Title: Crippled Wings

Author: Karina

Rating: PG

Pairing: Duo

Notes: Challenge 200. Baby Series 4 #58. Takes place at the same time as Clipped Wings

Spoilers: None

Warnings: Many7 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: Crippled Wings

'I wonder what he's thinking about?'

Duo subtly shifted his shoulders, flexing muscles that felt as though he had been indulging in hard manual labour for hours. It was tension, pure and simple. He was clenched tight, watching everyone, expecting... Well, in truth he had no idea what he was expecting.

Everything felt different, wrong, many making him tight, uneasy with change. That was what it was, the advent of change. It was one thing to know change was coming, but another thing entirely to live the experience. He knew the Clan of Chang was coming. He knew Chang Wu Fei was the Chang of Chang and would take up that title. He knew it. He KNEW it would mean changes to their relationship and he had been prepared for that. Really, he had been prepared.

Only now, watching the change become reality, he was not so certain he was ready.

He had not had a great deal to do with Milliardo after the war. He had come into the man's acquaintance late. It was not until after Stephen's birth that he had had any real quality association with the man. Watching as he became King had not had the impact that watching Chang become The Chang was having on him.

This was as though someone had taken a knife and slashed through wings, grounding a bird, crippling it for life from the freedom it had known. Chang was suffering in silence, stoic as ever, seemingly, outwardly, unfazed.

'I'm the one having the hard time dealing with it.'

What was he to do? All of his talk about nothing being capable of affecting his bid for the affections and attention of these men... How could he make a move on either one of them? How did he think it really would make no appreciable difference to their relationship dynamics?

The Chang was not the man he had grown to love. Chang of Chang was not the firebrand, the fire breathing dragon who had great wings to spread and carry him above all of the troubles of the world. High up into a sea of pristine air from which he could survey the world, untouched by it, to determine a course of action. To swoop down and interact with the world at large whilst still keeping himself separate; calm and serene one moment and spitting fire the next.

Propriety for a Leader would allow no such thing. Nor would it easily allow for an intimacy with a favoured individual in the minuscule privacy a prominent leader could claim.

Reality could be unpleasant, but reality...

'Fuck that. I've got wings too, and my wings allow me to dream and defy reality. I can fly in my dreams and I won't let Chang be grounded like this. I'll make him fly... Somehow. And I'll rip the chains holding Zechsy down too. We'll all fly. I'll make it happen. Somehow.'

End

Karina Robertson 2012