Formatting on the site continues to be an adventure. It works slightly better in AO3 if you read stuff over there. Or I should stop writing flashback sequences – one of the two.

Enjoy!


The transport cockpit was quiet. That was the most common result of Heero Yuy and Chang Wufei being left alone together. Both were reticent by nature, doubly so when on a mission, and neither valued inane conversation. It marked the departure between them and Duo (who was more often paired with one of them for a mission) whom they both would have accused of being the very definition of inane. In the quiet, they understood one another perfectly.

It was, in fact, a welcome change from being surrounded by so many civilians, in Wufei's opinion. Not that the Quests were particularly trying – compared to the green Preventers recruits they were downright competent – but anyone who needed to talk so much and act so little would eventually find a limit to his patience. The research with Jonny and Benton Quest through the Horus files had been soothing after a fashion until Heero had deigned to pop his head in long enough to announce that he had acquired a transport and was leaving to retrieve the two Gundams from the Preventers headquarters. Technically Wufei could have left him to it, as all five ex-pilots had high enough clearance to do pretty much anything deemed mission-necessary, but he had opted to accompany him anyway. Partly it was to report their plan to Une in person directly, but most of it was because Wufei was frankly curious. The Tallgeese was Zechs's suit, even if he didn't use it much anymore, and nobody was allowed to touch it. Even Noin was under orders to steer clear of it when possible.

When he had learned Heero's plan to take it, he hadn't been totally surprised.

"You're just leaving him a note?" Wufei demanded, fighting against the smile threatening to break across his disapproving face.

"Hn."

"And you don't think he'll be angry?"

"Of course he will be. But by then the situation will have resolved itself. And even Zechs wouldn't deny that this is a situation that warrants its use. If he were here, I'd ask. But sending him any kind of communication will inevitably be intercepted by Surd," Heero said reasonably.

"I am sure I don't want to know the answer to this, but – what exactly are you putting in the note?" Wufei dreaded the answer.

Heero handed him the piece of paper in response, turning away to begin the process of transferring the unit to his transport. Because of their combined access and rank (and death-glares), the hangar was completely empty of personnel, and everyone was under orders to keep it that way. The pair had also systematically disconnected every monitoring device in the area. Une had already instituted a base-wide lockdown of all digital communications, so hopefully sealing the hangar would prevent any record of their intentions from reaching their enemy.

Wufei looked at the note in his hands. It read:

"I am taking the Tallgeese to intercept the Surd suit. I will return it, condition to be determined by the battle itself. Expect certain repairs to be necessary. I may also be forced to rewrite the operating system as the one Zechs uses is obsolete at best. He will be better served by my improvements. If you insist on court-martialing me for this act, please let the record state that I have the approval of Agent Chang and Agent Winner, and they will speak for me at any tribunal. It would be unwise to argue against them both on this matter or any other."

Wufei didn't realize how hard he was laughing until Heero had to call his name more than once to coordinate maneuvering the transport into place. Whatever else he might be, Heero Yuy was no fool.

Now, halfway back to L2 with the Gundams safely in tow, both ex-pilots were focused on the mission to come. Wufei had received an alert from the Quests that they had located Surd's probable base for his physical body on L1, and that Trowa had tracked Rage himself to a small outpost near L5. Horus showed that the Surd suit was moving in the direction of L4, so their battle would be spread across the colonies. Wufei was just about to contact Quatre and check on the availability of shuttles when the thought seemed to summon him.

Not in person, of course, but as a tug in Wufei's heart, a warmth that could only be from the empathic bond. He looked at Heero in surprise.

"You're not imagining it," the Japanese pilot said without turning away from the control panel. "That's Quatre all right. You'll get used to it."

"Do you know what it means?"

"I have a suspicion. Quatre must be nearly completely unshielded for it to reach us so clearly, and he only ever unshields that much when he has reason. He must be trying to reassure someone."

"But," Wufei narrowed his eyes, "exactly what feeling is this? Even unshielded, he's not directing it at us, but it's strong enough to be felt. We're just getting the empathic echoes through the bond. What feels like this?"

Heero smirked knowingly. "You'll find out sooner or later."

"It is illogical for you to keep information from me that might be tactically important," Wufei grumbled.

