Gundam Wing: Gemini
Chapter 3: False Truths
(Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing, nor do I want to. No, seriously, I'd rather not own it.)
(AN: Well, here we go with another chapter. I'm trying to pump these out more than I really want to at the moment. The Gundams sure have themselves in a pickle, huh? Never a dull moment.)
~;~;~;~;~
While the girl laid on the bed in one room, Duo and Quatre were filled with questions of their own in another. Just who was she? Where did she come from? And more importantly, what in the hell was she doing in Siberia, of all places?
All of those questions only made their situation worse when they watched the breaking report.
"We have breaking news out of Siberia," a reporter stated with a picture of the girl that was with them on the other side of the screen. "Singer Caitlin Lane was abducted en route to the Alliance stronghold where she was scheduled to perform. According to OZ, they report that she was very likely abducted by the Gundams. Her family in the colonies is asking for her safe return…"
"Now that's a load of crap," Duo said with his arms crossed against his chest. "There's no way we kidnapped her!"
"OZ is likely going to spin this to make it look like we have," Quatre answered. "If they could get away with threatening the colonies, then it's more than possible that they would do something like this."
But while Duo was upset, Quatre was more concerned than before. Now he knew the girl's name, but while he was grateful she wasn't injured, she wasn't awake to answer the main question on his mind: what was a nice girl like that doing on the battlefield?
"Why don't I go check on her?" Duo suggested. "She can't stay asleep forever."
Quatre nodded. It would likely be best, considering that he likely wouldn't be able to answer the many questions that she would likely ask when she woke up. And it didn't help that he had his own thoughts to deal with as well. Not only were they powerless to fight at the moment since the colonies were used as a shield, but something random came to his mind: the girl and Duo both looked rather similar. Why was that? He decided to leave that part alone; it wasn't his place.
With that, Duo left the room and headed down the hall to check in on the sleeping girl. He figured he would knock, just in case. He didn't want to walk in on a girl and get screamed at.
But the sound from the other side snapped him to attention.
"Come in," a soft voice came from behind the door.
When Duo opened the door, he saw the girl with her hand on the side of her head with her eyes closed. Whether she had just woken up or if she had been awake the whole time, he didn't know. But when he saw the television on in the room, he knew that she likely heard more than she needed to.
"Is it true?" she asked. "Is what OZ is saying really true? That you abducted me?"
Duo stayed in a corner of the room, out of sight from the girl. He didn't want her to see who he was. But there was something in her voice that rang a bell in his mind. Her voice… why did it sound so familiar to him? No, it couldn't be…
"Well?" the girl prodded, opening her eyes finally and looking around the room. Her breath hitched in her throat as she could barely see anything, aside from the TV. The only light seemed to shine through the shutters, but that did nothing but fuel her question more.
"Why would we kidnap someone? That's not our style," he answered her finally.
The girl looked around, trying to find out where the voice came from. "This doesn't look like any base I've seen," she said.
"No, the blond guy found you and brought you here."
"Where's 'here'?" she asked, her eyebrow raised.
"The Middle East," Duo answered, hoping she'd just leave it at that.
But that only seemed to frighten her more. "What am I doing out here?" she asked, feeling uncomfortable with talking to a voice with no face to go with it.
"Well, if you have to know," Duo answered. "The blond guy with the goggles? He found you on the tracks and pulled you inside. Poor guy looked worried about you."
"Is everyone okay?" the girl asked.
Now that was a question Duo wasn't prepared for. A girl he didn't know asking if everyone was all right? Normally, the first question asked would have been where they were and how they could get out. Instead she was asking if everyone, aside herself, was all right. He wondered if she had hit her head or something.
"Yeah, for the most part," he finally answered her back.
The girl looked considerably relieved from that. "That's good to hear," she said with a smile.
But the more Duo looked at her, the more he didn't want to get too close to her. He wasn't sure why, though. Last he checked, the girl didn't even have a weapon on her.
"Were you with him?" the girl asked him. "The one who wore the goggles?"
"Yeah," he answered, remaining in the dark corner of the room.
"So… OZ is simply lying about me being abducted? Right?" she asked.
Maybe he thought she was smarter than she looked. "Pretty much," Duo answered.
