Disclaimer: Gundam Wing and all its characters © Sotsu Agency, Sunrise, and TV Asahi; The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003 by MacAdam/Cage, is authored by Audrey Niffenegger. All fics are not for profit.

Some lines from The Time Traveler's Wife's chapter one: The First Date, One, are incorporated in this chapter.

Home Before Midnight
Chapter 2: Mobius Strip

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."- Albert Einstein

November 10, 195. Quatre is 15, Dorothy is 16.

The last concrete image he saw was Dorothy's baffled face, and the last clear sound bites he heard were of his own voice: "Oh, really? Happy birthday, then." Soon after the insincere greeting left his mouth, everything around him undulated again into a patchwork of wriggling colors. The sound of rushing blood surged in his ears, followed by a scratching noise reminiscent of fingernails against glass. He felt a hardness materializing beneath him, and when he opened his eyes, he was back in the Sanc Institute, slumped against the piano.

"It was a dream," he concluded, rubbing at the imprints of piano keys on his cheek. He unclenched his fist and stared warily at the paper there, as if expecting it would transfigure into some kind of creature borne from his worse nightmares. It felt so real, he thought.

Heaving a sigh, he picked up his briefcase and headed out of the classroom.

Perhaps talking to Heero might help me resurface to reality fully.

But reality wasn't always something he looked forward to.

Heero was in their dorm room, slouched on the upper bunk of their double-decker bed. He did not make a response or any form of acknowledgment when Quatre greeted him, and for some reason, Quatre was glad. Heero's mouth has become his personal Pandora's box; he sought advice from him before and was awarded with swarms of painful truths that were too extreme for him to endure. That was why he refrained from mentioning Trowa or the ZERO. He knew he deserved castigation—he was more than willing to die if it was the only thing that could rectify his mistakes—but there were certain things he should accomplish first before gets himself checked out. Maybe after protecting Princess Relena and this nation, maybe after assuring that his family's Corporation would be bequeathed to trustworthy hands…

"You're self-flagellating again."

Quatre blinked, resurfacing from his thoughts. "What?"

Heero went back to typing. "If there is any way you could atone for your sins, being guilty about not being guilty enough doesn't count into the tally."

Why would not Heero just stick to his socially maladroit self and shut up? Admitting that Heero knew how to read him stung. Sometimes he thinks the guy could even hear and understand his Space Heart's unintelligible whispers, and it was downright unfair. Sighing, Quatre slumped to the lower bunk and dropped his briefcase to the floor, sending its latch to come off and the contents to sprawl out.

Groaning, Quatre bent over to start picking up the mess, and halted in mid-movement.

"Are those your things?" he heard Heero ask. Quatre noted the hint of amusement in the question, but the retort and denial did not make it out of his mouth. The organizers and books there were provided by the institute, but that yellow Moleskine with a small padlock, the gold four-fold umbrella, and the semi-transparent vanity case were certainly not. Dorothy suddenly sprung to his mind; the scene at the classroom replayed in his head.

He gasped. "She picked up the wrong briefcase!"

Humming the 'Sunshine Sonnet', Dorothy fingered the bits of sunlight that went through the gaps of the tree's foliage and fell on the sketchbook she was flipping. She passed the sketches of perhaps one of Quatre's sisters, the cross-section illustration of an apple cut into a butterfly shape, and the outlines of a machine with a belt-like thing, which she guessed was either an MS shoulder harness or the scrawled beginnings of the insides of a cockpit. She stopped at the drawing of a silhouetted dog running by the seashore.

She has known Quatre for almost eight years now, but he never breathed a word about how good he could draw. Yes, the guy was not a bragging soul and she understood that in his situation, he could not divulge much information about himself. But keeping his talent in arts a secret to her? It did not sound as though something like drawing could ruin her future.

'I'm just protecting your tomorrow,' he had said, and she had decided she didn't really mind because the very words made her feel like she was a princess and he was her knight—typical fairytale dream of little girls. Once upon a time, she did not mind being one of them.

She has already tossed the pad back into Quatre's briefcase when the soft sound of thudding feet behind her crescendoed. She smiled when shadows fell on her to block the sunshine bits, then looked up at a panting fifteen-year-old Quatre.

"Mr. Winner."

"Here," Quatre said between gasps, lowering her briefcase to the ground. "I suppose you already know, Miss Dorothy. You picked up the wrong briefcase."

"Intentionally," she replied smugly. She patted the grass next to her. "Mind if we talk? I need something to tell you."

His expression reminded her of the first time she met him—two Quatre's, one from the present and one from the future. Chuckling softly, she snatched his hand and pulled him down.

"It wouldn't be long," she promised soothingly. "I know you need to know something. Don't you wonder what those dates on the paper I gave you are?"

"Of course I do," Quatre responded, slowly slipping his hand out of hers, which she prevented by intertwining their fingers tightly. He shifted a little, obviously uncomfortable. "I had a weird dream about the first date on it."

"Tell me about it."

Dorothy squeezed his hand a couple of times when he hesitated. "I think I fell asleep after you left," he said finally. "In the dream, I met a very young Dorothy Catalonia. I am there both as a six-year-old kid and as a fifteen-year-old boy. It's your birthday, September 17, 186. Is it correct?"

"Yes, that's my birthday. Are you sure it's a dream?"

He shrugged. "Not a flashback or memory. I can't remember meeting you before."