"If it were something I thought it likely you would have to interpret on the mission, I'd tell you," Heero replied with a shrug. "But it's not. It's not in the code."

Wufei hmphed in response, but there was no denying the truth of it. The night they had discovered the bond, after dinner with the Quests, the five pilots had spent several hours not only becoming accustomed to their new arrangement, but developing a way to use it. By the time they had prepared their initial assault on Surd's base (which wound up being a rescue mission after the unexpected presence of the Quests), they had developed a means of communicating through the bond with Quatre. He served as a relay station between them – they had discovered that Quatre could send impressions clear enough to indicate which person was sending the emotion as well as what it meant. As signals and codes and such were almost second-nature to all five, it took only a little while for them to reliably pass rather detailed information without any form of technology.

It was astonishing how much Quatre's empathic abilities had grown. Mere days ago, Trowa could not sense Quatre at a moderate distance, and mostly only strong emotions filtered through the shielded bond. Heero, too, had felt mostly just the sense of connectedness unless Quatre was experiencing something profound as with the pain of ZERO and Rage. But now, if Quatre had not been practicing his shielding almost nonstop since realizing the change in himself, it was likely that his every passing, fleeting feeling would have been noticeable to both Trowa and Heero. It seemed that whatever Hadji had done to break Quatre from ZERO had also shattered limits he had imposed unknowingly on himself, and now he was truly embracing his full power.

Still, that did mean those not previously accustomed to receiving emotional inputs from Quatre would have to learn to deal with them.

Opting not to pry Heero for more information about what he was sensing from Quatre, Wufei changed the topic a little. "Winner is planning something, isn't he?"

"Usually."

"Something additional to this mission that he's not telling us about."

"Probably."

"Do you know what it is? It could be vital to the success of the operation for me to know what he is thinking."

Heero turned from the transport's controls and fixed Wufei with a look of supreme disdain. "You've gone soft."

"What?!" Wufei's hands curled into fists and he resisted the urge to strike at the insult.

"You've internalized the accountability of Preventers too much," Heero said flatly. "Procedures and forms and paperwork – you know that they don't matter on the battlefield. You probably need those things to work with the empty-headed recruits, but this is us, Wufei. You know how we operate."

"And I know we will operate at peak efficiency if we are fully informed," he returned hotly.

"That's where you're wrong. Every battle we've ever won has come because we worked together and trusted each other to do what he thought was best, not what we thought was best. You didn't know when I installed ZERO in Sandrock before a battle, and you didn't need to know. But when Quatre activated it, you followed. Just do that this time."

"You don't know what he's planning," Wufei realized with a small amount of smugness.

"I don't need to. Do you really think Quatre would do anything that would endanger the mission? If I need to know, he'll tell me. If he isn't telling me, he has a good reason. That's enough for me. And it ought to be enough for you," he said reproachfully.

Wufei didn't have anything to say to that, so he huffed and decided to look through the data he'd already acquired about Jeremiah Surd. Which was in no way admitting that Heero was correct. Not at all.

The Preventers database had contained all the details provided by Race Bannon, as well as more history regarding Surd's incarceration and escape. There was also a psychological profile, but Wufei didn't bother – he knew enough to understand Surd's mind fairly well already. Besides, it was Howard who had proved the most informative. As per Heero's point, questioning the old man had revealed that, indeed, Surd had been the seventh scientist on the Gundam project besides himself and the Doctors. He had been an anonymous source that the Doctors used because he was valuable, but Howard had never trusted him. After parting ways from the others, Howard had made it his business to learn who the mysterious contributor with such knowledge of programming had been. By the time he uncovered Surd's identity, however, Operation Meteor had already begun and Howard had more on his mind than old suspicions.

Still, it confirmed that Surd had not only an intimate knowledge of how to build a proper Gundam, but of the original ZERO program and what the system could do once enhanced. And if Wufei was honest with himself, he thought there was little better way to reprogram the half-ZERO designed by Dr Quest than to put it in the hands of someone like Surd, run it through a ZERO-enhanced brain like Quatre's, and mix the pieces together. Surd's ZERO had all the tactical superiority of Quatre's thinking, the technically nuanced and advanced programming of Quest's invention, and the focus of a mad genius with nothing to live for but revenge and perfecting the program.

