Apple on Dreamwidth

Title: Fourth of July
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Pairing: 1+2+1
Warnings: Military Violence
Song: Fourth of July by Mariah Carey
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, the characters within, or the song. No money is being made from this fic.
Author's Note: I've been meaning to write this for over 10 years, I just managed it today. Happy 4th of July!

Trembling
Starry eyed
As you put your hand in mine...

“I am not concussed,” he was trying to check my pupils. “Come on, you're supposed to be the serious one. Quit playing around.”

He wasn't smiling but somehow he still seemed intensely amused, at my expense. He swiped two fingers across my temple and I felt the sting so I knew what I would see even before he showed me the blood. “I am being serious.”

Huh, maybe I was more effected that I thought.

He cut me off before I could respond, “You're tracking. Come on, keep up,” and he pulled me along at a dead run.

 

It was twilight
On the Fourth of July
Sparkling colors were
Strewn across the sky
And we sat close enough
That we just barely touched
While roman candles
Went soaring above us and baby

We'd hit the base right at the shift change causing maximum confusion, at least that was the plan. The explosions had been timed to keep the remaining personnel off balance to give us the time to escape. We'd already been on site about 17 hours, collecting intelligence and planting the explosives for the big finale and all without being detected, not too bad. Everything had been going accordingly, until the barracks blew. There'd been more shrapnel from that than I'd anticipated; the whole building exploded instead of the planned roaring inferno. The Ozzies musta been keeping accelerant under their bunks, go figure. I'd been a little too close for that sort of explosion but at least I'd had cover and I hadn't gotten hit by any of the debris. Or so I thought.

Heero and I stood there and watched it for a while, there were a few smaller secondary explosions going off in odd colors like maybe there'd been a hidden chem. lab. in there too. It was quite a show, in atmosphere explosions had a glory that Space just couldn't match.

 

Then you put your hand in mine
And we wandered away
I was trembling inside
But I wanted to stay
Pressed against you there and leave the world behind
On that Fourth of July

Heero shook his head suddenly and dragged me further back into the recess we were supposed to be hiding in; all business with this one, no time to enjoy the finer things in life. Still, he pressed up against me more that was strictly necessary, not that I was complaining.

He leaned in further and whispered, “We need to extract, now.”

I shook my head (maybe I was a little dizzy as well, I ignored it) and stared at him surprised. “That's off the time table. There's still 278 seconds til the hanger and the mobile suit bay blow,” I whispered back sub-audibly as a half-squad marched past our spot at double time. “There's still too many soldiers on this side of the base, we need the distraction.”

“If it has a larger yield it will catch the fuel depot.”

I sucked in a sharp breath of the thought of that. If the fuel depot goes ahead of schedule it'll blow us all to Kingdom Come. “Let's go.”


 

 

So starry eyed
On the flowery hillside
Breathless and fervid
Amid the dandelions
As it swept over me
Like the wind through the trees
I felt you sigh with a
Sweet intensity and baby

He was right. A little over 4 and a half minutes later the Mobile Suit bay went up and a few moments after that the fuel depot went up too.

When we finally cleared the perimeter fence with seconds left we ran for it, across the 50 meter no man's land; there was no time left for subtlety. I heard a shout behind us but whoever spotted us didn't even have to start shooting before the explosion rocked the area. We had reached the edge of the flat area there was still a bit of a incline to run up before we had decent cover; tall grass and some wild flowers, nothing I wanted to run up with eyes on my back. So just as the first explosion sounded, I turned, sighted, and took three quick shot. I hit my targets, three goons toppled over on the top of the guard tower, which meant I happened to be looking in the right directions to see just how much larger the blast was than expected.

I'd only turned long enough shoot before I turned back to continue running with hardly a hitch in my step, but I'd already seen too much; my eyes were practically dazzled and I tried to clear my vision as quickly as I could. “Move!” I shouted, more to motivate myself than Heero, whom I could already hear breathing with efficiency. If he put on that extra burst of speed I knew he was capable of he'd leave me in the dust. We had to get out of there, I could already feel the heat from the first explosion wash over us and the sound the second explosion a moment later shook the ground.

