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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.

Chapter List
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That was the real question, ‘why did animals listen to him?’ He’d been asking himself that question for as long as he could remember. In the city it hadn’t been as bad as it was out here in the forest, not as much wildlife around. But the birds in the city had always seemed to be listening to him when he complained about one thing or another, and once a Cardinal had actually fixed a problem for him. His hair had gotten caught in the bark of a pine tree while he was getting out of it - he couldn’t yank it out or climb back up to assess the damage because of the angle he landed in after slipping. The tree’s hold on his hair had been a definite. It certainly taught him not to climb out of trees with his back to the trunk. He’d started crying in frustration over it after a couple of hours - he’d been about 10 at the time and there was no one around, the park devoid of human life. A Cardinal had flown over and picked his hair out of the tree very carefully with its feet. It took the bird twenty minutes and the only reason Duo ever knew that the bird was there was because he was able to turn his head once his hair started coming loose - he’d looked up to find out why. He’d thanked it once his hair was free, and it had nodded at him and flown away. It had struck him as strange then, but thinking about it now he was sure there had to be more to it than simply a really nifty bird.
Looking at his parents he felt his heart sink seeing the downcast and withdrawn looks on their faces after his question - what could they be hiding? “Is there something wrong with me?” Duo was kind of afraid of the answer.
“No. No there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with you.” His mother was quick to reassure him. “You just have something... extra.”
“Extra?” Was that seriously all he was gonna get as an explanation? The pause stretched on until he was about to demand a better answer.
“You once asked why Taid wouldn’t allow you near the animal pens on his farm.” His father injected.
“Yeah?” Duo could vaguely remember being immensely disappointed that he wasn’t allowed near the animals. He loved animals; they tended to calm him down. Like they understood him somehow, in a way that no one and nothing else could.
“He’d had a few older ones that he wasn’t ready to part with yet.” Solo paused not entirely sure how to go on from there.
/What?/ “What the heck does that have to do with me? It’s not like I would’ve killed them, I love animals!” Duo was starting to get angry at the half-assed way they were attempting to tell him something.
Solo let out a long breath, “Your ability. You have an affinity with animals because they KNOW what you are. They trust you with their lives. Explicitly and without question, their souls aren’t as complicated as humans. So, the older they are the more willing they are to simply follow you around. Forget their function and simply BE. They would have laid down and died the moment you were out of their sight. And you could have been sucked into the world of death far sooner than your capability to take care of such situations would have been able to handle.”
Duo was more confused than ever now. /World of death?/
“We had hoped that you wouldn’t inherit the gift. That the entity would bypass you and go to one of the family members that train all of their children to take on the job.” His mother added. “We moved to America to be normal.”
“What job?” Duo asked.
“The job of the Shinigami. A spirit that helps to guide the spirits of the dead to the afterlife.” His father stated this like it was some kind of disease.
“But I’m alive... I’m not a spirit?” Seeing his mother affirm that he wasn’t a spirit Duo sat back in his chair trying to make sense of how that was supposed to work when it hit him like a brick. “The voice.” It slipped out on his exhale and suddenly he had his parents’ undivided attention.
“What voice? And how long have you been hearing it?!” Sara’s voice pitched into high octaves at the end and she was leaning over the table toward him, her chair knocked to the floor.
Duo flinched back, frightened of his own mother for the first time in his life. His dad was about as stunned as he was and to defuse the situation he teased her, “Back to being huffy about something that hasn’t hurt anyone again Love?”
Sara shot him a glare but her rage calmed at seeing his smirking face, recalling her earlier tantrum.
Once his wife was seated again Solo looked to his son, fully expecting him to answer his mother’s angry questions.
Duo looked from one parent to the other and then down at his hands folded tightly on the table top. “Actually I’ve only heard the voice once. Generally it’s something I simply sense in the back of my mind.” He mumbled without looking at them.
