Stradivarius
by Nix Winter
This is a flashback interlude... It's Trowa+Quatre, set in the war.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing.
Notes: Sometime soon, this will be beta'ed :)
Other Notes: My interpretation of Duo, his past, how traumatic some events were over others is part of my understanding of the character and filtered through my perception and own experience. I do owe Episode Zero and highly recommend it. As for when Duo's first sexual experience was or what his ethics are in relation to monogamy, that's something between him and Heero, and probably varies from one Duo to another.
Trowa's Flashback.
He'd promised. Madrid by the third of July. His fingers brushed lightly, silently over the inside of his gloves, the soft black leather worn and just a little too large. Nanashi's last week had been spent surveying the factory he was now deep inside. Tall, slender, with dark brown hair that hung to one side of his face, and green eyes, he was of two selves.
Breathing slow, easy, he counted the seconds until the expected guard came around the corner on his first rounds. Flesh is so soft, even armored softness punctuates, at the throat, the eyes, Nanashi-shi moved instinct and training, devoid of emotion and the guard hit the wall of never. Sound, so unintended, a grunt, breath caught through a crushing windpipe, eyes suddenly bloodshot, and Nanashi-shi looped the man over his shoulder, at half his weight and ten times his determination, and they disappeared into the darker hall of Nanshi-shi's target.
The building had been new once, probably not long after Nanashi had been born in a colony far away. It was dark and nameless, defiled and yet the walls and circuitry were still sound. The body rested under the elevator, far down in maintenance pathings that the current users of the building either knew nothing of or cared nothing for. It would survive the blast down there, a skeleton of war. All in black, his face streaked with dark and grays, only the green of his eyes life and color, he flowed up the metal stairs. Soft cotton quilted shoes left no sound, disturbed no innocent molecules in passing, as a boy with no soul does not breath.
It was late. Night when no one judges and the callous turn on few lights to do their work. He expected only five people in the building. The guard he'd already met, three workers to move pallets of the profitable narcotics, and one woman who went over the accounts, the real accounts for OZ while the rest of the day shift drank beers and talked about how at least they had jobs and weren't in the military. Crouching, he pushed the door open and, just slightly, not much and listened to her mutter. Not so much with words, but the irregularity of her breath, held, grunted, drawn in sharply. She didn't like their numbers. Profit was only had when clients received packages and distributed the drugs. They'd been short on receiving payments.
Nanashi did not like narcotics.
They would need to hire new drivers.
Of course, they were going to need a new distribution center.
He smiled, thin lips, pale, but the green of his eyes darkened as the first puff of her cigarette swirled out over his head. If one has to die, let it be on a break.
His pistol was ceramic, matte black and when it snarled, it did so silently, with a bullet that disintegrated into thousands of tiny bits of shrapnel slicing hot as laser through flesh. It left no scent, no light. It had no name, and it came from his home, a bastard tool from L3.
The heat of the bullet left no blood to run down her face. It's speed left her expression vague and frustrated, indolent in it's way, certain of a bad day, certain of her right to carry on as she had been. He put out her cigarette.
Why he checked the inventory, he wasn't sure. Nanashi-shi wanted nothing that the gun he carried didn't want. Nanashi-koe knew the moment he scanned the inventory.
There was another boy. The thought of him made the room light, made breath suddenly sweet. He had golden hair, soft curls that only light and air could touch. Even in the darkness, light would find them, glide along the arc of their being. His voice could linger, and touch so deeply into Nanashi that he'd remembered smiling, found the taste of food, and on the third of July, in Madrid, Nanashi would sit at a table and be Trowa Barton sitting at a table with Quatre Rabera Winner. The world would continue until at least the third of July.
There on the list of inventory, was something small and mostly useless, a trinket to be sold by OZ to fund wars that killed and left children with empty souls. It was a Stradivarius. Nanashi-koe wanted it. Want was a deep breath, connected to an emotion that opened his chest and made him jittery. Nanashi-shi did not like this feeling, did not like want. To hand over this trinket to the blond angel of light and watch him open it, and see him smile and to have done something well… to have brought a smile to the angel's face; Nanashi-shi would have to understand or at least tolerate.
