Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Duo's Jewel of Peace ❯ Chapter 2

Duo's Jewel of Peace

By Nix Winter

Disclaimer: I don't own GW. I'm just enjoying writing about what might have been, cuz Duo's soo cute!

Warnings: uh… none so far.. well, I've taken liberties with the culture and with the Catholic Church, a few swear words

Notes: 1x2, after Endless Waltz

Chapter Two

Duo had changed into civ clothes when he got back to the church. The living quarters were under the surface, carved out of the guts of the station. It wasn't ideal, more like a large metal cavern with the wall's covered over with plasboard only in areas where the youngest children were. They had nearly sixty-five very young children, but only one infant.

She was a little girl whose mother had taken refuge with them, only to bleed to death giving birth. Duo had used all the remaining blood plasma they'd had trying to save her. She'd refused to go to the med complex even after she knew she was dying. What she was hiding from, Duo didn't know, but he wasn't going to hand her over to her enemies. Her daughter was all of five days old and slept more than a baby ought to, but seemed healthy enough to Duo. She currently slept in a carrier strapped to his chest. Diluted nutrapacks weren't breast milk, but she was gaining weight and having what the book said was healthy bowel movements. Jewel was living hope for him and beyond beautiful. He leaned back in his chair, moving his tongue around in his mouth, trying to decide if he should eat a nutrapack for himself, or wait a while longer, in the hopes that help would get there. While he did that, he rubbed his baby's back, taking comfort in the rise and fall of her chest.

He'd have Maxwell Church finished by the time she could walk and she'd grow up in a household filled with love and good food, with school books and clean safe toys. He'd register as citizen of the Earth Sphere as Jewel Peace Maxwell. His jewel of peace. Happy for the moment he let himself think about Heero for a while. Those thoughts took him to sleep, in day dreams he'd had since he was still a teenager, of how soft Heero's hair might be, and what a shared shower would be like, of what Heero's smile would feel like, and just his arms around him, holding him as he drifted off to sleep.

Sleeping there, he almost looked like a priest, black pants and jacket, white shirt, braid trailing over the arm of his chair and down to the floor. He wasn't though, the Church had refused him admittance to seminary because he had been clear that he loved and was sexually attracted to a member of the same sex. He wasn't going to lie to them, even to get support for Maxwell Church. They'd promised though, to send a priest. He didn't care what kind of priest showed up, just so there was one, to call the mass, baptize the children, and be there if something happened to him.

In L1 Sector, prime colony

"Hello."

Heero ignored the female voice. It wasn't Relena. It wasn't Sally and he was in a hurry. He'd never actually installed one of these stealth units, and not in a commercial shuttle which was now gutted and prepared to hold enough food to feed a thousand people for a month, as well as a small pack of things that Heero knew Duo liked and another pack of medical supplies. He had plenty to do with getting the stealth unit installed, so he didn't want to talk to someone he didn't know.

"I say, hello!" If anything the voice was more cheerful now, "Are you Heero Yuy? I'm not a solicitor or so. Miss Relena sent me. I meet your partner in the market. She said that I should pack some supplies back for her."

Heero lowed himself, hanging just slightly of the guts of the shuttle where he worked. A woman, dressed all in black, white collar, and a cross, very like the one Duo wore. "How may I be of service to you?"

She bowed. "Sib. Tærsa, Order of Willful Peace."

"You're a priest?" She didn't look like what he would have expected. Black skin, darker than any of Quatre's followers, tight curly hair, and serious dark eyes, she was tall, lean, exotic looking to him. The African continent had endured disastrous plagues and famine in the early to mid-twenty-first century.

They'd stayed well out of Asia and Europe's Oz wars while quietly building cities that relied on a sustainable harmony with their part of the world. Now they were emerging again, powerful in technology and culture. Where one skin tones had homogenized, now it was high status to had a child with midnight skin. This girl was no poor church child. "What do you want with me?"

