Chapter 1
The jet landed on a large, flat piece of concrete, lying among other piles of ruble. "Just go out, look around and try to get back here before dark. I want to get out of here as soon as possible so we can go and check the progress on our Gundams."
Duo looked around him at the scattered debris "Who's going to go what way?" He asked "We'd get further if we split up, this colony is relatively large in comparison to the others."
Heero sighed again, "I'll go that way, you go the that way. Trowa, you head south, Wufei, you can try west. Quatre, you come with me, we've got the most ground to cover anyways."
"Yes drill sergeant." Wufei gave him a mock salute and walked off. Duo and Trowa also departed heading their separate ways. Heero watched them all walk off before turning to Quatre and raising and eyebrow at him "Are you ready?" He asked
Quatre nodded "Heero, why did you want me to go with you instead of with Trowa or Duo?"
Heero wouldn't meet his curious gaze "You have a habit of going into hysterics when you meet death face to face. I'm going to make sure that you don't stop searching after the first dead body. You're going to see more today then you have on every other mission we've been on combined. This was the most populated colony by far and the numbers of the dead are bound to be overwhelming. If' OZ wanted to cure the overpopulation problem, they knew right where to begin." He walked over to a partly demolished apartment building "We might as well start in here." He muttered, walking inside.
Quatre's eyes widened at the moment he saw the bodies thrown all over the place. It was as if the human life held no more value then a pair of discarded socks. "It's so cold in here." He murmured "Everything is just so cold in here. It's so quiet."
Heero walked behind him, keeping an eye out for any signs of life, but mostly watching over the younger boy. It was close to 80 degrees out, the bombing had left behind fires that threw soot and ash into the atmosphere, locking in the heat from the fires and the artificial lights that still kept the daylight and nighttime coming and going on the world of the dead. He watched Quatre kneel down by another lifeless figure, and as he touched the dead man's hand, he began shivering from the feeling only he could feel.
"Quatre, snap out of it." Heero said calmly, "It's okay, they can't feel anything now."
Quatre sat on the floor wavering back and forth on his heels "So cold." He whispered, teeth chattering "So very cold."
Heero helped him up, nothing the icy feel of his skin. Slowly, he took him outside into the warm light and stood over him, waiting for him to return to the world that every other living soul was forced to live in.
After falling to the ground after Heero let him drop, Quatre's breathing remained heavy but the color was going back into his pale flesh and his skin wasn't quite as cold as it had been.
"Are you okay?" Heero asked him
Quatre shook his head "I just can't bring myself to handle it. Death just leaves behind emptyness and it's so cold and dark without human life to put some color into it. Everytime this happens, I just see the darkness and it holds onto me and won't let me go." He looked up at Heero, his eyes sorrowful "I'm sorry, I just don't know how to stop this."
"Let's just keep moving." Heero said "You'll get use to it after awhile. It just takes some time."
...
Trowa nudged aside anther dead body, searching for any sign of life. But, there wasn't any, he could feel it. He walked out of the small home and wandered down the street. Death, it was so dark, so final. Death had to be avenged though, he had found that out from experience, without it, Death had no purpose and it would just come again to take the lives of more innocents. Thousands of people had died at the hands of a powerful government and unless the "others" who were behind that system were killed in the same way, those thousands of voices would remain calling out to the world of the physically living. He looked down the road at the remaining home and for a moment debated just leaving it and going back to the jet, as it was now, he was going to be late enough. Besides, it didn't seem like anything was different there then it was every other place he had been in before that. He turned to look back at the direction the jet was in and then looked forwards again, with a sigh, he began walking towards the building.
The door lay splintered on the ground, broken into three jagged pieces. He pushed aside a slab of concrete and let his eyes adjust to the musty darkness. It was another dead family. There was the father, blood surrounding him and his head buried under fallen slabs of rock and other debris. Two children, both young boys, were sprawled out on the floor, one under the now shattered coach, the other half buried under a fallen cabinet.
He looked around again, where was the mother? OZ had set a strict curfew on when all families should be in their homes. Had she abandoned her own flesh and blood to save her own life? Death could make people go crazy. He had seen it before, when someone saw the light of hope in front of them, they would try to overcome any obstacle to get to that glimmer of true light. "Please help me." He heard a soft feminine voice "Sir, I need your help."
"Where are you?" Trowa asked, trying to peer through the darkness
He felt a tug on his pants "I'm right here." She whispered again.
He knelt down beside her, took out his canteen and offered her some water, she sipped a little but then used her little bit of life to move into the light.