"But they threatened the colonies…" At that point, the girl's eyes widened, and her face was twisted with horror. "My parents! I hadn't been able to tell them I'm all right! Surely they don't believe that OZ is telling them that I was abducted!"
"Actually, they are," he answered.
The girl stood up for a moment. "I need to tell them I'm all right," she said before sitting back down. Her head still felt like a bowling pin that had been knocked down by the ball.
"Not from here, you can't."
"Why not?"
"Because if you did, then OZ would make it worse than it already is."
The girl took a breath before covering her face with her hands. Surely things couldn't have gotten worse…
~;~;~;~;~
At the Lane mansion, Marshall, Hannah, and Marco had finished their press conference. Hannah had her hand over her eyes, trying to catch the tears that were falling onto her hands. When the door closed, Marco's hands balled into fists.
"This is my fault," he said. "I never should have let Caitlin go off to Earth without an escort in the shuttle!"
"You didn't know this would happen," Marshall answered with a hand on Marco's shoulder. "I'm sure we'll find her and bring her home quickly. Those Gundams did this to mock the Alliance and OZ."
"Those bastards," Marco growled. "If they needed to fight someone, fight the enemies, fight me, but not just abduct Caitlin. What did she do to deserve this? Not a damn thing!"
Marshall nodded his head. "Marco, I know you're upset," he started.
"You're damn right I'm upset!" Marco answered. "My fiancée was abducted by the Gundam pilots! Who knows what they're going to do to her!"
~;~;~;~;~
"Make it worse?" the girl asked.
Duo nodded from the corner. "Yeah," he answered. "They'll probably spin that too to tell everyone that we forced you to say you were okay."
The girl's hands fell from her face before she looked around the room. "Um, this is getting uncomfortable," she said. "I can't see who I'm talking to."
Duo finally took a deep breath and took a step forward. He didn't want to get any closer than that, since he didn't want her to see him.
"I don't think that'll help," she said.
But the second Duo stepped further into view, the more he could see the girl's features. Her blue eyes and long brown hair were nice. Her light blue long-sleeved dress still showed a few spots from where she had fallen onto the track. For the most part, she wasn't hurt. At least that was one shining moment in this whole mess they were now involved in.
"That's better," she said, smiling up at him. "Now I don't feel like I'm talking to the walls." Her smile soon faded as she looked at the floor. "I guess I should explain some things that the news wasn't saying."
In his mind, he already knew her name from the reports. Anything else, well… that was anyone's guess. But at least she was willing to talk to him. Why, he wondered. Maybe it was because he was approachable? Or was it because he was concerned about her? A girl like that shouldn't have been anywhere near where she was to start with.
"My name is Caitlin Lane," the girl continued. "I'm a singer from the colonies."
Duo could swear he had heard the name before, from the news report. Well, at least she wasn't lying about that. If it was one thing Duo was good at, it was reading faces. Caitlin's just seemed to look as if telling him the next thing would hurt her more than he. He wasn't sure whether to coax her into talking about it or to leave her be. But it wasn't all. Her worrying about others before herself, her eyes, her hair… even how soft her voice was. Maybe he was wishing for something he couldn't have.
"I'm sorry, it's just that… you remind me of someone," Caitlin apologized.
"Someone?"
Caitlin nodded. "I've been an only child for years now," she answered. "But I had a brother, an older brother. Years ago, he disappeared after the area I was in was destroyed. When I woke up in the hospital days later, I asked about him, where he was, why he didn't come back…"
At that point, he wasn't sure what was in her eyes, but he swore he could see tears in her blue eyes, as if she was remembering something she didn't want to talk of.
"I found out then that he was dead," Caitlin continued, shutting her eyes to hold onto what little strength she had. "My brother was just… gone."
All he could do was stand there and listen to what happened. Did he feel bad for her? Of course. Losing someone was hard enough as it was, especially if it was someone she cared about. But what piqued his interest was what she said next.
"Some time later, I was adopted by the Lane couple."
At that point, Duo had a feeling the last name sounded familiar. "You don't mean that general from the Alliance, do you?" he just had to ask her.
Caitlin blinked up at him and nodded. "That's my adoptive father," she answered. "Do you know him, too?"
