The Day My Dream Came True

 

Disclaimer: I don’t own any Gundam Wing characters from the original cast; IE: Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre, or Wufei. Hari (pronounced Ha-ree) Azuma is a character creatd by me, myself and I. And we DO own her! So there!! :Þ

 

Warning: This story is kinda centered on angst… So… you might just want to have a box of tissues handy… or not… ::shrugs:: But you can’t say that I didn’t warn you.

Oi, and just for ref. Mitsukai is a Japanese term for ‘angel’.

 

 

It’s every girl’s dream to marry her first true love. Most have the whole thing planned out in their minds and hope with all their hearts that it’s the way it would happen; candle-lit dinner at fancy and very high-priced restaurant, the stars shining out on a navy blue sky with the moon lighting the balcony dinner table out over the ocean, the man of her dreams down on one knee and holding out a small velvet box and a hopeful look on his face. Not me. That’s just way too high class for my taste. Heck… I don’t even need a gold band to sign the contract. I just want to know that I’ll have Duo forever. But, believe it or not, I did receive the ring, making that dream so many longed for a reality for me… But I was givien the gift in a way that I would have never anticipated. I’ll never forget how unprepared I was on the day my dream came true.

 

=(@)=

 

“DUO, NO!” Hari screamed at the monitor of her gundam.

 

Everything had happened so fast. Deathscythe HC had swung its scythe to slice the new model in half, but the Gemini One had turned out to be another model of a stupid doll. Not expecting the sudden twist of events, it proved to quick for the gundam. And yet, the suit had not managed to completely evade the attack. The thermal blade left a large gash across the chest of the mobile doll. It kicked Deathscythe in the chest causing it step back in efforts to regain its balance. The mobile doll then turned to Steel Shadow and Hari’s eyes widened when the doll’s beam cannon was pointed straight at her. Gemini One’s firearm began to charge for a shot. Before she was able to even move, as one of the new modifications on the suit, the shot had charged fairly quickly and the doll pulled the trigger, but Hari never saw the gun fire. Deathscythe had jumped in front of Steel Shadow and Duo had taken the shot, causing Hari to shriek at her gundam’s screen.

                Before the gundam hit the ground, a panel on the chest of Steel Shadow had open giving Hari access to the gundam sized shirukens concealed within it. As soon as the doll was in her sites, Steel Shadow pitched it at Gemini One and the star embedded itself into the opening created by Duo’s scythe and detonated. The mobile suit was destroyed but Hari cared nothing of it. She looked out to Deathscythe, on it’s elbows, partially laying on the ground.

 

                “Duo!” Hari screamed out, “God… DUO! Answer me!”

                Silence.

                “DUO!!” She screamed in terror once more. The other gundam pilots could hear her desperate cries for Duo’s reply and all stayed silent hoping to hear some him say something themselves.

                “M-Mi-…” The frequency was choppy because of the damages dealt to his gundam, but Duo finally replied, “Mistukai… I… nnh… Don’t worry about me, Mi-Mitsukai. I’m fine.” Duo struggle to talk between the surges of pain that pulsed through his body. He finished with a reassuring chuckle.

                “Oh Jesus, Duo… Don’t ever do that again!” Hari scolded as she smiled to herself and tears that were once about to be shed in terror now stood for the relief she felt inside of her. Duo’s image didn’t come up on the screen but she knew he was hurt pretty badly. Steel Shadow came to a kneel and the cockpit door to her gundam opened. Hari jumped out and ran towards Duo’s gundam to see her beloved and make sure that he was telling the truth. The other boys, also relieved at the sound of Duo’s voice, began to emerge from their own and meet the couple at Deathscythe.

                When Hari reached Deathscythe, the cockpit door was open and seemed to welcome her to see Duo. She smiled to herself and climbed up the leg, then made her way up it’s torso. She reached the cockpit and jumped onto the open door.

                “Duo, you baka!” She smiled as she looked into the cockpit at Duo.

                Duo eyes were shut. Blood ran down the side of his face from his head and trailed down his neck. On the opposite side trickled a string of crimson from the corner of his mouth. His right hand gripped his side where a large amount of blood had soaked into his shirt and stained his fingers. And his left dangled over the side of his chair… lifeless.

                “Duo… Come on Duo… This isn’t funny…” Hari reprimanded with worry in her voice.

                Nothing.

                “Duo… Duo wake up…” Her voice began to shake and she gave a pleading smile, “Please… Shinigami…open your eyes… I beg you. Please!”

                The response was no different from the last. Hari’s dark brown eyes narrowed.

                “No…” Hari whispered, “Oh GOD NO!”

                He voiced raise in the same terror the overwhelmed her the first time as she reached a trembling hand to stroke Duo’s unresponsive face. She ran her hand down Duo’s cheek hoping to be greeted by his carefree, violet eyes, but all she did was stain her own hand in his blood. Failing at her attempt, she let out a sarcastic laugh that sounded no different than a heart-wrenched sob. She felt her hot tears begin streaming down her cheeks. They felt as though they were burning into her skin, but no tear burned as much as the pain that pierced her heart. She drew Duo closer to her. Hari pulled him out of his seat and into her arms.

                Heero had made it to Duo’s gundam before the other three remaining pilots. He climbed up Deathscythe to help Hari get Duo out of his mobile suit. Heero pulled himself up to the open door, only to find Hari in tears as she sat on the cockpit door, Duo’s lifeless body in her embrace. His eyes filled with shock and his heart felt severe pain when Hari glanced up at him. Heero silently bowed his head then kneeled and placed a hand on her shoulder. She looked back at Duo’s unchanging face. She felt more searing tears fall as she spoke.