“What happened the one time you heard it?” His mother was no longer angry, but now concern laced her tone, Duo wasn’t sure which one he preferred.
“Look, usually I would dream about wild animals killing you guys or my friends, crazy cultists doing things I’d rather not hear tell of, yet I was forced to SEE. I didn’t even know what a cultist WAS when they first started appearing. I guess animals killing people made sense to me so I didn’t really think too much about it, but when people started doing crazy things I told you guys about the dreams.” The indignant fear in his parents’ eyes when he looked up at them had him shake his head in disgust. “Did psycho not tell you or did you just never ask?” Duo’s voice was hard, he knew his parents loved him, but sometimes their type of love just wasn’t what he needed.
“I...We...” His dad tried to find the words but failed and looked down at his mug of tea in defeat.
That said everything Duo needed to know, his parents made him go see a shrink and then didn’t bother to see how he was doing there. “I told you the dreams were over when I learned to control them.” Duo offered to the silent kitchen a few seconds later.
“So they’re not over. I knew it!” His mother crowed in triumph. Duo snorted - he couldn’t believe the audacity.
Shaking his head at his wife Solo asked, “What do you mean when you say you learned to control them?”
Duo smiled wickedly, “That’s where the voice comes in. Shortly after High School graduation I had a dream that had no animals or killings or anything “normal”,” He air quoted the word. “I was sitting in a clearing covered in snow; there weren’t even footprints to show how I’d gotten there. There was a voice that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, it wasn’t loud or commanding, just there. You know a sound you just listen to, like you don’t have a choice because it’s something you WANT to hear. It told me that I needed control. That if I didn’t start learning to stop what went on in my dreams, that they would start happening for real. Scared, I’d questioned how I was supposed to do that. That it seemed like an impossible task. The voice told me how to put a ‘force’ behind what I wanted to happen, nothing like yelling or being mean but a calm kind of... understanding I guess is a good word for it. That if I focused on what I truly wanted to happen then it would happen. I hadn’t seen anything die since. Until two weeks ago.” Duo winced, waiting for the explosions that were sure to be his parents.
Sara and Solo sat in silence for a long time, so long that Duo had begun to fidget. Suddenly stilling Duo surprised himself realizing something that he hadn’t thought of before, it hadn’t been important before.
“If you all thought or at least were hoping that I didn’t have this Shinigami thing, then how come I wasn’t allowed near the animals on Taid’s farm?” Duo was leaning toward his parents across the table from him.
Sara jerked herself out of her contemplation at her son’s voice breaking the quiet. “I’m not really sure Sweetie. Tad just said it would be a bad idea.” She blinked owlishly turning to Solo. Duo let the endearment go; it only meant that his mother was massively distracted she hated saying stuff like that because her dad always used them when he was trying to get something or put her down without upsetting her.
Looking up from his study of the floor, knowing that his wife was looking at him Solo answered the silent question. “Because they knew. They had’t’ve. There’s no way- I should have seen this sooner! They never reacted like that with the other kids; it should’ve been a dead giveaway! Why didn’t they TELL us! We could have helped him through it better, would have been able to know WHY he was having dreams like that. Damn it!” Half way through his tirade he’d switched into Russian a sure sign that Solo was well and truly angry.
Another thought occurred to Duo, “That wolf, the brown one I told you about.”
Solo paused in his angry litany and looked over at him, his mother’s gaze falling to his as he started his newest response to a question he’d thought himself unable to answer.
