Once, as my heart remember,
All the stars were fallen embers.
Once, when night seemed forever
I was with you. --- Enya, "Falling Embers"

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Step one. Step one. One foot in front of the other. Crunch. Crunch on the dead leaves that tumbled like dice. Chance. Chance. Crunch. Crunch on the thinning, dying grass that she would tell the ground keepers about. Swish. Swish of one leg brushing against another. Cotton legging touching cotton legging on the inside of her thigh.

Stop. Exhale.

The wind pierced through any amount of clothing she could wear. It burned her eyes and cheeks. The cold dried her lips and seemed to freeze her tongue every time she tried to lick her lips to keep them from bleeding.

Slow exhale. She pretended that she smoking an invisible cigarette and the steam that billowed from her mouth was a sophisticated source of cancer. She reached a hand up to push through her man made cloud and let her damp breath condense on her fingers.

"My lady."

Turn. Pivot on the heel, like the soldier she was. Still is.

"So nice of you to be here."

She smiled at the speaker, vaguely aware of the irony of being called lady.

"You've grown up nicely, Relena."

The girl - no, she was a woman– nodded her head once, not really in a an agreement but more of a short and shallow bow. How formal. How aristocratic.

How ironic that the girl of the bluest blood would fight to end aristocracy. Equality for all. Everyone's equal. So funny that Relena was quite a spoiled child. Not spoiled. Pampered, but she didn't act like a spoiled child any more.

Inhale. Exhale. She closed her eyes to burning, icy wind before her eyes would get watery. She hated to think that the others might think she was crying.

The two women walked together, hands in their coat pockets, leaning against the wind to keep their balance. They did not have much in common but with their long hair whipping around their faces, they might have been cousins or even sisters. Relena had grown more than anyone expected and her face soon lost its baby fat and roundness and became more edgy and sharp.

Une licked her lips again and, frustrated, fought to keep her hair out of her mouth and from sticking to her already chapping lips. She thought about how old she suddenly felt. Little Miss Innocent Princess had changed into a reasonable adult.

The girl's voice had lost their day dream feeling. She lost her dreaming eyes, which were no longer wide eyed and innocent but accepting and heavy lidded.

Une felt like a very old maid. Oh yes, she had her practical daughter, Marimia, but even she was growing up. Perhaps a little too much for her adoptive mother's taste but that was to be expected.

One step. Two step. One foot in front of the other. Heel, toe. Heel, toe.

In each step, the distance between her toe and the heel of the forward foot was as big as her foot. She had read about that. Soldiers were always trained to break that habit, to make in perfect step. All steps must be alike. Une never could get into that habit.

"Hello, ladies," said a soft voice.

Relena said, "Good afternoon, Trowa."

Stop. Tuck hair behind the ear. Lick lips. Sigh and let the wind dissolve the cloud that issued from her lungs. The clouds came from the others noses and mouth and were also swept away by the wind.

Except one. Heero.

Une thought this was very odd but she was hardly surprised. She had touch the man's hand once before. It was so cold that she was afraid that she would bleed. He probably could control his body temperature and wanted to converse energy or something like that. Heero had always been one of a kind.

She clenched her own hands inside her coat pockets. They felt sticky and warm. She wanted to remind herself she wasn't quite the soldier hero was. She did what she did out of order and love for Treize, not because she was trained to. Training was only something to happen along the way. Still, her clammy hands reminded her of her humanity.

The wind whipped at everyone. Most of the people let out a small squeak or gasp of surprise as the icy air tried to throw them off their feet and pull their clothes off and freeze them to death.

Une shrugged up her shoulders and flipped up the collar of her coat, an old style of trench coat that she had been fond of since she was younger and still reading daring novels of mystery and private detectives.

She felt so old as she thought about that.

She looked at the two nearby graves and felt something long quelled swell up inside her. Regret? Loneliness? Or just pain? Perhaps shame.

"I think everyone's here," someone said. Une didn't know who.

She looked at the rectangular hole in the ground. She was momentarily fascinated by the cutaway view of the earth. There were some muddied and now frostbitten roots and earthworms. There were air pockets and the straight line that showed where the soil ended and the clay began.

She vaguely heard talking but she didn't really want to hear it.

"We have gathered here today . . ."

Priests had never worked for her. Religion never worked for her. Reality had. Sometimes, it was a muddled and fantasized reality, especially under the seducing words of Treize, but a reality nonetheless.

She wanted to walk over Treize's grave but knew that would be rude. She still wanted to be closer to him, even if he was now just a memory and a corpse.

How many days and nights had she pretended that Mariemia was her real daughter simply because that would mean Treize had loved and had touched her in such a way to result in such a child. And that was why it so much harder when the rebellious and growing up Mariemia would scream, "You aren't my mother!"

She hated that Barton woman.

Quatre was speaking. He was so quiet that the wind swallowed and gulped down his words. She didn't want to spend the effort to catch them.

Trieze had loved her, in one form or another. So many times she'd seen his eyes dance over her body, even in that hideously unflattering uniform, and how he had spoke just a touch softer to her than most people. Or was that too just a fantasy?

Relena was saying something. Always making speeches, but at least she'd kept it short.

