Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ True North ❯ Chapter 13 (End) ( Chapter 13 )

True North

Chapter 13

Pairing: 2x1

Category: AU

Warnings: OC kid

Archived?: MediaMiner, under Miyabi

Feedback: Yes! At MediaMiner, jeliang at umich dot edu or kakigouri at gmail dot com.

Gundam Wing copyright Bandai, Sunrise, and Sotsu Agency. "Eien no Rhapsody" copyright Midori Saiha/Ringo Zaidan. "Beloved" copyright The Working Title.

Thanks to Diamroyal for beta reading and providing information I lacked, Richard Anderson for providing valuable information throughout the entire time and for being a sounding board, both for providing me with a retaliation idea and running with it, Natea for providing the pregnancy info, Midori Saiha of Ringo Zaidan for creating the doujinshi that inspired this.

Most importantly, a heartfelt thanks to all of you that have been reading all along.

"And I will waste no time
Worried 'bout no rainy weather
And I will waste no time
Remaining in our lives together"

--John Mayer, "Clarity"

Duo groaned, tapping on the containment chamber's wall. "C'mon, Heero. You couldn't be that upset about the lights."

There was no answer, but he saw Heero's shoulders moving up and down with, for him, suppressed laughter. At least he thought it was laughter; the bastard had his back to him.

"It was for your own damn good," he shouted. "You'd have burned out otherwise, and then you think you'd have gotten back now?"

Duo kicked a bare foot angrily. Heero had returned to the labs shortly after he'd passed the exam. It had taken a few days to get used to things, but after two weeks, he'd settled himself comfortably, and they'd been working side by side on the research project Duo had thought about last September.

Of course, Duo thought that Heero hadn't given a damn about the lights being rigged when he was studying back in April. In fact, he hadn't given the event much thought himself since; there wasn't any reason too, since it all worked out.

Apparently, Duo had been wrong, since it was already the first of June-Moira was going to be sixteen in two days-and Heero not only remembered the lights prank, he was still pissed off about it, because otherwise Duo wouldn't be in containment at this very moment, in a paper gown, waiting for the biohazard unit to give him the all-clear on what looked like an endless series of blood and urine tests.

Duo was going to stay late to tie up some loose ends on the first part of their research. But when he stuck his card in the log system after he was done, the building went into a chaotic uproar of bright lights, sirens and alarm bells, followed by the cops.

He'd triggered the master alarm, one that was reserved once a year for drills. Otherwise, it'd been six years since they'd heard it for an actual emergency. It wasn't until they'd finished doing a very thorough strip-search (Duo made a note to tell the Earthside bio unit they could stand to be gentler) that he saw Heero standing outside the containment chamber, arms crossed and wearing a smugly triumphant expression.

"Why the fuck is he looking so happy?" were the first words in Duo's head. When he noticed Heero was laughing /at/ him, they changed to "What the fuck I do to deserve this?" Upon backtracking through anything he'd done to piss Heero off, the lights prank had been the most recent.

So just before he left to give the biohazard people a urine sample, he asked, "This is payback for the lights, isn't it?"

Heero had nodded just before Duo got shooed off, the smirk on his face growing larger.

"Dr. Maxwell?" There she was again, the captain of the biohazard squad, at his elbow, a no-nonsense woman in her fifties who was so tiny she swam in her protective suit. "Your tests are clear. Congratulations."

"Great! Does that mean I can go?" he asked. That got a glare and a firm shake of the head.

"Sorry. You've got to go through routine decontamination," she said. "That won't take long, but we've got to keep you here for observation. Given where you are, I'd say overnight. Maybe more tests to see if anything happens."

Duo groaned. Why, he asked himself, couldn't he just have been denied sex for a week or two instead of this? The only bright spot in all of this was that Heero had mastered the security system, meaning he'd adapted to present-day technology quite well.

There was a time and place for showing that, though, and this wasn't it.

