Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Wasurenai yo - I won’t forget ❯ Chapter 2

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

Disclaimers: I garner no profit from this fic. I own nothing but the clothes on my back and Bobo, if the g-boys were mine, I’d be one happy person.

Warnings: Angst, spoilers in first part- Endless waltz alternate end- so AU, Shounen ai, character death?

Pairings: 1+2, 1+R, 3+4, 5xS, eventual 1x2, 3x4

AN: Editing frenzy ^_^

Wasurenai yo
by priscel

two

“Fuck.” The strained, raspy sounding word almost echoed in the thick, heated darkness. He could not remember where he was or who, for that matter. All he knew was instinct based and it declared he must free himself but the pain that shot through his chest, as he weakly pulled at his harness, stopped him.

‘hold on...’ He heard a whisper somewhere but it was too late for it to matter; the cold numbness in his fingers and legs was spreading past his no longer aching stomach. He knew that it was a bad sign and on top of that, the heat of the cockpit only made him shiver like he was cold.

‘Cockpit?’ A wave of dizziness hit him and he dropped his head forward until it passed. He heard again that whisper, but it was fuller, cocky and familiar as it remarked that someone had lit a fire under his ass and that was why it was so hot. He felt like he would have laughed if his throat didn’t feel like it had needles in it. Then the blurry things around him began to fade. Don’t ask him how he knew that, he could barely see anything from where he was hanging.

He struggled to lift his head and tried to force his eyes to focus on the blinking, blurry screens in front of him. There were words on one of them, words that disappeared and changed but what was the use in straining himself when he couldn’t even read them. He realized what had woke him up; he felt small bursts of air against his face they were cooler than the metallic air in the cockpit, but soon the air stopped and a live wire smell joined the humid air he breathed.

‘. . . no. . .’

He felt oddly calmed by that dying whisper for familiarity and the thrum of his slow heart beat in his ears. ‘...come.’ The numbness beckoned to him and soon he slipped away as the release light flashed and the hiss of metal decompressing covered the shocked gasps on the other side.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The cream-colored door opened to an orange sunlit room. Flip-flop slippered feet stepped into the room leaving the door ajar and then went over to the bed of the room’s sole occupant. He checked his watch, he was a bit earlier but he felt that someone should be here for the boy if he needed anything. He snorted to himself, it was a breathy quiet sound compared to the boys heavy breathing, as he sat down in the chair beside the bed. He stared out the window to the fading light and setting sun, it wasn’t like he’d be waking anytime soon. The doctor had said that he was unconscious which really wasn’t anything new, anyone could tell that by looking - comatose was a better way of describing it. But still it was the principle of the matter, waking up to an empty room didn’t agree with him. He was glad he wasn’t the only one, three other people came to visit the boy, not including the kooky doctor, though Cedric was mainly the one who checked, cleaned and redressed all the wounds the boy bore.

He leaned back and smiled. It had been almost two weeks since Tamara had shown them her alien and he was getting better.


“Cedric, tell me why are we out here again?”

“To see if there’s anyone inside it.”

“Yea!” A small girl piped up while bouncing up and down, her shoulder-length, dark-brown pig tails swinging around her heart-shaped face. She smiled, showing all her teeth before turning to hop in circles around the older, glaring girl who spoke before. “And I found it! Well, Emy said I could have it since we both found the treasure and anything else that we find that’s buried. So that means I get to keep the alien inside.”

The glaring girl snorted. “Tamara, you dummy, that’s not buried treasure. Stuff like that is usually in a trunk and in the ground.”

“It is so, in the ground.”

“Nope, that right there is the crater it made when it fell. If you can see real dirt beneath the sand that means it must have hit the ground really hard to dig that deep.”

Tamara’s face scrunched up as she listened to Maggie then a brilliant smile lit her face. “Then it is buried treasure ‘cos it’s in the dirt! Emy said that’s why we have to dig so deep.”

