Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Survival ❯ Epilogue: Rise Again ( Chapter 38 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Epilogue: Rise Again

And… Well, this is it. Thanks for reading, and hopefully I'll have the start of Sedition out before too long.

Remalene is a creation of Kyeian for one of her fanfiction series, which she has graciously allowed me to use as rights of being her best friend, or something. *grins*

December 27th - Wednesday - L5-C1936

Leia smiled indulgently, watching the McGee children squeak and squeal, the younger ones making snow angels and tossing handfuls of snow that could hardly be called snowballs at each other as the older ones worked with David McGee to try to make a snowman with varying degrees of success… She didn't think any of them had ever seen enough snow in one place before to understand how. Most colonies included snow in the weather schedule now and again, but generally never so much, as it required colder temperatures than most were willing to tolerate for more than a day.

But this colony had gone full-stop in their Christmas charade this year and were having true snow for a whole week… and the turn-out had probably made it worth the cost and complaints. Adults and children alike were exclaiming in delight everywhere you looked, and the smell of evergreen permeated everything… She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, focusing on that for a long moment… Coming here had been both easier and harder than she had imagined. There was no denying the good cheer in the air, it was infectious, but at the same time…

“Mom! Mom!”

At the same time there were children everywhere, and it made her want to sob inconsolably.

“Mom!”

The child was shrieking her throat raw, and as Leia opened her eyes she saw the McGee mothers turning to look to the right despite knowing exactly where their children were, and Dr. McGee had stopped to look as well, looking concerned… which made sense with a child that sounded so distressed, she was turning as well…

Her heart leapt up in her throat and she froze. It couldn't be. “Marie?” she found herself say, her voice disbelieving.

The girl was close enough now that she could see the snap of acknowledgement in her eyes before she'd slammed into her, arms thrown around her waist. “Mom,” she cried again, and Leia could hear the tears choked up in her voice even as she gripped at her little girl… Oh God, she was here…

She broke Mariemaia's grip on her so she could get down on one knee and hug pull her into a death grip properly; her daughter still hadn't come into her height. “Oh Marie…” Her throat tried to close on the words but she swallowed. She's alive, she's here… “I've been so worried, I thought I would never find you, Meagan had no idea where your grandfather had taken you, and then the raid and no mention even in the news!” Her eyes were streaming like a faucet but she couldn't care less. Christmas had come two days late, but it was the brightest she had ever had all the same.

Marie let out a hysterical little giggle. “I ran away… I realized he didn't care and I stole a ship and ran away, but it took me to Earth on autopilot and I got lost… Oh Mom, we've been looking and looking for you for months…”

We? Still holding her daughter, she raised her head… and sure enough, standing a few yards away was a blonde young man who couldn't be more than eighteen at most. He smiled a little when he saw her looking at him and shrugged, looking confident yet still a little awkward… and Leia smiled. Whoever he was, he had brought Mariemaia back to her despite the odds and Marie was already starting to chatter on about how he'd taken care of her - he couldn't be too bad. She had time to get to know him, she had Marie back, safe and sound, likely thanks to him… She owed him the world. “Dr. Leyda Keissler,” she introduced warmly.

“Odin Lowe.”

***

December 31st - Sunday - Brussels

“-going to be a completely unmitigated disaster, I'm telling you!”

Dorothy nodded agreeably, even though she really couldn't care less about how distressing Lincoln had found the situation, debating if she could get away with pulling her nail file out of her purse… the middle one of her left hand wasn't even anymore, and it was beginning to really drive her insane. Mm… She was fairly certain Lin knew she wasn't paying strict attention anyhow… after all, it couldn't really be that bad, with how calm Jake and Relena were…

They both jumped slightly as the door opened and David Mitchell strode quickly in and focused on them with a grin. “All ready to roll?” he asked a little too cheerfully. “Drinks, snacks, noisemakers, upholstery cleaner?” He blinked and snorted slightly to himself. “Even better, I'd forgotten the couches in here were leather.”

Dorothy gave Mitchell a level look. “I don't clean.”

“Leather?” Lin asked a moment later, eying the colonel suspiciously.