******

When she heard the news, Moira blinked. Then, to Papa: "Could you repeat that?"

"I'm pregnant," he said. "That's why I had to sit you down."

"Men don't get pregnant," she snapped. Papa shrugged.

"Well, I did. If you don't believe me, call Duo. He should be out of containment by now." He folded his hands over his stomach, and she winced thinking about how it'd expand over the next...

"When's it due?"

"Early winter. It's still hard to pinpoint, since we don't know how the baby will develop. Even if I gave you a due date now, we'd probably be off by a few weeks, maybe even a month. And, since this is experimental, there's the possibility of it being premature." There wasn't any telltale sign of a smile on his face-Papa was wearing his standard expression.

All Moira could do was sit in her chair, gaping at Papa's stomach. She couldn't imagine him at full term, waddling around in extra large clothing. Well, she could. But she didn't want to. So maybe they wouldn't have to look very far for something outside of maternity wear, but there was something very wrong about this.

"Why don't you call Duo? He's got more information at the labs," Papa said. "I'll be upstairs."

******

"Ah, he told you, huh?" Dad said, nodding over the vidphone screen. "Yeah, we've been working on that for a while. I wasn't sure if it was going to succeed, but hey, there ya go. Papa's about three months along."

Moira wanted to shake him by the shoulders, to ask in a very loud, angry voice that if they wanted another kid, why didn't they just grow one in a tube like they did with her? That she could handle a lot better. Besides, there were tons of kids who'd been born out of artificial wombs-it wasn't that big a deal.

Then again, she was cautiously optimistic in the hopes that this was all a nightmare, and she'd wake up and laugh about it at the table with both of them.

"Now, Papa probably told you that we can't give you an /exact/ due date, but I'd say..." here, he shuffled some papers on his desk, "November to Decemberish."

"Oh," Moira found herself saying. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening.

Dad grinned. "So, you'll be getting a little brother or sister in time for the holiday season! Isn't that great? Actually, we thought we'd tell you tomorrow, but since someone couldn't keep it to himself, consider this an early birthday present."

"/What/?" Moira squawked.

"Oh, and could you do me a favor, hon? Don't tell anyone for a while, at least not until Papa begins to show. Not even Nana, okay?"

Moira fainted.

******

Heero could feel Duo's reproachful glare boring into him as he told Moira that no, he wasn't pregnant. After he'd dumped a glass of water on her, she'd woken up and had been immediately sat down once again.

"So you're not three months along," she said, wary. "And there's nothing coming out of there around Christmas."

Heero shook his head.

"Right," she said, looking to Duo's face on the vidphone for confirmation.

"It's too dangerous," Duo said. "Y'see, the baby needs somewhere to latch onto in the body. So, for a woman, that's the uterus. But a guy doesn't have one, so the next likely candidate is the intestine."

"I...see," Moira said, shakily drinking her glass of water.

"When the placenta forms, it has to break down the capillaries in that area, so there's a blood supply for nutrients. So you know that sticks around, right, honey? Remember your sex ed classes?"

Heero didn't know anybody could glare while drinking out of a glass. Maybe he /had/ gone too far. Hopefully the ice pack he was preparing would keep the bump on her head from swelling too much.

"If it's a woman," he said to Moira, wrapping a towel around the ice and handing it to her, "there'll be muscles that clamp down on the blood network, so she's fine when the placenta comes off. But a man doesn't have those, so he'd bleed to death within a few minutes once that happened."

"Don't forget the part where the baby's head gets stuck in his pelvis," Duo muttered. "Actually, he /could/ give birth safely and avoid bleeding to death and the pelvis thing via C-section. They'd have to keep the placenta in there and let the body break it down though, so there's the risk of infection."

Moira nodded, finishing her glass. "And you guys thought it'd be /funny/ to pretend that Papa was pregnant? The hell?"