 

Then you put your hand in mine
And we floated away
Delicately lay entwined
In an intimate daze
A crescent moon began to shine
And I wanted to stay
Tangled up with you among the fireflies
On that Fourth of July

Heero grabbed my hand pulled me along. The shock wave from the secondary explosion hit us just as we crested hill, it actually lifted us off our feet, or maybe Heero had just jumped. Either way we tumbled down the far side of the hill coming to a stop wrapped around each other like an intimate embrace with the embers from the blast drifting down around us like starlight.

It was nice and I would have liked to stay and catch my breath if not for the whine of Mobile Suits could hear approaching from the west. Heero picked his head up and looked down at me, “Are you OK?”

I huffed out a laugh, “Any landing you can walk away from.”

He eyed me like he was considering my sanity.

“I'm fine,” I clarified. “Not that I don't appreciate the concern, but--”

“We need to move,” he said rolling off of me and to his feet in a smooth motion. He came back to offer me a hand up; such a sweetheart.

 

Thunder cloud
Hung around
So threateningly
Ominously hovering
And the sky
Opened wide
Showering

Running through the forest was about the easiest part of the mission. There were about two more miles to go before we reached our Gundams but it was dark enough that trees were more than sufficient for cover but that wouldn't help us if they had infrared so we kept moving.

There were Leos over the canopy nearly directly overhead but their searchlights pointed in the wrong direction. Still Heero and I were well aware their canons were independent of their lights so we made sure to zigzag around the trees and take a more circuitous route than we might have otherwise. When one of the Leos finally opened fire it was well away from our position, seemed like one of the pilots was taking out their frustration on the foliage.

 

Then you put your hand in mine
And we ran from the rain
Tentatively kissed goodnight
And went our separate ways
And I've never truly felt the way that I
Felt that Fourth of July

“Duo,” Heero said. Just as I was about to climb up to the cockpit.

I turned to watch him stalk right into my personal space. I put my hands up in mock surrender; he wasn't going to hit me but I had to be ready to fend him off if he was planning to check me, we didn't have time.

Impatiently, he pushed my hands out of the way, grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled me in for a kiss.

Time stopped; we may be on the clock but I'd always make time for this.

After a long moment he pulled back enough to look at me with a quirked eyebrow. “Check your mixtures.”

I burst out laughing, “It wasn't me!”

He turned and headed for Wing with a shrug that clearly screamed 'Whatever.'

I was still laughing as I climbed it to Deathscythe and finished my flight checks.

 

Truly I have never felt the same inside
Like that Fourth of July
Truly I could never feel the same as I
Felt that Fourth of July

 

 

I stalled out in chapter 5 of Dangerous Bonds again... sorry. No, see what had happen was, I was all amped up to get through the prologue - chapter 4 since I was actually doing the things I wanted and updating and making it work. And then I got to chapters 5-7 where I thought I had done all the work previously but then I saw I tricked myself and I just left a whole bunch of edit notes like "**add character development here" and "re-word this sentence" so that was sort of annoying. Now I realize I'm going to have to do that that thing I said I didn't want to do, rewrite the damn thing for the 4th or 5th time. And also, there is that problem where I wanted to just make the whole thing from Duo's perspective but it doesn't really seem feasible. There are some really important things that happen that will only make sense from Heero's perspective. And I'm thinking Quatre's and Trowa's relationship will only be worth developing from one of their perspectives as well (like Duo is perceptive enough to notice something going on between Quatre and Trowa but he definitely has other things to focus on. Now I have to do some soul searching to see exactly how much of this I want to rewrite.

I kinda want to just set away from Dangerous Bonds again, it's annoying me. but it's almost October and that sort of means I should be working on Don't Lie.

I'm off to do some soul searching by which i mean tackling unresolved plot problems.

I completely gave up writing for a month so I did nothing for November. I really don't have anything to say for progress either. I've basically been completely focused on the civil rights protest that have been so prominent in this later half of 2014 after shooting death Mike Brown. I only got more pissed off after the officer wasn't indicted and then a week later the officer that killed Eric Garner wasn't indicted either.