That certainly wasn't the answer he was looking for. Caitlin had been adopted by the Alliance, the same general that had ordered that the church be destroyed. The same church that killed the two people that cared for him more than anything in the world and stole the person that mattered to him. He could remember the screams his little sister had before he had raced out of the church that day.
Caitlin blinked up at him. "Is something wrong?" she asked. But before she could get an answer, she watched Duo leave the room, and that left Caitlin in confusion. Was it something she said? Something she did?
Duo stood outside of the room in the hallway, mentally kicking himself. This girl just seemed too coincidental at the moment. Her hair and her eyes, sure there were other people that had the same thing. But then there was her voice, her selflessness and worry for other people before herself, and then there was the part about the Alliance. These were the same bastards that destroyed the only real home that he and his sister had; not only that, but they also stole the three people he held dear to him. Damn it, he thought to himself as he headed back to the room where Quatre was. Maybe he could make some kind of sense about Caitlin.
And, quite frankly, as Duo thought about it, everything started to add up to him. But did he really want to tell her the truth? He couldn't lie, but at the same time, telling her the truth would only make it worse on her.
;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;
As if things weren't already bad enough, an OZ convoy came to the area. They had three different missions to handle: find the rebels that attacked the Siberia base, find the Gundam pilots responsible, and also to find the abducted singer. They had received reports that the rebels were in this small, unassuming town. It was obvious that the leader of the town, though he was nice and said that they could rest, might have been hiding more than he was saying.
And there was only one thing OZ could do at that moment: Flush out the enemies.
Several pairs of eyes watched from holes in the closed windows as OZ soldiers placed what looked to be long crates at certain places in town.
Did the soldiers think they were being watched? Yes. Did they care? No.
The soldiers only stayed quiet as they pressed a button inside of the supposed crates and left off to the next one until they were all deployed. Now, all they had to do was wait.
Wait and see if their efforts would pay off.
~;~;~;~;~
Duo walked back to the room that Quatre had been in, full of more questions about Caitlin than he had answers. But he couldn't just escape the fact that she looked, talked, and even behaved like his younger sister. He gripped his hand into his pocket and found the cross that he had found at the church years ago. If what he thought was true, then Caitlin was already in way over her head.
Quatre watched as the door opened and saw Duo walk back inside. The look on the other pilot's face was something he couldn't place. "How is she doing?" he asked him.
"She's awake," Duo answered, closing the door and leaning against the corner with his arms crossed against his chest.
"She's not hurt?"
"No."
"Thank goodness for that," Quatre answered, a look of relief on his face.
But Duo wished he could look as relieved as Quatre did. Sure Caitlin wasn't injured, which was good in itself, but then there was more to her. Why did he simply walk out of the room without answering her question of if he was all right?
Quatre noticed something in Duo's hand. A chain? A necklace? Whatever it was, he watched as Duo simply held the object tighter in his hand as if he was trying to break it but failing. "What's that?" he asked.
At that moment, Duo realized that he was still gripping his sister's necklace in his hand. Damn it. He suddenly shoved his hands in his pockets in an effort to make it look to Quatre that he didn't have anything and quickly regretted it. "This war's taken everyone I've cared about," he answered.
Quatre simply blinked at him. Just who was he talking about?
From inside the room she was in, Caitlin looked around before she opened the door quietly and heard voices from another room. Tilting her head to the side, she quietly walked over and stood near the door but not in front of it. What she heard stunned her.
"You had a sister?" the blond pilot from before asked from inside the room.
"Yeah," the other voice said with a hint of regret in his voice. "It was my job to protect her, and when I got back, she was gone. All I could find was her necklace."
Caitlin held her hand to her mouth in shock to keep from letting a gasp escape her lips. Was this what that pilot was trying not to tell her?
"I'm sorry to hear that," the blond pilot's voice came through the door.
"She was my little sister, Quatre," Duo said, shutting his eyes. "I thought she was dead until I found out she was adopted."
"Well, that's good to hear then," Quatre said. "At least she's adopted and isn't in any way associated with this war."
Duo shook his head. "No, she's already involved in it," he answered.
Quatre wasn't sure why he was saying this, but he had to. "What do you mean?"
Duo took a deep breath. "There's so much about that girl in there that reminds me of her. Her hair, her eyes, her worrying about everyone else before herself… the way she behaves and how she talks…" His hand gripped the cross inside his pocket again. "Of all the places where she is, why the hell did she come here?"