Maggie gave a long-suffering sigh, “Emy said this, Emy said that...” She mocked, eyeing the overall covered girl with an arched brow. “How do you know Emanuel’s right? You guys weren’t supposed to come out this far by yourself and he’s only eight like you.” She started to look to Cedric for support but considered against it, hearing snickering from the supposed adult with them.

“Nah uh!” She shook her head for emphasis. “Alice was showing us around.”

“Yea, at Zabriskie Point not all the way near the Canyon.” (1)

Tamara frowned into her pout. “Emy says he’s 143 and he showed us a shortcut. And he’s gonna show us how to catch liz-ards tomorrow.”

Maggie rubbed the back of her neck, her frustration making a light blush show on her brown cheeks. Emanuel ‘Emy’ Harden was the youngest son of the Manager staying on property at the Furnace Creek Inn. The boy probably did know a short cut since he had been raised in Death Valley. “I’m not going to argue with you, I dunno why I’m bothering to even listen to you. You are so annoying and that,” she pointed to the ruined, seven foot, oval black object before she continued, “has to be a mobile suit’s cockpit. There’s probably a dead body in there...” She smiled deviously, “or worst, a blown up dead body with lots of puss and guts everywhere.”

“Ewww!” Tamara’s petulance quickly faded.

“And if you touch it’ll make you explode, only leaving puss and guts everywhere.” She tried to keep her glare but Tamara’s wide-eyed expression, only prompted her to snort and smile.

“Ewww!” Tamara repeated before giggling.

“Damn, what happen to little girls being grossed out about stuff like that?”

“Since when were you grossed out by it, Magdalene Wyly?”

Maggie glared at Cedric’s amused face, only he called her by her full name and decided that she preferred it when he was silent and moody. At least then he called her Maggie without being smug about it. She huffed, “I’m different.”

He arched a dusty brown brow at the brown skinned girl before letting his eyes return to their examination of the scorched outer shell and the mostly melted keypad beside the melted edges of the hatch. “Oh?”

She glared and wondered if he could feel the imagined hole she was burning into his black-haired head with her brown eyes. She sighed and then pushed him aside and pressed a bunch of buttons on the ruined keypad. “You are taking too long, let me handle this. It’s probably broken anyways.”

Blue amused eyes watched the 12-year-old tomboy as she continued to press the keys to no avail. Maggie opened her mouth to speak when the hatch hissed as internal clamps depressurized. They gasped in amazement, the stale air whiffling their hair and Tamara squealed in excitement.

“Its... not broken.” She shrugged looking at her hand briefly before covering her noise at the smell.

Cedric’s blues darken with a knowing look. Although Maggie was only joking with Tamara, he knew that it was a possibility that the pilot was dead, and the cockpit filled with gore. He cursed himself and wished he had locked his charge in her room. Yet he knew it would have made no difference, she would have followed him and little Tamara with her decapitated doll -he couldn’t get her to throw it away no matter what he gave her- wouldn’t be too far behind. He was thankful that Emanuel stayed at the Inn with his friend, Alice. They didn’t need to see the left over from the Barton coop from a week ago. He shook his head, running one hand through his short fringe. A week ago, Los Angeles was teeming with life, not the desolate, death trap of lawlessness it had become since. Six days ago, he and Alice were both college students home for Christmas. But it was hotter than hell out; the temperature hitting an unusual 120 degrees for January with nearly zero humidity and at night the temperature dropped to extreme lows. The newscasters called it the closest to Global warming the world had ever been and all sorts of advisories were broadcast daily.

The heat made people desperate. There were fights all over the city for water, tying up the evacuation forces and the thinly spread Preventers with looting and the illegal sale of goods: material and human. There was enough of the city left for people to feud over despite the people who desperately needed the aid provided by the law enforcement among them. He and Alice had to depend on each other to survive, to keep moving and get to some place safe. They came across others driving through on school buses and some men clearing their path through with a construction crane and plough. They joined the ragtag group and acquired several cars before heading out to Furnace Creek through Death Valley, where they were welcomed with open arms.

He didn’t know why he bothered. A cockpit this damaged, sitting in the constant hundred-degree weather they’d been having since the earthquakes and fires, made it seem highly unlikely that the pilot inside was still living. He already had his fill of dead bodies.

