Lunar Symphony
Nuriko: :sits before her paperwork, pencil in hand: Ya know, Duo, playing hot potato is pretty fun. I don't know when I've had so much fun.
Duo: Writing stories with Jess over the phone seems to keep your mind sharp.
Nuriko: :nods: I'm stuck only being able to get online once a week. It's the same with using the computer. So it'll take some time to update.
Duo: Yet fans will certainly find it worth the wait.
Nuriko: Of course. I never make people wait unless it's important.
Duo: :looks around: Where's Hee-chan and Jess?
Nuriko: Last I knew they had some plans. They wanted to plan something for upcoming chapters.
Duo: Is that a wise thing to do?
Nuriko: :smirks: It's perfectly all right.
Duo: :raises an eyebrow: What are you planning?
Nuriko: You'll see, Duo. Just be patient.
Duo: I'll try. Patience isn't my strong point.
Nuriko: I know. Now, on to chapter seven.
Chapter Seven:
After Heero left I had taken time to pull myself together before going back down to help the twins finish the offices. They were almost finished with the last room when I found them so I agreed to allow them to finish up on their own, provided they cleaned up afterwards. They then agreed to meet over at the halfway house once finished so they could help with the last room in need of work.
"Duo! Cassie wants to cook tonight," Mei called as she rushed up to me. She was adorable, especially when she tried saying words with R's in them.
"As long as Lucian and Gabe don't mine, I'm certain it'll be all right," Mei grinned and took a seat on the front step, Bruce curling up on her lap. I grinned in return.
"I'll wait hewe fow Lucian and Gabe to come back, then I'll ask them."
"All right. If you get bored though. . ."
"I won't," she cut in. "Bwuce is with me." I patted her head and went inside. Instantly Chris, Travis, and Mark tackled me. They were fans of the Gundams and therefore fans of the former pilots as well. When they had learned about my former status they had become stuck to me like glue whenever I'd allow them to be stuck to me, which was often.
"Duo! Tell us more about the wars!" Mark called. I smirked then. There was always a way to gain their help.
"I'll do it at story time, after we finish the play room." Mark jumped up and down while Chris and Travis cheered. "This does mean you three will have to help out."
"We will," Travis answered for all of them.
"Good. Gather everyone together except for Mei, Lucian, Gabe, Cassie, Sandra, and Collin. The little ones, Kyle, Harry, Violet, Kourin, and Ian aren't required either. Everyone else needs to be in the play room."
"Got it, Duo. Come on," Chris said, running off with Mark and Travis hot on his heels. I grinned once again and turned to see Lucian entering the entrance hall.
"Lucian, Cassie wants to cook tonight."
"Let her. Gabe and I are fairly tired as is. After we finish the play room, we won't be up to cooking." I nodded.
"I know that feeling all to well." I then thought a moment. "Ask Sandra if she can handle the five on her own. Then see if Collin will help Cassie in the kitchen." Lucian nodded.
"You got it Duo. Will Heero and Mei be joining us tonight?" I felt my previous sadness hit like a sledgehammer and I shook it off quickly.
"I don't know. Have her make enough, just in case."
"How's your room coming?" Lucian questioned. I smiled sadly. Just last night Gabe, Lucian, and I had hauled furniture up to the live-in staff quarters on the third floor of the halfway house. After having accepted Lady Une's job offer to manage this place, I knew it was only a matter of time before Heero was sent off on a new mission. I aimed to be settled in here before he told me he was leaving.
"Duo! This came for you!" Gabe called, coming into the entrance hall from outside. I took the large envelope from his hands and grinned when I read both the address and return address. Une had come through, and in more ways than one.
"My rooms done Lucian. I finished it earlier today. Also, thanks Gabe. Tell Luc he can begin work on that sign. Une's named the halfway house." I refused to call it an orphanage. Not every child here was here because their parents were dead. Some had been tossed aside like yesterdays news. This way, there were no distinctions between the children. It was hard enough having no family as it was, without the added pressure of labels.
"What did she decide on?"
"Maxwell's Haven. We'll keep it as long as everyone agrees to it." Lucian and Gabe cheered.
"Of course we'll all agree. We all love you tons, Duo. Besides, you were once in the same situation as all of us are now. It's the best name I've heard yet." I hugged Lucian then, tears in my eyes but I wouldn't let them fall. I was very grateful for his words.
"Fine, leave me out of all the hugging. See if I care," Gabriel muttered under his breath jokingly. I laughed with Lucian and then hugged Gabe as well.
"Enough. We have a room to finish." We all grinned then and headed for our last room in need of being finished.
