Goodbye LJ...

[windandwater]

This is just to make it official for those who don't know, but I'm leaving LJ completely. For the rest of this week at least. Tomorrow is the Bar Exam and it runs for three days, so don't expect to see me about at all until Thursday night. Or even until the weekend since I plan on spending Thursday after the Bar drunk and crying. No online time for me at all. *whines* It will be hard, but I know I can do it.

So, because I'm a total h0r like that, I am declaring this to be a spam post. Go ahead. Run wild! Give me fics, give me links, give me pics, just babble to your heart's content and rape my inbox so I have something to see when I finally DO come back to the wonderful world of LJ. I don't even care if you write me a drabble and post it one word at a time. XD;

Though, I've tried to make a spam post before and it failed a bit miserably, so I don't have very high expectations this time around. Feel free to prove me wrong though!

♥

Comments

I Will Harm None

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

"I Will Harm None" by Mikkeneko

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Yea, although I walk through the valley of Gundam Wing, I remain untouched by lawsuits, for I own nothing and lay claim to nothing. So mote it be.

Warnings: romance-free, angst

Re: I Will Harm None

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

"I want to be a doctor!"

said the little girl, and her mother thinks she knows why. Little Sally is not quite five years old, but she is old enough to remember fleeting impressions of a father now gone: the flap of a long white lab coat, the shining metal glint of a stethoscope hanging around his neck. The crinkles around his warm, smiling, kindly eyes.

So: "When I grow up, I want to be a doctor," says Sally, and her mother is not surprised.

But she says only, "We'll see." After all, things have not been easy since her husband's death. They have already had to cancel Sally's piano lessons, and are currently in the middle of negotiations to sell the house. They have another one waiting for them in Hong Kong, in a district with lower rents and public schooling.

Still, she says none of this to her daughter. She only musters a smile, and pats her lap, and the little girl willingly crawls up into her embrace.

Re: I Will Harm None

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

~~~


I want to become a doctor:

is what it says on Sally's fourth-grade writing assignment. The teacher looks from the paper into the girl's shining, eager eyes, and smiles. "So, a doctor?" he says kindly. "That's a very admirable goal. Not many people your age have any real idea about what they want to do when they grow up. Are you sure?"

"Uh-huh!" Sally nods vigorously, her braids bouncing about her shoulders. Her mother, listening, squeezes her hand encouragingly. "I want to fight off cancer and lookemia and all sorts of diseases. I want to save a thousand patients' lives. I'm going to be the best doctor ever!"

"I believe you!" The teacher chuckles, humoring her, then sobers. "Now, Sally, if you want to be a doctor, you're going to have to study hard. You know that?"

Sally gulped, and steals a glance up at her mother. "I do study hard!" she says.

"Yes, your grades are very good," the teacher soothes, meeting the mother's eyes reassuringly. "But in order to be a doctor, they can't just be good. They have to be better than good, hey have to be the best. You have to learn everything there is to know about biology, anatomy, chemistry, and mathematics... and that's just to begin with."

The little girl looks daunted for a moment, but then her chin firms. "Then I'll learn it all," she says. The teacher nods in approval.

"Still, Sally, it takes a lot of very, very hard work, and a long, long time to be a doctor," her mother warns. "You have to go through high school, and undergraduate college, before you can even start the specialized training it takes. Can you really stick with it that long?"

"I will," Sally insists heatedly. "You just watch me."

Re: I Will Harm None

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

The conference ends, all in good order, and Sally walks beside her mother to the parking lot. For the first time, she seems a little subdued.

At last, her mother asks her gently, "What's wrong?"

Sally looks up at her mother, blue eyes pale and clear. "Mommy," she says, using the childish name for the first time in a long time, "do you really think I can do it? All that hard work?"

Looking down into the anxious, determined face, Sally's mother has to put aside her doubts. "Sally, darling," she says. "I think that if you truly put your mind to it, and give it all your heart and soul, you can do anything you choose to."

A grin breaks out on the little girl's face, and she nods again, and her braids go bouncing.


~~~


Give it her heart and soul; this is just what Sally does. By the age of eleven, she is taking high school science courses. By the time she is thirteen she has learned everything the public schools have to teach her, and is ready for the advanced college classes. Too soon; her mother's heart quails, for just as she feared, her English and voice lessons aren't bringing in enough money to pay for the classes.

"Don't worry," Sally says one evening. "We'll find a way. I'll take those classes and become a doctor, no matter what, and we won't have to worry about money ever again."

Re: I Will Harm None

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

The week before her fourteenth birthday she finds a way; the local UESN base offers subsidies for medical students who enroll in their programs. There is, of course, an age requirement; but it is waived pending Sally's test scores.

Her mother is brought in to sign the forms of consent that allow a minor to enlist in what is, technically, a branch of the armed forces. For the first time, she begins to feel qualms.

