Note: The strawberry story actually happened..only I was the strawberry kid lol.
A Woman Thing
The family all squeezing into the front hallway to welcome the late arrivals Wufei soon found himself being hugged by the female members of Lucrezia's family and some good natured backslaps from the men, even her brothers. Having found out quickly enough from his last visit that these were affectionate people Wufei returned the gestures though with a little more restraint and dignity.
Watching from the doorway Lazuli beamed with her pleasure, seeing for herself how her grandson had already been accepted into this family. He needed more family then her and apparently he'd found it thanks to his girl. Introductions following Lazuli finally got to Marta, the two hugging like old friends. "You have a beautiful family." Lazuli declared as she drew back, the two turning to beam in Wufei and Noin's directions. "He fits beautifully."
"I think so too." Marta said with a beaming grin, the two sharing pleased as punch looks.
)
:"I so don't like the look on mom and Lazuli's faces." Noin said as she caught a glimpse of their cat that got the cream grins. "They're up to something."
"We'll have to be on our guard." Wufei agreed as he finished getting a bone crushing hug from one of Lucrezia's cousins though his name escaped him. "My grandmother is a pretty sly woman."
"Those two have been on the phone constantly." Noin's father put in, finally managing to pry them away so that he could get their coats. "They've had plenty of time to plot and plan."
"Yeah so be afraid, be very afraid." Michael said with a rather evil smile on his face.
"Well we have hot chocolate and Christmas cookies waiting for you all in the kitchen. I'm sure you're all in need of some warming up given how cold it is out there." Marta interjected before her husband or sons could warn Wufei or Lucy off. "Honey, show them into the living room and Tula and I will bring the snacks in." Not waiting for agreement she grabbed her daughter and dragged the bemused girl behind her, the two soon returning to the living room with trays loaded down with steaming mugs and brightly decorated cookies. Everyone digging in there was plenty of chatter about regular things but there was a slight undercurrent that hinted something might and likely was up. Eyes weary Wufei and Noin kept a cautious eye on the female heads of their family, wondering just what the women had planned on their various phone calls. They had pretty good ideas but they could always pray and hope. It was the season for it anyway.
)
"Grandmother, why did you bring that bag in?" Wufei finally inquired having had to wait several minutes for his grandmother and Noin's mother to stop talking. He'd assumed it had her medication when she brought it in but she hadn't taken anything out. Besides that it wasn't a small bag either.
"Your baby pictures and some photo albums."
"My...what? Why?"
"Well because Marta asked me to bring them. I'm afraid I bragged about what a cute baby you were and she just had to see pictures. I brought some of the others so she could see what you were like as a boy too." Lazuli said innocently, trying not to smirk at the horrified look on her grandson's face. He was almost blushing too, she thought, biting her lip to hide her amusement.
"You have baby pictures?" Noin wanted to know, a grin on her face as she looked over at the bag. "I can't wait to see them. I bet you were so cute." Noin added as she teasingly elbowed Wufei's side. She's never seen any pictures of him before he was a teenager, all the pictures he had laying around were ones he'd taken or by one of their friends.
"Traitor." Wufei hissed, his cheeks faintly red and it was all he could do not to take that bag and throw it into the first snow bank he found. "You could have just brought a few of them, grandmother. You didn't need to cart them all over here."
"It was my pleasure and besides they're all in a specific order, taking them out would mean disrupting the order since I'd forget what went where." Was her smooth lie. It was her excuse until she thought of a better one anyway. "Besides I didn't know which ones she'd want to see other then the strawberry one. All my friends love that one."
)
"The strawberry picture?" Noin said with interest, looking over at Wufei who's cheeks were damn close to being the color of a ripe strawberry. Interesting.
"Did you have to bring that one?" Wufei said looking completely and totally mortified. If it wasn't so important to his grandmother he'd have burned that one years and years ago. "I was only two, darn it."
"We'd gone strawberry picking at this farm that actually allowed you to pick your own berries." Wufei's grandmother explained, a fond smile on her face as her eyes twinkled merrily. "We brought several baskets home and Wufei got into them. I left him alone for five minutes and when I got back he was covered in strawberry juice and happily devouring close to an entire basket. He always did love them so."
"Grandma..."
"Why don't us guys head down to the basement and show Wufei the sound system, maybe he can figure out what's wrong with it." Lucas interrupted, remembering the situation Wufei was in too well not to come to the guy's rescue. They'd actually fixed it that morning but as far as he knew the girls didn't know that. They hadn't said anything so that they wouldn't have to be bombarded with carols for a while.
"Sounds like a good idea." Michael agreed and soon the brothers, their father and a couple of cousins, along with Tula's husband headed to the basement for refuge, herding Wufei along with them.
)
"Awwww, look at the little bow tie!" Noin sighed, all soft and fuzzy as she looked over Wufei's grandmother's shoulder as they all looked through the baby pictures. He had been so adorable and a part of her wondered if his sons would be so adorable. Maybe even their sons.