Une looked at Millardo and Noin who were clenching and unclenching their entwined hands. Comforting each other. How sickening sweet.

Une turned away and to the center of all this sad attention. She couldn't see him but she knew who he was. She'd seen him at the viewing.

Duo didn't really look like himself. The mortician had put too much makeup on his face and it made him appear to be a sleeping goth kid, not the vibrant, cheerful boy that he had been.

Everyone here had been "part of the gang." These were the people who really saved the world. All she did was help try to stop them. Oh, the wonder of 20/20 hindsight.

She wasn't sure the details of how it happened because she felt that if she asked, it would be probing the wound. She heard something of how it wasn't the fire but the smoke that had gotten to him. Everyone was, at first, relieved that they found his body in time. The autopsy was a different story when they found out the chemicals in that smoke left his mouth and lungs black, dry, and peeling. She didn't know what could have caused that.

She thought back to some of the other times she'd seen Duo. He worked on and off with the Preventers but he was a field agent while she had a 24/7 office job. She was chained to her desk and hardly left the room to talk to anyone. Instead, she had always phoned them with orders. There was no time to hear about his life or his jokes.

She felt empty. The biting wind didn't help.

HQ felt a bit hollow when he wasn't there. People took themselves too seriously, including herself. Duo made them know that they did this job because they loved it. When he had gone on that long expedition to Mars, she felt the overhanging gloom of depression among her coworkers.

Heero was standing so still while he stared at the coffin, like a statue.

She saw Relena steal a glance at him. Une knew why. Here was this beautiful and quite eligible high official who was willing to do anything for him but this soldier couldn't even notice as he was wrapped up in his now dead friend. Relena would be hurting from both loss and rejection.

The priest was talking in Latin. With all of her training and specialized education, she had taken a course in Latin but she never could understand by ear; only by reading.

Duo had had a very interesting conversation with her once. It had been after the big celebration for the 5 pilots who had saved Earth from the terrible clutches of the Barton Foundation. It was stuffy and hot in the big ballroom. Too claustrophobic. And most of all, it was utterly dull.

She had wondered out onto the balcony and enjoyed the fresh breeze.

"Is the red-head baby bitch yours now?"

She had turned around and seen Duo and admitted that the "little bitch" was hers.

Duo, who had never really warmed up to her before, had just quietly talked to her, not as a swaggering 16-year-old savior but a young man who had just now remembered his manners.

It was amazing that someone could ask another person to sleep with them with such manners. Only Treize and Duo could have pulled it off.

She had refused of course. She felt almost insulted at the time that someone would think she would sleep with a teenage boy who had his head inflated by heroism. But she understood it later as she listen to this boy quietly, shyly ask for love and time in bed. It was the only way he understood love. If you love someone, as friend or life mate, you made them feel good. You did it by giving them presents, by making them laugh, by kissing, by lovemaking, by killing evil, by freeing people, by helping, and by never dying.

Maybe he just couldn't live up to everything.

The funeral was over. It was supposed to be a small ceremony to minimize the pain.

While everyone else walked away, she looked over her shoulder and saw Heero. He wasn't doing anything. He just stood there, staring at the hole, as if it would give him answers to everything unasked.

She hesitated. She wanted to walk over and give him some comfort. But what would happen? Realistically, she knew that Heero would push her away. Silence her. Ignore her. Insult her. Rebuke her.

While everyone silently crossed the cemetery to their warm yet uncomforting cars, Une went back to the grave.

"Heero?"

He looked at her. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked pale.

She did not reach over to him. It would show that she could see his weakness and that would just rub it in.

"I can relate."

Heero's eyes darted in the direction of Treize's grave. He licked his chapped lips and said hoarsely, "Everyone can relate. We all lose something eventually. Is his daughter any comfort to you? Does she remind you of him?"

He was starting to lash out. He wanted to hurt her.

Une shook her head. "She's salt in the wound, sometimes."

"Then why did you adopt her?"

"Because that's what he would have wanted."

Heero shook his head. "I don't know what Duo would have wanted."

Une was going to say that Duo wouldn't have wanted Heero to dwell on the past and on the losses, but he probably heard it a hundred times already.

"He would have wanted . . ."

"You don't know what he wanted!' Heero snapped. "No one knows what they want! You don't, I don't, and no one does! How can we know what anyone else wants, especially when we can't ask them? For all you know, Treize could have wanted that little abomination dead!"

Une clenched her fist. She wanted to slap him, but she reminded herself that he didn't really mean what he said.

"What will you do, Yuy?"

He looked her straight in the eye. It was then she noticed how awful he looked. He was deathly pale. His eyes were bruised from exhaustion and insomnia. His eyes had once been eerily piercing and now they were water and unfocused. He looked like hell. He looked like he had seen Hell.

"I don't know what to do."

"You are used to being told what to do."

"Yes."

"Then it's about time you learned for yourself. The rest of us already have."

She left him alone because she wanted to rub it in. She couldn't do anything else for him.

When she reached her car, she sat in the driver's seat for a few minutes, staring the bare trees as they waved their wiry tendrils.

"I know that I did love you, Duo."

And she said her last good bye to him.