A/N: In honor of the holiday season, and the fact that I have just survived a 13-hour trip from Columbus to Minneapolis (hooray for sleeping in my own bed at last!), I give you two chapters for the price of one!
Still don't own the Gundam boys or the Quest family. But they play so nicely together!
I wish all readers a fine end of December whatever that means to you.
Enjoy!
The two matches happened simultaneously, but they were studies in opposites. Heero chose to react to Jonny's charge defensively, conserving his energy and neatly sidestepping his opponent. Meanwhile, Duo, moving with catlike silence, seemed to flow across the sand, almost catching Jessie off guard. Jonny lunged and missed a touch, and Heero's fingers brushed across the hollow of his throat as he spun away.
"One to Yuy," Wufei announced.
Duo attempted to get behind Jessie, but she was ready for that and struck backwards with her elbow. There was force in the blow, but it only just glanced off his back.
"One to Jessie," Trowa said.
The unexpected weakness in his attack seemed to light a new fire in Duo and he shifted tactics, moving from the stealthy form of a thief to the more open style of a street-brawler. Jessie got her hands up defensively almost in time, but Duo poked her in the side and tapped her on the head before she could step back.
"Two to Duo," Trowa reported.
Heero, for his part, was very still overall, moving very little even as Jonny shifted into proper judo techniques. Jonny feinted to one side and brought his leg around. At the last moment he struck out with the heel of his hand. He felt the brush against Heero's shoulder even as Heero's thumb pressed against his heart.
"One each to Yuy and Quest," Wufei reported.
Jessie was still recoiling from the double attack Duo had managed against her, and she felt her anger rise. For a moment she forgot about the touches, forgot that she was trying to be smooth and not aggressive. She just wanted a bit of her own back. So she took a page out of her dad's book and simply charged. Her arm was cocked to slam Duo and her speed, even in the sand, was quick as a lithe snake. But at the last moment Duo caught her hand and twisted her arm to pull her into a close hold.
"And that's that," he said with smug satisfaction. "You're not too bad, Red."
Jessie pulled away from him in disgust, but then realized what he'd called her and grinned at him. She hadn't won, but she had gotten something more important. Then she followed Trowa to get a better look at the fight not yet over between Heero and Jonny, Duo strolling along at her side.
Jonny had managed to close with Heero without getting hit, and he seemed to have some sort of strategy. At last he struck out with a foot and threw his body into the air for the kick. When he landed, his foot was solidly pressed against Heero's stomach. Jessie let out a cheer.
"Match to Heero," Wufei reported.
Everyone froze as Heero smiled very slightly. Then Jonny caught what Wufei had seen. Sometime between when he had launched himself into the air for the kick and when he had hit the ground, one leg extended in the blow, Heero had pressed the first two fingers of his left hand against his ankle. Heero lifted his right hand, forefinger pointed as though it were a gun, and lowered it until it was even with Jonny's chest.
"Satisfied?" Duo asked nobody in particular.
Trowa nodded silently and Wufei lifted his chin, which seemed to be an agreement. But Heero looked steadily down at the boy on the sand.
"You fight with your emotions. But you're reckless and you don't see the field. That speaks to inexperience. You're more than I expected, and you aren't more than you should be."
"More than I should be?" Jonny asked.
"He means," Quatre said, appearing near the others, "that you fight like somebody who has never fought a war. You may have fought for your life or the life of your family, but you are not a soldier. Which, to be fair, is good. Nobody should have to be a soldier."
An odd silence fell for a few moments. Then Heero shifted and he opened his right hand to pull Jonny up from the sand.
"Thanks," Jonny said.
"It was a good fight," Jessie commented.
"You're both fools," Hadji shook his head. At their looks, he shifted his turban a little awkwardly. "It is obvious to me that you were both permitted the touches you got. Not that they were humoring you, nor that they were dishonoring you. But that you simply cannot do what they can do."
"Who are you?" Jessie asked again.
"I don't have authorization, Winner," Wufei warned, catching him as he began to respond. "That paperwork is on your head if you do this."
"They're not stupid," Duo argued. "They're gonna figure it out. Especially if this goes deep. You might as well just deal with it."
But before anyone else could say anything, Heero faced them.
"Wing Zero."
The silence was absolute. Then Duo nodded and smiled a little dangerously. "Deathscythe."
"Heavyarms." Trowa's voice had almost no inflection at all.