"He hated that thing so much." Lazuli said with a laugh, shaking her head at a picture of Wufei sitting in a mud puddle, covered in it. "He was always such the little gentleman, pictures like this one were rare. His favorite place to be was outside though, even when he was still an infant. When he was a toddler we could just set him on the grass and we wouldn't have to give him a single toy, he was fascinated enough by the ants and leaves on the ground. We were always worried he'd come across something poisonous and put it in his mouth, he was so curious and without fear."
"He still loves the outdoors. We often go for walks around his house with Patch." Noin put in, smiling at the mud puddle picture. He looked perfectly happy to be covered in mud, even though now he likely looked back and winced big time. He was such a tidy, neat freak. Quiet for a while as they went on to a new album Noin noticed something strange. "These pictures, they seem to be from blocks of time, several pages of pictures of him in the same clothes. Were a lot of his pictures destroyed along with the colony?" Lazuli seemed the type to take loads of pictures and fill albums, she was that sort of grandmother.
)
"No, these pictures are all from the brief times he stayed with me. My son and my daughter in law weren't the type to take pictures for no reason. When they did send pictures they were usually class photos or to commemorate something he'd done academically. I would imagine they might have had two albums at most with pictures of him at the time of their deaths. They weren't what you would call hands on parents." Lazuli said with a rueful look. "Not that I was much better. I think, hope that at least with Wufei, that I did a better job. I guess I didn't raise my son to be the sort of father his own wasn't."
"Your first husband was..a hard man?" Marta asked hesitantly, not wanting to pry if it was still painful. She'd heard plenty about Lazuli's Cameron but not a lot about her friend's first husband.
"He was...hard yes. Very strict and set in his own ways. He wasn't a bad man but sometimes, to me anyway, it seemed like he was more machine then man. He was never affectionate to our son, much less me and I can't say I ever saw him do anything, say anything that suggested he cared. I'd like to believe he did. Wufei was named after him. I suppose I always though that my son would learn from his father's mistakes instead of repeating them. Thankfully Wufei has things that my son didn't have. I know I owe his friends and Melin a debt I can never repay for how he turned out."
"It must have been hard for him, boarding school at such a young age." Marta commented, looking sad as she looked at a picture of Wufei reading in a sofa, a serious look of concentration on his young face. "It was hard enough letting my children go when they were adults, much less if they were children. We missed Lucy terribly while she was at the academy."
"I think he might have been happier at that school then he was at home. At least at school he was left alone to do what he wanted. Cameron and I would visit him whenever we could, I think he only ever went home during the brief summer vacation and for important events his parents expected him to attend with them." Lazuli said with a shake of her head, able to understand Marta's sentiment easily. She'd always wished she'd put her foot down about sending her son to that boarding school but she'd bowed to her husband's wishes. Just as Wufei's mother had bowed to his fathers.
)
"Melin was the name of his first wife, right?" Marie, Lucas's wife asked hesitantly, not wanting to press on any wrong buttons. With all Wufei's grandmother had lost she'd imagine family could be a sensitive subject. Her mother in law had filled her in on bits and pieces of Wufei's past but not a lot.
"Yes though she preferred to be called Nataku." Lazuli said with a sad, fond smile as she picked up another album and sorted through the pages until she came to one where Wufei and Melin looked at least a little at ease with each other. One of the last photos she had of the two. "She was quite the tomboy, very headstrong and willed. If she wanted something she went for it and heaven help anyone that got in the way. She and Wufei had known each other a little from boarding school but they weren't close by any means. Up until the end I think they only tolerate each other, they were arguing less the last time I visited though but they were too different to stop all together."
"She died during Oz's first major attack on the colony right?" Noin asked, knowing only bits and pieces she'd gotten from Sally and Wufei occasionally. Neither liked to talk about it.
"Yes. As soon as word of the attack went out she was one of the first to climb into one of those machines and blast off to defend the colony. Wufei, at that time wasn't interested in the war or being a part of it but he went after Melin anyway. To protect her as a husband should. Rather then taking out a mobile he took a gundam being developed nearby and did quite a bit of damage with it I'm told. When he ran out of ammo many of the Oz forces targeted him specifically and when one particularly strong blast was shot at him..Melin got in the way, taking the blast instead. Her suit wasn't designed to stand up to that kind of blast, especially when it had already suffered damage." Lazuli said with a far off look, remembering well the day her grandson had called her to tell her what had taken place. To tell her of Melin's death.
)
"She sacrificed herself for him." Tula murmured, tears shimmer in her brown eyes at the sad story. How terribly sad and romantic, to have been forced together and yet been so willing to lay down their lives for the other in the end. Melin had given up her life for her husband without a thought and if that wasn't love then she didn't know what was. And to die so young, before they'd ever had a chance of learning to love each other and be happy together.
"Yes. She died a death she would have been proud of." Lazuli agreed, understanding the look in the girl's eyes. She could well remember the devastated look on Wufei's face when he had given her the news. Perhaps he hadn't loved Melin but she had meant something to him, more perhaps then his parents ever had. "Oz, or should I say his future partner Sally, called off the attack and Wufei managed to get Melin back to the colony and to his meadow. There was a meadow you see near their home and it was his favorite place. She told him she'd fought to protect it for him. She died in his arms, asking if she'd been a good wife to him. She was buried there and he left his meadow to fight her fight for her. He went to war in her name, named his gundam after her and sought the justice she'd been so determined to bring to the colonies."