Her silvery-white hair shimmered and her eyes were the color of pure gold. Her dress was torn and there was blood smeared on her peaches-and-cream complexion. He could see that she was young, too young to have children the age hers were. It was all because of the loss of age and time. She couldn't be much more then twenty at the very most. She had probably been married off at sixteen and had her children soon after marriage. Those boys looked to be about three or four years old and the man, judging from the beginnings of the wrinkles around his eyes and the flecks of gray through his brown hair, he had to have been in his early forties. But through all of that, he also noticed that life was leaving her body by every passing second. She had lost too much blood to last until he could get her to a hospital. "Lady, I'm afraid you're dying." He told her, figuring that she would rather hear the truth and say what she wanted to before she died.
"I know that." She replied in her soft voice "I just want you to do one thing for me. I want you to find my baby and save her, she's such an extraordinary child."
"Where is your baby?" He asked, trying to help her through the most difficult moments in any mortal's life.
"She's with her grandparents, they're on the other side of the colony, further away from the explosions, I thought she would be safer there." She gestured weekly towards the north. "Her name is Satunia Jane. Just please help her, I just know that she is alive. If she was gone, I wouldn't still be here." She reached up and grasped his hand, "Will you move my inside next to my husband after I'm gone?" She asked, Trowa nodded and smiled at her. She smiled back at her and then took one last gasp before the life left her body, all at once.
Trowa moved her body in where she had asked him to put it before leaving the house. He didn't have the time to look for a baby right now, there were areas left that he still needed to look through. If that one woman was able to make it as long as she did, then there had to be others. He glanced back to where the family lay together at the very end "I'm sorry but I just don't have the time right now. If I can, I'll go looking later but trying to find that child would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. There are just too many people here to find the body. I'll try to go looking later though, if it will bring you some peace." There was no reply of coarse, just the empty silence that the shadow of death had left behind.
...
Heero and Quatre exited another house and walked down to the next. Quatre watched Heero carefully, he didn't seem to hold any compassion for the deceased. He didn't seem to care about anything; that was why everyone called him the perfect soldier. He did every mission he was given in silence, speaking only when it was absolutely necessary. His every movement was mechanical, not even seeming to be human. "Heero, don't you care?" He cried out after another moment lost in his thoughts "Doesn't this do anything to you at all?"
Heero stopped and turned around "Quatre, if I let everything get to me, the way it gets you, then all I would do is cause myself to become weak, unable to avenge these people and destroy the people behind these pointless actions. We were all chosen for a reason, to bring every part of human life into our battles. I'm the monotone follower, Duo brings in the happiness and laughter, Trowa is thoughtfulness, Wufei is hate, hurt, and anger rolled together, and you're the sentimental sensitivity. I'm not allowed to feel, that's your job, you keep the rest of us in check on our feelings although each one of us has to block out certain ones, sadly enough, for you, that feeling happens to be pain." He turned again and walked again "This might be the first colony they've managed to wipe out completely."
"Just hold on to some hope." Quatre urged "There has to be someone."
"See what I mean." Heero put in "You're idealistic and it will destroy you in the end. Stop lying to yourself right now, that's the worst thing you could do to yourself in these times."
Quatre fell silent as they approached the door but then spoke up once again "It's getting warmer now." He remarked
Heero just looked at him, the temperature hadn't changed at all. "It's all in your head." He replied "Nothing is changing around here."
"But it is." Quatre protested "I can feel it."
Heero sighed and kept walking, the house, unlike most of the others, was still standing. He kicked down the door and let the light stream into the dim room. Quatre wiped the sweat from his brow and followed him inside. The first floor had three rooms, a room with a coach, chair, and a table. On the other end, there was a brick fireplace with some pictures lying on the floor in front of it. Quatre picked one up and took off the pieces of broken glass. It was a photo of two elderly people, the man standing behind the woman, trying to look strong but his eyes betrayed his love for the woman who sat before him. Quatre smiled and set the frame back on the fireplace and picked up another. This one was a picture of a large extended family, the same two elderly people were sitting in the center, but this time, other people gathered around them. There was a very young woman and a middle-aged man standing behind them with a tiny baby in the woman's arms. On either side of them, stood two young boys, they didn't seem to be older then three. Quatre touched the woman's face and moved the glass away from her. She truly was beautiful to him. As the moments passed and he kept gazing at her, he slowly felt something in him fade away and he realized that she was gone. The carrier of death had stolen the angel away from him; the light that had been contained within the photo no longer was there, the picture went dark, just like all the others. "She left me." He heard himself whisper "Just like my mother did."
Heero peered into the three rooms on the second floor, there were two bedrooms, one belonging to an older couple, probably the same ones in the photos. The other seemed like it had been empty for some time. There was a crib set up in a corner and a few pictures lying on the floor but there was a layer of dust covering everything. He swiped his index finger through it once and looked at it more closely. He was right, the dust was from a lack of use, not from crumbling rocks and cement. He turned and walked back downstairs where Quatre was still staring at the same photo he had been looking at when Heero had gone upstairs. "Are you done down here?" He asked softly, making Quatre jump and turn around quickly.
