Disclaimer-I own most of the plot and the dialogue between characters, at least for the beginning chapters. All other dialogue is copyright of Gundam Wing and its producers/writers/directors/actors/etc.
Prologue
April 7th, AC 175—November 18th, AC 180
"With this in mind, the colonies ask for complete and total…"
A shot. A scream. Heero Yuy's face twisted in horrific agony as the small missile of lead blasted through his collar bone, splintering the bones so wearied by age and fatigue. The lined face that kept up the hopes of the colonies sagged grotesquely as he sunk to the ground, gasping for breath.
Aralia Yuy covered her mouth and tried to fight down vomiting as she watched her father take in huge gasps of air, making loud rasping sounds from the labor. Quinze and Dekim ran past her and crouched next to Heero. Quinze began shouting orders. Someone call an ambulance. Someone call the police. Someone find who did this and kill him. Vertigo began to take over her brain. Her father was dying before her eyes. Someone had shot him where it was sure to be fatal.
Her knees buckled and she fell to the ground, closing her eyes but not her mind against this horror. People rushed around her, screaming and yelling, crying and raging, viciously shoving past her. She was knocked about on the ground but she barely felt the blows of running feet, all she could think was that her father had been murdered in cold blood right before her eyes…
Aralia screamed again, feeling as if someone was wrenching her spine from her back.
"You're doing fine, Aralia," said the palliating voice of the nurse. "It'll be over soon."
"It'd freakin' better be!" Aralia screamed at her.
The nurse continued smiling, and Aralia could have strangled her for daring to be calm and assured when Aralia felt like her body was being ripped in half. Her husband paced nervously back and forth at the foot of the bed, just behind the doctor, wringing his hands and muttering. Dimly, through her rage at the nurse, Aralia thought it strange that her husband of 3 years, an ex-Alliance commander named Midorikawa Gendo, should be so nervous. All through the pregnancy he had been cool as an icicle, something that had infuriated her…her thoughts were cut off as she screamed again, but this time they were matched by a wail, a wail that at once thrilled her beyond belief and terrified her to the bone.
"Congratulations, it's a boy," the doctor said, rising from his position.
"Give me him!" Aralia gasped.
"A few moments," the doctor answered over the baby's cries. Aralia glared at him. It wasn't exactly comforting to know that the man responsible for delivering and caring for your baby wore glasses that prevented him from total blindness, had a claw in the place of a hand, and preferred to be known by a syllable instead of a name.
Aralia watched with a disgusted fascination as the umbilical cord was cut and carried away by the nurse and the doctor approached to stitch together her skin, and then watched as her baby was cleaned off. Her child. It was numbing to the senses that what had just forced its painful way out of her was now hers to keep to her home for the next two decades. This was something she would love enough to die to protect for the rest of her life.
"Do we have a name for him?" the nurse said.
Aralia's mind was numb as her son was laid in her arms. He was scrawny and small but calm now, and she thought nothing had ever looked so perfect.
"Mrs. Midorikawa, do we have a name yet?" the nurse repeated.
"Hikaru," she said breathlessly, unable to tear her eyes away from her miraculous source of perfection. "Midorikawa Hikaru." She had given in to her Japanese husband's desire to name their child after his home country, but insisted on a name that sounded at least somewhat similar to her late father's.
The nurse bustled around, calling for a wheelchair. "You and Hikaru are going back to your room now."
"Where's Gendo?" Aralia asked, suddenly realizing the absence of her husband.
"He's already there," was the reply. "He left while we were cleaning off the baby."
Aralia pursed her lips and frowned. She would have thought that the father of her beautiful son would be haunting her bedside, begging for her to relinquish the flawless child so he too might hold it and make a bond of hearts with it.
She allowed the nurse to hold the child while she stumbled into the wheelchair, and then reclaimed Hikaru to her own arms. The nurse pushed her out the door and down the hall, towards the residential area of the hospital.
"I don't quite understand it," the nurse said, frowning at the room. "He should have been waiting here. Maybe he went down to get food or a present for you?"
"Maybe," Aralia said, frowning. Her stomach was beginning to feel an uncomfortably emptiness. She clutched Hikaru tighter to her torso, but the gaping hole was not satisfied.
The nurse was helping her into the bed when she spotted a piece of paper. It was written in Gendo's straightforward handwriting, a dash preceding her name on the outside of the folded paper.
"Could you leave, please?" Aralia asked, looking at the nurse. "This…this is from my husband."
The nurse sighed, a look of pitying omniscience on her face. "Honey, I don't know if you'll want to be alone when you read that note. I've seen that note a hundred times before."
"I want to read it alone," Aralia said firmly.
"If you're sure, honey." The nurse dropped the blanket over Aralia and went from the room, shaking her head sadly.
Aralia unfolded the note. In a voice both loud and soft, she read it to both herself and her child.
November 18th, AC 180
-Ms. Yuy
I have been called back into the Alliance military. As a commander I can have no dealings with someone who follows the rebel cause.
After 3 years of marriage, the Alliance still means more to me than you do. That is the plain truth and I will not cover it with lies such as that I am afraid to be a father. Because I am not. I would have loved this child had it not been yours.
Raise him to be whom you want him to; I can see him only as an enemy from now on. I feel I owe you this warning out of decency: People may be after your life now that I am again in the military. I suggest that you move away as quickly as possible. I advise you to keep his last name "Midorikawa", as it may save his life someday. Be forewarned, should I happen to come across you, I can and will kill you both.
Curse my name and forget me. I have already done so for you.
-Commander Midorikawa
Aralia folded the letter, a feeling of numbness overriding all other bodily functions. As the paper fluttered from her hand and onto the ground, Hikaru began to wail.