The Legend of Shinigami | By : KimTime-Wolf Category: Gundam Wing/AC > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 674 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to Gundam Wing or its characters. This is purely fan made and not for monetary purposes. |
I do not own any rights to Gundam Wing in any way. This is purely fan made and non-profit!
A guide to the way I write: /.../ are thoughts, *...* are flashbacks, <...> are people on the other end of a phone/video chat conversation, ^...^ are dream sequences.
There was an animalistic shine outside the living room window. Duo couldn’t figure out what it was, but he did know that he couldn’t look away from it. He felt compelled to watch: he’d tried to look away a few times when the enigma outside seemed to blink, but something other than just his eyes held him there. Some force that he felt deep in his bones, a feather light caress to his senses, the whispering of a voice deep in his mind; it made his breathing slow and measured, feeling as though anything else would shatter the moment. The voice was familiar and Duo felt that if he stared long enough at the twin gleams in the night lit forest he would be able to clearly hear the voice in the back of his mind and learn why it haunted his dreams and now tingled through his system.
When he was younger those dreams had scared him, waking him and his parents with his screaming, so his parents had taken him to see a psychologist about them. However, as he got older Duo began to understand the dreams, and that they weren’t going to leave no matter what he willed. They still bothered him for they were generally disturbing, and if he didn’t think of them as ‘nothing but dreams’ he would probably claim that he was certifiably insane. But Duo had learned that he could control what happened in them, making it so that his parents never died anymore, the friends he made weren’t eaten by wild animals or ripped apart by crazy cultists. Frankly Duo would still be going to see the “doctor” even now if he hadn’t lied and told them all that the dreams had stopped. The shrink had been no help at all and Duo didn’t want his parents to waste their money anymore, not when he felt that he was in control.
Now Duo could see himself reflected in the glass as he gazed out the window at the orbs and knew he looked like a shipwreck: the whole drowned-rat look without the water and tattered cloths of a street waif. The color of his eyes were dimmed by the purple-black circles around them from stress and a lack of sleep and his hair looked like the nest for some forest critter. His dream had pulled him out of slumber for the fourteenth time in two weeks. He’d been on his way to the kitchen for some sleep summoning hot chocolate when the glow had snared him. Duo wasn’t sure if it was a reflection of the fire burning in the hearth on the other side of the room off of something outside or if whatever was outside had an inner glow, but he was mesmerized by it.
Duo came to himself with a start as the kitchen door banged shut, signaling that his father was home from work. Meaning that it was around midnight and he should have been back to bed over an hour ago. Still staring out the window, however, he was able to see the wolf as it turned away from him and headed deeper into the woods. He could see the shimmer along the thick fur on its back as the moon had come out of hiding just then. Duo felt it was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.
Duo wasn’t all that sure how long he had stood there and stared at the wolf out in the newly washed clearing that made up their side yard but he cringed a little thinking of what the consequences could be for being up and about when his father came home. He knew that his being awake wasn’t really the problem so much as ‘why’ he was awake. His dreams were supposed to be gone, and so far Duo had been able to hide their effect on him. He generally put foundation on in the mornings before he left his room, but one didn’t wear make-up to bed - it was bad for your skin. Plus every time in the last two weeks as the dreams had worsened and woken him with a curious pull he had gone out and gotten hot chocolate to help him sleep again and been back in bed before anyone knew he’d been up. If his mother wondered why the chocolate powder was disappearing so quickly, she had yet to mention it. Duo wouldn’t be able to hide from his father tonight however, his room was clear across the living room from where he currently stood and he would still need the hot chocolate to get to sleep.
“Might as well get this over with.” Duo sighed out quietly to himself as he turned from the window and continued on to the kitchen.
“Hey Dad, how was work?” Duo asked as casually as he could upon entering the kitchen and flicking the switch flooding the room with light.
“Duo.” His father’s voice gave him pause however, he didn’t sound so good. Duo lowered the arm he’d had raised to reach for a mug.