Basically my priorities drastically shifted from what they were at the beginning of this year. As I have always said, any fics I have started posting I fully intend to finish but I don't know when I will be able to get back to writing.

I fully expect my next post will be the the year round up sometime after January 1st.

Oh My God, I got even less done this month than I did last month. I almost spent the entire month stuck on one sentence in Chapter 5 of Dangerous Bonds. I thing that is really pathetic and I'm pretty disappointed in myself. It's kind of like when I turned in a really crappy attempt at an assignment at school and the teacher called me out on it, like "You didn't put any effort into this at all." (which at the time I as pretty chagrined about because that was the first and only teacher I ever had that called me out on that bullshit) but This time I'm indignant because I really did try to do better... Only because I'm both the teacher and the student in this scenario I know that I did try, but I really did put in only a pathetic amount of effort.

So...I finally said fuck it and pushed past the sentence, and I'm still not completely happy with the way it turned out which is less than pleasing. Unfortunately I still think I'm in Chapter 5 editing wise (Hint, I need to edit through Chapter 9 before I start posting again) This is a very slow going process, and it's about to get slower.

It is now October, which means I need to switch to Don't Lie for this month. I "need to" but perhaps it would be more accurate to say "going to" because none of this is really necessity and that's probably part of the problem.

Next month is November which is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which I always want to take a swing at but the only thing that's really to be actually written is the Uther/Merlin fic which, I just did a word count on and it's just over 25,000 words in outline/rough draft format. Actually I could definitely see being able to double or triple that in size by actually writing it out... And that is a little daunting to think about, that one of the longest stories I have written is actually a guilty pleasure kink fic, purely objectionable material that is filled with basically the number one trigger warning of fandom. Even so, I've definitely said I do not want to work on that until I have Dangerous Bonds posting again.

All of that probably won't matter because I'm about to have a baby sometime in the next two weeks and I remember from the last time how difficult (near impossible for me) is was trying to focus on writing while I had a newborn to take care of, and this time I will have the addition of a 20 month old demanding attention as well. I love my kids guys, which it comes between writing and them, they're going to win.

And then my Maternity Leave will be over before the end of the year and I'll have to contend with work as well. It's really starting to look like I won't have anything posted by the end of this year. That really sucks because it feels like this is another year where I didn't get anything done. Strictly speaking, that's not true. I definitely accomplished at least 3 of those writing goals I set at the beginning of the year and I totally wrote that Merlin outline/rough draft thing, 25,000 words in about two weeks. Definitely more writing than I've done in the last two years, I just don't have anything ready to show/post for it and that's the part that's disappointing.

I other distractions, Um... Super Smash Bros for the 3DS came out a couple of days ago and I have been dying to play that game since I heard they were making it. And since I keep talking about it and going all glassy eyed/lustful over it my husband, being the terrible enabler he is when it comes to video games, has sworn he is going to get it for me before the end of the month. As if that's not bad enough, yesterday he bought Minecraft for the PS3. Honestly, I have never had any inclination to play Minecraft but I did spend about 3 hours playing it last night and honestly I've been itching to pick it back up the whole time I've been writing this post. I am tempered by two things, 1)either I'm really slow or the days are too short and the nights are too long and 2) My Husband is soo much better at it than me.

My first time playing I was half a sleep so I couldn't focus on what the tutorial was actually telling me but I still rushed through the steps and at the end of the tutorial the game was like "Congrats you've finished the tutorial. The game has started, it will be night soon and everything is going to try to kill you. Have Fun!" and I'm like, "Wait... What?" Needless to say, I was completely unprepared and one of the green penis monsters totally killed me about 5 minutes later. Actually I was building a safe spot toward the middle of the starting area and I'm not even sure why but a crater opened up under me and took out one of the walls and left a hole that I didn't want to try and fill. And since I couldn't figure out why it happened in the first place I went back over to where the half constructed shelter had been (I had torn it down trying to figure out what the tutorial was trying to get me to do) and tried to refill in the stone underneath and build a house on a stable foundation, but before I could finish that... dead. And then my husband, who had the advantage of learning from my failure built this awesome two story shelter with like half a moat and a enclosure to trap all the animals in before he even finished the tutorial. -_- show off.