"Well, you're going to L2, aren't you? Cardinal Chavez had given me a commission to serve in the Maxwell Church. I have vaccines and vitamins, enough for 100,000 people. I was to go with you."

"L2 is not a pretty place, Sib. There is disease and fighting. I'm told there might be an attempt at genocide going on. Its ugly and dangerous now."

"Sounds like Africa at one time. Only help will heal such a wound. Let me come. I was a doctor before I took the cross and I only did so in order to go to Maxwell."

"Why?"

"Duo Maxwell saved lives. Now he's working to save more I want to help. And I disagreed with my uncle's decision not to allow Mr. Maxwell a special dispensation for gender preference. If Mr. Maxwell had said as they wished him to, he would have had much support. I would love to meet the man this saint loves."

"Maxwell is not a saint." Heero said, disappearing back into the shuttle. He didn't say she couldn't come though. It would be 6.5 hours until he was ready to leave for L2. Another 36 hours until he could dock on the outside of the thing, clamping on, still in stealth mode, and then find a way into the colony. Thoughts of Maxwell lingered in his thoughts, as he connected system after system into the stealth component. Maxwell was no saint. Heero still knew the man's resting heart rate from counting it while he slept once, as he watched over Duo after a mission gone more difficult than they'd planned. He knew his blood type and the kind of shampoo he liked best and he too wanted to meet this man that Duo loved so much. Meeting this man was a mission with an unknown goal, very uncomfortable for Heero. All he knew for sure was the could not kill his rival, no matter how much his soldier's logic said that would be the most direct route to getting to the goal of his heart's mission, another goal that he refused to acknowledge to himself.

Back on L2

She woke him, crying softly, a 'I think I'm hungry, but not sure cry' and he patted her back, holding her against his chest as he sat up, comforting her before the cry tired into, 'I'm starving and everyone's going to know it'. The twins Sirun and Sorun were asleep by the side of his lounger chair, leaning against each other, a single stuffed bunny between them, each holding one ear. He smiled and stepped over, only to get light headed one foot on the floor, one still on his chair. Tongue pinning his lower lip, he took a deep breath and held there for a moment, hoping the twins would not wake and glomp onto his legs just then. The lightheadedness didn't really pass as he got both feet on the floor and he decided he would eat.

Heero was on his way and Duo didn't want to faint in front of him, even if he was a bit thinner. Maybe he could raise money, get fat rich people to come up on an eco-tour for two weeks, shift some rubble, live on half a nutrapack aday, go home twenty pounds lighter and with a great sense of well being. And a few blisters, maybe a bullet hole, he added to himself, maybe he shouldn't invite the nice people from Earth up just yet. Smirking, enjoying the thought of wealthy and well fed eco-tourists running from a street fight, he keyed in the combination on the impact and fire proof lock box the nutrapacks were kept in. Mouth watering, he carefully pulled the door open, not wanting it to creak and tell everyone he was opening it. Almost without thinking about, he kept bouncing Jewel and she had quieted, sucking hungrily on the end of his braid. Not the most hygienic pacifier, but he'd never told anyone, not even himself that he was parent material.

The food locker seemed barer than he'd have thought. A quick count brought the total up to 324 packs. That meant, if Jewel ate every two hours, half a pack a meal, and he limited each child to one pack a day, didn't eat himself, they had food, counting the new girl, for just a little under three days. Someone would go hungry on the third day. He blew air into his cheeks, and considered where Heero might be coming from, and how long it would take, what the odds were that Heero would make it through to them at all. He took out two packets, dropped his in his pants pocket, and set about making Jewel a bottle. There was a ship with food in it. Quatre said he sent it. Duo didn't know a damn how to cook grain, but he expected it could be done, or Quatre wouldn't have sent it. It was really simple, the answer. He had to find the ship, raid it, hell, split the defenses open and spill grain out into the artificial sunlight of L2. The government could suck his rocks, if they could catch him.

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