Title: Friends and Family
Author: Karina
Rating: PG
Pairing: Milliardo
Notes: Challenge 192. Baby Series 4 #32. Takes place approximately three hours following In These Attics.
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: Friends and Family
/It really does look like it goes on forever. It just fades into the distance./
He stretched his back slowly, carefully. How long had they been working their way through this section of the attic? Just looking, touching, and not really stopping to examine anything in detail. Hours, certainly, and he was sorry to say that he was actually feeling sleepy. It had... soothed him. Surprising, really. Nothing usually worked to make him feel relaxed enough to sleep. Nothing.
Except perhaps cradling his son to his chest, relaxing back in the rocking chair, and feeling the young child's breath feather on his neck, and the faint heartbeat and warmth that made each day worth living.
He could not say that he held a glowing regard for the world at large, rather a dull curiosity was more his norm. No doubt they would be horrified if they knew his view of the world, but he had become very good at eluding the questions of the prying doctors and therapists over the years. He was not a danger to anyone now. Not when he had Stephen to guide him toward the future, to give him something to hold on to, to work for.
Given enough time Stephen might actually heal him, at least as much as he might ever heal from the hand life had dealt him, but then who was he to complain? There was always someone worse off. Always. It depended on your point of view after all.
He would have to be careful. If he slipped and they noticed how his mood was darkening toward depression again they would introduce medication again, and he was heartily fed up with seeing the world through medicated eyes. He was not that bad yet, and he would not allow it to get to that point.
This new discovery could go a long way to lifting his mood.
It was because Chang would be taken away from him, of course, and wasn't that ridiculous? Chang had no intention of being locked away into seclusion by his Clan, as was traditional on his colony. Rarely was the Chang of Chang on public display to the people, the Elders having taken the more public role and the Chang being secluded, fed information by his aides. Living in that kind of isolation would, frankly, drive him to suicide and he doubted it was something Wu Fei could have dealt with in the long term.
He was too much of a firebrand, too volatile in nature, to tolerate the isolation.
He must take each day as it came, delight in the company offered by Chang and by Maxwell and persevere for Stephen's sake. Friends and family. What more could he ask for?
It would be enough and it was not such a bad life to lead.
End
Karina Robertson 2012