Authors Note: I've always been fascinated by stories in which the boys all live together after the war. Why on earth would they do that? They never seem all that close during the war itself. And yet, I'm a fond of the convention as well. So this is my attempt to explore the convention and see if I can't attempt to justify it in my own way.

Pairings: 2x5. Eventual 1x3 and 4xR.

Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own anything but my words.

Heero

Stillness. That was important. Lying on his back in the silence of his room, he listened to the stillness. No sound in the small apartment. Even the air barely stirred, except to fill his lungs, and leave again.

Stillness meant safety. That wasn't true, but it was closer to safety than noise and motion. He had been told they were all safe, that this was peace. But Heero only knew how to listen to sounds of war. He thought only in the patterns the war had taught him. This was not a secure location. It wouldn't stand up to a mobile suit attack. Evacuation would take him exactly twenty-three seconds. He'd timed it.

But there would be no evacuation. His orders were clear. He was not to leave. House arrest, they'd called it. Too many incidents. Lay low for awhile.

Une said it was damage control. The woman who had killed by the roomful, who had been willing to kill by the colonyful, she had called it damage control. She said he should have adjusted by now. And she smiled, gently, as if smiling was somehow easy.

It was the man that had caused this. And he might walk again. Medical science had advanced dramatically during the war. No, a broken spine wasn't trivial, but he might walk again. He would be pressing charges, they said.

Heero could still see the man. The steps outside the embassy where Relena was scheduled to speak. The throng of the crowds, every person a potential threat and it'd only been a week since the last attempt on Relena's life. They'd argued in the car on the way there. The speech was an unnecessary risk. She didn't need to be there. And there was a protest scheduled.

The protesters were there when they arrived. Men and women waving signs and shouting. She had moved to ascend the steps, her back turned to them. A man, broad shouldered, dilated pupils indicating addiction, lurched forward screaming. He reached into his jacket. And Heero moved. He had been warned against gun use unless no other options existed. So he'd broken the man's spine. It wasn't an accident. It was the looming threat of the hand he couldn't see, it was the protestors: fat, foolish, ungrateful sheep (he was not allowed to think that, though), it was the argument in the car. It was listening, every moment of every day, for the sound of war and hearing it there for a moment in the crowd.

Now it was still. It'd been two weeks and he had lain in the stillness and run scenarios through his head. He thought of possible threats to the location. Ways to neutralize them. He didn't know what else to do with the silence.

Relena had come by, twice. He had taken advantage of her visits to instruct her guards. They had listened and saluted. He knew they had fought in the war, and that they would give their life for Relena, their emblem of peace. But he watched their eyes when they came in and they had not noted all the exits.

A car rumbled to a stop on the street beneath the window. Someone exited. Not Relena. Familiar, though. Something in the footstep. Not Une, not Sally, not Noin. Not Wufei, but definitely masculine. The knock was polite but insistent. Quatre.

Yes. Warm blue eyes and when he opened the door, a smile. There was a jolt when their eyes met. He'd felt it before, when he'd worked with Wufei. Quatre noted every exit before he walked in. It was that. It was a certain level of trust.

"Why are you here?" The Preventers gave classes in small talk, in putting a subject at ease. Heero had not done well.

"Heero. I'm so sorry." Quatre touched him lightly, on the hand, and his expression was difficult for him to read. Heero could see joy there, to be expected of Quatre, but there was something else. Something like the release after a hard won battle, "They've been keeping this locked up pretty tight. I only found out yesterday. And then the negotiations-."

Heero tried to restring the words into a meaningful series and failed. "Why are you here?"

"Quatre's expression broke into another smile, "I worked it all out. You're on an indefinite vacation. I'm taking you home."

"Relena-" But Quatre cut him off.

"No, Heero. They'll keep you here as long as they can, then they'll hide you on a colony close enough to monitor but far enough for everyone else to forget about. I have, that is, I made us a place. It's safe."

There was no point in arguing what was, in the end, a conclusion that Heero had already come to. And a safe place? Such a strange choice of words. "How long?"

Quatre just shook his head, "Where do you store Zero? I have a carrier."

As they traveled back to the new base Heero listened as Quatre briefed him on the security measures taken to protect the location and began to understand the usage of 'safe' in its description. He would check the measures personally, when he arrived. But it was the sort of security that would take a Gundam to surpass. The sort that only a Gundam pilot might build. Which meant, he realized, that actually securing the location would mean gathering all the Gundams and their pilots.

"Why?" He asked, because Quatre couldn't have missed that fact either. He had been gathered.

"I love the Peace." Quatre's voice was low, woven through the hum of the shuttle. "I- we all fought so hard. But I am not," and he smiled as if he too had heard Une's lecture, "adjusting well. Maybe the Peace will do better if the warriors don't get in the way."

Quatre

It was gratifying, showing Heero around. Seeing Zero next to Sandrock in the hanger was a relief in itself, but better still was seeing Heero settle into the security room attached to his quarters. Quatre could see the tension drain from him as his fingers danced over the keys. Which wasn't to say that Heero relaxed. 01, he was quite sure, wasn't familiar with the word. But there had been a hunted anxiety about him when they had met and it left him. It left Quatre too. That twist in his heart where empathy lay.

Still three more. But Heero was their heart. So they would come. Wouldn't they?

No sign from Trowa or Duo. That made Wufei the inevitable next target, but Quatre was at a loss when it came to approaching Shenlong's pilot. Wufei had always been the most solitary of their number.

So he watched Heero. The other pilot spent the first few days as Quatre had, roaming the grounds and checking the security, moving cameras, making adjustments, grilling the men on duty. Quatre was able to catch him only once a day, eating. At those times, he'd join him in the kitchen and offer to cook. Left to his own devises, Heero would gnaw at whatever came most quickly to hand, Quatre entered once to find him absently finishing off a jar of marmalade, one spoonful at a time.

After he'd settled, Heero only paced the grounds twice a day, and spent only a few hours in his security center. He spent the other hours training or sleeping or... at first Quatre wasn't sure what it was that Heero was doing. He would walk the forests, sit by the ponds, lie in the grass and do it all with a sort of childish wonder.

He seemed happy, in those moments. Quatre, observing, began to understand. Heero's childhood, from what he knew of it, had not been a privileged or warm one. Life in the colonies, especially those most focused on industry, offered only the beauty to be found in cold steel and glass. That even Heero, perhaps especially Heero, would crave a connection with nature made sense.

The single success, and he wanted very much to see Heero as such, was enough to encourage him to try a second time, unsure of the results though he was. He waited in the kitchen, shooing away the chef, and when Heero came in, he greeted him with a bowl of beef stew and a cup of coffee.

Heero grunted his thanks. "Have you located them?"

"I've got my people watching Catherine, now. It shouldn't be long. The circus will be touring again soon."

"Duo?"

Quatre simply shook his head.

"And Wufei?"

He nearly shook his head a second time. Stopped. "Heero? What do you think of this place?"

"You planned it well."

Of course. Tactically sound. Well, it didn't matter.

But Heero set down his cup, and met Quatre's gaze. "It feels like I thought peace would."

The words sang in his ears, and his smile was unguarded, childish. They could have their peace too.

"I think you should talk to Wufei. He won't come if I ask him."

"I'll have him here by Friday."