Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Shinigami's Stage; Behind the Jester's Mask ❯ Chapter one ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Date posted: Thursday, July 22, 2004
Edited: No my Beta is gone, and I'm looking for a new one.
Warnings: None that I can see
Rated: PG-13 for now and to be safe, but forewarned that it is going to be rated R in the future.
Feed back: Yes please!
Flames: None too bad, just tell me what you don't like, or if you see something wrong. Please be kind.
Story setting: Based on anime version (a mix of the Japanese and English one) and manga series. Plus a mix of the book's/movie's time and this time. (You get it?)
Story Type: Duo centric. A kinda journal fic. Romance, poem, sap, drama… The story is based on the journal. It is like the theme.
Declaration: This is my first GW fan fiction, and I have a spelling disorder. I haven't seen GW in a while, but I have read a lot of FF. Oh, I don't own Gw only my characters and this story. DO NOT steal. It's bad. Try and sue me, because all I have is one shinny new penny and I'm going to go con some little kid for a piece of gum with it. BWAHAHAHA
Pairings: 1x2 :: 3x4 :: 5x? Surprise.
Summery: AC 201 -- Three years Duo is missing, and now Heero is going to get married soon to none other than Relena. Then meet Solo Maxwell who is about to change all that with an invitation to a Family Reunion, where the four ex-gundam pilots will meet their lost comrade. But something terrible had happened the three yrs he's been gone… something had changed, a shift of some sort… and no one is about to speak up.


Shinigami's Stage: Behind the Jester's Mask
By: Mira Watanabe


:.:Chapter One :.:

Intro: Stage Set

William Shakespeare once said, "All the world's a stage and all the men and woman only actors." I like to think of it a different way, "All the world's a play and each man his own stage." I believe that we all act out our own play, each one different to the other. We are all playing out our lives in this world of drama, romance, love, anguish, madness, and hope. How to prove this, you wonder? Pick up a blank book and write in it. Write about anything you want, and how you feel about it. Now tell me is this the person you show others? Perhaps, but I believe we all have secrets, whether we know it our not. We never show our real selves, always acting, always under the big spot light, and always put on stage for every one to see. So here I ask you...

Who's behind your mask?

Rewind, Go Back:

Wed, May 26, AC. 121
Age: 21

………………………… ;………………………..

It feels that time has run away without me. Many years have passed, and with it many experiences -- most of them I want to forget. I have everything I've ever wanted. A family, friends, a home. But there are a few things I've left behind, and wish I could have -- what I should have kept with me, but had let go without a fight. It's been a while since I've last seen the other pilots. I know they have been looking for me for quite sometime, but I can't face them. I'm a coward. There's one thing I'm really good at, and that's hiding. And running away. So I know they will never find me if I didn't want them too. But there is one person I miss terribly. Heero. But I let him go a long time ago. Duo no baka. Heh, that sounded a lot like him. I want to see him again, but I'm afraid.

As hard as it is to admit it, I'm weak. Did you know that? I bet you didn't. It's the other thing I'm good at…

Acting.

…………………&# 8230;………………………… …..

Duo lazily watched the rising sun off the horizon. He sat loosely on a blanket as he witnessed the sweet pleasures of nature's sky. Reds mixed in with yellows, oranges, blues, and purples, creating a magnificent view for the world to enjoy.

His hair was free from its once confined braid. The only clue that it was ever there, was the natural waves in his chestnut hair. It now laid all about him in contentment, in tangles he ignored. A wild mass of hair; bright, shinny, and well cared for.

...Yet, even in this peaceful atmosphere, something under the surface was missing. Always present, the paranoid feeling sat there and waited like a slumbering beast, but Duo paid it no heed, all ready quit used to it by now. It had been with him for as long as he could remember.

Violet eyes tore away from the Heavens and looked down to the white bundle in his arms. A sincere smile graced his face like that of a mother's. One of the few real smiles ever present on his face for years.

A calloused hand, warn and harden by war, gently brushed back the downy fluff of Carmel hair on the baby's sleeping head. Softly he kissed her forehead, hugged her sweetly, and looked back to the wonderful sky.