Outside the door, Caitlin's eyes widened like saucers. She could barely keep back a startled gasp at what she had just heard. Was her brother in that room right now? Her heart beat inside of her chest as her free hand slowly reached for the doorknob.
Inside the room, Quatre blinked in surprise. "You don't mean…"
"The girl in that room?" Duo answered, opening his eyes and looking at the door. "She's my sister."
Outside the room, Caitlin's wide eyes only filled with tears as her hand stopped just short of the doorknob. Was it really true? Her older brother was in that room right now? Why didn't he simply tell her? Did he think she wouldn't have understood the situation? Did he think she'd be in the way? Taking a step back from the doorway, she felt a few tears slide down her cheeks before she noticed that they were falling from her eyes like a dripping faucet. "He's my brother?" she said quietly into her hand. "Why didn't he just tell me?"
Inside the room, Quatre simply lowered his head. This was a lot for him to take in as well. "But still, Duo, you need to tell her the truth," he replied.
"I can't tell her I'm a Gundam pilot, Quatre," Duo protested. "That's only going to get her killed. And you know OZ would hurt her to draw me out."
"Not about the Gundams at all," Quatre answered. "Just tell her you're her brother. If you had been looking for her all this time, then don't you think she deserves to know that, regardless of what's going on?"
"She needs to be safe, above anything else."
"She will be, but you have to tell her. Otherwise, she'll still have questions, and things would get worse. Much worse."
Before Duo could answer, he heard something outside the door. The second he opened the door, another had already closed. It didn't take him long to realize what had just happened: Caitlin likely overheard what was being said. He mentally kicked himself again. Why did he let that out of his mouth? How much did she overhear? And most importantly, how was he going to explain everything he had said earlier?
Quatre, who had heard the noise as well, stood up from the bed and walked to the door. "What happened?" he asked.
Duo now felt like the biggest fool in the universe. "Caitlin heard everything," he answered, his voice low with the same amount of regret he had before.
Quatre took a deep breath. "It might be best to leave her be for a while," he replied. "Give her some time to grasp all that she heard and let it sink in before going to talk to her. You have to understand that it's a lot for her to deal with right now."
Wordlessly, Duo reluctantly agreed. There was no way he could tell her his reasons for not telling her right now; if he knew her as well as he remembered her, he thought she'd be too emotional to hear anyone straight. And the only thing he could do at the moment was to let her calm down.
Caitlin leaned against the door of the room she had been in, trying hard to keep from screaming. She was more than shocked from what she had heard; she felt herself slide down to the floor, with not much strength to stand. Not that she wanted to, anyway. It was the most difficult thing that she had listened to. Her older brother was in that room, and he never told her at all. He just made me think for years that he was dead, she thought to herself. Why did he do that?
She closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands. Caitlin wasn't sure what to feel at the moment. She felt hurt from the fact that her own brother didn't try to explain that he was alive, much less a Gundam pilot. At the same time, she felt betrayed at the fact that she hadn't had the chance to see her brother for years. There was a whole other emotion that she felt: anger. But who should she be angry at? Duo for not telling her he was alive? OZ for putting them into this situation? The colonies for just sitting back and letting it happen? All three? None of the above? Maybe herself for not seeing it before now?
The deeper breaths Caitlin gave herself, the more she started to think. Was there a reason why Duo never told her he was alive? Much less, that he was a Gundam pilot? She remembered from her studies that everything happened for a reason. So, what was it?
~;~;~;~;~
Duo and Quatre were outside in a walkway as they heard from the Maganacs that OZ had been planting bombs all over town. Quatre automatically thought that it was about not just the Siberia base but also about Caitlin. Duo, on the other hand, balled his hand into a fist into his pocket. This was only going from bad to worse.
And they had until midnight until they went off. That definitely made it worse.
"Aren't the Gundams causing this problem?" Quatre asked.
It sure seemed like it to Duo. "I'm sure it's us they're after," he added. Since they think we just kidnapped her all of a sudden, he thought to himself.
"Their attack seems to be well thought out," Rashid, the leader of the Maganacs, answered them. "They probably planned this for quite some time."