"There really aren't any survivors, are there?" He asked, tears in his eyes
Heero shrugged "I told you I highly doubted it." He walked towards a set of stairs at the end of the hallway "Let's check down in the basement, if they were smart, they would have stayed in there."
He took a candle from a drawer and lit it before descending into the depth. After a moment and another longing look at the young woman in the photograph, Quatre rushed after him. Under the stairs, huddled in a corner, was the elderly couple they had seen in photos, their eyes opened for eternity. Heero moved the lids down and stepped back "Let's go." He said "There isn't anyone here we can save." He began to walk towards the stairs again but Quatre paused
"Did you hear that?" He asked, looking around him at the shadows
"Quatre, you're letting your mind play tricks on you again." Heero answered, pausing but not stopping completely.
Quatre grabbed the candle from him and began to walk around "No, I'm positive that I just heard something crying over here." Heero stood on the bottom step for another moment before following the younger boy. Remarkably enough, he too began to hear a soft wailing as they moved closer and closer to the rock wood box. Quatre set the candle down on the floor and reached into the dark area between the box and the wall.
Heero peered over his shoulder, his curiosity getting the best of him "What is it?" He asked
Quatre brought something out from the darkness. "It's a baby!" He replied, the candlelight dancing in his sapphire blue eyes "and it's alive!"
The child, after looking at the two of them curiously, scrunched up it's nose and began to wail again, more loudly then before. "Do something to shut it up." Heero commanded, covering his ears
Quatre cuddled it up to his chest and bounced it a little. Eventually the baby's cries subsided and died out completely. "Is it a boy or a girl?" Heero asked
Quatre checked quickly "Girl." He replied smiling broadly "Isn't she cute?"
Heero shrugged "Just leave her here. If this is our sole survivor, this race is better off dead. We can't raise a baby and we don't know anyone who could for us." Quatre opened his mouth to protest but Heero cut him off "Don't try to put up a fight. You're the baby of your family and the rest of us were the only children in ours. No one has any of the experience necessary to raise a baby." He sighed and turned away "Just leave her where we found her and forget about it."
"No." Quatre said standing up, still holding her "I'll take care of her."
"What are you going to do when Sandrock is repaired?" Heero asked "You can't take a baby in a Gundam."
"Then it looks like I'm going to have to give up fighting." Quatre replied "It's a sacrifice I'll have to make."
"Why is it so important that this one kid lives?" Heero demanded "I just don't get it."
Quatre looked down at her and smiled softly again "I just feel something special about her. There is something about her that is rather strange but it's not in an evil way and I feel the need to protect that energy."
"I still say you leave her here." Heero tried to persuade him one last time
Quatre looked him in the eye and took a deep breath "Heero, for once in my life, I don't give a damn about what you think."
His eyes widened "I think that's the first time I ever heard you cuss." He noticed and then sighed "Keep it if you want to then. I don't care, it's your problem now." He left the candle with the boy and his new adopted daughter.
Quatre hunted around for awhile until he discovered a box of bottles and cloth diapers. "At least you're set for a little while." He said to her. The baby now had her eyes closed and was sleeping soundly in his arms. He stood up after setting her in the box, surrounded by the extra diapers for some padding. "Now I can understand why parent are so overprotective of their children." He spoke to the sleeping infant again "I don't exactly know why I'm even doing this. I've never felt an intuition like that before. You must be one special little girl."
"Quatre." Heero called "Are you coming or not?"
He began to walk towards the stairs, picking up various pieces of baby supplies every few steps or so.
When he reached the stairs, he hesitated and looked back at the older couple "Please forgive me." He whispered before taking the woman's cream colored pendent from around her neck "I know this is disrespecting you but she's going to know as much about her origin as I can offer her."
He picked up the box again and walked up the stairs. Heero was standing in the doorway holding a small quilt in his arms. He handed it to Quatre without changing expression "That's all the help I'm going to be giving her." He said "Don't ask me for anything else." He turned and walked away, leaving Quatre to follow.
Quatre began the walk back to the shuttle, cooing to the still sleeping baby as they walked. "You know, I'm really glad I found you." Quatre spoke to her softly "I doubt that with the life I've lived that I'll ever be able to settle down, get married, and have children of my own. I'm just glad that I'm going to be able to raise a baby, even if you aren't mine by blood."
"Stop talking to it as if it can understand you." Heero said stopping and looking back "It's not like it can talk back or anything."
The baby opened her eyes and began to fuss. Her eyes searched around and her tiny mouth moved looking for something to suck on, searching for food.
Quatre took ahold of the string he had tied to the box and after taking out a bottle and the baby, slung it over his shoulder and paused long enough to feed her.