"Sandrock." Quatre's was even lower than usual, spoken heavy with remembrance.
"Yuy, the paperwork's on you. Shenlong," Wufei said after a moment.
Laid so bare, the five pilots waited. They'd received everything from silence to stunned silence to furious silence upon revealing their identities. The reaction they got, however, was new.
"I knew it!" Jessie crowed. "I knew it! You're the real Gundam pilots! It makes so much sense!"
"It does?" Duo asked, a little hesitantly.
"Jess is sort of a fangirl," Jonny teased. "She followed you throughout the war."
"Not the creepy kind," she said coldly, glaring at the teasing. "I was fascinated by the Gundam pilots' skill and determination and dedication to defending the people who needed defending. I know the war was complicated and mistakes were made," she said quickly, "but I always believed that the five Gundam pilots were doing their best. I just...never realized they were just kids."
"We weren't," Quatre said softly. "Not then, and not since."
"So, which was your favorite?" Duo asked, bouncing on his heels.
"Um," Jessie rubbed her nose awkwardly. "Um... Well, I guess...Heavyarms."
Duo took the opportunity to hoot quite a bit, that is, until Heero got around behind him and grabbed his braid, saying something deeply unfavorable in Japanese. Trowa stood as though nothing had been said at all. It was Wufei who made a sound suspiciously like a snort before speaking.
"Well, that's all right, then. He's taken." And he nodded to where Quatre was a little red in the face.
The wind came up then and forestalled any further discussion as everyone turned to get back to the tent where it was warmer. But they'd only just reached the warm glow when Duo stretched his arms and yawned.
"That's enough for one night for me," he said. "I'm going to head in. Wake me for breakfast, okay Cat?"
"Always," Quatre smiled at his friend and they shared a tiny nod.
"It is late," Wufei said. "We should return so we are rested for tomorrow's work." He gestured to Jonny and Jessie who looked like they wanted to protest.
"You will also want to tell your fathers our identities. We do not expect you to keep it from them," Heero said.
"Oh! Yeah, good point," Jonny conceded. "They'll be mad if they find out way after we do. They hate being in the dark." He turned to go, Bandit, finally woken out of the deep comfy sleep he'd surrendered to, at his heels.
"Hadji?" Jessie looked back. The adopted Quest hadn't moved, and in fact had taken a seat on a warm yellow pillow.
"Let them be," Trowa appeared at her elbow, Quatre's violin case carried carefully in his hands. "This is not for us."
"Hadj? You sure?" Jonny called.
"I am sure, my friend. Go in and speak to Race and Dr Quest. This is a journey I must undertake alone." He exchanged a glance with Quatre, who gave him a small nod.
"Don't forget to sleep," Trowa said softly, his eyes on his beloved. Then he moved a few long strides back to Quatre's side and stretched out his hand. Quatre took it and drew it to his cheek for a moment. Both closed their eyes and everyone looked away from the blissful expressions that slid across their faces. But Quatre broke the contact after a few breaths and smiled.
"I'll be in soon enough. Thank you, Trowa."
"You guys coming or what?" bellowed Duo from up the sand dune. Jonny and Jessie looked back at Hadji one last time before following Heero and Wufei, Trowa bringing up the rear as they retreated and left the two alone under the stars.
-==OOO==-
"So, may I ask why I am to be tested differently from my friends?" Hadji asked after several long minutes of silence. Quatre had dimmed many of the lanterns, leaving them with only a soft glow that was much overshadowed by the bright stars above.
"You'll have to forgive us," the blond said. "Now that you know who we are, I imagine you can begin to see why we are the way we are. In a certain sense, the five of us rely upon no one but each other. We have to live in the world, so we make the choice to trust when we must, or when we find people we care about. The war gave us many allies, and many enemies. And sometimes we can't tell the difference."
"I do not understand, not exactly, because I live in a world rather different from yours, though I can begin to see, as you say. But that does not answer my question."
"It will," Quatre smiled. "Jonny and Jessie remind us a lot of ourselves before the war, or of others we have met. They may not be warriors, but they are fighters and defenders. They have certain skills and they are relatively easy for us to understand. When a person fights, they become what they are; they can hide nothing from us that way. By sparring, Heero and Duo displayed to us all everything we might need to know about them."
He turned and his eyes seemed to cut straight through Hadji as he spoke.
"But you are different. You cannot be so easily defined. We could fight you and we would not understand you. So the others have left me to decide about you."