“Much easier to clean blood-splatter off of,” the man returned cheerfully. Lin moaned and moved to hold his head in his hands as he continued. “It's hell to get out of cloth, trust me.”

She narrowed her eyes at that, trying to decide if he was actually serious or not… “If anyone gets blood on my jacket there will be hell to pay,” she decided after a moment.

Mitchell outright chortled. “Make sure you tell them that, Heiress.”

“This is a bad idea,” Lin protested again. “Are his ribs even healed yet?”

“Mm, he has a good enough job to have gotten Remalene treatment to make it go along faster, so probably.” He moved over to poke through the drinks along the table. “And so long as Jake still has his arm in a sling he's not likely to rise to Jack's bait and start a real fight, and since it's New Year's and not early Fall, Jake won't be so high strung that Jack shouldn't try to get a rise out of him just for spite. All in all, it's actually the best chance for a blood-free encounter between them that I've ever seen, and that includes the points where we'd only have lunch with the man for an hour outside some airport.”

…Because that sounded all sorts of promising. Dorothy opened her mouth to ask what Mitchell was on about, because she certainly hadn't been in on all these details when she'd learned that Jake's father was going to do New Year's with them, but was stopped short when Valerie and their other friends down in Reconstruction bounced into the room. Kelly focused on her and grinned. “Dorothy!”

“Kelly!” she returned with just as much enthusiasm, which made the other woman start giggling outright… before bouncing over to sit on the arm of the couch next to her and hold out a tiny external drive.

“Come on, quick, we have to pick out movies before the rest of the menfolk get here.” Her grin was devious, and she'd done up her hair and make-up… really, tonight was an excuse for everyone to dress up after too long not doing it… Dorothy was still confused that they all felt they needed an excuse, but just because she didn't let something silly like that stop her didn't mean she wanted to have to compete with all these other girls every day, so they could keep being silly.

Dorothy grinned back; she and Kelly had the same taste in movies, so she had to agree… especially seeing as it wouldn't be all that long before everyone else protested and turned something else on - they had to stretch it out as long as they could. So it happened that they were playing with the laptop hooked up to the tv as everyone else arrived, Jake and Relena hilariously matching with their mirrored slings… and she watched Jack with her lips pursed, trying to find what was so volatile about him; she just wasn't seeing it.

Relena gave her an amused but level sort of look as she came over. “What?”

Dorothy smiled. “What what?”

The princess snorted, raising her brows. “I'm not buying it, Thea, out with it.”

Well fine then. “If they get blood on my shirt, I'll throw the mother of all fits.”

Both Relena and Kelly guffawed at that, though Kelly was outright disbelieving and Lena was rolling her eyes. “You know, just for that, come here, I need to bleed on you…”

Dorothy skittered out of the princess' reach before she remembered that the other woman's stitches had come out a week ago and she hadn't bled for more than two, with that Remalene drug speeding up the healing process. She scowled at her as Relena laughed naughtily… She was picking up on too many of Jake's bad habits. “You're mean,” she decided to announce after another moment.

Relena just laughed more. “I love your maturity level, Thea…” She blinked as she focused on the laptop screen. “Oh no, we are not watching that!”

***

January 25th - Thursday - Sahara Desert

“Cut him down.”

I coughed as the breath was driven out of my lungs as I hit the ground hard, curling on my side trying to get it back. My back was a mass of searing pain, but at least they had had me take off my shirt first, so it wasn't ruined… It would be easier to let the welts heal if I could keep them covered, for all that the cloth might have been some protection from the whip.

A whipping, in this day and age… Effective, I supposed, but these people were insane. The kind of society they fantasized about building with us all as their pawns wouldn't be able to survive with larger populations even if their ideals didn't make me want to hack and gag.

It had made me throw up, when I'd first woken up in the cages and realized what the metal netting meant, what I would have to do in order to survive and make it out of that iron jungle.

They had this expansionist idea running without realizing that it all would ultimately either collapse under its own weight or that they would face rebellion from the inside once it got large enough. In a world created of and run by misery, eventually someone would damn the majority for the sake of themselves. I'd already seen it a few times, though the quarantine time in the cages broke you enough to where you became more animal than man in many ways…

I had been no exception, really.