"He dedicated his life to her dream." Noin said, her voice slightly choked with emotion, picturing Wufei as a boy, suddenly forced into the shoes of a man, going off to fight a battle of impossible odds. And he'd succeeded too. He was still fighting for it. All for her.
"In a way. I think though that he's living his dream too, it's just the dreams of a man now instead of the boy he was. I think his future now is a lot happier then it would have been otherwise had he continued on the route he'd set out for himself. War is never a good thing but it gave him four of the finest men I have ever met and you, Lucrezia. For that I can say it was almost worth it all."
)
"Something is seriously messed up there." Michael announced as he came down the basement stairs with a bowl filled with pretzels, walking over to set them on the coffee table. "I poked my head in to see what was going on and they all looked like they were close to crying."
"Crying?" Wufei wanted to know as he looked up from the chess board, somewhat concerned. His grandmother and Lucrezia weren't criers.
"Women get more impossible to understand every year. Don't worry about it, Wufei. I'm sure they're fine." Noin's father assured the younger man, absently trying to figure out how the hell he was going to get out of the corner Wufei had backed him into. The boy was good, damn good.
Hearing footsteps on the stairs all male heads turned to see Tula coming down, looking like she was on the verge of crying and more then a little distraught.
"Are you okay, sweetie?" Her father wanted to know as he got to his feet, wondering if they'd gotten bad news and he'd just missed the noise of the phone or door bell. He hadn't seen Tula look this emotional since she'd announced her engagement to her Allan.
"I'm fine. Mama just asked me to come down and ask you guys if you needed more chocolate or snacks." Tula sniffed, coming over to look at the chess board. Eyes watering as she saw her father was pretty much stuck she turned to congratulate Wufei then unable to help it launched herself at him to give him a bone crushing hug. Wufei was shocked as the rest of the males in the room.
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"Honey...are you sure you're okay?" Allan asked hesitantly, not quite sure why his wife was hanging off Wufei if she was upset about something. "Did you burn your cookies again?" His wife had been trying to learn to make his favorite cookies recently, so far with terrible results. He knew his mother in law was about ready to give up too. "Remember that Lucy is even worse in the kitchen then you are." He added, hoping that helped somewhat.
"Oh you are such a jerk. You could all learn a thing or two from Wufei about being a real man." Tula announced, sending her husband and brothers scalding looks while Wufei sat, dumbstruck as she let him go and patted him on the shoulder. "I'll go bring you some more chocolate, Wufei. The rest of you jerks can get your own." She announced then marched out of the room, leaving it dead quiet as everyone looked from the door to Wufei while Wufei was busy trying to comprehend it all.
"Am I the only one who's completely in the dark here?" Nikos, Noin's teenage cousin asked hesitantly into the silence.
"Nope. But that's women for you. They rarely make a lick of sense." Lucas said with a sigh, only saying it since his own wife wasn't around to hear him. "Lets just try to avoid them for the rest of the night and hope Tula doesn't come back to pour scalding hot chocolate on us jerks."
)
Later that night, with most of the family having left for their own homes Wufei was tired but unable to sleep. His brain was just too busy to let him doze off. He was far from being a ladies man but it seemed like all the females in the house had been determined to heap affection on him tonight and he didn't know what to think of it. Marta and his grandmother had both kissed him good night like he was a little boy still for Christ sakes! Pondering it for several more minutes he turned his head towards the door when he heard the door knob being turned. Recognizing the figure easily enough he relaxed, shifting over on the bed to make room for her as she crept across the room to slid under the covers he held up for her as he settled on his back, her head on his shoulder as she snuggled against his side. "Couldn't sleep?"
"No, guess I've gotten use to having you beside me." Noin admitted, nuzzling against his warm skin as she draped an arm across his waist. "I thought you'd be asleep, you looked really tired earlier."
"I am, just couldn't sleep until I figured out why you women were acting so strange. What happened while we were downstairs? Your mother keeps hugging me and you and Tula were right up there too." Wufei said with a faint smirk as he wrapped his free hand around her waist in a loose hold.
"The past, well I guess it kinda got to us." Noin said, leaving it at that since she knew he was smart enough to put the pieces together and figure it out. She knew he'd prefer that to discussing everything his grandmother had told them.
"Ah." Wufei said softly, the pieces falling into place. He'd wondered about that. That explained mot of the behavior though he was still at sea as to why Tula suddenly thought he was the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel. His past wasn't always a pretty one, he knew there were a lot of people who'd had easier childhoods, easier lives period. But he'd played the hand he'd been given and recently, as far as he was concerned, he'd drawn all the aces. Turning his head slightly to place a kiss on her forehead Wufei closed his eyes, lulled by her warmth and presence. He was happier now then he'd ever been in his life, he could never regret this or anything he'd done for one simple reason. "Lucrezia...whatever happened in my past led up to this moment. As far as I'm concerned..it was worth it."