto the sidewalk, shaking and feeling weak. "Tom?" Quatre's voice came from behind him. "Are you alright?" Quatre put his hand on Tom's shoulder and the young Aussie pulled away from instinct. He was afraid he was going to be beaten by someone.
"I'm fine," Tom snapped, standing up on his own. He looked at Quatre, except he wasn't looking at Quatre. He was looking at a tall, brown-haired boy with a dirty t-shirt and jeans. The face was familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on a name.
"Who…who are you?" Parks asked. The young man looked confused.
"It's me, Quatre," Suddenly, the brown-haired man's image fluctuated and turned into a very concerned looking Quatre. "Are you sure you're feeling all right?" the blonde asked.
"I…" Tom's head suddenly began to pound with pain.
"It's the SIA…" he groaned.
At this point, Duo and Wufei came out of the bar just in time to see Tom collapse on the cement, his face contorted into a painful look. "Don't tell me," Duo said, already guessing.
"We need to get him back to the hotel room," Quatre said. Wufei nodded and hoisted Tom up from underneath his arm.
Tom's Dream~
An eight-year-old Thomas Parks found himself sitting on the floor of a house, playing with Lego bricks. He could smell food cooking in the kitchen, a room away. Behind him, sitting at a desk, was a young man in his teens, doing homework. The door opened and a man stepped in.
"Welcome home, James!" A woman greeted the man as she stepped from the kitchen. "Any luck?" She asked, kissing his cheek.
"No, Laura." James said in a gruff tone. The woman's smile disappeared. "You'll have better luck tomorrow, how about some dinner?" She asked.
"No," the man said, sounding annoyed as he walked up the stairs to his bedroom.
"Mom?" the young Tom asked. Laura looked down at him. "Yes, sweetie?"
"Are we going to have to live in a box?" he asked. His mother laughed. "No, Tom. Daddy will find a job and then everything will go back to like when we were living in Australia, I promise," She said, leaning down to kiss her son on the head. Suddenly, there was a crashing noise from upstairs.
"God dammit, Laura! Why didn't you move this boxes!?" James' angry voice screamed from upstairs. Thomas' mother suddenly looked very scared.
"I'm sorry, James. I'll move them right away," She answered, hurrying up the stairs. There was the sound of stomping and then the sharp noise of a hand striking a cheek. Tom's brother quickly abandoned his homework and grabbed Tom, walked into the front hall closet, and shut the door.
"Ben, is Mom okay?" Tom asked. There was the sound of crying from upstairs as James was yelling more.
"I hope so," Ben said.
"James, please, stop!" the cry pierced Tom's ears, making him cry.
~Meanwhile
By this time, Duo, Wufei, and Quatre had gotten Tom back to their hotel room and laid him down on the bed. Duo pulled out his laptop to access the Preventer database to see if he couldn't recover Tom's files.
"Well, find anything Maxwell?" Wufei asked, looking over the American's shoulder.
"Not really. It says that he had just moved from Australia to a colony in the L-2 area when he was about eight. He had a mom, dad, and a brother."
"When he started having his flashbacks, he saw someone else besides me. Do you suppose he saw his brother or father?" Quatre wondered aloud. Duo shrugged.
"What does the file say about his reactions to the SIA?" Wufei asked.
"Massive headaches, body temperature fluctuation, physical outbursts,"
"What?" Quatre asked, regarding Duo's last statement.
"He smacks you if you invade his bubble," Duo said bluntly.
"STOP IT!" Tom suddenly rang out, tossing in his sleep.
Dream~
The door to the house swung open to reveal a rather ragged James Parks. "Dad?" Tom asked, barely recognizing his father. Tom's father looked about his son, who was sitting in the middle of a pile of Legos and toy cars.
"Pick this mess up now!" The man slurred as he smacked his son on the face.
"James! Don't hit him!" Laura suddenly burst from the kitchen to protect her son.
"Don't you defend him, bitch!" James threw his wife to the ground, her forehead hitting a table, causing it to bleed.
"Leave Mom alone!" Tom yelled. His father stared at him with a contemptible look and picked the boy up by the collar of his shirt.