"How do you know I am not a threat?" Hadji asked honestly.
"If you were, and I don't believe it, then I still wouldn't be worried for two reasons," and here the smile that grew was predatory, a shark's smile. "The first is that I can probably handle you if you are a threat. I'm not exactly helpless. And the second is that, even if I'm wrong about you, you won't do anything to me."
"Because your friends have my friends," he realized.
"Of course. It's not necessary, obviously, but if everything I thought I knew about you turned out to be wrong, the barest signal from me and your four friends would become hostages in an instant. And you don't ever want to find out what happens when someone threatens one of the five of us. It's never pretty."
"I believe it," Hadji said a little breathlessly. Quatre shifted and his shark's smile faded into a real one again.
"Please don't worry. It won't come to that. I know you won't hurt me or mean me harm. I know that. I just need to understand you."
"Very well. What do you wish to know?"
But instead of answering, Quatre turned to face Hadji so that both of them were sitting in a half-lotus position, knees almost touching. Hadji wasn't surprised to see Quatre's hand stretching towards him, and he found himself lifting a hand to meet it halfway. It had to be this. It could be nothing else, not after that jolt of something inexplicable when Quatre had pulled him into the ceiling hours ago. He met the wide blue eyes fearlessly and pressed his palm to the outstretched pale hand.
The contact was again electric, sudden and strong, and Hadji realized all at once that whatever he'd felt before had been but a fraction of the young man's true self. Here, open and focused and seeking, Quatre's energy practically glowed. There was a powerful rushing feeling, as of standing up far too suddenly, and then Hadji felt his own mind begin to lighten and lift. It was precisely the sensation he experienced when he meditated deeply, dropping away his consciousness and slipping beyond. He could have chosen to fight it, but Hadji knew he was where he should be and there was no sense in being half-committed now. He released his doubt and let himself be drawn away.
In his mind's eye, then, he found himself in his usual surroundings. Hadji's meditations tended to begin and end in the same place ā the lighthouse tower of the Quest compound. But, unlike the one in reality, this room was wholly his (unlike the space in the material world which was also used to store sensitive instruments and observation equipment). The broad windows on all sides were always open to the light wind and the bright crimson of sunset. The floor was thickly carpeted in deep red Persian rugs. Stands with candles ringed the round space, and the air smelt of incense and spices ā curry and saffron and pepper. It was a space Hadji had built up in his mind over time, carefully laying each and every item in its place with his imagination. He could count the windows and the candles, could note the ash of the incense, could trace the patterns of the carpets. For any journey into the astral, for any exploration deep within the human spirit, it was always wise to have a place between the mundane and the beyond that was his in which to rest, prepare, and find himself if he was out of his depths in the consciousness of the universe.
But this time, Hadji was not alone, and, to be honest, he was not very surprised.
"Where are we?" Quatre asked after looking around a bit. His face was somehow much younger and more innocent, and Hadji wondered how much of what Quatre presented in the real world was a mask.
"Apparently, we are in my mind." At the raised eyebrows, he held up his hands. "Don't look at me. I have never experienced anything like this."
"Me either."
"Perhaps it is worth our time for you to tell me what it is about you that made this happen," Hadji suggested, taking a seat in his favorite spot, a particularly cushy rug beneath him and the view of the ocean before him.
"I'm an empath," Quatre said, sitting as well. "At first I could only sense powerful, all-consuming emotions, and only from a few specific people. Since the war, it's changed and grown a lot. Now I can pretty reliably feel the emotions of anyone around me if I unshield. And when I connect to those with whom my empathy originally began, not only can I share their emotions, but often they can share in mine as well."
"So you read hearts, rather than minds," Hadji said, thoughtfully. "I do not read minds myself, but much of my study has been of the mind and its many facets and powers. Meditation, as we are doing now, is something I practice regularly. And I often walk the astral plane as well. Though I have never had a visitor to this part of my mind before, I have met others on the astral plane, and they have found me."
"So perhaps my empathy allowed me to connect to your mind," Quatre finished the thought. "And rather than meeting you on the outside, in the astral, I have come with you inside." He paused for a moment, then said, with a slightly pinker face, "I never intended to invade your privacy. I am sorry for that."
"If I had wished to fight your intrusion, I would have. I was as curious as you were," Hadji shrugged.
"Actually, I think I was more ambitious than curious," Quatre said. Then he frowned. "And normally I wouldn't have told you that."