My point the distractions are powerful and numerous. I think I will start working on Don't Lie, right now, other wise I won't get anything done.

So, I was not able to post anything in July, sadly. I did not actually get distracted, at least not for days at a time. It really just took nearly the entire month of July to finish that notes/very rough draft of the Uther/Merlin 5+1 porn thing.

I typically keep all my files in three places, on my computer, in dropbox and on a flash drive. I work on them from my computer, the dropbox is the back up (I have lost too many pages of writing for various reasons so now I keep the back up) and the flash drive so I can work on them when I'm not at home (namely when I am at work, which is especially fun because it looks like I'm actually doing work when I'm typing in a word document on the computer verses playing around with my phone all day.) However since that Merlin fic is mostly graphic pornography I actually just refused to open the file on my work computer, so I actually wrote the whole thing in the notepad of my iPhone which is why the whole thing is in such a spectacularly rough format. It actually needs to be 'written' before it can be edited.

But the important thing is that I finished. Tragically I did lose part of a scene in chapter two because of the way I happened to write the story out. (Where I wrote the first part, didn't think it went far enough, wrote an alternate ending, decided I liked both parts and decided to make a completely different chapter, started writing out the beginning of the second chapter only to then realize I wanted more chapters, then skipped into starting to write chapter three.) So when I jumped to writing chapter three I still has a scene between the beginning of chapter two and the ending of chapter two to bridge the gap. I figured, "it's ok I'll come back to it at the end," but when I did come back I had forgotten it.

A couple of other interesting things about this fic:

Chapter 4 developed a plot, like an actually episode of Merlin type plot. Because so much happens in chapter 6 it's actually about two chapters long and then chapter 4 was just so short I felt like I had to pad it. So part of the exposition in chapter 6 and then the lead in to chapter 3 gave me an idea for a scenario to lead into chapter 4 that ends up being pretty serendipitous to a a sort of reoccuring thing I have going on in the story. It fits nicely.

I wrote it somewhat out of sequence. Like 1,2c,2a,3,6,4,then 5 and currently there is not really a 2b, not like I originally envisioned it, anyway. It doesn't matter, I'll work it out.

Also, I spend a night thinking/half dreaming about how I wanted chapter 6 to proceed instead of sleeping. But of course when I started to write out chapter 6 it took so long because I couldn't make the conversation work like it had in my head. The conversation being how Arthur confronts Uther about what he's doing to Merlin. I managed to make it work but of course I don't think it's as good as my original envisioning. Then writing chapter 6 first caused an difficult tonal shift in chapters 4&5.

( I actually want to go into a little detail. Spoilers and talk of Non-con )

So that's that. It's done. Or at least it's done enough that I can put it down and work on some other things I want to actually get posted before I fully flesh out that story.

On that note, I went back to Dangerous Bonds and accomplished my goal of making Duo a little less Kaitlyn and a little more Duo. I fixed some of the narration so, at least in my opinion, it flows a little better. It took a bit more rewriting that I wanted, but the story didn't actually changed, just Duo's tone and a bit of his reasoning for doing the things he does.

Right now I took a break from Dangerous Bonds to make this post. Really, I think I need to do a floor plan for the Institute. I kind of remember doing that before but I don't know where it is anymore and while editing and rereading the descriptions just don't seem to match what I thought it looked like in my head. That's what I'm going to go back to doing when I'm done here. I hope, again, to get all the the previous chapter, now edited, to AO3 before the end of the month. I will probably fix the way it is posted on all the other archives it's in (fanfiction.net and Mediaminer.org as well as My website.) Hopefully I can get this done before the end of the month.

