Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing.
Genre: General
Rating: PG
Warnings: Shonen-ai
Notes: after the Mariemaia incident.
Dry Ice on a Sunny Day
I watched as my first period AP English class walked into the room and took their seats. It was a year after the Mariemaia incident and people were finally believing in the peace that had been established. I myself was a survivor of war, a military brat. My father was a general under the Alliance before the war even started. He still has dreams about fighting in those wars. But one thing he always tells me is how he looks up to those Gundam Pilots.
Their identities were revealed thanks to some legal case about civilians needing to know if they were safe or not. Which leads me back to my first period class, one student in particular in my first period class. He sits by the window, staring out at the lawn, an impassive look on his handsome features. He's a good looking boy, it's a shame he's so much younger than me for I can see why all the girls fall in love with him. But he has a look in his eyes that says for itself that he is in love and therefore taken.
He feels my gaze on him and turns his sharp Prussian blue gaze on me. Soft chocolate hunks of perpetually messy hair falls into his eyes but he doesn't seem to care. He seems to look me over before giving me a slight nod and looking back out the window. I can see it. He's thinking about his special someone. I can tell by the way his small mouth with those full pink lips curl up in the corners slightly and the way a slight healthy blush has risen to those high cheek bones of his. His long dark lashes slowly flutter close over that intense stare, covering his almond shaped eyes.
I jump, startled, as the bell rings and look back to my favorite student. He's still gazing out the window, lost somewhere that only his love can follow. I shake myself and take roll. He's last on my list, always is. He gives a grunt and his deep low voice mutters a quick "here," before he goes back to ignoring the world around him. I look back to the rest of my students.
The more rowdy ones are throwing paper at each other and the girls are talking excitedly about the upcoming dance. None of them are like my favorite student. His eyes have the hard stare of a soldier, of a little boy who was forced to be a man far too quickly. I wonder what has made him so, but no... I know what it is. He is a soldier, never a child.
"Okay class, settle down." At my command it falls silent. For some odd reason the students in this school like me. Perhaps it is because I can relate to them and help them out where I can, lending pencils, or handing out snacks every Friday. "All right.. For today's assignment I want you to share a childhood memory with me. It has to be a happy childhood memory, one that sticks out in your mind the best from all the others. You have all period to work on it and you may discuss it with your friends if you wish." With that I leave them to it and sit back at my seat.
My eyes pick out that single student again. He's staring out the window as if he didn't hear the assignment but I know better. A few minutes later he goes to his bag and pulls out a spiral notebook and a pencil and begins to write. He doesn't put his pencil down until the end of class. As the bell rings all the students get up and rush out after shoving their papers into my face and calling out a "Bye Miss!" over their shoulders. But not my silent student. He gets up and calmly hands me his paper before walking out the door into the over-crowded hallways of our high school. I eagerly look down and blink.
"Dry ice?" I ask aloud to the empty class room. I shouldn't judge though, I'll have to read this when I get home. With that in mind I set all of the papers in order and put them in a folder to take home.
The next day I sit and watch as the same class walks in and take their seats. There's my silent writer, sitting by the window and staring out at the lawn, that secret smile on his face. His piece... it was perfect. Just like all of his other works. I stand up and kneel by his desk. He turns to look at me, dark blue eyes staring me up and down before declaring me as harmless and not a threat.
"I loved your piece. Would you be willing to read it to the class as an example of good work?" I ask. Holding my breath. He normally turns me down. After all, the others would never understand. They haven't grown up yet and experienced the real world. He gazes into my eyes for a long time, those Prussian blue lasers seeming to stare straight into my soul. Finally he nods and I smile and hand him his paper. He turns back out the window.
"Okay class, I must say that I was impressed with your efforts." I announce and it goes quiet. "However, there was one piece I liked in particular. If you'd please." I turn to my favorite student who sighs and grudgingly gets up from his window. He ignores the jeers of his fellow classmates as he stands in front of the room, looking at his paper.
"Hey Yuy! Where's your Gundam!" A redheaded boy asks and the class breaks into laughter. Yuy just waits till their done laughing and I motion for him to go on.
"Dry Ice on a Sunny Day." He reads the title and the redheaded kid, Archie, speaks up.
"Dry ice? Dry ice is your topic? What kind of a sad childhood did you have?!" Archie criticizes. Once again he waits until the class is quiet before reading his paper. As he reads the looks on the faces of the students change from contempt to awe. I'm sure none of them have ever heard a story quite like this one before.
Dry Ice on a Sunny Day
by Heero Yuy, aka Kid.
When most people hear of dry ice all they think about are how it's used as special effects in movies or how they use it to ship food to their relatives. When I was three, at an age most toddlers run around screaming about super heros, I was memorizing the properties of such elements. Dry ice. Frozen carbon dioxide. CO2. Green house effect. Etcetera. While other children were playing in the parks of L1, I was memorizing the exact amounts of chemicals to mix to make an exact sized explosion.
But then one day it changed. I don't remember what day it was, I don't remember why, I don't remember where. All I remember is that one day it was so hot that my guardian decided he would give me a break. Odin was like that, just a big goofy blonde who loved to tease me. It was early in the day and already getting to be ninety degrees. Odin came into my room and picked me up, carrying me into the bathroom.
Inside of the bathtub were around a hundred blocks of dry ice, steaming slightly and glistening as the florescent lights hit it. I knew what it was immediately and Odin made me recite what I knew to him. "What is it's name kid?" He asked.