“Dad?” Duo looked around quickly and spotted his father heaving on the floor just inside the back door blood slowly pooling under his right leg. “Dad!”
Duo rushed over to his father’s side wide awake, dream and wolf forgotten. “What happened? What should I get? Do you want me to wake Mom?” Seeing the gashes on his father’s leg Duo’s mind instantly linked them to some type of wild predatory cat - Duo bit back a growl at the thought of an animal hurting his father.
“Calm...down Duo, I’ll...be al...right. Wake... your mother.” The downed man groaned out in response to the rapid-fire questions his son threw at him as he tried to catch his breath from the attack.
“Right. I’ll be back.” Duo tore across the living room and down the hallway, past his bedroom and the bathroom and hall closet to his parents’ room. He paused to knock loudly on the door and await a response. He knew his mother didn’t usually go to sleep until after his father got home, but he didn’t want to walk in on her, one never knew exactly what she could be doing. Duo had walked in on her enacting a scene from a book she was writing once; he’d never walked in without knocking since.
“Duo? Is that you?” A voice quavered from beyond the door facing him. Without thinking it over Duo threw the door open, his mother had sounded scared and that wasn’t normal, his mother wasn’t afraid of anything. The door hit the wall with a loud thud and Duo growled deep in his throat when his saw the wolf in his mother’s bedroom, holding her hostage on top of her own bed.
Duo’s mind ran on autopilot: “Dad’s hurt. I think he got bit by a bobcat, maybe only clawed at. The gash wasn’t very big but the marks were deep and narrow, I couldn’t be sure if it was a bite or claw marks. I didn’t get a good enough look at it.” Duo’s voice was calm and resonated through the room with a stillness that relaxed his mother and the wolf facing her. His mother nodded and started to climb off the bed to go to her husband since it was obvious Duo didn’t know what needed to be done - she stopped when the wolf growled at her softly.
“It’s alright. I need you to let my mom take care of my dad, okay?” Duo addressed the wolf between him and his mother. The large golden head turned in his direction meeting his eyes, letting him know that it understood, but then it turned its gaze toward the glass door opening on to their back porch.
Duo seemed to take the motion as a cue and looked outside as well. When he saw the golden glow of many eyes reflecting the light from the room he growled again, and going on instinct alone Duo marched to the open door and yelled at the wild cats prowling around his home. “Get out of here! You’ve done enough damage for one night. LEAVE!” The power in his voice sent them all scattering.
The golden wolf walked out the door brushing past Duo as he continued to stare out into the night. At her passing Duo looked down at her as she turned her head and seemed to nod at him in approval before she ran off into the tree-line, going the same direction as the wolf he’d seen just a little bit ago.
“Duo?” His mother’s voice now sounded terrified.
Duo blinked and flinched slightly, “Yeah Mom?” He turned around to face her; curious as to why she was more frightened now than she had been of the wolf before.
“What did you do?” She asked him warily, still kneeling on her mattress.
“I.” Duo’s face clearly stated his confusion. He was pretty sure that his accepting a wolf’s presence as protective and yelling at a bunch of predatory cats was kind of obvious, so he wasn’t exactly sure what his mother was asking him. Duo’s face was screwed up into a concerned yet confused looked, one eyebrow raised. “I don’t know?”
There came a muffled thump from the direction of the kitchen, jump starting Duo’s brain to another tract.
“Mom, Dad’s still hurt. He told me to wake you...” Duo trailed off as his mother fled the room without him finishing his explanation. He heard the banging of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and the slamming of the hall closet, then his mother’s feet pounding through the living room. Duo decided he would be better off just going to his own room and waiting to see what happened next. He knew he wouldn’t be getting any sleep for the rest of the night and he wanted to be ready if his parents needed his help and be prepared for the eventuality of when they wanted to talk to him about whatever it was he’d just done.