"I'll do whatever I damn well please you little fucker,"
Tom could smell something on his father's breath; it was the smell of cheap beer from the corner bar.
"Dad! Stop!" Ben, who had come downstairs from his room, demanded.
"What is this shit?" James slurred. "My whole fucking family is against me? The one who works so hard to bring home a paycheck?" He screamed, knocking over a chair.
"The one who puts food on the table?!" He continued as he kicked the television set. Tom took cover next to his mother, who was shuddering. Ben zoomed across the room to join them in cowering as their father continued to rant and smash things.
"Stop it!" Tom cried softly.
~Back to the others
Wufei watched intently as Tom curled up into a ball and began to shudder. "What's he doing?" The Chinese man asked, giving the SIA victim a skeptical look.
"Reacting to a memory," Li stated, shaking his head at Wufei's lack of sympathy.
"Men don't act like that," Wufei soughed as he crossed his arms and puffed out his chest.
"Yeah, but kids do. Didn't you ever get scared when you were little?" Duo asked as he looked up from the computer. Wufei looked puzzled.
"No." Wufei said coldly. Duo snorted. "Sure,"
"I'm warning you, Maxwell," The Asian man growled. Li chuckled.
Dream~
Tom was in his room looking at a book with Ben when he heard the door downstairs swing open and his father clamor in, drunk. James' heavy footsteps pounded as he walked up the stairs.
"Get under the bed," Ben commanded. "But-"
"GO!" Ben shoved his younger brother beneath the bed as he slammed the door shut and pushed against it to prevent entry. Just as their father's footsteps reached the doorstep, something stopped them.
"James! Leave them alone!"
"Oh Mom, please don't," Ben pleaded quietly.
"Stay out of this bitch!" James yelled as he beat on the door.
"NO! Leave them alone!" Laura cried as she ran up the stairs. The protective mother tried to punch her husband in the stomach put he pulled away and pushed her down the stairs. Ben and Tom could hear their mother's last cry as her head hit a stair and her body flipped over her, snapping her neck.
There was momentary silence. Ben opened the door a little to see his father, standing over the stairs, looking at Laura's motionless body at the bottom of the staircase. Ben's eyes became wide as he stood and opened the door all the way.
"You," Ben growled.
"She deserved it," His father snapped. The young man trembled with anger as he lunged at his father.
"BASTARD!" Ben cried as he punched his father in the face. James flew backwards with the force of the hit.
"You'll pay for that," The drunken man muttered. Ben only looked at his father as he ran at him and knocked James' head into the wall, rendering him unconscious. Ben wasted no time in stumbling down the stairs to check on his mother.
"Mom," He said, picking her up. She was cold and pale. "Oh God, no," Ben began to cry softly as he realized that his mother had left this world.
"Ben?" A small voice came from upstairs. "Tom!" The young man gasped, nearly forgetting that his brother was there.
"What's wrong with Mom?" Tom asked. "I'll explain later, we have to go," Ben said, running back up the stairs and grabbing his younger brother. "Why?"
"We just have to, come on."
~Meanwhile
"Mom…what's wrong with Mom?" Tom mumbled as his brow furrowed. Quatre looked pitifully down on his friend.
"Hm…" Duo uttered, scratching his chin as he studies Tom's file. "What is it, Maxwell?" Wufei asked, walking back over to the laptop.
"Well, when the file was started, it's recorded that Tom had a lot of injuries. Burns, bruises, scratches and scabs," Duo reported.
"He was in a train accident, wasn't he?"* Quatre asked.
"Yeah, but the report says that the bruises and not all of the scratches were caused by the accident. Some were caused by a person," Shinigami continued.
"He was abused?" The young Arabic boy gasped. Duo nodded solemnly.
"What caused the train accident?" Wufei inquired. "Pilot error. Two trains were heading in opposite directions on the same track. The one that Tom wasn't in was supposed to switch tracks, but obviously he forgot." Deathscythe's pilot said.
"Tom should have a scar on his chest from the accident," He added. Wufei turned around and unbuttoned the young Australian's blue shirt. Sure enough there was the remains of a large gash, starting below his shoulder and ending at the bottom of his ribcage.
