Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Broken Wing Alternates ❯ BWA: Despair ( Chapter 4 )

Authors Notes: Why am I still writing these things? Not much use in them . . . Iraya is how I spell his sister's name. You got a problem with it, deal and don't come whining to me.

Disclaimers: Don't own 'em.

Broken Wing Alternates: Despair

Beautiful. So beautiful. Swirls of vibrant colors oozed past his vision. Those colors were sounds, sound all around him in blue and pink and violet. A yellow burst flared briefly before flashing again, the color of illness. Then an orange flare, brilliant against his delicate eyes. Then a sharp, crimson blast, and this time he heard the words associated with the color.

"QUATRE!" a hard, female voice, "Goddammit, why do you keep doing this?!? C'mon you little asshole, cough it up!" A rough hand grabbed his shoulder and rolled him over, the other hand beating his back, not bothering to be gentle. Quatre did as commanded and coughed, really more from the beating than from any desire to obey. He became slowly aware of a twinge in his stomach, a tight nausea. His throat constricted and his entire torso folded in on itself, forcing the contents of his stomach up and out through his pale lips. Vomit fell over the side of the bed and splattered over the floor, staining the tile a brown-orange tinged with blue. Immediately the hands let him go, gave his battered back some relief. He lay there, coughing pitifully, with no one around to give him comfort. However, nothing of this situation was outside the realm of the habitual. "I'm getting so damn sick of this, Quatre," came the voice again, the one he now recognized as his sister, Iraya. "Next time I just might . . ." She trailed off, throwing down a tool in frustration, the thing hitting the metal table with a hard clang.

"Y-You might w-what?" he stuttered out weakly, "let me go? Heh. F-Father would send you to join me." Quatre groaned and clutched his still convulsing stomach, even though there was nothing left in him to regurgitate. "I'm his heir. He'd never let me die so easily, and he'd kill you if you did."

"Then why keep trying?" Iraya shouted, shoving the tray over on its side, sending the collection of medical tools sliding and scattering over the floor. "Why?!? You've got everything you could ever want, but you keep trying to throw it all away!" She stomped over to him, lifting him from the bed with her strong doctor's hands. "You're the one who's going to inherit everything! You're the one who'll have all the power when Father dies! You've got an entire damn colony to yourself, for Christ's sake!"

"An empty colony!" he shouted back at her, "With no one who would care to help me, no one to comfort me! I've got everything except . . . oh why the hell do I even try to talk to you! You don't give a damn about me anymore than HE does!"

The smack resounded through the room, throbbed on his cheek and Iraya scowled.

"If could, I'd leave you here to die, you whining bastard. Do you think I like being stuck on this abandoned hunk, watching after you, keeping you alive despite your best efforts? For all I could care you could blow your brains out and space would be a better place for it. But no, you're the precious goddamned heir and I've got to be your babysitter."

"Why doesn't he just make another one? It's not like I'm not replaceable! All he's got to do donate some sperm and find some extra eggs lying around. It's not that hard to create a test tube heir."

Iraya's face closed off, as it so often did when he brought up that aspect of his life, or lack thereof. He growled, slamming his fists into the ruined sheets sending some of the not-quite-dried vomit splattering up onto his pale arms. With the effort, however, his last strength left him and he fell backwards onto the bed, not caring if he lay in part of the remains of his last meal, which had partially consisted of far too many blue sleeping pills.

"Go to sleep." Anyone else might hear tenderness in those words, from an older sister. Anyone else might have a sister determined at all costs to protect them out of love. Quatre did not, and so he heard no caring in that command because there was none.

~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~

He slept. Not because she told him to, but because his body demanded it, as did something else beyond his understanding. Not that this time was the first he'd felt a strange pull to sleep. No, he often fell into deep, coma-like slumbers and dreamed of things he never could be certain were real or merely wishful figments of an abused soul. These dreams became his anchors, the only things in his life that gave him reason to live, for he could not be certain that they would come to him in the oblivion of death.

He might see himself surrounded by a group of strong protectors, who stood by him not out of duty or on orders from his father, but because they wanted to, because they cared about him.

Or he would see himself as a strong mobile suit pilots, fighting for the grand ideal of peace, fighting to bring about the end of a great war.

He might even see that small group of friends, those closest to him and those for whom he cared most about in the world.

The image, the dream he longed most to see, however, was that of the tall boy. The one with emerald green eyes, only one of which could be seen through his red-brown bangs. Around this figure hung a brightness, an aura of pure and undamaged love. Soulmate . . . the word barraged his mind before any part of his psyche could reject it and in that moment he knew that one word held all truths within its two simple syllables. This boy, this mysterious face he'd never before seen anywhere other than these strange dreams, claimed the part of his soul no other could claim. But where was he? Where could he find this boy, so strong, so perfect?

Only in his dreams, it seemed.

End Broken Wing Alternates: Despair