Duo sighed. "You know, I didn't want to go along with it, but he threatened me while I was in containment. You're damn lucky you never ended up in one of those before, sweetheart."

Moira turned to glare at Heero. "All of this for the lights? That's /cruel/!"

"Now we're even," he said, as Duo said at the same time, "We'll make it up to you tomorrow, honey. Promise."

Moira said nothing, glowering at both of them instead.

"I understand if you want to kill us," Duo was sheepish. "We didn't think you'd pass out on the floor."

"On my /birthday/?" she growled.

Duo caught Heero's eye, and said, "We just need some time to talk when I get home. Don't worry, we'll keep you posted. And you're not sixteen until tomorrow."

Moira snorted, getting up and leaving the room. When she'd turned the corner to go upstairs, Duo fixed Heero with a glare of his own.

"She didn't have to take the bribe," Heero said.

Duo's expression didn't waver. "You realize now I have to extend the girl's curfew?"

"I'm not sorry."

"Let's hope for your sake you stay that way. Shit, even a curfew extension might not be enough," Duo said, breaking the connection.

******

Luckily for both of them, Moira took the curfew extension-out until midnight on weekdays and then one or two in the morning on weekends-and that settled the entire matter.

Of course, Heero thought, that was because Duo had been thoughtful and given her some ice cream he'd picked up on the way back from work. Also, she'd had some time to nap and let things settle.

In fact, looking at Moira now, chatting with Relena, it looked like she'd completely forgotten about it. Heero could tell through the lack of glares directed towards him and Duo in between her bites of pasta.

They were at Zerzura, the little karaoke restaurant to celebrate her birthday tonight, and, Duo had added on a little side note, Heero being revived for a year. He'd been surprised when Duo had mentioned that; after all, he hadn't realized that much time had passed.

"Remember how you didn't want to go here before?" Duo asked, putting down his napkin. He smiled fondly. "I was ready to fall on the floor laughing at the look on Moira's face."

Heero shrugged. "This is different from what I thought it was going to be," he said. Zerzura was cozy without feeling cramped, and the singing, so far, wasn't all bad, except for the drunk man whose voice was so off-key Duo started talking about shooting heroin to take away the pain.

"Hey," Moira said, getting up from her seat. "I think I'm gonna get up and sing, okay?"

"No need to ask permission," Duo said. "Go on up."

"But first..." Moira glanced at Relena briefly, biting her lip nervously. At the old woman's encouraging nod, she turned back to Duo and Heero. "Since it's been about a year since Papa's been with us, I thought I'd, uh...well, hold on." Her head disappeared beneath the table for a few seconds, and she rose to her feet again with a brown rectangular package in both hands. "Here. I made this for both of you. I guess you could consider it a Father's Day present too, but really early."

Duo's eyes widened. "Honey, I wasn't expecting this!"

Heero took the package-it was surprisingly light, and whatever was inside felt hard, like metal. "What is it?" he asked, putting it on the table.

"Ah. Yeah. I can't tell you. See, I'm going to sing up there, and you're going to open it while I'm onstage." She bit a knuckle.

"Are you copping out on sitting here `cause you're afraid we won't like it?" Duo teased. Moira shook her head.

"No, no. It's not like that. Oh, and the song's dedicated to you two. I'd say that onstage, but uh...I didn't want to embarrass you guys." Her eyes darted to meet Heero's before looking away. "Okay, I guess I'll be going now." She turned and ran towards the stage.

"Aw, isn't that cute?" Duo said, slinging an arm around Heero's shoulders. He prodded the package with a finger. "I wonder what she came up with that she's so nervous about..."

"Quiet." Heero held a finger up to his lips. "She's starting."

/Come to me like in my dreams spinning everything/

/And all the while my bones fight not to crash down/

/Now that I know that you can be everything I need/

/And anything I'd do to find your name/

Duo reached over and started to peel back the adhesive holding the wrapping together. "Let's see what she's got here for us."