The difference was in those who could find their humanity again after they resurfaced, and it hadn't taken me too long once I'd escaped into the relative slavery of the world outside the cages to recognize those remnants of mercy in others. It hadn't been long before I fashioned a strategy of escape, because I wasn't interested in staying long enough to lead that first rebellion, or interested in wasting away what humanity I kept safely buried to do what would be necessary to start one.

It would have been easier to do that than escape, but everyone has their own standards. Just because I was forced to bend mine past the breaking point once didn't mean I was willing to do it again.

The various leaders of this twisted little society they had named Cambyses - an utterly tasteless action that bordered on historical sacrilege - had been smart and powerful enough to implement start their little world and to get the ball rolling, but that was about it… Either that or the original leaders had already been usurped at some point, which wouldn't be all that surprising either. I shouldn't complain, though; their stupidity was entirely in my favor. Roshan might hate me, but at least at this point it was just hatred and fear of me possibly seizing his power from him, not suspicion that my squadron might be getting ready to run for Egypt and leave the psychos to their petty new world order schemes. Someone else could bomb them after that for all I cared - as soon as we were free, they were someone else's problem.

I could feel the others holding back from coming closer, the tension a bitter tang in the air. Good. If they broke rank at all, it wouldn't have been worth it. And it had been worth it, to focus on nothing but pride and mine, to step into my role and bruise Skye a few times with a snarl and toss orders to Vaska to cut his rationing for a few days before stepping forward and claiming responsibility for my soldier's punishment. It wasn't as though Vaska would follow through with it, after all - if he did I would thrash him, and properly. Doing what I had reinforced my by now renowned possessiveness, not wanting to let anyone besides myself touch my men, and I was high enough in regard, known in the other camps well enough, that I would only be whipped.

Roshan would only have been too happy to beat Skye to death. And I wasn't about to lose someone else.

Five months more… It was a depressing estimate, and one that had only grown as time went on, but it was what I had to cling to, and wasn't a chance in hell that I might give it up. Five months at most… I might truly lose the rest of my sanity if it was any longer than that.

***

February 2nd - Friday - L2

“As I already said, I am not the person you need to convince,” Leia repeated, entirely understanding the man's case. “I'm all for it, hell, I'll pay any premiums out of pocket for every aspect. That's hardly the point.” He was frowning at her again, so she sighed and tried again. “The kid doesn't get why he would want cosmetic surgery.”

“But the scarring-”

“Yes, I've seen the scarring; I know all about the scarring. I've tried to talk to him about it. The only points he'll agree to concern continued maximized mobility and use, and I can guarantee that if there is even a statistical chance of either a procedure taking his current mobility away or putting him in a bed for more than eight weeks, he will decline, and that's that.” She sighed, brushing her bangs out of her face. “As for anything outside that realm, the only chance it'll happen is if that little girl can talk him into it.”

The plastic surgeon blinked at her in utter confusion. “She's twelve.”

Leia gave him a level look. “I'm aware, Dr. Goodman, I was there.”

He flushed at that but didn't try to apologize, continuing to look utterly confounded. “But how does that-”

“I'm aware the boy is odd, doctor, seventeen-year-old boys with severe injuries don't go traipsing across continents and entire colony clusters while taking care of a child they found completely at random in the best of times, let alone these.” She met his eyes solidly. “If you can't convince Marlé into talking him into it, then by God the boy saved my daughter, he can keep his damn scars if he wants!” Goodman was leaning away from her by now, but good grief, she'd already said it nicely enough times for the man to understand.

It was not her fault that Odin's sense of practicality was level with his sense of aesthetics, which was to say he more or less letting the twelve-year-old design his wardrobe. Not that that's a bad thing. She shook her head a little. At least Marie had good taste… in loyal pseudo-brothers as well as comfortable fashion. Leia wasn't sure if her daughter remembered Jake at all, but she certainly seemed to have taken to Odin about the same as she had to Treize's friend as a toddler. And for all his calm silence, he seemed just about as taken with her.

She was almost ready to forgive him for having taught her daughter to vault from one rooftop to another.

