Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Broken Wing Alternates ❯ BWA: Honor ( Chapter 5 )

Authors Notes: I am the Anne Rice of the fanfiction world! Haha! Okies, maybe I'm not THAT good. Okies, I'm no where NEAR that good. But I am striving! I'm striving! Enjoy this last part of Sailorcelestial's Trek Through GW Weirdness.

Disclaimers: Don't own 'em. May, I'm losing my creativity, ne?

Broken Wing Alternates: Honor

A hand batted at his paper. He ignored it. The hand batted again, and he ignored it. The hand batted a third time and Wufei reached beneath his paper with lightening speed and grabbed the little wrist.

"You have to be faster, Xian," he grumbled, letting his son's hand loose. "There will be no room for such sluggishness in the battle ring."

"But I won't be able to fight for years!" Xian's voice rose in an exasperating whine.

"That does not mean you should be slacking in your training!" Wufei snapped and rose, letting his newspaper down to tower above his sniffling seven year old son. He pushed his glasses up his nose from their perch at the end and narrowed his dark eyes. Such a simple, yet perfect expression. So small a change in his face created such a large reaction in the boy.

"I'm sorry! I won't slack off anymore, I promise!"

"Good." A sliding sound reached his ears, heralding the return of his wife and daughter. Wufei sighed, sitting back in his chair when Xian scuttled off to greet the two females. Their voices, intermingling in the distance between the kitchen and living area, he could only barely hear but knew what was being said. He leaned an elbow on the chair shoulder, his chin on his palm, and waited.

Waiting never took long in the Chang household.

"Chang Wufei!"

"Yes, my sweet Meiran?" he replied, knowing she hated such a label. As expected, her delicate golden face flushed with anger as she stomped into the room, her small frame shaking.

"Don't call me that! I am about as far from sweet as one can get and you know it!" The lithe young woman fairly glided over the space between them, looming over him only because he remained seated. Silken black hair, once kept up tight in twin pigtails, now cascaded down over her shoulders and shook as she gestured wildly. "What is this about goading Xian into not slacking off?!? That boy trains nearly fourteen hours a day! He works himself silly and into exhaustion!"

"He's too slow." Wufei stated simply, calmly, refusing to step into the yelling game Meiran always tried to lure him into.

"Dammit, Wufei, he's seven years old!"

Behind her, from the kitchen, twin pairs of ebony black eyes stared into the ruckus the adults were causing. The smallest pair belonged to Xian, but the bigger where the wide but condescending eyes of their oldest child. Meiran, named after her mother, mostly ignored by her father and he knew it, and knew it was wrong.

"What about Meimei?" he asked, using the traditional nickname, the one the girl hated not only because it made her sound like a child, but because it did not apply to her.

"What about her?"

"You treat her as the prized child, treasured over your son. Xian rarely sees you, because you spend all of your time with your daughter."

"And you practically ignore her!"

"She needs none of my attention when she has all of yours. Someone has to spend time with Xian. Otherwise he would think himself an orphan. I keep him busy to make him strong, but also," and here Wufei paused to scowl at his wife, so lovely, but so cold, "to keep his mind off of his mother, who has abandoned him. He is not your son, only mine."

She stepped closer, no doubt intending to slap him. It would not be the first time. However, she must have sensed the four little eyes at her back, because Meiran stopped, took a deep breath, and calmed herself enough to refrain her violent tendencies. She remained silent for a long while, dark, smoldering eyes looking everywhere but him, the object of her ire.

"Meiran is to lead the clan when I am gone," she finally said, clenching her fists tightly to her sides. "I have an obligation to teach her what she needs to know, to let her meet our people and see me when I lead so that she will be wise when her time comes. It is a painful thing, to forsake one child for another. But I had to, Wufei."

"As I had to focus on Xian when you could not," Wufei stood, taking her into his arms in a hug, a gesture of affection show only without the household. "I do understand, as much as you think I do not. So I take up Xian in my hands the only way I know how. By teaching him the things I know the same way you teach our daughter what you know." She would not cry against him; he knew that. She never had and most likely never would. She did, however, clench her fingers tightly around the silk of his shirt and lean ever so slightly into him. She leaned on him, and he leaned back towards her. A mutual agreement on both their parts, the reiteration of a long-ago made vow.

"Mama," came Xian's little squeak, "can we have dinner now?"

End Broken Wing Alternates: Honor