A few more tugs and the paper fell away.

"Jesus Christ, Moira," Duo whispered. That was more than Heero could say; in fact, all he could do was sit there, stunned at the contents.

/Please come whisper all you know about this thing called love/

/And feel it as you speak draw you to me/

/Note the swell that passion brings and feel it in the air/

/Come step off of your ledge to soar with me/

It was a series of three photographs arranged like a triptych; the first one being of Duo in profile, the last of Heero while he'd been reading, and the middle one of both of them together.

But these photographs looked like they'd been developed on metal instead of paper. Like Moira had /painted/ them on. The edges of the photos themselves weren't even-Heero saw that the photo of himself had a slight tear on one corner-but it didn't make the entire project any less stunning.

/I could try and find out why these old wings won't fly/

/Till I close my eyes, count the lines and find I'm soaring high/

/Oh to look up and find you with wings on tight/

/Your head faced down/

/You're spinning round/

/Crashing down on me/

He looked up at Moira singing and twirling all over the stage. She didn't seem nervous anymore, and her voice was powerful-more so than Heero had thought. She'd always be singing something softly to herself in the house, but here, her voice carried all the way to the back, low and sweet, with enough brightness to match the song's mood.

"Whoa," Duo said. "Look at that. She got you smiling." He pointed to Heero's picture. Sure enough, he saw himself with the corners of his mouth turned up in the photo. He realized that she'd taken the picture when she was still recovering from the flu, and that was why she'd asked him if it was okay.

Now that he was focused on the photographs themselves, Heero realized that Moira had also gotten the one of him and Duo when he'd gotten his exam results back. How she'd managed to get that one, he'd have to ask someday. Even an outsider could tell they were a couple from how intimate they looked. He'd been touching the notch between Duo's collabones again.

/I'll find you and you'll know me from all your dreams/

/And I'll be everything that I know you can be/

/Dreaming, loving/

/And you'll be everything/

Whistles and cheers filled the restaurant as Moira ended the song, winked at the audience and pointing both fingers at everyone before she ran offstage.

"C'mere, kiddo," Duo said, leaving the table, and swept her up into a bear hug, crushing her against him.

"Don't break the girl's ribs," Relena chided, "she can't even move."

He released Moira, holding her at the shoulders. "I can't believe you did this for us. It's /incredible/--we're going to be looking at these pictures years later and wondering how you managed to do it, never mind how you were able to keep it a secret all this time." Duo hugged her again, this time lifting her feet off the ground.

"Dad! Not here! Not here!" Moira shrieked, squirming in his grasp, but Duo swung her around in a half circle before setting her down and giving her two loud kisses on her cheeks.

"Thank you so much! We're gonna get them framed as soon as possible," he said.

"Great. Real good," Moira said weakly. Relena, wearing an exasperated smile, rose from her seat and guided her back to the table.

"See? There wasn't anything to worry about. Now," she said, sitting the girl down, "let's see what they've got for dessert."

For a moment, Moira looked at Heero, as if she was searching for or gauging something. He didn't say anything; he couldn't put what he was feeling into anything coherent yet, and he wasn't going to express it until then. An odd wistful look flickered in her eyes before she turned to the dessert menu with Relena.

He heard Duo sit back down, and two hands grasp his shoulders. "Aren't they something?" Duo whispered in his ear. "I'm so proud of our little girl."

Heero ran a finger along the center picture, across Moira's engraved initials, and nodded.

******

Later that night, Heero found her sitting on the roof, another one of those pictures lying nearby.

"How did you make those?" he asked. Moira started, whipping her head around.

"Oh, wow, didn't see you there. You mean the series, right?" She turned back to look at the sky, rocking back and forth on the heels of her hands.

"Yeah," Heero said, leaning out the window. The night air in summer was warm, smelling faintly of the neighbors' gardens. He reached out, picking up the photo near Moira's knee. "I'm still trying to figure out how you did it."