"Ouch," Duo commented, observing the scar. Suddenly, Tom's face contorted into a painful look and his muscles contracted. His breathing became heavy and he began to cough.
"Ben…" He murmured.
Dream~
It had been three days since the two young Parks brothers had escaped from their father. Ben had landed a job on the other side of the colony working for a packinghouse and he and Tom were on their way by train. The two sat across from each other in large, red, plush seats next to a window. Tom looked out at the synthetic snow covering the colony.
"Ben, do you think Mom's okay?" The young version of Tom asked. Ben flinched. He still had not told his younger brother that their father killed their mother.
"Tom, I need to tell you something," The fifteen-year-old sighed, looking down at the floor.
"Yeah?"
Ben gulped and his voice got quiet. "When Dad was fighting with Mom he pushed her down the stairs,"
"Was she hurt real bad?" Tom gasped, suddenly wanting to go back home.
"She's dead, Tom," Ben said finally.
The younger boy's eyes welled up with tears and his lower lip began to quiver in a very childish, yet understandable, manner. Ben himself found it hard to fight back the tears. "C'mere," he motioned to Tom to come sit in his lap. Ben's younger brother obeyed as the tears spilled over his cheeks. No sooner had the brothers began to comfort each other, there was a loud crash and the car quaked and rocked until its passengers were thrown out of their seats.
Tom opened his eyes to see orange flames surrounding he and his brother. People were screaming around him as the fire robbed the air from their lungs. "Ben!" the young Thomas Parks cried out, suddenly very afraid.
"Tom!" His brother called back from behind him. Tom spun around to see his older brother with a gash in his forehead that was bleeding.
"What's going on?" Tom asked.
"I have to get you out of here," Ben said, avoiding his brother's questions again. Ben began to look about him for a way out. He spotted one. Somehow something had punctured the bottom of the car's floor and there was an opening small enough for an eight-year-old to pass through. Ben scooped his little brother up and began to push him through the hole.
"Go for help," He said before forcing Tom down the hole.
"Come with me!" Tom cried. Ben shook his head.
"No, the hole's too small for me, you have to go for help, Tom!" He said. Tom was about to protest, but Ben forced him down the hole. Tom's chest caught on a steel protrusion and he cut himself.
"Ben!"
"JUST GO!" His brother's cry came from the car. Tom reluctantly sped out from underneath the train car and began to scream for help. He was rather surprised to find that there were already people from the nearby highway out of their cars and pounding on the windows of the cars, trying to save the victims.
Since he was too short to reach the windows, Tom climbed up onto a boulder next to the wreck and began to beat on the window with a dismembered tree branch. He could see hands pounding on the glass from the other side, crying out for air.
"Please, don't die!" He called out.
One by one, the hands began to fall underneath the glass. "NO!" Tom cried. One pair of hands was particularly small, even smaller than his.
"Don't die," the young Australian pleaded. Breathing became harder for him as he continued to beat against the glass. He was losing blood from his wound fast.
The small pair of hands finally dipped below the glass, signaling the end of a life.
"NO!" Tom cried with the last of his strength. He passed out from his great loss of blood and tumbled down the rock. He could hear people shouting in the distance.
"Hey! This kid escaped the train, somebody get the paramedics, he's wounded!"
"Ben…" Tom whispered with his last breath.
~Back to the others
Tom's breathing continued to be heavy for nearly an hour. It was now 12:23 A.M. Wufei had begun to meditate nearly an hour ago when Tom's cries died down. Now only Quatre and Duo were fighting to stay awake in case something should go wrong. Suddenly, a loud beeping noise was emitted from Duo's laptop, signaling an incoming message.
"Agh!" Duo cried, nearly falling off of his chair in surprise. Quatre jumped.
Shinigami quickly opened the message to stop the noise. "What!?" He demanded.
"Sorry for the late night call," It was Lucrezia Noin/Marquis. "I was looking for a status report."
"There is none," Duo replied grumpily. Noin gave the two a look as though she was about to give them a lecture.
"Tom went into SIA recovery right after we got in, we've been here watching him since then." Quatre said. Zechs' wife sighed out of frustration.