"CO2." Was my answer. I knew what he wanted, but I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of teasing me. I was a native Japanese speaker and was sill having trouble pronouncing my English 'r's.
"No kid, not it's symbol. What's its name?" I frowned at the tall blonde. He was being mean again.
"Cadbon dioxide." I answered. He started laughing, the sound echoing around the tile walls. He seemed to find it 'cute' that I had problems pronouncing English. The big jerk. "Anata no baka desu!" I snapped at him, embarrassing considering I had ten years before I hit puberty. The insult of calling him an idiot had the desired effect, he stopped laughing.
"Oi!" Odin called back. "I actually know what that means now akachan." I glared at him, not very affective considering I was a toddler. When I was at that age I hated being called a baby more than everything else in the world.
"Baka. Nani desu ka?" I asked. He looked at me and gave me a frown.
"What did I say kid? No Japanese."
"Idiot. What is it?" I translated and he gave me a grin, putting me down on the floor.
"I decided you need a break kid." He finally said, ruffling my hair in an affectionate gesture that meant he was excited about something. He filled the tub with a little bit of water and watched as I tilted my head to the side and saw the plumes of gray mist rise to the rim of the tub. "Do you see the mist?" Odin asked. I knew he didn't mean it like it sounded. As he breathed the mist swirled and moved like water in a pan that was tilted forwards and backwards. I nodded. "That's like the atmosphere on Earth."
"I thought the Earth was blue." I remarked, watching the swirls of darker gray on lighter gray.
"It is kid, it is." Odin answered, kneeling next to me on the floor. "But the atmosphere forms a protective barrier much like this cloud of mist."
"You're getting poetic again." I teased.
"And you're rolling your 'r's again." Odin teased back.
"Old man." I teased.
"Brat." He answered.
"Ojii-san." He hated it when I called him grandpa.
"Chibi." I hated it when he called me child in Japanese too.
"Jiji." Another way of insulting someone by calling them gramps.
"Akachan." He retaliated. I had side tracked him from teasing my pronunciation. Kid one, Odin zero.
We watched the dry ice for a little while before he added more water to the tub until the cubes of ice were covered completely. Instantly the room filled with the sounds of a motor and the mist began to over flow from the basin. Right before my eyes large egg white bubbles began to form and pop, spewing forth fountains of smokey white mist, and small smoke rings that floated before falling into the tub like used up fire works. After an hour or so the last piece of ice was no bigger than the nail of my pinky. Odin let most of the water out and let that small piece float lazily in circles, it's life dwindling away.
I turned on the tap and sucked the piece of ice into the flow and shut the tap off. The ice was now considerably smaller. I felt cruel, killing the pretty white carbon dioxide, the last survivor of what used to be a tub filled with others of it's kind. Finally in a small cloud of white mist the last piece of ice melted away. I remember feeling slightly sad and looking back up at my guardian. Just as I did the lights caught in his eyes turning the normally ice blue into a deep forest green.
"Odin?" I asked softly.
"Yeah?" He asked as he drained the tub.
"Thank you." I was perceptive even at the age when other children were running around playing super heros. Unlike them, I knew. Odin knew I wasn't a normal child, he was the one who found me alone and starving on the streets after all. For those hours that he let me play with the dry ice, he was giving me a small measure of a childhood. Once the last of the ice, all that was left of the dry ice, swirled down the drain Odin picked me up.
"Come on kid. Let's go watch Looney Tunes." I remember laughing and calling him an idiot again as I made him promise to do this again. Odin laughed and nodded. Every year he kept his promise, and on the hottest day of the year he would fill a tub with dry ice and carry me to the bathroom where we would tease each other mercilessly as the ice fizzed and created a coating of fog over the water.
Odin died on a cold and rainy day, and with him went those days of tubs full of dry ice on hot days and Sunday morning cartoons in between the memorization of polyatomic ions and their charges. Just like that water swirling down the drain, Odin was gone, and so were those happy days.
Heero stopped reading and handed me back his paper before going and sitting back at his seat, looking out the window like he always did. And that's when his words truly hit the class. To them that tub of dry ice might have been a stupid waste of time. But to Heero Yuy, the former pilot 01 of the Gundam Wing, it held his lost childhood. I looked at the clock and saw that the bell was about to ring.
"For homework I want you to bring in lyrics to your favorite song so we can analyze it like a poem." I told the class. They grumbled and took out their binder paper, getting ready to list a bunch of possible songs. I turned my gaze back to Heero, with his secret smile and sad blue eyes. He turned to me as he felt my gaze and nodded before turning back to his window.
The bell finally rang and the students rushed out like normal. I turned to the door seeing a tall boy walk in. He was my favorite student in period three, Trowa Barton. He nodded to me before setting his forest green eyes on Heero. The Japanese boy packed up his things and smiled a beautiful smile at his silent friend. The stoic Trowa smiled back and the two left my class room. As they walked I could see Heero slip his hand into Trowa's. I see now. It seems my favorite period one student had a thing for the color green. I would expect no less from the boy who wears green tank tops and jeans every day. Maybe one day, together, those boys will fill a tub with dry ice together and laugh as it fills to the brim with mist.
All I know is that it's almost time for period 2. And that means my favorite student in second period. Duo Maxwell…
I know, I know… I haven't published or updated anything in months. I'm really very sorry but I've been really busy with school. Now that it's the holidays I'm going to try and update more often. I'm working on the next chapters for all of my stories that aren't on hold. Anyway, this one just popped into my head a while ago and I had to write it down. Please tell me what you think! Flames are welcome!