"Well, I can."

Quatre flashed a questioning look.

"I've met you before and I've known you for almost a decade now."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

How could she explain without getting him to think she was not right in the head? Dorothy wanted to laugh at the weirdness of the situation. Everything happened to her in her past; it was all in the future for him. Here she was, sitting with the man she loved and the man who loved her more, and he knew nothing about it. Her Quatre, laughing at her brand of culinary wizardry her nine-year-old self practiced in their makeshift kitchen; her Quatre, teaching her to patch her favorite stuffed toy even if he himself knew nothing about needlework; her Quatre, trying on her father's suit after she commented on his frequent wearing of pink shirts; her Quatre, cradling her face on his hands while pressing light kisses on her cheeks and forehead…

"Give me the list," she said, and fumed when he handed her the crumpled paper.

"You must take care of this! You'll need it in your travels."

"Travels?"

She ignored him, ironing out the paper with her hand. "I made this list, but you're the one who actually dictated the dates. I think it's just a cycle similar to a Mobius strip1: you said you memorized them from this list and I made it when you visited me. I don't know when it was first made, but it's accurate. Those are the next dates you'll be visiting me. You instructed me to give this to you the next time our timelines converge, which is now, AC 195."

"Wait, I'm lost," Quatre said. "I told you, I can't remember meeting you before."

"Because you're just fifteen," she argued. "Your travels are just starting. The last time I saw you, you were twenty-three."

"What?"

"What you just saw is not a dream, Quatre. You're time-traveling. About our childhood meeting, I speculate that you don't remember it because that's the only time we met each other in the same timeline, aside from today." She shrugged. "I guess your world contains too many blonde girls."

He was still confused. "I'm time-traveling?"

She nodded. "You didn't discuss why or how; it was too classified, you said, and it would affect our future. I'm not sure what exactly caused you this chronic dislocation, but you've inadvertently informed me it's connected to the ZERO system."

His eyes widened at the last words.

"I don't know much about the ZERO," Dorothy admitted, her face earnest. "There's a plethora of information about mobile suit interfaces from where I came, but ZERO's not included in the list. What do you know about it? Is it installed in your...Sandrock?"

She slid closer to him and played with a strand of hair. "You have started time-traveling. It just means you've been exposed to it."

"I'm sorry," he said, voice a tad shaky, "but I just remembered you're from the Romafeller."

"You just realized I'm a spy," she corrected with a smirk. "Am I your enemy?"

He clamped his mouth shut into a thin line. Dorothy chortled.

"Don't worry, dear. All I want to see is how you knights in Gundanium armor play my favorite game. I'm very loyal to the Foundation, but I wouldn't let my husband-to-be die because of what I know."

She loved every expression Quatre shows, but she decided now that a shocked one would be her favorite.

"I-I'm going to be your husband?"

"I assume so." She pursed her lips. "You blurted it out—you're twenty three then, and I'm fourteen. You said whenever it is that you came from, you're married to me. Could you believe that? I didn't even expect us to survive the war…"

His face was priceless as ever. His shoulders slumped, and his hand flew to his heart. "Dorothy?"

"Hmm?"

"Can we please back up? Let's pretend you haven't met me before?"

"You spoiled the most exciting part of my life by telling me who I'm going to marry and you're telling me to back up?"

He blushed. "You just did that to me!"

"You did it first," she retorted. "At least in my timeline."

Silence enveloped them after that, Quatre looking troubled, Dorothy smug. She coiled her arms around his neck; he stiffened but made no protest or movement to squirm away. He would not. This was the Quatre who loved her in the past and the future, he would of course love her now in some bat-squeak echo of another time.

"Why did you take my briefcase?" he asked suddenly.

"Just wanted to know my fiancé's teenage kinks."

He rolled his eyes. "Did you find any?"

"No. But you never told me you're good at drawing."

"I really haven't told you anything yet," he said with a sigh, the unconvinced tone evaporating from his words. "At least in my timeline."

She laughed at his attitude. "I'm really sorry, dear. I'm just providing you a little guide, though I know it's far from enough. I don't intend to add to your troubles."

Dorothy disentangled herself from him and cupped his face with her hands; he smiled, his first since he sat with her, and touched her fingers lightly that it almost tickled her. He believed her—his eyes were a dead give away. Perhaps it was because she mentioned the ZERO? Perhaps because of his Space Heart? She suddenly felt as though he had just been pretending not to know, as though this very Quatre knew she would do this, that she would attempt to explain his Chronic Displacement in the simplest terms and he was just checking if she could. Her train of thoughts was derailed when he fluttered his eyes close; she leaned forward instinctively, planting a kiss on his nose. She giggled when he shot her a semi-protesting glare, then he peeled her palms away from his cheeks and slid her arms past his shoulder. He slowly moved forward, closing the painful distance between them—

"Excuse me," announced a familiar voice. "I hate to interrupt, but I need to talk to Quatre now."

"Heero," Quatre almost shouted. Dorothy stifled her laughter at his clumsy, adrenaline rush-induced movements to quickly but gently tear away from her. After the two pilots were gone, she was laughing so hard and she did not know whether it was because of Quatre's fumbling explanation or Heero's answering miles-wide grin.

to be continued...

A/N:

1. Mobius strip- a surface with only one side and only one boundary component (example is the Universal Recycling Symbol).