She drained the milk from the bottle rather quickly, gave a soft burp and began to gurgle happily, grabbing one of Quatre's fingers and waving it around wildly while blowing spit bubbles and staring wide eyed at all of her surroundings. It was official, Quatre was hooked on the light-eyed little child.
It was dusk by the time he made it back. Heero was already there, sitting under the shuttle with a bunch of tools by his side. Duo and Wufei were sitting on one of the wings and by the looks on their faces, it was obvious they hadn't had any luck whatsoever. "Hey Quatre!" Duo called when he saw him approaching "Whatcha got in the box?"
"It's a baby." He called back
"Boy or girl?" Wufei asked, squinting over at them, as if he could actually see from the distance.
"She's a girl." Quatre replied for the second time that day
Wufei sighed disappointedly "the world doesn't need any more woman."
Quatre waited until he was sitting up with them before taking her out of the box and rocking her in his arms again. "She's kind of cute!" Duo exclaimed, holding out a finger for her to grab.
Wufei didn't say anything else for a moment and then asked "What's her name?"
"I've been trying to think of one." Quatre said "I've never been really good with that kind of thing though. For a little while I was thinking about naming her after my mother but I didn't feel that was appropriate being that there is no blood connection between the two of them. All the other names I've thought up don't seem to fit her at all and they all sound stupid to me. I was hoping that you guys would be able to help me out a little on this one."
Duo snapped his fingers "I know! Call her Bubba." He grinned as she stuck his finger in her mouth "I've always dreamed of having a kid named Bubba."
"That really figures." Heero said from under the plane "You're not stable enough to come up with anything more practical."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Duo demanded, taking his finger away from the baby and moving to where he could look at the Japanese pilot.
Heero stood up and dusted off his hands "Exactly what I said, you aren't ready for children, you're a wild person yourself and a baby that age needs stability which you aren't capable of offering right now."
"Oh." Duo sighed and moved back, giving the girl his finger again.
"I don't think so anyways." Quatre put in quickly "She doesn't really look or act like a Bubba from what I've seen."
"Call her Nataku….after my deceased wife." Wufei suggested monotone "It's a sensible name and hopefully she'll learn her place in society faster then the first Nataku did."
"No!" The two of them exclaimed in unison "Let her soul rest in peace." Quatre tried to persuade him "Don't try to resurrect her now." Wufei sighed, but let the idea fall.
They sat thinking for a few more minutes before Duo came up with his next brilliant idea "Call her Duo Jr." He exclaimed, jumping up and snapping his fingers "After the God of Death and the greatest gundam pilot that ever lived."
"Um, Duo." Quatre put in "If you've forgotten already, she's a baby girl. You're a guy, it doesn't seem to fit right."
"So what?" Duo asked shrugging "Call her Duet." He leaned against the wall of the shuttle with a satisfied look on his face
"I don't think so." Quatre said, trying to be nice "She doesn't look a thing like you and I don't like the idea of naming her after anyone else, dead or alive. I want her name to be unique and fit her as an individual."
"Oh well." Duo replied "It's her loss."
"Why don't you call her Satan?" Heero commented "All she is going to be to us is a hindrance and a devil child."
Bubba/ Nataku/ Duo Jr./ Satan opened her eyes from her position in Quatre's arms at that last comment and began to sob loudly. "I don't think she appreciated that one." Duo remarked, shouting over the baby's wailing
Quatre bounced the baby in his arms and cooed to her softly "It's okay sweetie." He said softly, trying to sooth her "Everything is going to be okay."
"Let's call her Sherika!" Duo exclaimed, with his hands over his ears "That one fits her perfectly."
"Stupid woman child." Wufei muttered, mimicking Duo's action of covering his ears "You're just as bad as the rest of them."
"Just let her be." Quatre said, continuing the rocking motion "She's just upset. Wouldn't you be if you were yanked out of the only life you knew, away from the only people you knew, and put into a new life where even if you were this young, you knew it was going to be completely different from the last life?" He pulled out a pacifier out of the box and stuck it in her mouth. The baby's eyes widened again but she stopped crying and started to suck.
"Who did you find?" Trowa asked walking up from a distance
"A pathetic female child." Wufei commented "All she does is cry."
"You have any names you like?" Duo asked "We're kind of stuck on what to call her."
Trowa flipped over, not bothering to take the extra time to walk, and looked down at the baby, her hair gleamed silver in the firelight. "Her name is Satunia Jane. Just please help her, I just know that she's alive. If she was gone, I wouldn't still be here." The silver haired woman's words echoed in his head "Her name is Satunia Jane." Trowa said "Just trust me. She's an orphan, her mother died like the rest of the family after she asked me to find her. It looks like you guys beet me to her though."
The baby opened up her brownish-gold eyes and cooed, waving her arms around in the air. The fire crackled and in a split second, the lights went out.