Tamara ran up to the cockpit and climb up with one leg inside before Maggie picked her up and backed away. Cedric nodded. Maggie, like many of the children who were either participating in extracurricular activities, waiting on their parents to pick them up or for any other variety of reasons that held them after school, was hauled down into the basements by the staff when the first tremors started. When it was over, they returned home to find what was left of their families: the major cities were ploughed through, the survivors began relocating. Even though she joked about it, she knew the smell that came from the cockpit all too well and didn’t want to Tamara to see it.

“Come on, Tamaram, lets get the blankets and water Cedric brought for your new alien. It’s going to be cold when he takes it out.”

Tamara made a face, then kicked Maggie in the shin and took off for their car giggling.

“Shit!” Maggie hunched over her abused leg.

“Don’t call me that. I’m not a Tangerine!” Tamara yelled, waving her headless doll through the air and nearly tripping over her own feet.

“You little brat! I didn’t call you a tangerine. I called you Tama-ram!” Maggie ran after her and Tamara squealed.

“Yea, what you said, I am not!” She scrabbled into the car, giggling with Maggie following after her.

Cedric spared them a small smile as he climbed into the cockpit, drawn by the hanging figure in the harness. He realized he was kneeling on the console of the cramped space and blinked when something dripped on his head. He wiped it off and rubbed it between his fingers, it was thin, red and warm. He swallowed down his queasiness and looked up. The pilot was bruised, pale and had a gash on the side of his head that seemed to still be bleeding. He smiled in relief, which was a good sign and figured they must have agitated the pilot’s wounds when the hatch opened.

‘Corpses don’t bleed.’ He reminded himself, his smile growing when a faint groan reached his ears and pained unfocused slits of violet stared into his before the pilot went limp in his harness.


Cedric looked at the bandaged face, pale and still beneath its coverings and hoped, not for the first time, that the kid would wake up. He stretched, putting away the depressing thoughts as he walked to the bathroom to get the medical supplies he needed to tend to the kid. He was whistling a tune when he returned to find Shalita Warrington at the door waving at him, leaning on her crutch in her other hand. Her micro braided, dark brown hair was pulled back into a high pony tail that stopped just past her bandaged neck. It was a small adjustment that brought more attention to the slight tilt at the corners of her eyes and the burn on the left side of her pretty, light brown face. He smiled at her and she did the same in return, entering the room

“With me here, the boy can get a proper bath.” She said, taking the chair beside the bed and watching as Cedric set his materials on the bedside table to the left of the boy’s bed.

“The doc said he shouldn’t be moved.”

“Please. Did you listen to him when he said I shouldn’t be walking around?” She cocked a shapely brow at him and he smiled. “You really shouldn’t doubt yourself, Cedric. You’ll make a fine doctor some day. I know it or else I wouldn’t be here-”

“Shalita.” He interrupted, sounding exasperated. He wasn’t good enough where it counted.

She shook her head. “No, it’s true. The Doctor didn’t do much for me when he arrived, just provided me with the appropriate pills.” She a little bitterly, unable to keep her distaste out of her voice, “Stop putting yourself down. You can’t bring back the dead.”

Cedric stiffened at her words, holding the boys limp arm still and refusing to look at her as he made himself focus on his task. Shalita rose and went to the bathroom. Cedric sighed when he heard the water running in the tub. He’d just finished removing the gauze from around the boys’ torso when she spoke again. “Now, what do you say ta helping that boy get cleaned up and that mess of hair washed?”

He nodded with a small smile, the clumped hair would be hell to wash but he had help. He glanced at Shalita as she helped remove the rest of the boys’ bandages and felt the ache that he had always carried with him lessen and his body relax into his task. ‘He’s going to make it.’


tbc...

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(1) http://www.trailmonkey.com/usa/dv2furncrkm.htm

Thanks for the reviews and those you who are reading! (huggles you) Hey anyone out there live near or are really familiar with Furnace Creek, Cali/Death Valley? I would appreciate their input on this fic, email me!