First Duo closed and locked the glass door to his parents’ room, then closed their door to the hallway when he went through it and headed down the hall to his own door. Passing the open archway to the living room he glanced over and saw his father sitting at the kitchen table with his foot in a bucket, his pant leg pulled up above his knee. The sink was running so Duo guessed that his mother was in front of it as he couldn’t see her. He continued on to his room and went inside. Within the shelter of his haven he changed from his pajama pants to work jeans and pulled out a t-shirt which he slid over his head. He grabbed up his hairbrush and taking the thong off the end of his overly mussed braid he brushed it out and re-braided it. He pulled the foundation out of his top drawer and covered the effects of a sleeplessness that he was afraid was finally messing with his brain, /Talking to animals again Duo?/ He chided himself with a shake of his head.
Looking in the mirror after putting the foundation back in his drawer Duo could concede that he was an odd looking seventeen year old; he had thick chestnut brown hair that hung to his rear when braided and slightly lower when not confined, large purple eyes with thick black lashes, his eyebrows were the same color as his braid and so was the hair on the rest of his body, he couldn’t grow a mustache or beard, though he’d tried. He was about five-eleven and wore a size fifteen shoe, his skin was a light tan shade that simply darkened with too much sun. Duo smirked at himself - he never really got sunburned, which wasn’t really natural for either parentage, but he liked it that way since he loved the sun so much. He’d rather not have to deal with burned and peeling skin.
Neither of Duo’s parents were U.S. citizens, but he was - he’d had the ‘privilege’ of being born on American soil. His father was Russian and his mother was Welsh - this explained his unusual coloring a bit. Neither of his parents were trying to become American citizens at all - it wasn’t something that they wanted. They enjoyed being permanent residences of the U.S.A. but Duo had dual citizenship with Russia. He wanted to obtain citizenship with Wales as well when he turned eighteen but he didn’t know if he’d be able to or not.
The Maxwell’s had moved from L.A. to a small town in Northern Connecticut when Duo’s dreams had “ended” when he was fifteen. His father, Solo, had finally landed his dream job and his mother, Sara, was already a widely published author and could afford to quit her job as an editor for LA Publishing. So they moved to the backwoods of Hartland and his father became a Ranger. A love of nature seemed to be hereditary, Duo’s Dedushka on his father’s side was a forester and his Babushka was an herbalist. On his mother’s side his Nain was a botanist and his Taid a farmer. His mother’s books were mostly either about different plants and what they could be used for, or had them mentioned in an obviously knowledgeable way when they were used in her fictitious writings. Even the plants she made up could have been real for the way she explained them. Duo himself had always found peace only when surrounded by nature: going to parks or sitting in the tree on the sidewalk in front of their apartment complex in L.A. in order to get away from human contact. People tended to annoy him rather easily - hiding out was something - besides his brains - that separated him from anyone his own age. Duo was kind of a brainiac; he’d graduated high school at fourteen and had worked a desk job at a law firm before they moved. He had wanted to start college as soon as he graduated, but nowhere would accept him so young, so he’d gotten the job in order to have something to do. However, when they’d moved to Connecticut Duo had had to quit and there wasn’t anything for him to do out here except take walks in the woods, hang out at the lake he’d found or sit and read in the clearing he always had a hard time finding, but was SO worth the search. The spot was truly beautiful with flowers on one side, giant White Oak trees surrounding it and the grass thick and perfect for napping on.
Duo was currently taking college courses over the internet, since he was finally old enough to apply. He was working on a BA in Business with a focus on Agricultural Law and Management, though he wasn’t really sure exactly what he wanted to do with it yet. But it certainly couldn’t hurt and the subject matter was interesting. Occasionally he’d take his laptop out to the clearing or the lake and work on homework he didn’t need the internet for or he’d work on short stories or editing his mom’s newest work. He was pretty good at editing and enjoyed it immensely.
Hearing his parents begin talking in the other room - the stillness of the house not stopping sound no matter the distance, Duo decided to turn on his computer and play some music while he got some homework done so that he couldn’t overhear them.
Babushka = Grandmother, Dedushka = Grandfather (Russian)
Nain = Grandmother, Taid = Grandfather (Welsh)
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