WARNINGS: Rated K for reference to male/male marriage and not-fluffy topics of conversation

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the boys, the Gundams, the copyrights, or the patents. But the snappy one-liners are mine, all mine (unless indicated otherwise in the chapter notes).

SPOILERS: the Gundam Wing Episode Zero manga, "Filling in the Blanks", "A Moment of Truth", & "First, Last, and Only Time"


A Christmas Crusade

Follows "Two out of Three" – Christmas is a time for visits from the past. Trowa POV.


So this is Christmas.

I believe there's an old song with that line. If I bothered to turn on the radio, I might even hear it playing, queued up among all the other pre-programmed holiday hits that were being transmitted from an unmanned radio station. The date was December 25th and even though the majority of the world wasn't Christian, the tradition had spread thanks to the cultural and commercial exportation of it in the early twenty-first century.

Today was Christmas and while most of the world was bundled up at home, gorging on festively colored sweets and basking in the artificial glow of gaudy decorations, Duo and I were here, manning the fort.

I sighed as I wandered past the observation deck windows for the forty-third time this morning. We were the only ones here, on call in case of emergency. Our chosen helicopter was prepped and ready for launch. A backup jet was also standing by, fueled and stocked.

Duo and I had nothing to do but wait and count down to our shift change.

I'd rather be spending the day at the house, but as that would entail fighting the holiday traffic and paying exorbitant airfare rates, I knew that getting what I wanted in this case would only make me miserable and grouchy. And then there was Duo's ever-volatile and unpredictable Shinigami to consider. Traveling in these conditions would call the God of Death out like a siren's song. It was easier and smarter to accept the fact that, as the team with the lowest seniority, we were stuck with working the holiday shift. Someone had to do it and it might as well be us. It was the only viable option given our available choices.

I was on pass number forty-four when Duo sighed, tossed aside the crossword puzzle he wasn't making any progress on, pushed himself out of his chair, and marched over to the far wall where the bank of personal lockers had been installed. He opened up his with a noisy clatter and pulled out a black, plastic bag. Watching him and speculating on what he was up to was more interesting than staring at the helo again, so I turned and leaned back against the glass, tucking my hands into my trouser pockets.

"Are you… humming?" I checked as he set the bag down next to one of the break room tables and began wrestling with the ties.

"Uh, maybe?" he admitted, giving me a shy grin that made me want to help him remember how not shy he could be.

I forced myself to stay put. We were on call and in the hangar lounge. It would have to wait.

Duo pulled out a satiny-looking, green cloth and shook it out over the table, tugging it so it draped equally on both sides. Then he removed a sealed plastic dish, a thermos, and a—

"What is that?"

He took great care centering the thing on the table before flicking a switch on the base which caused it to pulse with multi-colored lights. "This," he replied, "is a disturbingly commercialized, plastic miniature of something that's meant to resemble a Christmas tree. Possibly. If you tilt your head and squint."

I stared at the thing, studying its plastic pine needles and painted-on frost. "That's what I was afraid of."

"Oh, c'mon. You never celebrated as a kid?"

I didn't meet Duo's teasing grin. I stared at the little, fake tree. Its blinking lights were mesmerizing. "The captain would give me a stocking filled with sweets and trinkets every year up until I was tall enough and strong enough to pilot a mobile suit." After my first battle and my first kill, magic and fairytales like Santa Claus were ridiculously morbid.

I startled when I felt Duo's hand slide into mine. He'd moved around the table to lean against the window ledge next to me. "I used to try to decorate for the rest of the gang. Y'know, carrying on the tradition."

I nodded. He'd told me about the gang, and about the boy who'd helped him become the person he was today: Duo was the one who always had everything under control, the one you could count on to come through for you, the one who didn't know the meaning of the word "surrender."

Gesturing to the little setup on the table, I asked, "You're feeling nostalgic this year?" He certainly hadn't gone to any trouble for the Christmases we'd spent at WEI but, as far as Duo was concerned, time had been standing still for those four years. It made sense that he wouldn't want to mark its passing. None of us had. As children, Quatre and Wufei certainly would have celebrated holidays with their families – the Islamic or Chinese New Year at the very least – but no one had ever mentioned their passing. It could be argued that the five of us really had been living in a state of suspended animation at WEI. I hadn't noticed. In my case (and possibly Heero's), things had merely been continuing on, everything status quo. The war had been nothing but a year-long blip on the otherwise unrelentingly dark radar screen.

