Challenge #227 - Terminal
Title: Of Old Photographs and Emotions
Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing.
Rating/Word Count: G, 1,275
Warning: Mad little girls and angst.
Characters: Trowa and Mariemaia
Author’s Note: This takes place after Just a Kid but before Of Pain and Strength. Mariemaia visits Preventers and runs into someone she's not expecting.
She runs into Trowa unexpectedly. Well, he runs into her, she really rather rolls into him she thinks. He’s coming out of Une’s office, a file open in his hand and a cup of coffee from the local café in the other. He doesn’t curse, like others do, only stares at her blankly for a few moments, like he’s trying to figure out how he could have hit her.
“Forgetting your training already?” she deadpans. His gaze sweeps hers as she maneuvers around him and heads for the office door. She has never called him Trowa or Mister Barton, or anything really. Trowa Barton is her uncle, was her uncle. This man, no, boy, is simply a replacement and not anything worth her time.
She isn’t even sure why he’s here either since he’s not a Preventer. She supposes when one is a former Gundam pilot one needs very little clearance or reason. “I haven’t forgotten my training.” The calm voice stops her before she reaches the door and she turns her head, watching him. He’s gauging her reaction as well and once he’s sure he has her attention he turns and departs, making her follow him. She can’t help but compare his manner to that of Heero Yuy’s and then she can’t help but wonder why she’s cursed with insufferable Gundam pilots around every turn.
He stops at what she has always secretly referred to as The Gundam Office. It’s on the tenth floor, the same as Lady Une’s, and while only Wufei is a registered member of Preventers it seems that all the other pilots eventually wind up in here. Whether they’re in the area visiting or have urgent news, it all congregates here. So it doesn’t surprise her that it’s where they end up in the end. Wufei isn’t in and she remembers Une telling her something about a prolonged mission on Colony L4 for Wufei and Sally last week.
Trowa takes a seat at the desk and she rolls to a stop just inside the door, watching him carefully. He is nothing like her actual Uncle Trowa. This one has dark hair and green eyes where as her uncle had blonde hair and brown eyes. She continues to judge him silently. Slighter build than her uncle, not as vocal, quiet and unassuming, and he works in a circus. She rolls her eyes on the last one. Her grandfather had been the one to accept this Trowa into their army and look where he ended up. She inclines her chin when he looks up from his rifling of the desk, green eyes meeting blue.
“You aren’t my uncle,” she says.
He raises an eyebrow and gazes steadily into her eyes. “Thank God for that.” She thinks he’s just won her respect. She smiles and he returns a pale reflection of it, leaning back in the chair. “I have something that belongs to you.”
Her interest is piqued and she leans forward despite herself. “What?” she demands. She watches him pick something up off the desk and hand it over to her. Her eyes are glued to the photograph in her hands and she absently traces the faded face smiling in it with a finger. Her face, young and laughing. Her eyes move to the next subject, also smiling, also laughing. Her mother. “Where did you get this?” she demands, voice hoarse.
She won’t admit that she has forgotten her mother’s face, that she has forgotten her laugh and her hugs and the sweet smell of her jasmine perfume. Her grandfather didn’t keep anything of her mother’s after she passed when she was five to a new infection that spread through the colony like wildfire on earth. Uncle Trowa, the real one not the imposter, is the one who tried to keep Leia’s memory alive when Grandfather wasn’t around. He was the one who took the picture of the two of them two weeks before her mother’s diagnosis and subsequent death.
“Your uncle showed this to me before his death.” His voice breaks the spell and she looks up, furious to be caught crying, furious to have this thrown at her now and by him. The one who took her uncle’s place when he was murdered. “I took it before he was…”
“Buried, burned? Disposed of? Is that what you were going to say Trowa? Before all of the above? No one found his body; no one knows where it is! Did you throw it out into space? Incinerate it? Bury it? What happened to him?” She breaks finally, sobbing and holding the photograph close.
She remembers how Uncle Trowa would pick her up, making her fly, would twirl her around and around, even when she got too big. She remembers him checking her closet for monsters while her mother smiled and her grandfather frowned at her childishness. He was her uncle, father, mentor, everything, until he didn’t tuck her in one night. Until this one took his place.
“I hate you,” she whispers with all the pent-up emotion an eight-and-a-half year old can muster. Her eyes drill into his as she says it and it’s by sheer will that she doesn’t crumple the picture clutched in her hand. He looks impassive though, like always and she glares harder, swiping at stained cheeks with a pale hand. “I hate you!” she screams, throwing herself backwards through the door frame.
She rolls fast down the corridors, forcing Preventers out of her way in lieu of being run over. All the while memories flood her mind and blind her eyes as well as the tears that fall. She doesn’t care anymore she decides as she comes to a stop in front of the emergency stairs across from the elevators. One push would end it she knows but she closes her eyes before staring at her mother again. “I hate you for leaving me,” she whispers before folding the image up and sticking it in her pocket.
She doesn’t look up when she feels his presence next to her, simply continues to stare at the red words plastered across the door leading the stairs. He drops into a graceful crouch next to her and she turns slightly to stare at him. He looks fuzzy around the edges, an effect caused by her tears she imagines. “I didn’t mean to be rude,” she says finally, softly.
He lets out a soft laugh and she jerks surprised. She has never heard him laugh the entire time she’s known him. “Of course you did,” he murmurs back. “You remind me of someone.”
“My father?” she questions sarcastically. “My grandfather? Hitler? I’ve heard them all you know. The third grade, which I’m forced to attend mind you, is not all that forgiving.”
“Wouldn’t know. It doesn’t matter who you remind me of,” he adds. He sits with his back to the wall so that he’s facing her and he seems to be choosing his words carefully. “A friend of mine once told me that the best way to live is by your emotions.”
“Oh, and why should I care about that?”
“I think you need to start living Marie,” he murmurs. “You’re not dead yet, you need to realize that.” He stands effortlessly before she can properly reprimand him for the use of a nickname and disappears down the stairs. She glares after him, wondering about foolish Gundam pilots and the strange liberties they think they can take with her. She leans back in her chair and stares between her feet and the stairs and smiles.
“Okay,” she whispers despite the fact she’s alone, “I can live by my emotions.”