“He... I came out of my room having woken up from my dream for the fourteenth day in a row and was walking across the living room to get a mug of hot chocolate.” Here his mother sent a sharp ‘we’ll talk later’ look to his father that Duo missed seeing as he was staring at the table top. “But as I was crossing the living room a shine from outside the window caught my eye, I walked closer to the window trying to figure out what it was. I must have stood there for a really long time; I was pretty entranced with it. I tried to look away a couple of times to maybe get a better angle on it and finally figure it out. It seemed to blink, and I wasn’t sure if it was something reflecting the fire or something outside that glowed itself. But I’d come out here at like ten or so and you generally don’t get home until midnight. I think it had me stand there so that I wouldn’t be asleep when you got home. Like it knew what was going on, that you would need help. The fact that the other wolf seemed to be guarding mom, making sure she couldn’t do anything and that the cats couldn’t get to her.” Duo paused uncertain, “I sound like a lunatic.”
His mother smiled softly at him, “No, actually I think you might have a point.”
“So now all we’re left with is the puzzle of what’s up with the local bobcats.” His father stated sitting heavily into his chair again.
“Yeah.” Sara sighed and got up to get herself some more tea.
Duo finished his now cold tea and sat staring at his cup for a few minutes before getting up, rinsing it out and grabbing the makings for hot chocolate. Once he had a steaming cup and was seated again he mused aloud about the recurring dream that had woken him up for the last two weeks.
“My dream. It’s been about a fire. Some people go out for some ritual in the middle of the woods and it gets out of hand and starts a forest fire. There are a lot of animals dying in it. Do you think maybe there is an actual fire where the bobcats usually reside and that maybe they came here to find help?” Now Duo KNEW he sounded insane.
But his parents looked thoughtful as he sleepily rose from his chair, rinsed out his mug and went to bed. No goodnight came from him, but they knew that with chocolate in his system they were lucky he’d managed not to fall asleep at the table. Looking after their son as he left they smiled knowing that he probably wouldn’t wake up until noon having had chocolate at four A.M.
Sara’s smile faded however as she pinned her husband with a glare that could kill. “You said YOU were the one drinking the chocolate so fast.”
Solo flinched, “I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him about it. I haven’t exactly been home a lot the last few weeks. Honestly though, chocolate helps Duo sleep, not me. I thought you’d see through it and talk to him yourself before I ever got the chance.”
He had her there - she should have seen through it. But she’d wanted so badly to believe that Duo was perfectly fine, even though she could tell he was wearing makeup. However she was determined to only be concerned about it when he started to wear eyeliner and mascara, she’d have to ask him about it at least if he started doing that. She was pretty sure that her son was gay, but she didn’t want him to think he needed to be girly because of it. Now she knew he was wearing foundation to cover how worn out he was. Honestly she was pretty sure the real reason was worse.
“You’re right I should have. But you could have told me the truth, or at least what you suspected and I could have asked him. I mean you obviously thought it was something to do with being a guy so that’s probably why you didn’t, but still.” She berated Solo.
“You’re probably right. But it’s after four in the morning and I need painkiller and we both need sleep.” Solo said calmly, he’d temporarily forgotten about his leg in his rage and concern for his son. But it was making itself known rather loudly now.
Sara smiled fondly at him, “You go on into the bedroom and I’ll clean up and grab the painkillers.”
Solo smiled at her. “Sure thing, though I may need your help getting these off.” He said motioning to his jeans.
“I’ll probably be there before you at the rate you’re moving. Still sitting there like a bump on a log.” Sara teased him.
Solo grinned and got up to shamble off to their room, knowing that his wife was no longer angry with him. Pausing at Duo’s door he peaked in and saw his son had managed to get into pajamas before he passed out. Chuckling to himself he closed the door and made his way into his own room and sat on the bed. He’d only gotten his other boot off by the time Sara entered with painkiller and a glass of water.
“Duo made it into pj’s.” Solo told her as he took the offered painkillers and water.
Sara smiled, “Did he really? Will wonders never cease?” She asked as he took the medicine.
Placing the glass on the bedside table Solo peeled his shirt off over his head and threw it at the hamper.
“Well stand up big guy.” Sara was all business as Solo stood and she de-jeaned him and helped him into a pair of flannel pants. Once they were settled in the bed they fell quickly into sleep.
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The Legend of Shinigami