Quatre's mind then went to the civilians. He didn't want anything to happen to them; they had nothing to do with what was going on. Along with the civilians, he also thought about Caitlin. She had to be safe, at all costs. But still, he wasn't sure if she'd trust them or they'd have to convince her to come along.
"We'll have a meeting with everyone later on," Rashid said to them. "I'll tell them what's going on."
While that should have calmed Duo down, it didn't. He still had to explain to Caitlin why he let her believe that he was dead, why he never told her otherwise, and why he never told her he was her brother. He just wasn't sure what to say to her. Or how. Or even when.
Quatre nodded before looking at Duo. "Maybe she's calmed down enough for you to talk to her," he suggested.
"But what am I supposed to say, Quatre?" Duo asked him as they walked into the building. "'Hey, it's your brother?' I can't do that."
"You'll have to," Quatre told him. "The longer you keep the truth from her, the less she'll trust you. Or anyone, rather."
Duo took a deep breath. Not only did they have to get out of town, with their Gundams no less, but now he had a bigger battle to deal with. And he wasn't sure if he would win that one.
But now, he didn't have a choice. He would have to tell her the truth, and hope with everything he had in him that she would understand. Or at the very least, comprehend it. He just hoped she was calm enough to hear him out.
When he arrived at the door of the room Caitlin had rushed into earlier, he took a deep breath and knocked on it, half expecting to hear nothing from the other side.
"Yes?" Caitlin asked from the other side.
Damn it. Now it had to be done. Duo took a deep breath before he opened the door. He looked at her figure sitting on the bed and facing away from the door. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they say. He just hoped he wouldn't get burned. He opened his mouth to start, but Caitlin seemed to beat him to the punch.
"Why did you let me believe you were dead?" Caitlin asked with her head still turned away from him.
She certainly spoke her mind, for sure. Duo wasn't sure how to answer that question as easily as she had asked the question. "I had my reasons," he finally answered.
"For who?"
He finally closed the door and leaned against it for a moment before pulling up a chair and sitting across from her. Duo wasn't sure how to fight this fire at all, so he figured he'd start off from the beginning. "That day at the church, I couldn't find you," he finally answered. "When I only found your necklace in the rubble, I thought you were dead."
The moment that Duo pulled the necklace from his pocket was when he finally saw Caitlin turn her head his way. Though her face was tear-streaked and it looked that more tears would follow, he looked at her widening eyes as she saw what was in his hand.
"You kept it all this time?" she asked him, her voice losing the toughness it held a moment ago.
"Yeah," he answered. "It was the only thing helping me move on. Then a few months later, I saw that you were adopted. I saw your picture and knew it was you. I knew that once you were adopted, you would have a normal life, away from the streets, and you wouldn't have to worry about anything else in the world."
"But I needed my brother," Caitlin replied. "I just wanted my brother."
"I know you did, but I knew I couldn't give you what you needed. A home, somewhere safe and away from what we both went through… I couldn't give you that. And when I became a Gundam pilot, I knew I couldn't be around you."
"Why not?" Caitlin asked. "You're my brother. You could have let me know…"
Duo shook his head. "But I didn't want you to get hurt," he answered her. When he saw her blink, he had to continue before she opened her mouth. "If OZ, or even the Alliance, knew that you were my sister, they would go after you to get to me. They would have hurt you worse than anything we've ever survived."
Caitlin felt herself drying her eyes again, for what seemed to be the second time today she had to. All this time, her brother was just protecting her as he always did, only she wasn't able to see him actually doing it.
"That's why I couldn't tell you," he said. "I didn't want to think about what OZ would do to you if they knew you were my sister."
Caitlin blinked up at her brother, reaching out her hand to his shoulder but only stopping halfway. Part of her wasn't sure if she should move closer to him or just keep her distance. Finally the former option won out and her hand gently touched his shoulder. "You were protecting me?" she asked him. When she saw him nod his head, she stood up from the bed and hugged him.
Before he could say much more, he felt a pair of arms wrap around his shoulders. Duo wasn't sure what to make of it, but at least it looked like Caitlin understood why he never told her he was alive. "Someone's got to," he finally answered, hugging her back for a moment. But he knew that they weren't out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot.
~;~;~;~;~
Down in the hangar where the suits were kept, the leader of the town and the leader of the Maganacs were with Duo, Quatre, and Caitlin at the top level while the other Maganacs stood below to look up at their leader.
