Hi there

Challenge 234 and I am so sorry for the long delay.  Its just been that sort of year.  Hopefully I can get a few more fics out a bit faster.  Hope you enjoy.

Karina

Title: Life or Death

Author: Karina

Rating: PG

Pairing: Duo

Notes:  Challenge 234.  Baby Series 4  #157.  Takes place  a few minutes following  Survivors.

Spoilers: None

Warnings: Extended Length

Many thanks to ShenLong Deb for her work betaing this set of fics.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing or the Characters from the series but the baby is mine.

Title:  Life or Death

A battle for life or death.

On the streets of L2 one was born kicking, screaming and scrambling to survive.  If you were lucky you might have a parent to initially smooth the way, but how many abandoned babies had filled the missions and garbage strewn alleys?  He had struggled from his earliest memory to survive against the rats, garbage and detritus of human waste.

It was an unforgiving place, his home for his formative years.  The few friends he had made died in the burning wildfire of plague, young lives snuffed out because none cared to inoculate the street rats.  The unwanted children of a corrupted, putrid system.

There had been those who had tried.  Father Maxwell.  Sister Helen.  Others, but so few.

Were his memories coloured by the stink and the psychedelic colours of every form of garbage from bloated, rotting corpses of humanity’s forgotten and unwanted children, to human effluent and rotting food scraps?  Paper, plastic, dirt, crumbling buildings, fighting rats, dogs, cats and the corpses of the losers.  It was all decaying.  The life span of the buildings well past their use by date, adding to the detritus.  Mud, blood, alcohol, bodily fluids…

He closed his eyes, drinking in the laughter.  So carefree, so happy even in the midst of struggling to survive.  It had been like that when he was a child too.  Despite the squalor, the danger of the streets onto which he had been born and hastily abandoned by an uncaring mother… at least he assumed she had been uncaring.  Who knew, perhaps her pimp had tossed him out after he was born?

Hell, he had been too young to know or care.  What was the use of thinking about it?  He was just another survivor.  He had been strong enough, and lucky enough, to make it this far.   To have fought his way out of the depravity that was L2’s lower side.

He opened his eyes and watched Jessica, screaming in delight, slide down the banister.  Milliardo kept pace with her descent, ready to catch her if the need warranted a rescue.  Jamie waited at the foot of the staircase, laughing, encouraging her and practically dancing on the spot with delight.

Jamie.  Gone was the look that marked him as being older than his tender years.  He was just a young boy having fun, not an abandoned urchin fighting for survival with no protection other than the little he himself could provide.

Like Jamie he had gotten lucky by being picked up by Father Maxwell, and later the Sweepers, but how many others lived their days unable to break away from the…

No, he could not make that mistake.  It was depressing enough simply remembering.  He had wanted something better and somehow, he had found a way to improve his condition.  You had to really want it to break out of that sewer, have enough spirit left to fight the apathy of hopelessness.  There were programs in place now to help people do just that.  It had to be given time to work.  Nothing could be accomplished overnight.  He knew that only too well and, for now, he could content himself with supporting those programs and helping those who were within his reach to help.

Jessica and Jamie.  There would be no return to that life or death struggle for these two. 

End

Karina Robertson  2014