Holding the little one closer, he whispered to her, "Has it really been three years since then?"

A little hand grabbed a fist full of Duo's dark purple dress shirt, and a soft hiccup -- or was that a sneeze -- came from the white bundled baby. It was as if she was trying to comfort him, even while dreaming. He watched her for a few minutes to see if she would wake, and then seeing that she wasn't going to any time soon, he signed and looked back to the rising sun.

Questioning it, the Havens, and the gods he never believe in, he asked once more, "Has it really been... three years?"

In his lap laid a black journal. A unique journal, one he had for many long years, and many more long nights. Even through all the trouble the book has been through throughout the years, it was still in excellent condition. The only change it has ever gone through was the way it looked on the outside. From its once plain black cover was now in addition with a pair of sad violet eyes that seems to smear to the right and a blood red tear fell from the right eye. A smile that strangely looked like one off a laughing clown or devil peeked through the black haze with the two vivid eyes. A ghostly white script, like a whisper of wind written to the left, slanted to the right.

The book laid open for all the world to see, but only one knew what was written inside. Its owner told about war and sadness, of hate and loneliness, of darkness and despair. And Love.

A book of Death, about Death. A book of mystery and secrets. Inside laid hidden many things, and was open to one of them. The wind played with its pages, drying the freshly applied ink. A pen laid by its side like a partner that finished its own purpose.

Inscribed across it was one of many song, poem, and journal entries. This particular book was named simply, "Shinigami's Stage," for a mystery all of its own...


Rewind. Go back. Push away the front cover and lets read page one.

................................................................... .................
Shinigami's Stage

Opening Page: "I am"

I am an actor,
What you see is but my play.
I wear a Jester's Mask,
It is but my act.
I tell you my story of no lies,
Of things I've always hide.
My plastered smile, my easy laugh,
Are pushed away like the curtains to this play.
I am left bare before you,
To show you,
Behind the Jester's Mask.

::Duo Maxwell::
............................................................. .......................

'Two and a half years... 30 months! And what?!' Duo thought bitterly, standing in front of the calendar that was nailed to a wall in the two setter dinning room. It hanged there, mockingly; tawting him with its dates and letters. 'Nothing!' He slashed the calendar with a big black permanent marker, deleting one more month off of it. It was now July 1st, AC 198.

'Pathetic,' his conscience berated him. He pushed that particular thought aside angrily. Pathetic... Yeah, pathetic! Pathetic to actually hope! To actually think that he, Duo, could...

He didn't even go there.

Too much pain. Too much suffering. Too much pretending that everything was okay. Too much of everything that he stopped caring, that it self wasn't good, "No more pain... No more maybes... No more what-ifs... No more..."

Two and a half years have come and gone uneventfully, wastefully, after the Mariemaia incident. Peace was back and thoughts of war were pushed aside as if it never happened. The Gundam pilots were ignored, once again, as if they never existed. Life went on going.

Duo looked around the empty apartment, felling strangely melodramatic, and tried to ignore the darkness of depression slowly suffocating him. Because if you think about it too long, you where bounded to be dragged under until you could never get up again. A very dangerous thing if you don't watch out for it.

Cold, he concluded. The room was cold and not because of the temperature. Cold, not evil, but cold as in uncaring. 'No happiness warmed this house,' he thought. Nothing ever did. It was always cold, even when he first moved in. His best efforts to warm it were nothing, done in vain.

The apartment was a little higher than middle class, all spacious and beautiful - the new modern style everyone now loved. Everyone but Duo thought. Bage carpeting, classy black sets in the living room, modern black appliances, a normal sized television, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a Kitchen, a Living room, and a Dining room, he marked mentally. To make everything livelier he had painted the walls mild reds, forest greens, and deep blues. He even used the same colors as the walls on the throw blankets he put on a chair here and there. Then he had loaded the living room with many square pillows, the same colors too he added.

Oh but that's not all. Far from it in fact. Duo laughed a little, sounding just a pinch insane. You have to make it look like someone actually lives here, and much too his roommate's charging, he makes sure to make a mess... well everywhere. If not, the whole apartment would look like a cut out from some magazine or hotel brochure.

