Meilan: A True Warrior

by Catherine Bloom

I am justice.

I am Nataku.

Well, I like to claim that I am. I know I’m not of course, but that story always fascinated and inspired me. I didn’t see how anyone could not be moved by it and wish that they held Nataku’s honored place in the history of our clans. But he didn’t.

That’s what upset me about him. He was a scholar boy; his life was books and stories. And yet he could not aspire to be like Nataku.

Of course I would dutifully marry him, as my family wished. I knew I would hate being the wife of a boring scholar boy, but I have been raised my entire life to acknowledge my duty to my clan before my personal feelings. My mother had. She had the eyes of a warrior, like my own, but her body seemed constantly kneeling in the subservience she had been taught. I think her stronger for it; she never let her position break her warrior spirit.

The first time I saw him I wanted to scream about the injustice of being married to a boy who did not aspire to Nataku’s image, to the image of what I thought to be justice incarnate. But he did. I saw the spark in the dark eyes he hid behind those glasses as he dutifully bowed to me. If I hadn’t seen the fire, the spirit, of Nataku in his eyes it wouldn’t have bothered me.

But it was there, mocking me.

Me! The one who spent her entire life trying to emulate Nataku in every way I could. Nataku would choose that scholar boy over me. It was an outrage.

I knew there had to be a potential that I was not seeing, something Nataku knew that I did not. I tried to look deeper into the boy and find it, this thing that I lacked. I found it too. It was the total calmness he possessed, the ability to believe and give that belief to others. The ability I lacked.

And to my shame I fell in love with those eyes that instant.

But I fell in love with the man I knew resided beneath that scholar boy exterior. The one who believed in the justice the boy mocked.  It became my mission in life to force the man within out. The only way I could think of to do this was conflict.

We did not fight all the time. No, many times we even got along, but like schoolmates and not the Husband and Wife we were told to be.

Sometimes I found myself becoming too comfortable with the scholar boy. At those times I would lash out. Not in anger at him, though I told myself that was it, but anger at myself for being distracted from my mission. After I lashed out there would be a gulf between us and it saddened me, but I knew I was doing this for Nataku’s sake, for the sake of the justice I believed in so much. The justice I knew he believed in too, if he would allow himself to.

I always would state my superiority, that I was Nataku, even at the times when we were getting along. He thought he let me have my ‘childish’ delusions, but I knew he was stronger. He knew it too.

One day I followed him to the hill of flowers that was his place of solitude, an escape from the difficulties and annoyances of life. Like me. He would go up there to read, commune with nature, and all those scholarly things. It was the one place that I did not disturb him. It wasn’t my place and as foolish as I was I did know my boundaries.

But that day, the moment I woke up I had such a feeling of dread and terror. Something horrible was going to happen, I could feel it in the air. I knew I had to force the scholar boy to become the man I saw, and fast. I wasn’t going to be around for much longer.

So I followed him. I didn’t let him know I was there right away. I watched him for a while; I knew I wasn’t going to get another chance. He was so gentle to the bird and read with such an honest interest that I felt…guilty… yes, that’s what I felt, guilt that I was going to disturb such a perfect scene. The scholar boy wasn’t that bad, I actually liked him. But Nataku had to be awakened. It was the just thing to do.

“Wufei! You call yourself a man,” I taunted as I marched toward him. He didn’t even look up; he simply ignored me and read on in his book. I would not be ignored. “Wufei, why don’t you ever practice fighting, like the others?” I persisted, and I was rewarded as he looked up at me.

“Why do you fight?” he asked.

I was shocked and horrified that he could even ask this. Though we had only been forced together a short time I thought it was obvious. Hadn’t he noticed the real me at all? Or at all those times when I thought we were getting along simply figments of a hopeful imagination?

“For justice!” I finally managed to declare. He closed his book and looked at me as if I were the most foolish person in the universe. And perhaps to him I was.

“Justice?” he scoffed. “You really believe there is such a thing?”

He asked me as if he was talking to a child who still believed in the fairy tales the elders told. “Do you want me to show you,” I challenged as my body fell in to the fighting stance I had known since before I could walk.

He removed his glasses as he stood and I could not read his eyes. “Go ahead,” he offered.

I lunged for him in a way that would have made everyone of my teachers proud, but he dodged. The rain began to pour at the exact moment my fist missed his face and his knee came in contact with my side. I did not expect it. Even though I saw Nataku’s spirit in him I had never seen him study the fighting arts or even witness training. It was foolish of me to think he hadn’t.

The rain poured down harder and harder as we fought. The grass became slick with the downpour, making the footing nearly impossible. I managed to land two punches and one kick through his defenses. It would have been acceptable if he had either gone down or had not landed every attack he threw at me. It ended with a kick aimed at my head. I blocked, but the force of it sent me crashing to the wet ground. I could not summon the strength to return to my feet and continue fighting.