"It's hard. You need to get actual prints of your photos, and then soak `em in hot water. That way the emulsion part of the print peels off the paper."

"Emulsion?"

"The image and the glossy stuff it's on," she explained. Then, without turning around, "Why don't you come up here? It's a nice night out."

Heero climbed out of the window, scooting until he was sitting a little behind her, off to the side. Things really did look different from the roof, he thought. It felt more removed from the normal mundane world, and while the sky still wasn't that vast, Heero saw more of it up here.

No wonder Moira liked doing this so much. He could get used to it in time.

"So, with the emulsion, once you've got that away from the paper, you need to stick it onto whatever surface you want-I chose aluminum, it lasts longer-and for a while you can do whatever you want to it, like pulling, tearing," she pantomimed the motions with slender fingers, "but then you need to flatten it and let it dry before sealing."

Heero looked down at the picture in his hands. It was of Moira, laying faceup on the grass and upside down towards the viewer. She wore a small smile, as if she shared an in-joke with the viewer. She'd been lying in the shade of a tree-Heero could tell by the dappled shadows and sunlight-holding a few lilacs in one hand.

"When did you take this one?" he asked.

Moira glanced at the photo. "Around the same time I took the pictures of you and Dad. My art teacher wanted me to do it as a bonus for you guys, but I didn't think it'd look good."

"Why not?" Heero asked, surprised. He wasn't an expert of what was a good picture or not, but he couldn't see anything wrong with it.

Moira tilted her head from side to side, thinking. "The series is with you and Dad. If I stuck a self-portrait in there, it'd just disrupt stuff." She waved a hand, uncrossing her legs and drawing them up to her chin. "You know, out of place."

Heero stared at her, attempting to figure out where the hell she'd ever gotten an idea like that.

"What?" Moira snapped, gathering up her loose hair and flipping it out of the way, letting it fall down her back. "You don't believe me?"

He looked at the picture again, touching the upper edge. "Are you going to do anything with this?"

She shook her head. "No. Not that I know of."

"Can I have it?" Heero shifted into a more comfortable position on the roof. When Moira arched a questioning eyebrow, he said, "You might not like it, but /I/ do."

Moira shrugged her shoulders gracefully. "Sure."

"Thanks." He paused, watching her tie the laces on her sneakers before she clasped her hands around her ankles. "What are you doing up here?"

"Looking for the North Star." She checked her watch. "It might be dark enough now, actually."

"Polaris?" Heero asked. Moira nodded.

"It'll be Polaris for a while, yeah. But that star's actually about a degree or two from celestial north, and in a few thousand years, it won't be Polaris anymore after that."

"It won't?" Heero moved closer as Moira spun her index finger in circles.

"You've seen a top spin, right? Sometimes it wobbles due to torque. Well, that's what Earth has, and its axis makes a complete circle," here, she made a clear one for emphasis, "every two thousand six hundred years, and it always points to different places in the sky. So, right now Polaris is the North Star. But later on, it's going to be Vega. That'll be a hell of a lot easier to find, since it's so bright."

Moira paused, staring into the sky for a few seconds, and then pointed at a star. "There it is. It's one of the brightest."

As Heero leaned forward to see where her finger was pointing, she leaned back, saying, "Polaris is way back there, since we're facing east..."

His mouth bumped gently against her temple, and she stopped in mid-sentence to stare at him in shocked wonder. Heero was about to apologize when he saw that wistfulness appear in her eyes.

It hadn't been the first time he'd seen it; every now and then, when he was with Duo and she came into the room, it would appear for a split second before she replaced it with something else. Like she felt left out and wanted to be a part of whatever he and Duo were.

But she'd been too proud to say anything about it.

Heero folded an arm across Moira's shoulders, bridging the gap between them and hugging her close to his chest. She smelled comfortable and clean, like rosemary, verbena, and mint all together. All this time, her eyes never left his own, ones a dark shade of smoky blue that wasn't quite his or Duo's.