He tugged off one of the slightly too large gloves and slipped the memory card into the computer using only this thumb and forefinger, leaving no prints. Not that there would be anything left in the building, but careful was appropriate.
There had been a plan to this mission, timing. The bombs were timed, already initiated. L1 tech, they were a little less adaptive and he had no way to slow them. So he had ten minutes to find crate 985 and remove the violin. His pistol didn't have the range to pick off the remaining three workers and he would prefer for OZ to wonder, speculate about the cause of the blast for at least a few hours, so that he would have an easier time making it out of France.
It took another thirty seconds to get a better idea of the location of the crate from the computer, before Heero's virus fully grabbed the machine, using all it's resources to replicate and expand. Nine minutes, thirty seconds.
Long past, so long past that there had been a name, he had lived where people could fly. It was one leaping jump to the rail on the catwalk. Body of grace and balance at home with less gravity rather than more, he shoved off, into the space between the second floor and the first, spinning, arms out, as he landed, knees bending on the hard floor, a rush and his of disturbed air his only sound. Running both gloves back on, he counted off the crates, three to a stack, until he had the right column. From a running go, he jumped, caught a bar mid way up that was used for a rolling chain and hissed from the lines cutting into his hands before he'd already swung and brought himself up to the bar. Below him the workers were muttering, wondering. Six minutes, seventeen seconds.
The crate was nailed. He snarled. A Stradivarius in a crate would be well packed. He rocked the crate. One of the workers screamed. Nanashi-shi smiled.
Two minutes, nine seconds. He walked away from building, violin case in hand. Red trailed down from a cut above his left eye, a single trail down his nose.
Negative five minutes, thirty-two seconds. Nanashi threw his leg over his motorcycle, the violin now strapped to his back. Shi and Koe slept. Fire engines screamed towards the red that reached four stories behind him, crackling louder than his engine when he revved it.
Third, July, lunch time in Sintra.
Warm air, moist and tickled with salt, and Trowa paused at the bottom of the stairs. The room he'd rented was in an old villa with pink stucco walls and bright yellow curtains that fluttered in the breeze as if the color could never fade from them.
Jeans and a pale green shirt, unbuttoned at the color, and he was freshly shaven, eyes dancing with possibilities. He'd enrolled in school, a transfer from America this time, tuition paid for the full year. Today was Saturday though and he had free time.
His hair, longer than the school liked, but forgiven due to the nicely paid tuition and a letter from his mother about his grief over his cousin, well this dark hair shadowed his face, hiding one side, letting the other smile and hum through the streets.
The café they'd picked was closer to the water, and he could see Quatre a block away. The blond waved, and Trowa picked up his pace. He wasn't going to run. The smile at the back of his throat fluttered cool against the July heat. At least on L3 they could turn the temperature down if they wanted to, but there was something, something uncontrollable about the heat, about seeing Quatre smile in his direction. He had no control over this flutter and how much he wanted to grab the other pilot, pull him close and feel his heart still beating.
It was just the heat, too, which had no control over that put color over his cheeks.
Quatre stood, bowed slightly as Trowa neared the table. "I'm so glad to see you! I hear the transfer went well?"
"Of course," Trowa said, voice calm, not at all flustered or too happy, or alive for the first time since the last time he'd been near Quatre. "I brought you a small gift."
He handed the case over and sat, taking the glass of nearly melted ice water and sipping. "If it's missing anything, I'm sorry."
The case took a moment to open, combinations that weren't known and well therefore took a bit of time, Quatre smiled. Trowa sipped the water, watched the light on Quatre's hair, the way the puzzle captivated the little Arab. "I'm sure it's fine. I didn't bring you a gift. You shall have to come home to my house. We have a pool."
Trowa turned the glass in his hands. Scars. Ugly scars. He couldn't very well say he couldn't swim. He wanted … Quatre to like his appearance. "Maybe we can see a movie."
The case opened and Quatre's eyes turned into pools, great big oceans of blue that Trowa could swim in to his soul's content. "Allah," the boy said, color chilling from his face. "Do you know what this is?"
"I knew it couldn't be happy until it was with you," Trowa said, because.. well, nothing could be happy unless it was with Quatre.