Which was precisely why Wufei intended to unplug the tetraplegic by any means necessary as quickly as possible. Surd's ZERO could do more harm even then Rage's missiles. He would be stopped. He had to be.

"Yuy," he said, watching the lights of L2 come into view ahead.

"Hn?"

"Until I apprehend Surd, you have to keep his focus on you as much as possible. The more consuming and unpredictable your battle, the less likely he will pose a threat elsewhere."

"Obviously," Heero responded, annoyed.

"And you have to protect Quatre. And yourself too. We all come back from this, Yuy."

Dark blue eyes met steady black ones. When the two had first encountered one another, neither one of them would have said such a thing aloud, nor meant it, nor felt the import of it. When they had traded fire during Dekim Barton's battle, it had seemed they might never again regard one another as allies. But time, necessity, and the friendship woken in them by their similarities had changed all that. Even before Quatre pulled the other four into a first shared moment of empathy, even before he had come to Wufei for help with his space heart, those rifts that had divided them all were healing.

It was a testament to that change that Heero saw not the proud Chinese warrior but the friend, brother, one-of-five looking out through Wufei's eyes. This had nothing to do with strength or honor.

"Hai."

And Wufei believed him.

-==OOO==-

"Hey Quatre," Jessie greeted him cheerlessly. Her eyes returned to the dining room window and the endless darkness of space sprinkled with stars.

"I thought you could use someone to talk to," he said easily, standing beside her.

"Oh, probably." There was something too flippant in her voice. She tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear and looked at him closely. "My dad's been reprogrammed by ZERO to become a frothing madman whenever he sees me. Even for us, that's kind of a new problem."

"I understand," Quatre said softly. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Will it make him better?" she asked.

"No, not directly."

"Then what would be the point?" Jessie's voice hitched for a moment and she turned back to the stars. "I'm not saying I don't probably need a team of therapists or something. But we've got bigger problems right now than my state of mind. I can handle this. But if I start talking to you about it and break apart…"

"You might not be able to handle it anymore," Quatre finished.

"Exactly."

"I'm not going to pressure you," he said, "and your choices are your own. But I want you to know that I do understand, and if I can help you now, I will. When ZERO took Trowa from me during the wars, when it took Heero, I was lucky in that they both came back before too long. But the meantime was…difficult."

"Can I ask you something?" Jessie swung back so she was facing Quatre again. She knew she was redirecting the conversation, and the very slight quirk of the blond's eyebrow told her that he knew it as well, but she pressed on anyway. "Something kinda private? You can tell me I'm out of line if you want."

"Okay," he shrugged amiably.

"What is it with you and Heero? I thought you were, you know, with Trowa."

Quatre had definitely not been expecting her to ask that, and he smiled in spite of himself at the confused curiosity she radiated. Well, if delving into his personal matters would give her a moment's respite from her own pain, he didn't mind too much. She reddened as the intimate nature of her question seemed to fully dawn on her and she opened her mouth to apologize but he interrupted her.

"I don't mind telling you. It's okay. Believe me that anything I don't want you to know, you will never ever find out. But I don't want any of this popping up on a fansite or something either," he teased her.

"Of course not!" Her eyes lit up with mock offense.

"You know that I have a bond with Heero, right?" he began. She nodded. "Things have changed recently, but until now, other than Trowa, Heero was the one most connected to my space heart. In fact, he was the one who triggered it."

"But you're not in love with him?"

"Not the way you mean it, no," and he smiled at her again, clearly feeling her own distress dissipating as he gave her something to think about besides her own troubles. "But you're not the first person to ask me that, either."

"It's just…you often pair off with him. Even when you don't have to. And you include Heero in your plans more than Trowa. Or maybe it just seems that way. It isn't that you don't act like you love Trowa, 'cause you do and it's cute. It's just that you seem to default to Heero somehow. Like the way you went with Duo to back up the others the first time we went to Rage's and left Trowa with us. You should have seen…" she trailed off before taking a breath and meeting his eyes. "When you were plugged into ZERO, I thought he had lost his mind. He was grieving as though you were dead. If he'd been with you…"

"There's three parts to this answer," Quatre said gently, "and I'll try to explain all three. It won't surprise you to know that Heero's protective of me. You already know that."

"Well, yeah."