"Everyone, listen up!" Rashid's voice carried throughout the hangar. "OZ has discovered this town and will be attacking! I doubt we will be able to deceive them any longer! Therefore, we will aim at one area of their barricade and resist while helping the civilians escape!"
The civilians were a reason the Maganac Corps had been successful; not one of them had been killed during the war. That and they were important to them; where they were, they were family.
Quatre felt his hand being held, and as he looked to the side, he saw that Caitlin was holding his hand gently in hers. "Are you okay?" he asked her quietly.
Caitlin nodded. "I just never got a chance to thank you or my brother for saving me," she whispered.
"It was nothing, really," Quatre replied. "We're just glad you weren't hurt."
"I just wish we met under much better circumstances."
Same here, Quatre thought to himself. Under better circumstances, he wouldn't have minded meeting Caitlin and talking to her as a normal person would. He just nodded at her gently and watched her smile for a second as he watched her face ahead of her.
"And one other honorable duty remains," Rashid spoke to the Maganacs. "We must get the Gundams out of the vicinity!"
At that, Quatre's eyes widened for a moment. What snapped him out of it was the leader of the town placing a hand on his shoulder. When he looked at Caitlin, he realized that he was holding her hand longer than he had intended. Still, he squeezed her hand gently. It wasn't to let her know about her still holding his hand; it was to let her know that she was going to be just fine.
Caitlin's other hand went to her brother's shoulder. There wasn't a thing she was able to do for them, other than give them as much support as they would need.
"The Gundams are heroes who came to Earth to destroy OZ," Rashid said to everyone. "Because of OZ's scheming, they won't be able to join this battle."
Caitlin looked at her brother and squeezed his shoulder. Why was she feeling so powerless? Why did she feel like she couldn't do a thing to help him, just like they had helped her? She wondered if fighting was the one way he would be all right again.
"However," Rashid continued, "there will be a day when the Gundams will save us all! Be thankful you can return the favor in advance! Do you understand?"
With that, the other Maganacs cheered for their leader and for everyone. When Rashid dismissed them to get ready for battle, Caitlin let both of the boys go. She wasn't sure why she was letting then go, but the moment she did, she watched them spring into action like two wound-up toy soldiers. She found herself running right behind them on impulse.
From that point on, it was an organized pandemonium. Some of the Maganacs were taking care of the civilians, making sure there were not one of them that were killed; surely that would blemish the Maganac Corp name.
While Duo and Quatre were getting their Gundams loaded into a carrier, Caitlin could only watch as she simply let them. Mostly, she watched them out of worry; would everyone make it out safely? She worried more about the people that were now involved in something they shouldn't have been to begin with than herself at the moment. She might be young, but she certainly wasn't stupid, by any means. Although it was hard to hear that her older brother was a Gundam pilot, she felt that she had to accept that this was what he wanted to do. Not that she didn't want him to fight, though.
But what worried her the most was that people who shouldn't have been involved were now involved because of some misunderstanding. She had been in that situation before, as well as her brother. And, just like the memories she had of long ago, she couldn't do a single thing to help them. At all.
A hand on her shoulder snapped her out of her thoughts and startled her back to reality. She looked up and saw her brother. Where he came from, she didn't know. Maybe she didn't want to know.
"You'd better get into the carrier," Duo told her. "Can't leave you here, you know."
Caitlin blinked and nodded without a word before she took off to the carrier.
Her brother simply watched her go to the carrier. At least one good thing came out of the past 24 hours; he finally got to see his sister face-to-face, although this wasn't the way he thought he'd ever get to see her. It sure wasn't the typical reunion he had been thinking about. Then again, what about being a Gundam pilot was normal?
Rashid noticed that Duo was watching the carrier like a hawk. "The good thing is that she understands why things are happening," he told him.
"She's always been like that," Duo answered. "Understanding, caring more for other people than herself." He chuckled ironically. "Funny, though. She always worried about me, even if she was sick. She could have died, and yet she would ask me if I was okay."
"She has a piece of humanity for others," Rashid replied. "That's rare in this time. Don't let her lose that."
Duo had to admit; Rashid was right. Caitlin had always been like that since they were children. He just wanted to get her back home as fast as he could. At least if she was home, she was safe. Just exactly what he wanted her to be.