He couldn't believe something coming from him could be this beautiful.

But that was how any father felt towards his daughter, Heero thought, brushing his lips against Moira's temple. Her eyes widened, and she brought a hand up to her head in disbelief.

"So," he said, clasping both arms around her, "show me where Vega is?"

Moira pointed. "A little to the left. But it won't be celestial north for a while. After the axis makes another circle, the North Star won't be Vega anymore either, so we'll always be looking for a different one to find our way." She paused, thinking. "It's a lot like life, when you think about it."

Heero smiled, squeezing his arms tighter around Moira and burrowing his chin in her hair. "Yeah, it is."

******

The sun had already risen, even though it was still early. Heero rolled over in bed to look at the alarm clock; the display read 7:12. The days were getting longer, all right.

He rolled back over, listening to Duo snore. Today was Sunday, so there wasn't any pressing need to get out of bed soon. Given that they'd spent more time awake than asleep in it last night, it didn't look like Duo would be up and around for another few hours. Heero couldn't blame him; he didn't really feel like getting up either, but he couldn't go back to sleep.

Heero sat up slowly, swinging his bare legs over the edge of the bed. His shirt still lay crumpled in a heap from when Duo had taken it off the night before, so he picked that up and pulled it on, leaving the top three buttons undone. He only wanted to look out the window for a little while, so he couldn't be bothered to get fully dressed.

The neighborhood looked like it was still asleep, even though it was already broad daylight. Outside was quiet, save for the faint rustle of leaves and a few chirping birds.

It was a moment that others took easily for granted, Heero thought; morning, where activity was at a minimum and there was nothing but the calm itself. It wasn't anything /he'd/ taken the time to notice until now, much less before he'd been put into coldsleep.

He snorted, remembering how he'd been then, shutting himself off from everybody because he had things to do and didn't know how long he had to do them. He'd said, "there isn't time" too often, even after he'd met Duo.

But back then, he didn't know when the time would run out, only that it was going to and there wasn't enough of it. There was never enough time, Heero said to himself, when one was dying.

And yet, if Duo hadn't mentioned it yesterday, he wouldn't have been aware it'd been a year since he'd been brought out of coldsleep and subsequently cured. Well, almost a year, really; if they wanted to get technical about it, he'd been revived about a week or two after Moira's birthday. He couldn't remember exactly, but that wasn't important.

Heero looked down at his hands, curling in his fingers and opening them over and over. A year had passed, and he'd spent it in a healthy body. He marveled at that simple fact; anyone else wouldn't have thought much about it, but for him, it was nothing short of a miracle.

Not exactly, he reminded himself. Duo asked him to wait for him to come back with a cure, and he'd waited. And Duo /had/ returned. But, Heero thought, he'd known that would happen all along.

"Hey, what are you doing up so early?"

He felt a pair of arms encircle his waist from behind, pulling him in.

"Don't tell me you were gonna leave me alone in that bed by myself," Duo said, voice warm and roughened with sleep.

Heero said nothing, but instead turned around, reaching up to place his hand on the back of Duo's neck, tangling his fingers in the other man's long hair before pulling him down for a deep, intense kiss.

"Thank you," he whispered.

"For what?" The two of them were so close he could feel the heat of Duo's breath when he spoke.

"Everything," Heero said, before kissing Duo once more. He wasn't able to recall all the specifics, but other than perfect health, the opportunity to be reunited with Duo and Moira was one of the important things.

Duo smiled, finally understanding. "You're welcome," he replied. Then, unbuttoning the rest of Heero's shirt: "Come back to bed."

"Sure." He wrapped his arms around Duo's shoulders, reveling in his warm smell of pepper and coffee. There was no hurry, nowhere to go today, nothing they had to do.

Now he had all the time he needed.

******

fin

June-December 2004