 “How could it be?” I mumbled to myself. “I am the strongest in our clan…” In my heart I knew I would lose, but defeat, no matter from whom, always hurts.

“You think you’re Nataku? You have a lot of nerve calling yourself by that name,” he informed me as I still struggled on the ground. His words struck me in a way that no fist, nor foot, could hurt me. He had the spirit of Nataku. Couldn’t he understand that? I only held the mantel until he could honor it in a way I could never hope to. “There is no justice,” he continued when I thought he could no longer hurt me anymore. “This fight was meaningless.”

How could he say that? I looked up as he returned his glasses to his face and began to walk away from me. I was infuriated that he would dare turn from me, but glad as well. I knew the watery streaks that flowed over my cheeks were not raindrops.

“I know that,” I yelled at his back, praying and knowing that he would not turn and see my shame. “But I have to fight, that’s the way of our people.”

He continued to walk from me, not turning, not acknowledging. He left me there. The rain pelting my back as tears, I will never admit to shedding, trailed down my face.

He was right to do so.

I clenched the mud and grass in my fingers as I thought back to all I had done to him. Every time, every single time, we started to become something more than simply two stubborn children forced into a marriage we did not want, I stuck out at him. I insulted him. I did anything I could think of to drive him away. I was a fool for doing it, but Nataku and justice must be served, no matter the personal consequences.

Still part of me hoped that he didn’t… dislike me, too much.

The rain began to let up and I stumbled home. No one asked what happened to me when I returned home. Maybe they knew, maybe they didn’t care, but they didn’t ask. I entered my room and the first thing I did was throw my books to the floor. He cared about them more than me, more than becoming Nataku. Fine, if he choose the fool’s route in life that was his choice. Nataku’s spirit had not chosen me, but if he would not honor it, I would.

The warning alarms started going off then. We were being attacked by the honor-less Federation. I bit on my finger knowing my father would be upset if I did anything, but maybe…

I ran for the door and toward the berth with the mobile suits. I knew how to pilot of course, everyone over the age of ten did. I suited up and ran for the prototype Leo (?). The bald man who had created its mate, a stronger suit made of gundanium, yelled at me that a woman couldn’t handle such a suit.

My eyes narrowed and I informed him, “Then I give up being a woman. I am Nataku,” and entered the suit.

The fight began easily enough, until I saw the flowers. They were dying. The pretty flowers that the scholar boy would sit and read amongst. I couldn’t let them die.

Commanding the suit into space I could almost hear the scholar boy berating me about my lack of strength.  Just the thought of him thinking me weak spurred me faster into space, into a battle I knew I could not win. “Come and get me,” I intoned, “I am justice.” The mobile suits charged at me with a strength that was beautiful. I fought with all my might, but I was, and never will be, Nataku’s chosen.

I was ready for death, an honorable thing I had earned, when it happened. The suit of gundanium appeared and saved me. It was easy to know who was the pilot. And I felt a smile cross my blood spattered face. He yelled at me, that I should know my place. It made me laugh. I had always known my place, to be the good, supportive wife. And I had. He was the one just learning his place.

I never really understood what happened. Apparently, one of the enemy’s pilots decided taking me with him in death was a good idea. Kamikaze, how fitting. The explosion filled my vision and I thought death was claiming me as her own. The heat seared at me through the insulation of the suit I wore, then there was a chill, and I opened my eyes as the scholar boy’s suit caught me.

“Hang on, Meilan,” he called, and for a second I could imagine worry in his tone.

“I…I’m Nataku,” I managed to cough, resisting the urge to remove my helmet so I could wipe the blood away.

“You’re Nataku,” he humored me. “I won’t call you Meilan any more.”

I smiled. Maybe he didn’t dislike me. “You could praise me,” I half-teased. “I protected that field of flowers you like…”

“Idiot,” he said, but his heart wasn’t behind the word.

I closed my eyes and asked, “Please take me to that field…”

When I finally managed to reopen them, he was carrying me. The flowers were beautiful and unharmed, so unlike myself. And they would go on living, again, unlike myself. He set me down, with a gentleness I had not expected, and sat beside me. I had finally woken Nataku in him, but I wouldn’t be around to see him grow as I wished. There was very little left to ask, except…

“I... was strong, wasn't I? You weren't ashamed of me as your wife, were you?” I asked as the vision of the beautiful flowers began to fade.

“Yeah, you’re strong, stronger than anyone,” he said, and I wondered if he was still humoring me, but it was beautiful to hear.

“No,” I admitted as my body became weak and fell backwards. “You’re stronger,” my voice became a mere whisper that I only pray he heard. “You’re Nataku.”

Then I slipped away and wait for him, with Nataku, in a place of warriors.

I wait for my husband.

Wufei.