                “He would be one to leave with a smile… wouldn’t he…?” she asked in a sorrowful smile of her own. Heero didn’t answer, which didn’t change anything because she didn’t expect him to. Hari kissed Duo lips once more.

                “Ai shiteru, Shinigami.” She whispered.

                She gently set his head down, stood up, gazed at her counterpart on last time and headed down the gundam. The farther down the mobile suit she climbed then more she felt a piece of her dying. When she made it to the ground the other three had finally made it over to Deathscythe. She jumped onto the ground and stared blankly at the three. Her glazed eyes seemed as though the just stared right passed them. They looked back at her questionably then looked up at the open cockpit when they heard stirring. Heero walked up to the edge of the door and in his arms he carried a silent, unmoving and lifeless Duo Maxwell.

 

=(@)=

 

            Months had past and Hari was convinced that she had died that day as well. That piece of her she felt dying as she climbed down that piece of scrap metal was her heart, or her soul. No. It was neither. He world had died. Everything that gave her reason to live had left. Vanished. Diminished, like the day when the final bits of the sun sink beneath the horizon and all that’s left is still, quiet darkness. The safe house had been very quiet ever since that dreadful day. She came out of her room and walked into the living room where the boys sat in silence. All, except for Heero, who walked up to her in silence and sighed.

                “Hari… I made a promise and…” Heero spoke, the other boys looking on, “I think it’s time I was true to my word.”

                “…” Hari listened in silence.

                “Duo made me promise that… That if anything happened before the time came… That… Well…” Heero hesitated then stopped trying to say it as he pulled something out of the pocket of his jeans.

                Hari watched his hand come out of the pocket holding something. A box. A black, velvet box. He silently handed it to her and she took it. She opened the box, revealing a diamond ring. The room was filled with an eerie silence as she gazed at it. The boys said nothing for they new they had no idea how much that she hurt inside. They wordlessly waited for Hari to cry, give it back, do something, but she only stared at it, her expressionless face unchanging. Every one of them jerked in total surprise as she finally screamed as threw the box across the room and ran out the front door. Quatre solemnly walked over and pick up the box off the floor, tears of his own welling in his eyes. Heero had disappeared out the front door after Hari, but the rest of the gundam pilots stayed in the living room not saying a word.

                Heero found the sobbing girl on the cliffs near the safe house, screaming out to the endless ocean.

                “Duo!! Duo, you bastard! How could you do this to me!?” She screamed at the top of her lungs, getting nothing but the roar of waves breaking against the Cliffside below as a reply.

                Heero grabbed Hari’s shoulders and spun her around so that she faced him. Her expression full of rage and suppressed cries for him to come back. She glared at Heero as he searched her face, possibly looking for something to say to her that would calm her down. Nothing. Without warning, Hari grabbed the gun that poked out from the other pocket of Heero’s jeans.

                “Hari no!” Heero yelled after as she ran further to the edge of the cliff with the firearm.

                “Heero! I can’t do this! I have to end it now! This is too much for me to swallow!” She yelled back.

                “Is this what Duo would want you to do?!” Heero asked desperate to stop her from making the biggest mistake of her life. As he moved closer to her she turned the gun at him to stop his approach.

                “I don’t care what Duo wants! What about what I want?!” Her voice was cracking and more tears began to escape down her face.

She, herself was surprised that she had any left after all those nights of waiting for Duo to walk through the door saying ‘Man I had you guys fooled SO good!’ and every night, disappointment.

“I want Duo BACK! I want him back, Heero…”With the last sentence her voice level dropped and the gun that was pointed at Heero trembled. “I want Shinigami back…” nothing but a whisper now.

Her hands trembling now, more than ever, the gun fell to the ground. Her entire body began to quiver with the pain the pumped through her veins, through her heart, the pain that killed her that same day she lost what she valued most of all. Hari fell to her knees, her face hidden in her hands. With out hesitation Heero came down to his own and held Hari as she wept uncontrollably.

“You’re not the only one suffering, Hari…” He spoke gently while stroking her hair, her cries muffled by his shirt. “Duo was… He was my best, possibly my only real friend. I… I can’t say that I don’t miss him, because I would be lying. And if Duo Maxwell had taught me anything… it’s that no one should ever lie.”

Hari didn’t reply but only continued to cry in the soldier’s arms. He understood that it was a heavy burden to bear for her and didn’t force her to reply to what he had said. What he had said though, was, in fact, genuine. He felt that Duo was his only true friend that he could trust. Duo had gained his friendship, mostly through sheer persistency, but Duo had taught him so much through the course of their close friendship, but most of all the lesson of trust itself, was the greatest thing that he had gained from Maxwell.

The two had stayed out there until the late hours of the night, doing nothing but mourning the loss of a piece of themselves.

 

=(@)=

 

Hari’s eyes flickered behind her shut eyelids as she felt soft lips press against her own. She sighed deeply and thought to herself. It was just a dream… All just a horrible dream… This… This is real life. Here. I’m in my own room, lying in my bed as Duo is kissing me. Thank God it was just a dream. No… a nightmare. After the lips had receded, Hari opened her eyes to meet the pair of violet ones she longed so much to see. When she did open them she saw a gentle pair of eyes looking upon her; these eyes where a cool, deep blue, not the ones that she was expecting to be greeted with.

She sat up in her bed and fondled with the ring she wore on her left hand.

“He really is gone… isn’t he?” She asked looking coldly in to Heero’s eyes.

He gave a silent solitary nod as he gently squeezed her hand. Hari squeezed back and then pulled herself into Heero’s arms.