There's also a Merlin Podfic BigBang going on that I kind of do. I just doing know if I can manage. There's at least 3 Merlin fics I really want to see podficced and I do have a podfic on my list of goals for this year. I'm just sort of stuck on a few things. Namely my near compulsive urge to do voices/accents. I don't want to offend anyone with a shitty, inconsistent, and non-region specific faux English accent. That's actually a personal pet peeve of my own that I don't want to inflict on other people. Also, the one thing you sort of need when recording a podfic is silence and I have a 18 month old, silence is just something I don't have anymore. I still have a couple of more days to decided if I want to give it a try, but really, time spent podficcing is time spent not writing which is really what I'm trying to make the priority for myself. I want to but I probably won't.

Peaking forward a bit, I think after I finish getting the next part of Dangerous Bonds out I need to shift my attention to Strange. It's been so long since I last updated that story I think I'm at 5 years now. Ouch. Ha, it's not like I forgot about it. I'm just having trouble reigning in the plots a bit. Actually there's a story about what's going on with Strange, I think I will save that for the August Round Up.

Anyway, back to Dangerous Bonds for now. Be back next month at very least.

I was making progress!

Then things happened... as they always do. I swear this is not a excuse, just a fact.

But as I said last month, I do have progress to report. That being the plot hurdle that I managed to get over. That plot hurdle was on Dangerous Bonds and is thus tied to the progress. Well I did inch forward a bit into the next part of Dangerous Bonds, which is to way I am managing to fix the problems that have been bothering me for 5+ years. I mean, it's posted to chapter 8 but it's written to chapter 15 everything after 8 is a mess though; it's disjointed because I was struggling with the narrative a trying to separate the original story from the story I'm actually trying to tell (which is not all that different, but is different enough)

Anyway, I realized sometime last month that I couldn't remember the main character's name in the original series. I remembered it about a week later (it's Kaitlyn) but I realize that even though I remember the Dark Visions series it doesn't have as strong a pull on me any more. So this should go a little smoother. Also, I think I found the thing that was bothering me about my last read through. Because, bless her heart, Kaitlyn is spunky/sassy/all those things the teenaged female protagonist of a YA novel tends to be, she's still not a trained terrorist. And while Duo in this story is not himself a trained terrorist, from a certain point view, he kinda is. /vague spoiler type thing. So I'm going though a fix his voice and make him a little less OOC; not so much socially outcast teenage girl and a little more disaffected youth, I guess. Some of the sentence structure is still making me twitch but I'm not going to do much about it. Like I said, I'm not trying to rewrite, just tweak.

So, I was making progress... and then I accidentally read a Frostiron fic... then I had to read all of the frostiron fics... *sigh* I know, I'm too easily distracted.

Needless to say I have nothing to show.

I am so far behind.

I'm getting later and later in the month with these. Jeez, that's so like me.

It's mostly because again there was nothing to report. I've been wasting my free time watching Bleach more. But the good think is I'm on episode 330 right now (I think Cartoon Network was on 336 last night) so I'm almost done (there are only like 36o or so episodes on Hulu anyway. So at very least I will be done by the end of the month, if not by next weekend and I can turn my attention to getting so of those writing goals done.

At very least I suspect I'm going to do one of the easy outline ones, which does mean I won't have anything to actually post, but at least it will be progress. Actually I've been thinking about working on Don't Lie (Vamp!Heero as I call it.) Though to be honest, it is the wrong time of year to be working on it. But hey, if I do finish it before October I'll actually be able to post it on Holloween, like it's supposed to be. Though, to be honest, the story is no longer as originally intended.

See, originally I was going to do a series of vampire stories for Halloween. One where Heero is a Vampire pursuing Duo, one where Duo is a Vampire pursuing Heero, One where Heero and Duo were both Vampire rivals of some kind, and one where Heero and Duo where human and fight vampire monsters. Alas, the first story that started to develop was the Vamp!Heero one, and the stubborn bastard decided he wasn't a vampire after all, which sort of killed the thing.

But, as it stands, he is still a supernatural type creature, and the story is still a viable Halloween type... maybe not, but whatever. If I do end up working on Don't Lie, I probably won't post that till October anyway. I'm such a pain in the ass.

Anyway, I've been typing this during "commercial" breaks, and now I'm on episode 333 so, there you have it.