The Haven. That was what most of the children had taken to calling the halfway house. It seemed Maxwell's Haven was accepted without any trouble and was now shortened to the Haven by all who loved the place. I felt honored to have them name it after me. In a way, I also saw it as a way of honoring Father Maxwell, who had given me so much.
Dinner was at least an hour and a half away. The play room was now awaiting furniture, which would be put in tomorrow, giving the paint plenty of hours to dry before then. The children were gathered around me in the entertainment room, which had enough seats for all of them to sit comfortably. It was time for me to keep to my end of my bargain with the Fan boys and tell them stories from my time as a Gundam pilot. They had all ready heard about HeavyArms, SandRock, and Altron. Only Heero's and my Gundam were left to tell them about.
"Which Gundam shall I talk about tonight?" I asked them.
"How about the Wing Gundam?" Cassie asked from the kitchen, which was just off of the entertainment room. I knew my heart would hurt while I talked about Heero, but I couldn't refuse the kids their story.
"What is this? Does no one love poor old DeathScythe?" I questioned, pretending to be hurt.
"Of course we do. We're just saving the best for last," Mark said with a grin. You couldn't fault logic like that, ya know.
"After all, DeathScythe was the only Gundam with a very sophisticated stealth system," Travis added, making me grin. I had to admire these kids for learning more about the Gundams than most of our enemies had ever been able to find out.
"All right, Wing Zero it is." Morgana quietly sat beside me, leaning against me. I grinned as I saw Mei walk in. She'd enjoy this as well. What none of the kids knew was that the very person they had come to like and eat dinner with was the mysterious pilot of Wing Zero.
"Who piloted it?" Luc asked.
"What was its specialty?" Chris asked.
"How did Wing Gundam gain the name Wing Zero?" Collin questioned from the kitchen. I chuckled. Obviously everyone had been waiting for this one to come up.
"One question at a time, please," I remarked. I then looked toward Collin, whose head was sticking out of the kitchen. "Collin's question first." I sighed as if this was trying but it only made the children giggle. "Wing first became known as Wing Zero when the zero system was installed in it. The zero system was thought run and heightened the pilot's capabilities to way beyond normal. The one who piloted Wing Zero had to be in total control of himself. They had to be able to tell the difference between truth and what the zero system wanted them to see. Almost every Gundam pilot worked with the zero system. Only one of them refused to even so much as look at, let alone pilot with it."
"Why not? Wasn't the zero system able to make the pilot more skilled?" I shook my head, looking at Morgana, who had been the one to ask the question.
"For 04 it actually drove him insane instead of making him more skilled. He tried to kill everyone in his path. For 03 is gave him back his memories, but at almost the cost of the entire L3 colony. 05 became confused as to what our true purpose was."
"That leaves 01 and 02, right?" Gabe asked, leaning close with interest.
"Correct. 01 was the zero systems pilot. He alone understood it and controlled it. He didn't let it control him. 02, which is myself, never went near it. At least, I never used it. Even now, I'm glad I never tried it."
"How come?" a young girl with an eye patch asked. I remembered her name was Kali.
"Back then, I called myself Shinigami, the God of Death. With my may of thinking, no one would have been safe."
"My question now?" Chris asked. I nodded. That was a bit safer than where things had been going.
"Wing's specialty was combat. Its main weapon, the buster rifle, and later on the twin buster rifle, were unrivaled. It was with this weapon in fact, the twin buster rifle, that 01 was able to save Earth. Not just once, but twice. The first time was from a falling space station. 01 risked burning up on entry into Earth in order to end the war once and for all. Yet it wasn't the end, as we all know. The Eve's War stopped us from destroying the Gundams. We fought one last time, but once again it was 01 in Wing Zero that actually saved us all."
"You speak vewy highly of 01," Mei said softly, her eyes contemplative.
"Of course I do. He was my partner. Many of our missions were done together, as a team. He was very crazy at first, almost suicidal. His favorite past time was hitting the self-destruct button on Wing. When we first met, in fact, I had shot him twice. I then had the pleasure of breaking him out of a hospital and then watching him set his own broken leg without any pain medicine. Then I got locked up and 01 came to kill me so I couldn't tell them about the Gundams."
"Kill you!?" the children exclaimed. I laughed softly.
"Don't worry. As you can see, he didn't kill me. I got on his nerves plenty of times. Quite a bit actually, if I'm to be truthful and all his 'Omae o korosu's' meant anything. Omae o Korosu means I'll kill you in Japanese. Needless to say, he never could. Now, it's time to give Luc's question an answer.
"The one who saved everyone, not just once but twice, the one who was and is my partner and best friend, and the one who has always been a lot of fun to rile up, the pilot 01, Wing and Wing Zero, is none other than. . ."
"Me," Heero said, interrupting me before I could say anything else. "Back then I was known as the perfect soldier, cold and logical. I refused to feel anything. Emotions were a liability I couldn't afford."