~;~;~;~;~
Caitlin walked around inside the carrier and looked at the two Gundams. She had been told from the time she was adopted that the Gundams were the enemies, and from what OZ was saying, they agreed. But as she looked at the events from the past 48 hours, she felt more conflicted than confused. If the Gundams really meant her harm, like OZ was saying, then why was she rescued by them? But then, what would happen when she arrived home? Would she have enough in her to tell her parents, and even Marco, that the Gundams were not the real enemy?
"Hey, Quatre!" she heard her brother's voice from outside the carrier.
Caitlin blinked. There was no way he was calling the same person who came from a prominent family that her father had talked about. And, just as she couldn't get any more surprised, the blond pilot who rescued her opened up the cockpit and looked outside. Now he looked familiar to her. His family owned numerous resource satellites in the colonies; she remembered reading about him a long while back. She felt bad for not recognizing him sooner.
"Yeah?" Quatre asked out.
"I got some flowers here for you, buddy!"
"I promise, one day, my Gundam will definitely fight again," Quatre mused mostly to himself.
Caitlin simply looked up at him. She wasn't sure what she could say that might help them feel better, or if there was anything she could do. But as it stood at the moment, she wasn't sure if anything would help the situation.
Quatre got out of the mobile suit's cockpit and finally reached the floor of the cockpit. At that moment, he saw Caitlin looking at him.
"Will everyone be all right?" she finally asked.
At that question, he was stunned, but only slightly. He knew that Duo had told him about Caitlin's worrying about other people before herself. Quatre thought that it was a good trait to have, something that was so rare, like a flower in a desert. "Everyone will be fine," he answered, smiling at her gently. "The Maganacs know how to make sure of that."
Caitlin smiled back slightly. "I'm glad," she answered. "I'm just sorry that this had to happen. To everyone."
"It's not your fault," he answered. "You haven't done anything to where you have to apologize."
"I'm just on the wrong side."
"Family-wise. But you have to decide for yourself whose side you want to be on."
Caitlin nodded her head in agreement. Quatre did seem to have a good point. At some point, she'd have to stop being confused and start deciding on a side to be on. If she didn't, then things would only go from bad to worse. She watched Quatre go to the cockpit of the carrier they were in and followed him.
Duo found his way into the carrier and went into the cockpit. Quatre was on the far right while Caitlin in the middle. "So, ready to go?" he asked.
Quatre nodded and started up the carrier. He kept his mind on the task at hand, to get the carrier out of the area. He looked out the carrier and saw the Maganacs fighting off OZ Tragos suits. He had no idea what he could do to help them.
Neither did Caitlin, except when she looked surprised as she saw Duo leave the cockpit. Before she could say a word, she simply watched as the door to the cockpit closed behind him. What was he going to do?
"Quatre?" Duo's voice seemed to be coming from in the back.
"Yes?" Quatre asked him.
"Could you circle the sky, just once?"
Caitlin simply tilted her head in confusion. Why was he asking this?
"I can't help them now, but I still want to do something…" Duo answered.
Quatre nodded his head slightly. "Sure thing," he replied, turning the carrier around.
Before Caitlin could open her mouth, she heard explosions from the ground. She looked out and blinked at what she saw: her brother was firing onto the enemy. Not long after the last shot was fired, the Maganacs fired flares, which made the ground light up like sparkling stars. She hoped that the people on the ground were going to be all right.
"See you again, Maganac Corps," Quatre stated.
"And the next time we meet, I'll make sure the colonies' thoughts are united," Duo added from his Gundam. "Count on it."
Where were they going? Why was Quatre, someone so kind and considerate, a Gundam pilot of all things? Caitlin knew the reasons with her own brother being one, but there was still more she wanted to know.
And at the moment, just being safe was enough. For a while.
~;~;~;~;~
(On the next chapter: Conflicting ideals are difficult for anyone to grasp. While staying at the Winner Mansion with no way to return home, Caitlin comes to terms with the questions she hasn't asked. With the Gundam pilots still unable to fight, the task is getting harder by the minute. Meanwhile, in the colonies, Caitlin's father and fiancée are faced with a daunting decision affecting OZ. Next on Gundam Wing: Gemini, Chapter 4: Betrayal From Home.)