Maybe in another week. She started to grind her teeth at the mere memory; suddenly having an utterly fearless daughter was not conducive to her nerves. Marie's assurances that he had made her perfect any landings before he let her high up helped, but no mother could watch her child do that without her heart skipping a beat.

Goodman finished gathering himself up and gestured for her to follow him back to the exam room Marie and Odin were waiting in. She honestly didn't care what the boy's leg looked like so long as he didn't, but she did want him to know all his options and to not regret it later. Hopefully Marie could convey that better than she could before his surgery next week.

She shook her head a little. The muscular damage was extensive, but he'd already managed to compensate so well… Once they encouraged the tissues to grow back into their proper shape and attachment points instead of the multiple secondary ones they had established, once he had retrained the new tissue to coordinate with the old, his right leg might actually be his stronger one. It would never have the same endurance as the left and barometric pressure changes would hurt him like it would anyone with old wounds, but it would be more immediately capable… and she had seen the feral way his eyes had lit up when he had learned that.

He had been teaching her daughter how to free-run and fight and shoot; he was as bad as Jake when it came to the demands he made of his body, she was almost positive. They had skirted around Odin's identity so far, but it didn't take a genius to realize he had fought in the war and been good at what he did, and she had a few suspicions. It really wasn't too important - if there had been a chance that he was Wufei Chang it would have been, but Odin certainly wasn't Chinese - but it did make her wonder about what their best bets would be for the future, both for Odin and Marie… Because now that she wasn't desperate, she wasn't fool enough to think her daughter would be completely safe from those that would use her if she simply stayed on L2. False names and appearances only went so far, and it was fine for now… but it wasn't a permanent solution.

She would have to talk about it with Odin while he was recovering, and hopefully he'd be more comfortable around her by then; using Marie as a bizarre kind of translator was fast getting old.

***

February 19th - Monday - Brussels

Jake let out one of those naughty little cackles of his as he just barely ducked out of the way of her elbow, even as Relena felt all the blood drain out of her face. “Oh my God!”

Her bodyguard just laughed harder. “I think… I think you've got that move down…”

“Don't worry, it's not you,” Jerome noted, though he looked somewhat amused as well. “He's just insane.”

“That could have killed him!” she found herself squeaking in protest.

“That would be the point of you learning this.”

“But…” They were the ones who had lectured her over and over on the levity of how an elbow to the trachea wasn't something you did unless it was a last resort because it was a lethal move, and now-

“Good thing he's good at dodging?” Rome suggested.

“How is it that funny?” she demanded of the lieutenant; Jake was still too busy laughing to talk.

Rome snorted. “Because he does it when someone grabs him like that.”

Oh. Which meant he had startled her on purpose to see if the drills he'd put her through were sticking. And he was far too meticulous to move like that without thinking, which was incredibly comforting… for all that Rome was probably right and Jake likely could have dodged without knowing the blow was coming.

They had started going over the attacks that he insisted ought to be ingrained responses as soon as she had been cleared for not needing her sling last week. The fact that they were the kind that if she had known them when she was younger would have stopped any would-be kidnapper in his tracks still stung. She could still remember the terror of being taken as a hostage when she was eleven; later she hadn't even been able to justify that she had acted stupidly by being out in the dark; she had still been on the Darlian estate, not far from the lighted front lawn. Ignorance, innocence, however well-meaning, was unforgivable, especially for someone in her position.

She let out a little smile of her own as Jake started getting back control of himself. It felt good to see the results of the monotonous drills, to feel her body gliding in smooth action before her mind had a chance to recognize what was happening… For the first time in her life she felt truly powerful, even though she knew intellectually that physically she was far from even holding her own against even the newly enlisted. The confidence might not be terribly warranted… but she also had no intention of being separated from her guards. Really, Jake would never let anyone close enough that she would use the defensive movements; they were only going through with this to ease their minds for a worst case scenario that was unlikely to ever occur… But if somehow it did happen, she might be able to save her own life. And however little progress she made, it was a comfort to realize that.

“It's not that funny,” she murmured to Rome.

