An Echo Resonates for Him--Chapter 3

[Tomorrow]

AN: Well, the last chapter left you with questions, I'm sure, but don't worry... everything will be explained in the next chapter. However, this one provides you with some vital information. Thanks for the replies, and God bless.

Disclaimers: I don't own Gundam Wing.


"So you never knew..." the boy's sole occupant amidst the confines of this shelter, its shadows crawling along the metal walls worn from years of such ghosts' play to transform beyond the sin of those specters of the ones he missed so as even these silhouettes fell to their demise as mother and father, friend and nearly kin, had been fated that night away from his hand, replied more than asked the child as he became silent in his tale at the mention of his parents' "deaths."

He looked away at the whisper of her voice, such taunting words echoing within his memory; words that haunted him every night he dared to slumber, every morn he risked to waken of nightmare's clutch, each breath he dreamt to take without guilt to parch him... not even one tear to evoke from his breast to quench this arid tongue. <i>Did he desert them... those that kissed him so deftly and cradled him once in fondness? The mother whose breast he once suckled, did he leave her there within the mud to bleed as that crimson stained her flesh and mire but to suffocate? His father... a man so willing to suffer for anyone but himself and take a bullet to his breast day beyond day that his most precious would never be maimed with scars that so bleed, did he push him face first into those flames to lick and gnaw at sinew? Perhaps, if only he had the courage to return, but he was not his mother's babe, nor his father's son. Nothing but cowardice beckoned him then.</i>
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"I stayed in that darkness for over eleven years when I awoke to find myself in a hospital thousands of miles away from my home... awakening to a woman about twice my age with sky blue eyes and flaming red hair. She seemed so sorry when I first gazed at her, almost like she felt guilty about something... so clearly me," Adin hushed quite gently, so forbidden a sentiment, dear remorse, he let part from his lips to resound upon the wind as it continued to moan along the structure's steel sheets, taking his hand and running it along the frame of the picture Une stood before.

"She was so kind... too kind for her actions not to be forced from an inner obligation to something (someone as I found out later), and as I looked around my room and at myself, trying to get my bearings, it was then she began to explain things to me.

"I was hooked up to over a dozen machines, I'd bet, and my body was so different from when I'd fallen unconscious... my mind so... tainted--not from memories, necessarily, but from knowledge, things about life I'd never even dreamed of before as a child... just too naive back then."

He pulled his jacket around his slight form much more taut at his remembrance of the shock he endured, the years he'd lost--the phoenix lay upon his dying embers, so deformed from wounds sired by a reminisce of slaughter as to take so many years to resurrect... as though this bird desired only to remain amidst his ashes--, hands barely quivering as he found his way to the bed and lay upon the coarseness it held for him--he seemed so exhausted from just having to recall the pain, for his face paled to the emptiness his orbs kept now, teddy bear still companion to his chest.

"She told me that she'd been a volunteer at that particular hospital since she was about fourteen, and once she heard of the massacre at the Cinq Kingdom, returned to her 'home' to help in any way possible. She found me amidst the ruins of the kingdom, pulse faint, hardly breathing... she said she would have left me to God's hands if it weren't for the debt she owed to my parents, for all they'd done for her just after the Eve Wars. So she brought me to this hospital, taking care of me ever since.

I must have sustained massive head trauma, because I became comatose shortly after my arrival there, but my heart was strong then, breathing regular and deep, though. She described it to me as my body being dormant but my soul still thrived, for I was so stable one would've thought I was just sleeping... almost no reason why I hadn't all ready awakened yet.

"Ever mindful of her debt to Mommy and Daddy, she had her associates test experimental technology on me, machines and chemicals that would allow my body to mature physically even though it was dormant and using its natural methods to just maintain my life."

Keeping silent for a moment, allowing a held breath to escape from his throat but strangled by his weariness so relentlessly devouring at limbs and heart from recall of his forsaken providence back then, he listened to the woman's inhales heighten with his every word and continued, "As I'm sure you can guess from seeing me today, the process was a complete success. I was a little scrawny for my size, but the girl assured me that my father had the same stature when he was younger.

"The doctors also used other experimental mechanisms to advance me mentally. According to her, there was no use in my body growing without my mind being equal or above that stage, so they fed my brain with facts, data, analysis... basically every objective thing a person needed to know. They said my brain took to the procedures very well, since my intellect was all ready superior to any normal child's at birth (they said it wasn't surprising since both of my parents had been prodigies), and that there were many hypotheses and especially tactical methods my mind created on its own with little stimulation from the devices. I was definitely my father's son... battle bred in my blood, even without physical training. With the help of the machines, though, I'd reached a level comparable to my father's, they said, in physical ability and strategy.

"But unlike my father, they'd forgotten something: emotions. I remembered my mother once telling me how my father's guardians had once tried to bury his humanity, suppressing his feelings so that he could kill without remorse. 'The Perfect Soldier' some even called him.?

"My problem was different," the boy could only choke upon his very breath, body trembling further as he curled into a fetal ball upon the mattress with sheet to pour unto his lower half in warmth of his disgrace. "I had the emotional outlook of a three year old. In all of their genius, they'd forgotten about my mental health, feeding me data, but not love, teaching me analysis, but not control, showing me statistics, but with no comfort. What I had learned within the embrace of my parents those years ago was all I had to work with, but I guess it was better than trying to rid me of feeling completely.