In the Living room, the many pillows were a skewed and news papers were spread out near the coffee table. A red throw blanket and a hunter green couch pillow were two inches from the television. DVD cases were everywhere on the said blanket and on the coffee table.

The Dining room had mail all over, papers Duo didn't recognize, and his red coffee mug that said, "I'm normally a morning person," in drippy black lettering.

Yeah, it looked like someone lived here alright, but it was still cold, so that wasn't the cause of it. Maybe it was only himself who thought of it that way. Maybe depression had gotten to him? It was around the beginning of summer, the tempter outside was in the hundreds and the AC was set at 75 degrees.

Duo walked to the living room with leaded feet and pushed pillows to the floor from the black three setter couch. 'Maybe I did out due it with the pillows...' he thought, watching the reds, greens, and blue one foot by one foot squares fall to the floor. After making a space big enough, he flopped down and pulled a soft blanket out from behind him. Elbow to elbow with pillows, he felt slightly warmer. He pulled a random pillow from the pile and curled around it in his lap.

Idly picking at the tail of his braid, his mind was swarm with the memories of the past two and a half years and more.

War had finally ended for real, surprisingly. And what was more surprising was that he lived through it, when he surly thought he was going to die. He hadn't died during the first war and had thought that the second one with Mariemaia was going to finally due him in. It didn't though. Looking back now, he wondered if that was a good thing.

Back then, right after the last war, he thought he had been given a second chance to have a normal life and be happy. And he was for a time.

Things had been great. His first taste of real peace with that little paranoia on the side was more than he ever dreamed.

Hilde was a great friend, and the salvage yard was really fun, especially with all the Mobil Suits ordered to be destroyed. The mechanic's dream, an endless supply of junky components. Guess you could say 'things-were-looking-a-lot-like-Christmas' for Duo Maxwell.

One of the things that bothered him though, was why everyone kept thinking him and Hilde were an item. They were too much the same! So much in fact, that they fought over every little thing just to find out who was different. They fought over everything and nothing! Childish in everyway possible.

Coworkers were highly accustomed to their fights and loud bickering wherever they went, even with their frustrated sighs and exasperated arms flying into the air in mocking defeat. So yeah, Duo Maxwell was happy. He had the closest thing to a sister he's had for a long time, and many friends who love him and care for him.

But something was missing. Causing him to lash out and feel deadly alone even while having people there for him. He could feel it after every fight with Hilde, it was the cause some times and the effect on other occasions. Every time it would hit him hard, making him feel extremely empty inside, like an lifeless shell, and want to be alone. But being alone made it worse. It made him think more about it, try to solve its mystery.

There is one thing he hated most about this extreme feeling. Duo found himself even more frustrated, confused, and angry after this realization. The reminder of this one particular thing he had thought he had gotten rid of a long time ago. The reminder that…

...He still wore his Jester's Mask.


End Chapter: To Be Continued.


.

Annoying Author's Notes:

So what do you think thus far? Good, okay, great, could be better? If you didn't know, I had put this story up on for a while. I was trying to see how people liked it before I put it up on , but well… I didn't get bad reviews. (caught) I got pretty much nada on the reviews. (T-T) Just a few good words and one complaint on the poems. This was all out of 4 reviews for the whole month. (cries)

About the poems though, there is a reason to them and there will be many. So I hope none of you get frustrated with them. Some of them are mine, some I copied out of books, and some I've took form god knows where.

Another thing, I'm a really girly girl, and I have some trouble separating my persona and the other character's in my story. I had to re-due a few chapters because of this…

Duo: (sulking) You made me in to a fucking pussy!

Ummmyeah. (-.-);; And that too. But I did kinda pushed that part down a little… Damn. Gomen ne! Please for give me Duo! (T-T)

This is why I am going to re-watch the whole series of Gw and try to get the character's back in line. I think this confusion is mainly due to all the FF I like to read. And all I really need to do is decide Heero and Duo's persona.

Well go to go. I have a few more chapters to type up, and others to finish planning. I hope you like my story. If you do, would you like to be my new beta (editor)? I need a new one.

P L E A S E
R E V I E W!