Summer challenge: Women of Summer: Meilan
Title: Marital Arts
Author: ingvild
Characters: Meilan/Wufei
Rating/Word Count: PG-13, 524 words
Summary: Meilan could never abandon Wufei in his battle.
A/N/Warnings: I’ve tried, in my other fics, to write about the women and not the men through the women. In this one, it didn’t quite work. Because of that, I am giving it an English title (and not at all because I don’t know how to work the pun in Latin, nope, not at all).Mention of carnal relations between (manga-) canonically married fourteen year olds.
She has not abandoned him. No, she could never do that.
When her grandmother told her she was to be joined with the Chang boy, she did not object. Chang was a respectable name, and had spawned many skilled fighters.
She protested when she learned that Wufei was more interested in scholarly pursuits than fighting, and it galled her when he still bested her in hand-to-hand. How could this boy she had been joined to, who had no fighting spirit, beat her?
In the end, she knew that he would never join in the necessary struggle. He did not have the drive. But she, oh she would fight for him and her family and their colony, and she knew that one defeat did not mean the final defeat.
Wufei does not know that.
She gave her life for him because she was a warrior and he was her husband, and he needed her strength to find his own, but he does not know what to do with that strength. Is he fighting to keep her memory alive? Stupid, stupid, as long as he remembers her she will always be with him.
He calls the Gundam “Nataku”, after the name she gave herself. Its embrace is colder than hers was, but it is keeping him safe and his fighting spirit high, like she did. She is with him and the machine as they fight and struggle, but she cannot do anything for him when he leaves her, leaves them. He leaves, and she can do nothing as he is defeated and his fighting spirit bleeds away.
One defeat does not mean the final defeat! she cries, but she is dead, dead, gone all this time and he cannot hear her. He thinks he is no longer worthy of her, of the Gundam, of Nataku.
She wants to help him as he flounders about searching for answers, but she cannot. So much of their existence was tied up in fighting, in her revelling in it, his resistance to it, their arguing about it. Even their coupling had the feeling of a battle - the consummation of their marriage was partly teenage curiosity, but mostly a sense of duty, and neither would let the other have the upper hand - and somehow, in their struggle for superiority they both had a surprisingly enjoyable time. On several occasions.
But she can do nothing, now, to help him as he tries to make sense of things.
When he finally comes back to her, she wonders, did he loose something of himself? He has found a new meaning in battle, but she wonders if he can find a meaning outside it, now.
Her Wufei was not like that, he knew what life was like outside the metallic death machine. In trying to be a person he thinks would please her, he has lost that other self.
Let go, Wufei, she tries to tell him. Let go of me before I drag you to join me too soon. Eternity is long. You can live some, first.
Even though she knows he cannot hear her, she hopes against reason that maybe he will, anyway.
Author: ingvild
Characters: Meilan/Wufei
Rating/Word Count: PG-13, 524 words
Summary: Meilan could never abandon Wufei in his battle.
A/N/Warnings: I’ve tried, in my other fics, to write about the women and not the men through the women. In this one, it didn’t quite work. Because of that, I am giving it an English title (and not at all because I don’t know how to work the pun in Latin, nope, not at all).Mention of carnal relations between (manga-) canonically married fourteen year olds.
She has not abandoned him. No, she could never do that.
When her grandmother told her she was to be joined with the Chang boy, she did not object. Chang was a respectable name, and had spawned many skilled fighters.
She protested when she learned that Wufei was more interested in scholarly pursuits than fighting, and it galled her when he still bested her in hand-to-hand. How could this boy she had been joined to, who had no fighting spirit, beat her?
In the end, she knew that he would never join in the necessary struggle. He did not have the drive. But she, oh she would fight for him and her family and their colony, and she knew that one defeat did not mean the final defeat.
Wufei does not know that.
She gave her life for him because she was a warrior and he was her husband, and he needed her strength to find his own, but he does not know what to do with that strength. Is he fighting to keep her memory alive? Stupid, stupid, as long as he remembers her she will always be with him.
He calls the Gundam “Nataku”, after the name she gave herself. Its embrace is colder than hers was, but it is keeping him safe and his fighting spirit high, like she did. She is with him and the machine as they fight and struggle, but she cannot do anything for him when he leaves her, leaves them. He leaves, and she can do nothing as he is defeated and his fighting spirit bleeds away.
One defeat does not mean the final defeat! she cries, but she is dead, dead, gone all this time and he cannot hear her. He thinks he is no longer worthy of her, of the Gundam, of Nataku.
She wants to help him as he flounders about searching for answers, but she cannot. So much of their existence was tied up in fighting, in her revelling in it, his resistance to it, their arguing about it. Even their coupling had the feeling of a battle - the consummation of their marriage was partly teenage curiosity, but mostly a sense of duty, and neither would let the other have the upper hand - and somehow, in their struggle for superiority they both had a surprisingly enjoyable time. On several occasions.
But she can do nothing, now, to help him as he tries to make sense of things.
When he finally comes back to her, she wonders, did he loose something of himself? He has found a new meaning in battle, but she wonders if he can find a meaning outside it, now.
Her Wufei was not like that, he knew what life was like outside the metallic death machine. In trying to be a person he thinks would please her, he has lost that other self.
Let go, Wufei, she tries to tell him. Let go of me before I drag you to join me too soon. Eternity is long. You can live some, first.
Even though she knows he cannot hear her, she hopes against reason that maybe he will, anyway.