"I've felt empty since that day with an intellect to pursue any passion I desired, yet no emotional maturity to handle the pressure... no discernment.

"It's so strange," the child whispered to the lady in such sincerity of his coming words, sighing to only himself as he continued to stare blankly at the wall, just trying to find something hidden amongst that barren steel... any answer. "At one minute I'll be decoding heavily encrypted disks for whatever reason, and then in the next I can revert back to 'I want my Mommy and Daddy.' I just... I don't really have a mature train of thought."

Lady Une took but one step forward to the boy that rested upon the bed, and swallowing deeply before she asked to calm her nerves from sending him further from sanity, inquired, "So how did you end up here?"

"After they were sure of my conditions, they let me go, and I got a job at a small computer company just a few hours drive from the hospital. My salary isn't much, but I didn't need much, just a bed and a desk for my computer, a roof over my head to keep the rain and draft out... I don't deserve to be so pampered as I was, to be so lovingly looked after... not after the deaths my parents suffered trying to protect me. They worked so hard, to the bone nearly, to create such a loving environment for me before--they were always so tired when they came home from the meetings, yet they still found time for me: Dad to play and Mommy to sing to me before I went to sleep... so selfless--, and their deaths were malicious at the hands of the enemy. The worst punishment I can find for myself is to never know if I caused their deaths... the pain of just not knowing. I'll live in a hell hole... like the place where they died," his voice resonated across the chamber to meet in gentle descant a sob, racked within the stifle of time's grasp of so long a duration, that somehow left his chest and lusted for freedom into the chilled air that surrounded the two--leaving him naked to his own shame and broken in the eyes of the woman now watching him.

"It's been that way for almost two years now," he continued to sob at the revelation, murmuring into the distance his pleas for redemption," and I can still hear them crying out in agony... Mommy... Daddy..."

"Who was this girl you talked about, who felt indebted to your parents about something?" Lady Une asked rather quickly to shake him from the clutches of the reverie to claim his sorrow to drown in... to die in. "I must know."

"Her name was... Mariemaia... Mariemaia Kushrenada." Une could do nothing but flinch so blatantly at the name, her hand finding its way to her chest as she grappled the area where heart resided; she mouthed the name breathlessly as her eyes unfocused and she grasped the nearby chair for support, involuntarily.

"She said that not even a week before the attack she had a disagreement with her foster mother, and so she found sanctuary at that old hospital away from the woman's meddling. She mentioned how happy she was that she chose such an obvious hiding place, because apparently, after eleven years, her mother still hadn't located her."

"After all this time... she was there and I'd... never known..." Her cry echoed as a whisper between them as her free hand searched for her temples to massage the ache that began to throb at the utterance of the girl's name, for her composure so aptly wrought by that young lady's father crumbled in the knowledge of her ward's survival from that horrid eve Adin had just shivered to recount.

The child had risen from the bed as the woman stared into the darkness beyond herself, once more dragging himself to stand before the portraits that were hidden behind the drapery Lady Une so cruelly unmasked from his sepulchral asylum--a shrine he erected in memory of his loss... a memory to suffer by.

At his stirring, the commander was torn from her musings of the failed daughter of the man she swore in her own morale to protect in his name, out of gratitude and, yes, love for him; there were more important matters at hand now.

She turned to face the boy once more, marveling at the array of portraits and sculptures which adorned his realm--so many as to almost portray an eerie impression of obsession... passion for his own sentimental penalty... this child begotten of fatal pry at being ripped from mother's womb finding his only relief in self infliction, abused by his own guilt--, when she noticed one particular painting that his palm rested on then.

The canvas was worn from time's neglect, the white frayed edges seeming tallow in the dim light of the hanger, and the paint had dulled from rain and wind's vengeance for escaping them on that scarlet eve, appearing smudged with precious facial features smeared as though bleeding through the canvas and onto the hand of the prince who dared touch this sacred remembrance with a hand soiled by misery of his own doing--his fingertips infected it. This portrait reeked from the rain that poured in the background, mother and child kneeling within the mud these drops created in playful blend with the earth, and father crouched by their side to hold the umbrella above their heads, he completely soaked by the shower that purified his hands of the blood that once so washed them. He didn't seem to mind, though, for his wife and son, although filthy, were smiling and mostly dry--cuddled against his breast for warmth, a small orange streak of a sunset conquering the rain to spread across their faces.

This woman could see the stains from hand prints that marred the canvas, for she could guess Adin's young hands had crossed the surface so many times, trying to relive that peaceful instance with his fingers' graze.

There were other painting as well, sculptures too, that rendered the former Cinq King and Queen, sometimes with their son or a family friend or two--such a collection held by this child of the royal family, just dozens and dozens stocked into that tiny crevice.

As Lady Une saw the longing in his eyes for something, anything to emancipate him from the bonds he towed behind of the past he had been innocent of creating, even if he believed differently, she put her hands upon his face to calm him and murmured, "I didn't come here alone, Adin. There are some people that you need to welcome into your home, just one more time." ??