“Like I said, your colonel's special.” And he winked, proving that he'd meant the pun… which made her groan. But then really, they should have known better than to name an elite fighting force `The Specials.' She could think of three jokes in poor taste just off the top of her head… She smirked again. But then, it really does suit Jake at least. `Quirky' was really just the tip of the iceberg with him… And that was okay.

She could think of far worse people to spend time with.

***

March 27th - Tuesday - Treize's hidden compound

“Sir! There's-”

“My screen is already on, Sanchez. Thank-you; go ahead and tell any others who haven't seen yet.”

“Sir.”

Treize never took his eyes away from his screen; Heavyarms had attacked a Regime foothold… it was reminiscent of the beginning of the modified Operation Meteor that the gundams had actually commenced in. Tonight he should get an update from Váli with what information the Regime had been able to gather, but he suspected the details of what had occurred would be about as bare as the reports after gundam attacks three years ago.

And he was also nearly positive that while he again knew the pilot, `Adam Bloom', once he investigated he would again find himself in a similar position from the beginning of the war, when he realized it wasn't really Trowa Barton piloting the red machine. Adam was a…flippant… contact at best, giving little useful information at any point in time, but Treize liked to think he was familiar enough with the young man's mind to know that he would have mentioned reviving his eight ton war machine. He could not be positive - he would never be positive of his ability to judge a man's character after Zechs - but he was nearly certain… which meant the boy had either hidden it inadequately - again unlikely considering how thoroughly he had hidden Heavyarms before joining OZ as an infiltrator - or he had gifted the machine to someone.

Hopefully to someone worthy of the title `gundam pilot;' otherwise this all would be sadly short-lived. He found himself smiling. And that just wouldn't do. It was starting again…

It wouldn't do to be any more than fashionably late.

***

“Is that…?”

“Heavyarms,” Leia confirmed softly, not taking her eyes away from the screen. “Your uncle was assassinated before he could pilot it, but he helped design it as well…” She frowned. “Odin?”

“It didn't have a beam saber before,” Odin answered what he thought she was asking, rewatching the clips on the laptop he'd opened as soon as they heard something about a gundam attacking a Regime base. When he looked up she was giving him an exasperated sort of look, which meant that hadn't been the question… he tried to think of what else it might have been. Leia never seemed to make half as much sense as Mariemaia. He'd gotten better at piecing her patterns of thought together in the past few months, but he still only followed what she meant without repeated prompting approximately fifty percent of the time.

…Hopefully it wouldn't be so utterly baffling with others down the line; he was starting to appreciate how simple life had been when he didn't have any choice dictating his actions. He didn't miss it, he never would… but he had never spent hours on end so confused then. Admittedly, he was less confused just this week than he was last, but was like saying one rainstorm was more wet than another because it had lasted an hour longer; entirely unquantifiable, without even mentioning the irrelevance.

“How well do you know the pilot?” Leia asked after it was clear he was waiting for a prompt. She and Marie kept insisting he would catch on faster if he could figure it out first, but he still hadn't seen enough of a pattern to do more than guess, which he thought was pretty pointless… but at least they usually only made him try once or twice before just saying it.

“Trowa…” Leia stiffened, and he blinked before mentally shrugging. It was obvious that Trowa had stolen the name from the woman's older brother after he died, the same way he had Heero Yuy, but Trowa had never given him an alternate name to use. “I stayed with him for a while after I destroyed Wing the first time, he brought me back to health when everyone else left me for dead, but… he was mostly quiet.” Catherine had talked more than enough for both of them, and Trowa had had such an odd tendency to follow rather than make up his own mind that really he'd just taken the companionship for the simple thing it was. Even when he had come with him to offer his life to the family of all the pacifists he had killed at New Edwards, the other pilot had only spoken to ask occasional questions, or to note what was going on around them that he might not have noticed.

…Far less lively than Duo. Far less trouble too, but he didn't think Trowa would have ever staged a rescue for the person he had shot less than twelve hours earlier, especially considering the fact that he had to know he had no way to or even interest in returning the favor. The fact that he had decided to do the same thing later, provided Duo hadn't been compromised, had been confusing at the time, but the way he'd been so satisfied for having done it afterwards had discounted the theory that he had merely offered to save the other pilot because it would only be fair.