"Heero's not in love with me, but what he feels about me is almost more than that. To Heero, I'm a brother who needs to be protected, a commanding officer to be respected and obeyed, and the reminder that his own heart is alive and meaningful, all in one. He's also the best of us at what he does and we all know it. So when he has any say in things, he'll usually pair himself off with me just because, even though he knows how good Trowa is, and how good I am at taking care of myself, there's a part of him that just can't quite trust anyone, myself included, to protect me."

"So he goes with you to make sure you're okay. And I'm not surprised he doesn't trust you or Trowa. He's not the trusting type," she nodded. "But you said three parts?"

"Well, the second part is Trowa. What you saw happen to him when I was plugged into ZERO, I'd have to guess that was a pretty mild reaction compared to what it could have been."

"Mild!" she exclaimed, remembering his bone-chilling screaming quite clearly.

"Distance used to act as a dampener on my empathy," Quatre explained. "So because he was farther away, he got less of it than he would have if he'd been closer. To be very frank, if Trowa had been on Rage's base when I went into ZERO, he might not have been able to block me out at all. He'd have been unable to keep himself from channeling everything I was feeling and it would have completely overwhelmed him. ZERO and Rage did a lot to impair my ability to shield. I wouldn't have been able to protect him from it. It's not the first time our proximity has been detrimental to a mission before."

"Therefore, you deliberately separated yourself in case something happened so the backlash to Trowa would be less," Jessie concluded.

"Yes, exactly. It's less to Heero anyway, though probably not anymore. Pretty soon I won't be able to go anywhere with anybody," he joked.

"Okay. So I get that Heero feels like he has to protect you, and that Trowa was better protected from you if you didn't stay so close together on a dangerous mission. You've explained it pretty well for why it works that way in your plans, but not in general," she said, "so what's the third part?"

"Me, of course," Quatre grinned. Then, growing serious and turning from her to look out at the stars, he spoke as if to himself. "I do love Heero. But I love Trowa more than I can ever begin to tell you. There aren't words in any language for what he is to me, for what I feel for him. I don't just love him. I'm…connected to him. He's the other half of everything I am. He's as much a part of me and everything I do as my own space heart."

Jessie waited, knowing he would continue.

"Saying that I trust Trowa is like saying you trust your left foot to work in partnership with your right foot when you're walking. If there's something dangerous happening, or if there's divided priorities, sometimes I want Trowa on the other side, not because I don't love him, but because I do. Because having Trowa on the other team is as close as I can get to being there myself. But you're wrong, you know."

"I am?"

"Of the operations on this mission so far, I really haven't separated from Trowa much except the one time when I took Duo to back up Heero and the Quests, and that was a strategic decision on multiple levels. Other than that, we've been together. Although you're correct in that I'm paired up with Heero this time. But not for that reason."

"Yes, but…" she looked for words, "oh, I don't know."

"You're very perceptive," Quatre said unexpectedly, looking sharply at her. "Even if you don't know how to explain what you're seeing, you still notice it and take it under consideration. You trust your instincts and they're largely accurate. That's a rare thing. You'd make a good Preventers agent, actually."

"Thanks, I guess. So you're saying there's something I'm seeing that you do know about already?"

"Sure. You don't witness all our interactions. You never will. But from your perspective, what you see is a great deal of closeness and comfort between Heero and I. And his regard for me is obvious, if you know what you're looking for. I just told you I love him, and you notice it. Even if I march around holding Trowa's hand every second of the day, you might stick your thoughts on the way Heero watches me when I lay out a plan or something and it makes you wonder. I'm not surprised. Like I said, you're not the first to ask."

"I suppose that's it. I can't put my finger on it, but there seems to be...more in what I see when you're with Heero than when you're with Trowa."

"And you're missing the one thing you couldn't possibly know." He turned to the stars again. "I think if you watched long enough you'd see that it isn't much different from Duo or Wufei now that things have shifted – there's an openness to us because we are connected. And you expect to see more between Trowa and I than you do because that would be normal for people in love instead of just close friends. But the part you've missed is this – what seems to be less between Trowa and I isn't because we aren't impossibly bound together. It's because we are."

"I don't get it."

