gundam wing snippet
Dec. 21st, 2018 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
likefireinanaviary[re-post from tumblr]
A Relena-centric canon compliant (maybe) snippet set immediately after Minister Darlian’s death, though probably all of the details in this are wrong.
-
She stays in St Gabriel’s after, at least for a little while, out of deference to her mother and the memory of her father. But soon everything becomes too much, the pitying stares and hushed whispers that quickly cut off when she nears, the concerned questions and the sympathy—dear god the sympathy—as she knew it would. And when her smiles in the mirror look like nothing more than screams and her thank yous rises up in her throat like bile, choking her, she leaves.
She stays just long enough to attend the memorial they hold for her father. People would later recall that her speech was moving and dignified. They would say she handled herself with grace. Relena remembers none of it.
Here’s what she does remember: her father’s beloved face in the framed photograph, the sound the handful of dirt made as it hits the coffin like rain, the hot rush of anger; anger at him for dying, for ripping away every certainty she had ever known. She could have gladly lived the rest of her life being his daughter, could have lived with the guilt of being a daughter who had failed to save her father, but with a few words and his last breath he had closed the door to that life forever.
She throws the final handful of dirt onto his grave and turns to her mother. Her mother who, like Relena, had remained dry-eyed throughout the ceremony. She looks decades older. She’s sure her mother knows what she’s planning, but she says nothing. What’s left to be said? Relena hugs her mother tight and stares at the words on the headstone.
Richard Thomas Darlian. Beloved husband and father.
She whispers her goodbye as she turns to leave, but what she really means was: I’m sorry.
She doesn’t have a destination at first, but she asks Pagan to track down Heero Yuy anyways, without any real hope of finding him. The reason she gives—although of course he doesn’t ask, would never ask—was that she wanted to see him so that she might draw strength from him to go on.
She doesn’t tell him this: she dreams every night not of her father’s death but of a boy soldier’s eyes and the cold barrel of his gun. She wakes up every morning with a scream locked tight in her throat and wished that he had fulfilled his promise to kill her.
Contrary to all her expectations, they do find him. But what greets her when she arrives at the school is a different boy from the one she remembered. Something had left an indelible mark and his back was just a little bit less straight, his eyes just a little bit less certain.
And he lets her live. Again.
She stands on the rooftop long after the door slammed closed and looks down at the gun that neither Heero nor the other boy-pilot had bothered to pick up and feels, for the first time since the funeral, something in her shift, settle.
Well, if she wasn’t meant to die this way then maybe she needs to do something worth dying for first.
She picks up the gun.
A Relena-centric canon compliant (maybe) snippet set immediately after Minister Darlian’s death, though probably all of the details in this are wrong.
-
She stays in St Gabriel’s after, at least for a little while, out of deference to her mother and the memory of her father. But soon everything becomes too much, the pitying stares and hushed whispers that quickly cut off when she nears, the concerned questions and the sympathy—dear god the sympathy—as she knew it would. And when her smiles in the mirror look like nothing more than screams and her thank yous rises up in her throat like bile, choking her, she leaves.
She stays just long enough to attend the memorial they hold for her father. People would later recall that her speech was moving and dignified. They would say she handled herself with grace. Relena remembers none of it.
Here’s what she does remember: her father’s beloved face in the framed photograph, the sound the handful of dirt made as it hits the coffin like rain, the hot rush of anger; anger at him for dying, for ripping away every certainty she had ever known. She could have gladly lived the rest of her life being his daughter, could have lived with the guilt of being a daughter who had failed to save her father, but with a few words and his last breath he had closed the door to that life forever.
She throws the final handful of dirt onto his grave and turns to her mother. Her mother who, like Relena, had remained dry-eyed throughout the ceremony. She looks decades older. She’s sure her mother knows what she’s planning, but she says nothing. What’s left to be said? Relena hugs her mother tight and stares at the words on the headstone.
Richard Thomas Darlian. Beloved husband and father.
She whispers her goodbye as she turns to leave, but what she really means was: I’m sorry.
She doesn’t have a destination at first, but she asks Pagan to track down Heero Yuy anyways, without any real hope of finding him. The reason she gives—although of course he doesn’t ask, would never ask—was that she wanted to see him so that she might draw strength from him to go on.
She doesn’t tell him this: she dreams every night not of her father’s death but of a boy soldier’s eyes and the cold barrel of his gun. She wakes up every morning with a scream locked tight in her throat and wished that he had fulfilled his promise to kill her.
Contrary to all her expectations, they do find him. But what greets her when she arrives at the school is a different boy from the one she remembered. Something had left an indelible mark and his back was just a little bit less straight, his eyes just a little bit less certain.
And he lets her live. Again.
She stands on the rooftop long after the door slammed closed and looks down at the gun that neither Heero nor the other boy-pilot had bothered to pick up and feels, for the first time since the funeral, something in her shift, settle.
Well, if she wasn’t meant to die this way then maybe she needs to do something worth dying for first.
She picks up the gun.