Not that he had really believed that idea even at the time… after all, there was no way he would ever have been willing to leave Duo alone near Wing so he could scavenge parts from it. No one intelligent did anything only because it was fair. A contributing factor, certainly, but on its own…? He hadn't wanted to use Wing to duel after Zechs had it rebuilt in Antarctica for him because it was honestly too fair as well as a charity.

…There had also been the urge to show the man up despite very obviously being far out of his element, but that had been a tertiary concern, not a deciding factor.

Still, Trowa… Trowa was alive. And while he had practically been a ghost until they met again on Peacemillion, it would be good to see him again… It was good to know he was alive. And it made sense for him to upgrade the design to include a beam saber at the very least; Heavyarms had always inevitably run out of ammo sooner than would be preferred, and a simple knife could only do so much, especially in comparison. The original Trowa Barton had liked more flash and bang than was practical, if he had really helped design it. Beam sabers were more economical.

“None of us really ever knew much about the others,” he admitted when he felt Leia's eyes on him again. He had run into Duo with an odd frequency so he thought he understood his personality fairly well, and Quatre had been easy to understand after he recovered from Zero, but he had never been able to conclude anything about the others beyond the fact that they were worthy allies. And even then he had largely been trusting Lucrezia Noin, Sally Po, and Zero's judgment more than his own. He had learned more about Quatre after Libra, but… Well, he still had no idea what had happened to Quatre, and he had just seen Heavyarms, not Sandrock.

Trowa… He should be able to run again in a few more weeks, and once he could he would have to contact Xutao Chang and meet with Sally Po. Now that he had fulfilled his promise to Marie and had no leads on the other pilots, it might be time to make his stance and enter the fray again. And if Trowa was already working with Po, then she would be a good place to start.

***

March 30th - Friday - An Najaf, Iraq

Adam couldn't help but smile broadly as he looked around the little pub, taking a deep pull from his coffee. Reactions around him were all the way across the board. Most stared as if transfixed or were chattering loudly, excited or terrified or confused, conspiratorial whispers skittered underneath that layer of noise, while others were bellowing for everyone to shut up, and there was one woman screaming about how the `End of Days' was upon them. He was altogether amused by it all…

…Though hopefully someone would shut up the prophetess before she got too annoying.

Focusing back on the screen - which no one could hear but had subtitles along the bottom in some language he could read but hadn't the faintest idea what it was - he hid a proud grin behind his mug. Heavyarms… He had no real memory of piloting the gundam before waking up with amnesia, but there had been a certain kind of comfort, nostalgia, when he sat behind the controls. He could remember piecing together the circuitry laying on his back, listening to someone argue loudly about incompetence a few feet away, but he couldn't remember the battles he had fought in before Libra. He had never decided if that was a good or a bad thing before he had decided that he really had no use for the machine as times were in any case.

And Sally Po certainly had come through on bringing it into play.

Watching more closely, he could tell that it had been heavily modified, and schematics of the original started racing through his head, the diagrams for the upgrades from… somewhere it had been upgraded at, apparently; he was coming up empty on the details.

He wondered who was piloting… not that it mattered, as whoever was doing it was obviously quite good. This was the second time it had shown up - at least, it was if the military wasn't hiding anything from the media, which was iffy - but they hadn't gotten any good images of it before. They hadn't had enough time to even try to fight back the first time, they had just point blank lost a good sized store of Tauruses because they hadn't been expecting that they might need any defenses worthy of withstanding a gundam… and hey, he wasn't going to argue with that.

Technically speaking, with the Regime floundering to work up a stance aggressive enough to fight back, you could even say it's stimulating the economy. The hydroponics fortresses Relena had been building had literally borne enough fruit to take the edge off their late spring and more was coming, even as the fields were harvested of their surprisingly decent winter crops under the heat amplifiers and more crops were sown… They had gone through the winter altogether much better than had been feared.

And with the assurance that they weren't all going to starve, everyone was coming out of hibernation and taking up activism again… and voila gundam.

He grinned again, ignoring the reporter's subtitles and focusing on the clips they had of the battle again… he could hardly wait.

Any final thoughts? I can't believe it's finally done with… Thanks again.