"Sally, dear," she says, "is this really necessary? There are other programs, that don't have the other duty requirements..."

Sally shakes her head, and shrugs her thin shoulders under the oversized uniform jacket. "Even the cheapest one still takes more of an enrollment fee than we can afford," she says. "And I don't want the cheapest one. I want the best one, and the UESN has it. Tannery Base is the biggest and most advanced medical reserch facility on this side of the continent, remember? Don't worry so much, Mother. It's only in name."

But she does worry.


~~~


For three years Sally excels in the program. She is not even the youngest of the students, for many of the career military families put their children into the program early, but she has the most drive by far. The others are there because their parents make them, or because they want to enter a lucrative career, either in the armed forces or in the medical branch. But Sally is there because she has a dream.

She wants to be a doctor. The best doctor ever.

Her mother attends her graduation, at age seventeen. Sally Po receives an honorary rank, in recognition of her stellar academic achievements. It gives her chills in her chest, but she says nothing; she smiles and takes pictures with a battered old camera and goes to the reception with the uniformed and decorated fathers and mothers.

Sally laughs at the rank. "It doesn't mean anything," she says, "It only matters if I'm going on in the military branch, and I'm not. I'm not a soldier and I never planned to be. I want to heal people, not kill them."

"I know, darling," is all her mother can say.

Re: I Will Harm None

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

~~~


A week after the graduation ceremony, a letter arrives at the Po household. Lieutenant Sally Po, JG, has been selected as one of a handful out of thousands of medical interns to serve on a top-rank classified project internal to the UESN. She has proven her stellar worth, in terms of intelligence and loyalty, to be chosen for this project.

Sally is excited. This is, after all, a great honor. But more importantly, this is the first time that she will get to be her dream, to live and act and do the things that she has always longed to do.

"This is my big chance," she tells her mother. "They have confidence in me. I plan to exceed all their expectations. I don't yet know what the details are of what we'll be working on -- they're classified -- but they have some of their top doctors working on it and we'll be right with them. I've hardly had a chance to meet these people before, and now I'll be working with them. It's like a dream come true."

"But you'll be away from home so long," her mother frets. She doesn't like to hear herself fret, but lately it is becoming harder and harder to stop herself. "You'll be stuck in the middle of that base doing goodness knows what, for weeks on end. I'll hardly ever hear from you at all."

"Mother!" She tosses her head and laughs, and her hair flies about her face. "You'll get along fine without me. And I'm not worried at all! This is what I've always wanted, you know," she adds.

Her mother doesn't answer. Maybe she can't.

She can only watch as her daughter -- her only daughter, her brave, beautiful, brilliant child -- pulls on the white lab coat, and lets her hand run down the front as if in a caress. The expression on her daughter's face is enraptured.

"I want to be a doctor," she says softly.

"I know, dear." That's all her mother can say. And she watches her pick up the military-issue bag and walk out the door, and all she can feel in her heart is cold.

Re: I Will Harm None

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

~~~


The house is very quiet after Sally leaves. Maybe it shouldn't be; after all, she was hardly at home at all any more, between classes and ceremonies and nights spent out with her peers. This is a deeper silence, a foreboding one.

It's a silence that grows as the days and then weeks pass by with no word from her daughter, or from the base commander, or from anyone about what is happening. She gives her English lessons, and her singing lessons, and reads the paper, saving the crosswords for last. And she watches the news.

Two weeks after her daughter disappears, there's a blurb on the early morning news about an incident that occurred at the Tannery UESN armed forces base. The report is very brief, and very hazy on the details. All the news anchorman can report is that it was yet unknown whether the disaster was accidental in nature, or some form of bioterrorism, and that although hazardous materials were released into the environment, containment was put in place quickly and that there were no civilian casualties.

The report goes on and advises citizens to stay inside for the day, and to report any suspicious strangers immediately.

There is no further mention of the incident, not in the evening news, nor in the newspapers the next day. It is all hushed up so quickly, and so effectively, that she wonders if it was a mistake that it was ever in the news at all.

One week later her daughter comes home. Her lab coat has been laundered, but still bears faint stains.

She comes in, and puts down her military-issue bag, and takes off her coat. The light has gone from her pale blue eyes, leaving them slate-gray and haunted. Her mother sits on the couch, and waits, and Sally comes over and sits beside her, and finally puts her red-gold head on her mother's shoulder.

She strokes the twists of hair falling down her arm, and says nothing. She knows her daughter won't be allowed to tell her. She knows her daughter isn't free. So she doesn't ask.

Finally, Sally breaks the silence. "I don't want to be a doctor any more," she whispers.

Her mother puts an arm around her gently, offering what comfort she can. Sally slides off her shoulder, and lays her head in her lap. And cries.