"Great,"
"Wufei and I can get on it in the morning if you don't mind watching Tom, Quatre," Duo suggested. Quatre nodded.
"Sure,"
"Alright. I'll send you the details about the resistance group in the morning. Get some rest you guys," Noin sad as she disconnected.
"We should watch him in shifts," Wufei suggested. The other two pilots nodded. "So, who's first?" Quatre asked. At first, nobody spoke up, but someone finally volunteered.
"I'll go," Wufei said, being uncharacteristically curious. Duo and Quatre exchanged confused looks, but agreed. "I'll go next," said Quatre.
"Guess that leaves the last shift up to me." Duo shrugged. "We're outta here. See you in an hour or so," he added as he and Quatre left the room. Wufei nodded and sat down on the table next to the window to meditate while Tom continued to thrash in his sleep.
Dream~
Tom could hear beeping noises. Where was he? Was he still lying outside the train in the blood soaked snow? Or was he dead? The young boy opened his eyes and found that he was lying on his back in a hospital bed, now staring at the dots on the ceiling. He tried to sit up, but the minute he tried to, a great pain filled his chest and he decided it wasn't such a great idea.
"Ben," He rasped, suddenly remembering the train accident. The nurse who was in his room reading some charts jumped at the sound of his voice.
"Doctor! He's awake!" The nurse called, dashing from the room. A few seconds later, a tall man with glasses walked in, a clipboard in hand.
"Hello there. My name's Dr. Tsugeru. What's your name?" The man asked.
"Tom," The boy answered matter-of-factly.
"Is that your full name?" Tsugeru continued to ask.
"Thomas Parks," He stated. The doctor nodded and wrote something down on his clipboard. "And how are you feeling?" he asked.
"Where's my brother?" Tom asked, ignoring the doctor's questions. Tsugeru raised an eyebrow.
"Brother?" He questioned in a surprised manner. He should have known that a boy that young wouldn't be traveling alone. This wasn't going to be easy.
"Son, there were only ten survivors from that train, and they were all kids."
"My brother's fifteen, he's still a kid," Tom reasoned. Dr. Tsugeru shook his head and sighed.
"All under the age of thirteen," He added. Tom felt as though someone had just shoved a brick down his throat. Gone. His whole family, torn apart and killed.** His eyes began to fill with tears that threatened to fall at any moment.
"Do you have any family that I can call? A grandparent?"
Tom thought about that. He had no grandparents, and both of his parents were only children, however, he did not want to go back to his father.
"No," He finally answered. The doctor frowned. "Alright. You'll have to stay here while you recover. We'll find you a place to stay, don't worry," Tsugeru said as he left the room.
A few days later, the young Tom was healed up, although he still had a large bandage across his chest. Now the question was, where to put him?
Tom was looking at some birds on his windowsill when Doctor Tsugeru entered the room, looking particularly pleased with himself.
"Well, Tom, I have some good news," He stated. Tom's face lit up with the hopes that there were undiscovered survivors from the train wreck, and one of them was Ben.
"We found a place for you to stay," Tsugeru announced proudly. The little boys face lost it's light as quickly as it had come. Tom wished so badly that this was all a nightmare.
"There's a place for you in the orphanage down the street. They'll take good care of you and you'll make lots of new friends," The doctor said cheerfully.
"NO! I don't want to go to an orphanage!" Tom protested. He had been to an orphanage once with his mother, a few Christmases when they still lived on Earth. The children looked so sad. He didn't want to look that way.
"I'm sorry, Tom, but there's no other place for you. A good family will come and adopt you some day," Tsugeru said.
"Dr. Tsugeru to exam room seven," The intercom bellowed. Dr. Tsugeru sighed and pushed his glasses further up his nose.
"I have to go. See you later, Tom." He said, waving as he left. Tom glared angrily at him as he left.
"I've gotta get out of here," Tom muttered to himself once the doctor had left the room. He looked about the room, trying to find some means of escaping. He saw his dirty clothes on the table next to his bed. There was a large slash in his t-shirt where he had been cut on the train and bloodstains dripping down onto his blue shorts. He quickly jumped off of the bed, threw off his hospital gown and got dressed.
