Title: A Long Road
Author: Karina
Rating: PG
Pairing: The Elder
Notes: Challenge 205. Baby Series 4 #71. Takes place approximately an hour following Hnn Mode.
Spoilers: None
Warnings:
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the Characters from the series but the baby is mine.
Title: A Long Road
"It was a long road, fraught with countless difficulties, many foreseen, some not. At the end of the road we can look about us now and see our homeland. The nightmare is done, we can wake up and we can say 'I'm still here'. Still here, still alive, still breathing, still living when so many I knew are not. It is a humbling, frightening thing, to know that one lives whilst so many others do not."
The Elder paused, standing in the shadows, watching the small group clustered around the ornate urn. It was a sizable nook in the conservatory, the air was warm and filled with the earthy scent of growing things. There were five women seated around a table, their attention focused on an older woman whose grey hair was tied neatly into a tight bun.
"One should not feel guilt for being a survivor, but saying that is so much easier than living it. Why did you survive whilst the woman next to you, the child next to her, the man across from you... Did not. Why does one survive and others die? We can ask the question until we are blue in the face, but we will find no answer that entirely satisfies us. The truth is, until we come to terms with the fact that we did indeed survive, we will not free ourselves of the guilt of surviving."
She was writing notes, he saw, her attention focused on the assortment of younger females. A counsellor, he wondered? A fine porcelain tea setting occupied the wrought iron table and each woman had a cup set before her, some clutching the cups, some staring into the contents, others staring at the fancy filigree work of the dining setting.
"I watched my mother and my sister die, and I have never forgotten. It was so long ago, I was only four, but I have never forgotten. It's so very clear."
The oldest of them set aside her writing and gently laid a hand over the shaking fingers of the speaker.
"We survived. Some of us were adults, some of us merely babes in arms. The important thing to realise is that we all lived through it. It was Armageddon though the world survives, our world was taken from us. So long as we acknowledge the simple truth of it, painful as it is, and understand that each day is a gift, we can walk forward. People died around us, we saw people blown apart, butchered, our families amongst them. It might very well have been us, but it was not. Some deal with this sense of guilt by living for those who did not have the chance to. By doing the very best they can with their lives, trying to fill each day with a lifetimes worth of experience. To my mind that is far preferable than the apathetic one's who enclose themselves with everything that was lost."
End
Karina Robertson 2013