"Ah. In the mind, there are no filters. You may practice speaking carefully, but your thoughts are always unguarded to even yourself, so they are unguarded here."
"But that isn't true," Quatre replied. "I have learned to guard my thoughts. I didn't have a choice. Iā¦"
And with a visible effort, he clamped his mouth shut. But a sudden coldness swept through the room and the bright sunset darkened as if a storm had appeared. Hadji was torn between watching the changing landscape outside his room and his companion. The seas had become violent and rough, and the clouds roiled almost sickeningly. But across from him, Quatre had turned pale as death and was beginning to shake. He kept his jaw locked, and he had shut his eyes as well, his face screwed up in concentration.
"My friend," Hadji said worriedly, moving to his side and gripping his shoulders tightly, "whatever this is, for all your skill in burying it, it is about to break loose upon us both. I believe you must either control it or allow it to come and we shall battle it together."
Quatre's eyes flew open and, strangely, they were no longer that blue-green that was so striking. They had become flat, gun-metal grey. He spoke between his clenched teeth.
"No. The changes that would occur in your mind would be damaging. I will not permit it."
"Then breathe deeply. Focus on that which brings light and calm. This place is of our minds' making. You command it, not the other way around." Whatever the empathic powers had done when they'd come into contact with Hadji, this was no longer just his place. That Quatre's mind had changed so little until this crisis spoke more of his inexperience than his lack of equal presence.
To his surprise, Quatre began to whisper in what could only be Arabic. The cadence was familiar, though, and Hadji recognized it as some sort of prayer or verse. The words fell softly, but they seemed to take flight, building in fervor and joy rather than panic. Quatre's eyes began to shift away from that odd grey color and he started to breathe more easily. The clouds retreated and the waves calmed.
When he fell silent, the lighthouse was as it should be once more.
"Thank you," Quatre said, looking to Hadji with apology and affection. "Without your concern and your kindness I'm not sure I would have been able to calm myself. Even words of serenity need the fuel of the heart to become real."
"When we are no longer bound so deeply, perhaps you will someday share the cause behind that which I have just witnessed," Hadji said, but there was no expectation in his voice. "For something that can shake even your soul so badly must be a heavy burden to bear."
"It is. And it is not your burden and never will be," Quatre said, shaking his head. "But thank you again."
"So what we have learned, then, is that our gifts combined draw you with me into meditation, linking our minds. With practice, I believe we would find ourselves in a world of shared meaning, not only the place that is of my heart."
"And here," Quatre continued, obviously a little relieved to be on a new topic, "there is no capacity for falsehood. The fact that I may keep a part of myself hidden is not that it isn't present, but that I control it. I imagine you have your own demons you keep from this place."
The slightest flicker of every candle in the room was the only evidence that Quatre was right, but they both knew it regardless.
"Then I wonder if the bond continues into the astral or if it only permits this joined unconsciousness." Hadji wanted his face to be neutral, but as Quatre had said, no falsehoods could stand. He was eager to try.
"I have never been to the astral," Quatre said, "but with you to guide me, I am willing to see if I am capable of following."
"Then to get there from here, sit beside me and close your eyes." Quatre did as he was bid and settled into the lotus position. "I am going to take your hand and begin my ascent into the beyond. If at any time I lose my grip upon you, you should return here safely."
Quatre nodded and Hadji reached for a nearby hourglass, one of the smallest in the tiny nook of the room that held them; he had long since trained himself to return to this place after a set amount of time in the beyond, and he did not want to risk a multi-hour exploration for the first attempt. Then he settled beside Quatre and took a firm grip on his hand. Hadji turned the hourglass and let a deep breath out, allowing his eyes to close. The process of entering the astral planes was near impossible to describe, but the closest sense he had was of a lifting up and out of himself a second time, beyond even his subconsciousness, and entering a place outside imagination.
There is no time in the astral, and thoughts come not as words but as flows of being. Feelings and memories are water droplets suspended in the air and the ties back to Earth and life hang as ribbons that fade into clouds. There is music to breathe, wisdom for grass, and the sun that hangs above is lit with the souls of all who have found perfection. Shades of others on similar journeys may appear, but they look not like their bodies; they are the shapes of their spirits. Things do not happen in the astral because there is no action and reaction. There simply is.
But the soul that knew its name was Hadji felt joy to know that a soul called Quatre had joined it.
