Baby 4

by karina001

Wu Fei takes up the leadership of the Clan but has no intentions of abandoning the life he has made for himself. He intends to maintain his position in the Court of Sanc and continue his courtship of Milliardo and Duo.

23. Chapter 23 Strong Women

Title: Strong Women

Author: Karina

Rating: PG

Pairing: Treize

Notes: Challenge 189. Baby Series 4 #23 Takes place approximately an hour following Something of a Legend.

Spoilers: None

Warnings:

Many thanks to ShenLong Deb for her work betaing this set of fics.

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the Characters from the series but the baby is mine.

Title: Strong Women

She had never been a 'womanly' woman, neither during nor after the war, or as an agent for Preventer when she finally snared her man. It was only with her pregnancy that Treize had ever truly thought of her as a woman.

Lady Une was another example. He knew, intellectually that they were female; the curves could not be mistaken, but the mannerisms they displayed had been far from those of the genteel lady. They were strong women, powerful women, and it was a rare woman who could balance the gentility and grace of her sex with the power of high position. To be honest, other than his mother, he could not have named another such woman.

/Relena might manage it. As Princess Royal of Sanc she might well maintain that feminine softness balanced with political savvy. I can not see her getting soft and having a child would complete her maturing. She may well become the most formidable woman in the ESUN./

The world was full of strong women, but it was a rare few who could balance and accept their femininity with an excess of power in a largely male dominated society. Noin had never been such a one. The soldier developed at a young age and remained in place until the needs of a developing body within her own had forced her to acknowledge her own femininity. However late it had come, she had discovered it did not make one weak, but he wondered if she had realised what it involved to be a woman above being a soldier.

Noin had always valued strength. In a room full of strong women she was notable. In a room full of soft women she stood out like a sore thumb. Noin despised dresses and fripperies and frills, and he had witnessed her curl up her lip on more than one occasion at the weakness of other members of her gender.

She had learned in those final months of life there was more to being a woman and he wondered what she might have become had she not sacrificed her life with the birth of her son. He caught the odd glimpse every now and then of a very different Lucrezia Noin, when she hovered protectively over the child's cot at night.

She did not regret that sacrifice beyond the ache to be flesh and blood and feel the solidity of the flesh and blood child in her arms.

Where he watched Milliardo almost every hour of the day and night, she hovered more and more over the child. It was less the man she had long pursued and more the child now, and he supposed that was how it should be. She had geared herself to be a mother in those final months of her pregnancy and at the end, at the penultimate success of birth, it had been snatched away from her.

Man and infant were lost to her.

End

Karina Robertson 2012