Tom then scurried to the window to see how far up he was. Three stories high. He looked over to his bed to see how many sheets he had to work with- Not many.
"Guess I'll just have to run for it," He said. Tom walked over to the door and cracked it open to asses his situation. There was one nurse walking towards him and he got nervous, but at the last minute she turned into another room. When he was sure that there was no one coming, the young Australian made a mad dash down the hall. Just before he reached the elevator, he heard a familiar voice call out.
"Tom! Wait! Get back here!"
Tom turned to see who it was when he dashed into the elevator. It was Dr. Tsugeru, running towards him. Tom stuck out his tongue and put his hands up next to his ears to mock the outwitted doctor.
As soon as the elevators doors opened, Thomas Parks was bolted out of the hospital faster than the nurses could question him. The little boy dashed around the corner and kept on running past the hospital and everything else until he came upon a base of some sort. There was a man with a large head of gray, mushroom-shaped hair was standing outside the gate staring in. Tom, the ever curious lad, walked up to him, wondering what he was doing.
"Who are you?" The man snapped.
"I'm Thomas Parks," The little boy answered matter-of-factly.
"Go away, I'm doing something important,"
"Do you need any help?" Tom asked. The man glared down at him.
"Why would I need your help?" He asked.
"I dunno. I don't have anywhere else to go. My family's all gone now so I figured maybe if I helped you, you could help me out and keep me away from the orphanage?" Tom grinned widely. The mushroom-haired man rolled his eyes and went back to staring at the base until a thought crossed his mind.
"Maybe you could help me…And that way we wouldn't have to compromise Maxwell…" He said aloud. Tom cocked his head as the man grinned and chuckled to himself.
"Heh. Well then Thomas Parks, I think you can help me. Stick out your arm please," The man ordered.
"Okay," Tom said, raising an eyebrow. "You can call me Tom by the way. Ow!" Tom said as the stranger pricked him with a needle full of purple fluid.
"Hey why am I so sleepy, whadya do to me…" The little boy murmured as he drifted off to sleep and his world became black.
The blackness faded away into yet another strange room with dots on the ceiling. "Where am I?" Tom asked himself. He sat up to see the strange man who had pricked him with the needle.
"Do you remember anything?" The man asked. "What's your name?" He added.
"My…name?" Tom stuttered. Name…I…I don't remember my name!
"Your name is Thomas Parks. Your family was killed when OZ planted a bomb on the train you were traveling on. I found you in the snow outside the wreck and brought you here."
"Who are you?" Tom asked hollowly.
"I'm Professor G.. A Gundam technician."
"Gundam?"
"It's a large mobile suit that allows one to avenge his family." The professor said, planting the seed of curiosity.
"I want to learn how to use it," Tom said, his fists clenched. Professor G smiled.
~End Dream
Tom's eyes shot open to reveal a white ceiling. "What?" He asked as he sat up, holding his head in his hand.
"That's one bloody headache," He said as his head throbbed.
"Hey, are you okay?" A voice came from the other side of the room. Tom looked up to see Quatre sitting at a laptop.
"Yeah, what time is it?" Tom asked, rubbing his forhead. "Nine o'clock." Quatre answered.
"Damn." Tom muttered as he tried to shake his headache away. "I've gotta find my dad," He added.
"Your dad?" Quatre reiterated, a little confused. "I want to know what happened to that bastard, he killed my mom…" Tom said through gritted teeth.
"I'm going for a walk," He suddenly decided, further confusing Quatre. "Are you sure you're well enough to go out?" The Arabic boy questioned.
"I'm fine," Parks insisted as he opened the door and left. He walked out of the hotel and kept going until he came across a small park, lighted only by street lamp. Tom trod over to the swings and sat down plopped down into one of them and stared at the ground. Images ran through his head of his visions.
"Bastard," He said as an image of his father passed through his head.
"FUCKING BASTARD!" He cried out as he gripped the chains of the swing until his palms bled.
The End
*See Gundam Wing: Desecration, chapter nine.
**So his dad isn't dead, but maybe to Tom he is because he turned into a monster.