"Did you weally think and act like that?" Mei asked. The children watched him in awe. I have to admit; I was a little in awe of him as well. I always had been.
"I did. Then something happened that went beyond all my logic. Someone who was the very opposite of everything I had come to believe in had dropped into my life and wouldn't leave. Yet his skill was unrivaled and his ability to fight with emotions intriguing. I kept by him so I could learn how he worked and thought. Little did I know that I wouldn't just learn what made him tick, but I'd also begin to live by his beliefs, just not quite as loudly as he was."
"Who?" Gabe asked, caught up in Heero's words as much as the rest of the kids and I was. He had began to live by my beliefs? I had never even noticed.
"We didn't get along at first. I had planned on killing him once, when he had gotten captured. Yet as I held my gun on him, he had looked right at me with those expressive violet eyes, a smile on his lips, and said the one thing I had never expected from him." I grinned, looking him right in the eye.
"'I always knew you'd be the one to kill me'," I said, gaining gasps from the children. They hadn't been expecting that one.
"It was you, Duo? You risked the Perfect Soldier's ideals?" Morgana questioned, having heard plenty of stories about my encounters with 01 and only now putting it all together.
"Of course. Being flawless in whatever you do is fine. Tossing aside part of your self, your humanity, to be that good was just plain unacceptable to me. I knew I had to help him. Besides, I was Shinigami. I couldn't afford to be afraid of myself. Thus, it was only fitting that the one man unafraid of death would be the one to kill me."
"Is that what you were thinking back then?" Heero asked, his eyes unreadable.
"No, but it sure sounds cool, huh?" I asked, gaining laughs from the children. I smiled while Heero shook his head, a small smile on his lips. "Actually, my thoughts were fairly simple back then. The only death I'd allow myself was by the hands of an angel. Seeing as they're perfect beings, Heero was the closest to them for me."
"Not to mention you had a crush on him and would only allow him to be the last thing you saw," Morgana added. I felt my cheeks heat. I didn't want to explain why one man cared for another. I really didn't.
"Did you fall in love with the perfect soldier?" Sandra asked. I smiled softly. I was obviously underestimating my kids again.
"I did. I made it my life's mission to grant him some small bit of humanity."
"In which you succeeded in giving me back all of it. Enough so that I can love a little girl and her kitten, a very sly pick-pocket, and a braided baka," Heero replied. My heart skipped a beat. Had Heero just said he loved me? "As well as all the children here." My heart and pulse settled down. He was just playing it up for the kids. I should have realized sooner when Mei was the first one he mentioned.
"Whoa, are you two gonna stay together?" Luc asked, having always looked up to Heero. His left leg was prosthetic, so he couldn't keep up completely in most sports. Heero had told him that he could accomplish anything, as long as he believed he could. I laughed and waved his words off.
"Don't start. We've only been talking lately for the past three and a half days. Before that, we were out of touch for three years. Besides, last I knew, Miss Relena cared about him too. He did save her a lot. Almost like he was her own personal knight in a big shiny Gundam," I replied. For those words I got a high level death glare from Heero and he got the third degree on Relena. I smiled slyly and slipped out of the house. Once outside, my smile fell, my eyes filling with tears.
When Relena called he'd always go. If she were in danger, he'd save her. That was how it was. Heero loved Relena he just didn't realize it. He needed some form of pleasure, seeing as not even he could catch a moment alone with her. I sniffed once and straightened. I could do this. I'd love him while he allowed me to. I'd savor every caress, every touch, and every kiss until he needed me no longer. That was what I had taught him, after all, to be true to ones self.
Instantly, I felt the pain subside. There would be time enough for it once he was gone. Even then, the children would help ease it. I would love him unconditionally while he was here and let him go when the time came. As the old saying goes, 'When you love something, let it go. If it comes back, its meant to be'. I let Heero go once, as a friend, and he came back to help me clean up my life. Soon, I'd let him go as my love. When that day came, I'd face it proudly. My normal, pain free smile in place, I leaned against the wall and waited for a very angry Hee-chan to come looking for me.
Nuriko: How's that?
Duo: Well resolved with a ton of misunderstanding. I love it.
Jess: As do I.
Heero: This goes well with your plans Jess.
Jess: I know it. Then again, I can always trust Nuri for that.
Nuriko: :bows: Thanks, I try.
Duo: I think it went well considering you were writing till two o'clock last night. Then again in the morning.
Nuriko: Duo! Don't tell them that!
Jess: It's all right, Nuri. We all know how crazy you are with your stories.
Nuriko: Thanks. Until next chapter.
All Except Heero: Ja mata ne!
Heero: Hn, bakas. Every last one of you.