The realization knocked something loose inside me, some layer of insulating armor I was carrying. I'd never had a normal holiday. I'd never acknowledged that there even was a normal holiday to be had. Although he'd never experienced that normalcy, Duo had recognized it, and now… now he was trying to figure out exactly what it was. I blinked at the plastic, foot-high tree and its mechanical, battery-powered lights. Duo was trying to give us a Christmas, a real Christmas.

"Me? Nostalgic?" He grinned crookedly. "Well… maybe. But you look like you could use a little holiday spirit."

He didn't tug me toward the table, though, which was what I was expecting. I turned toward him in time to catch a brief, pained look tugging at his brows and lips.

I rubbed my thumb over his knuckles, reminding him that I was here, that his hand was still holding onto mine. He closed his eyes and sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry it wasn't you that I was looking out for."

Frowning, trying to imagine the leaps in logic he'd taken to arrive at this apology, I said, "When were you not looking out for me?"

"In WEI," he admitted. "From the moment we set foot in that building, I was determined to get us out somehow. All of us." He paused, considering his next words. "And the gym sessions… we needed to be an us. The five of us, I mean. A team, a family, a unit. Like my gang. It was the only way I knew how to… to…"

When he floundered, I lifted his hand, which was still clutching mine, to my chest, nudging the pendant beneath my shirt with his fingers. "I knew you were looking out for all of us right from the start," I summarized, "and I knew those weekends in the gym were for all of us, not just for me."

Rather than providing comfort, my words seemed to distress him further.

I confessed, "That's what made me fall for you in the first place. The fact that you… cared… for all of us."

He looked up, read my expression, and chuckled. "That doesn't make any sense, babe."

"I know." It was counter-intuitive. Most people wanted to be special – they wanted to be singled out – and I had wanted that eventually. But at first, I'd been too raw from the final battle, too uncertain of my own shaky memories, too frightened by the things I knew how to do but couldn't remember learning. I'd gone off to battle; I'd piloted Heavyarms; I'd killed people. And through it all, I'd wondered if I was still missing something, some motivation or reason for why I was doing what I was doing. Even after we'd won, I was… lost. And Duo had found me, had pulled us all together in those weeks and months following the world's rejection of us and our sacrifices.

In the silence of the hangar lounge, I tried to explain this, although I wasn't sure if it really came out the way I intended. After fumbling through the words, I finally said, "You showed me I was… equal to the others. I needed that."

He was quiet for a long moment and I began to get irritated with myself. I could speak well on abstract subjects, on war and peace and sacrifice and duty, but I couldn't thank my husband for simply being himself.

But, perhaps it did come across the way I'd hoped it would because Duo sighed, leaned his shoulder against mine, and confided, "Keeping all of us from hiding in our rooms like hermits… that kept me sane."

"It gave you a measure of control," I observed.

"Yeah, I guess it did. Still, I should have realized you were… I mean, I think you're special. Really special."

"I know you do," I softly chided him. "But being an object of one person's crusade is unnerving." And somehow undermining, like trying to cover up the fact that someone is lacking by heaping accolades upon them in the hope that they won't notice their own deficiencies.

Duo seemed to understand that, too. "Oh. Well, when you put it that way…"

I studied his profile, watching him think. I saw the question and answered it before he had to say it aloud. "Yes, I've been singled out for saving before."

"It was not a good experience, I take it."

"No."

"And, if you were the object of another crusade now?" he asked softly, his gaze shifting guiltily toward the festive table.

I smiled wryly. "A Christmas crusade?"

He laughed. "Yeah. Sounds pretty corny when you say it like that."

I put my arm around his shoulders and leaned my head against his. "I like corny."

I felt his laughter all down the side of my body. "So the tree's a keeper?"

Giving it a frank appraisal, I answered, "It's hideous. We're definitely keeping it."

"The cookies and coffee will be better. I promise," he replied, chuckling. I let him drag me over to the table. We angled our seats so that my left knee bumped his right as we passed the thermos cap between us and dusted our shirts with cookie crumbs and baking flour.

"They're from Pierra," he explained and I added them to the list of things she had yet to teach me how to make.

At some point, his right hand came to rest on my thigh, and my left arm slid over the back of his chair, my fingers tugging absently at his ponytail. Neither one of us mentioned anything about carols or presents. Nor did we volunteer any more memories or anecdotes from the past. We didn't need to. We were making new memories now and enjoying the gifts we'd already been given: each other.


NOTES:

In the part about being singled out and not liking it, Trowa is referring to his encounter with Midii Une, which is detailed in the Episode Zero manga. Long story short, Midii (a girl who was about Trowa's age) was a spy for the Alliance (under duress) and ended up getting Trowa's entire troupe killed. Trowa was the only survivor and that was because she was looking out for him, protecting him. They parted ways badly and Trowa headed off to space.