"Have you ever woken early and looked at the sunrise and for one perfect, golden moment felt your heart explode in your chest with joy? Felt that you would live forever and ever and that all the world, all of life, is nothing but perfect gloriousness? Felt so much emotion welling up in your soul that laughing or crying or dancing or praying or everything together wouldn't, couldn't possibly capture it all?"

"Yes, I have." Even as he described it, Jessie felt a memory of that broad feeling kindle inside her.

"What Trowa and I feel for each other is ten times that. We feel so much that there is no way to express it. What's between us is too big for that."

"I guess I don't understand," Jessie turned away. "I mean, I do conceptually. The idea that it's too much to show in any way that would be normal makes a weird sort of sense. I just…I can't imagine it."

"Would you like to?"

She looked at him suspiciously, but Quatre's eyes were fixed on her calmly. He held out his hands, palms up, and quirked his head a little. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe it was exactly the wrong thing to do, but in that moment Jessie didn't care. Her own heart was aching. She wanted to know what it felt like to love someone as much as he said. She wanted to know what it meant. She wanted to throw herself into something completely outside everything raging within her.

She took his hands.

Jessie expected a rush of emotion, but it was instead very slow, like the steady buildup of pressure in a colony elevator as the false gravity got stronger and stronger. But before long she felt her eyes widening and her chest tensing. She bit her lips as tears prickled in her eyes.

It was, just as Quatre had said, so big. It was almost painful even as it was exquisite in its joy. She wanted to weep and she wanted to shout and she wanted to curl up in that galaxy of emotion and lose herself for the rest of her life. There couldn't possibly be this much room in one person's heart for love, could there? Even in two people's hearts? This was the unbelievable, comprehensive, omnipresent love of fairy tales and myths and legends. It was everywhere. It was too big to be contained, too big to be explained, too big to even be comprehended. It was impossible. But it was real. So real.

A moment later the feeling faded slowly just as it became too overwhelming. Jessie gulped against a lump in her throat, not of sorrow or unhappiness, but because her body could not contain all those feelings without tears. Tears of joy, of peace, of completeness, an inarticulate affection and loyalty and protectiveness and security. She never noticed when Quatre withdrew his hands completely.

Jessie came back to herself with her arms wrapped around herself and her chin on her chest. Of all things, she was giggling helplessly.

"So that's why Trowa's never jealous about Heero beings so close to you," she managed. She was almost hiccupping and tears were falling and she allowed herself to sit on the floor as she looked up through wobbly eyes at Quatre who was smiling gently.

"Yup."

"That's…I don't even…How can…"

"See why it's so hard to explain?" he slid down the wall to join her.

"Yeah, you could say that," she tipped her head back and giggled some more, not even bothering to bat at the tears that still fell. It felt so impossibly good, she wasn't capable of being ashamed of any of it.

"I'd ask if you were okay, but," Quatre quirked a half-grin at her, "I kind of already know."

"Is it because of your space heart that what you have with Trowa is so…" she shrugged eloquently at the lack of words, "or is it something else?"

"I don't really know. Being an empath, I can say that I've never known anyone else in love to feel this way, but you can imagine that my life hasn't exactly had a lot of stable relationships in it," Quatre answered quietly. "But that doesn't mean I've never sensed this sort of feeling between people. I see it a lot, actually."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Well, it isn't identical," he cautioned her, "but the love some parents carry for their children is awfully close. Have you ever seen a newborn in the arms of its mother or father? It's not quite the same, but close enough. Honestly, I'd say that your dad feels pretty similarly to that about you, and so does Dr Quest for Jonny and Hadji."

And of everything else, those words, the honesty in Quatre's eyes and the lingering depth of the emotion rippling through her, gave Jessie the hope she had lost when she had first heard her father scream in the ZERO Sysem. If her dad loved her that much, as much as she had plainly felt, then he would come back to her. Anything else was impossible to the point of being ridiculous. If her dad shared even a bit of the emotion she had just experienced, he could no sooner stop loving Jessie than he could stop his heart from beating.

No matter how long it took, her dad would come back for her in the end. It was going to be okay.

The rush of that realization made her tears take on a more pressing urgency and she threw her arms around Quatre and squeezed him tightly. He held her, nodding wordlessly against her head. Of course he understood what she had just felt. It had probably been his plan all along, actually. Not to force her to talk about her feelings, but to bring them to peace some other way. And he had.

"Thank you," she whispered.