Trowa is in the pool, swimming laps, when she arrives early Saturday morning. Heero is seated at the far end of the pool, jeans rolled up to the knees and feet in the water, watching Trowa move. There are a pair of eye-searingly yellow sneakers next to a folding chair, safely out of the splash zone. She pauses as she approaches, observing the way the Gundam pilot swims. It's not as fluid as usual; she sees that the reach on his right side isn't as long or graceful as his left.
"Stop stalling and work on your warm-up," Heero calls.
Mariemaia flushes and gets to work. She's just finishing up when Trowa pushes himself one-armed out of the pool. She can hear the murmur of his voice, but not his actual words. Heero crouches and studies his side before nodding and stepping away. Trowa turns toward her, rubbing a towel over his hair. She's able to see the wound for the first time.
It's an ugly, jagged line along his right side, held together with small, neat stitches, covered by a thin plastic wrapping. It starts an inch or two above his right hip before zigzagging across his lower ribcage. She stares at it, wide eyed. It doesn't look like the type of wound one gets from a circus. It looks like someone attempted a botched disembowelment. Trowa catches her look and offers a wry smile.
"It looks worse than it is," he tells her.
"Does it hurt?" she asks. She flushes and wishes she could bite back her words. Of course it hurts, she thinks angrily.
Trowa looks amused though. "I've had worse." She sees Heero's jaw clench and eye roll. She imagines there's a story not being told and is curious what it is. She wonders if it's from the War or the Rebellion or something after, something with Preventers or the circus or something else entirely. "Ready for more diving?"
She gives a quick nod, then pauses. "Did you get in trouble?" she asks Heero. Trowa's eyebrows rise and Heero tilts his head questioningly. "For yesterday?"
"No, should I be expecting a summons from Une?"
Trowa's eyes narrow. "What did you do?" he questions. "You said you picked her up from school."
"I did," Heero replies, voice terse. "Apparently that was a mistake." Trowa looks unconvinced and Mariemaia bites her tongue. Heero nods at the pool. "In you get."
She spends over an hour in the pool, diving and swimming laps. Her legs only tire toward the end and she's impressed. Maybe the yoga is actually helping. Heero doesn't use the starting pistol, though he holds it loosely in his hand. He approaches her, toward the end of the session, when she's taking her place on the starting block once again.
"Where are we right now?" he questions.
She stares at him as if he's grown a second head. "Preventers?" she questions.
He nods. "How old are you?"
"Twelve," she replies, eyebrows raised incredulously.
"Exactly. You are not seven years old, you are not in an underground bunker," he tells her. "When you hear the gun you push off. Remember that."
She blinks, nodding. He steps back and she gets into position. Bang. She pushes off, enters the water and dolphin kicks her way to the surface. Trowa nods at her when she swims back to the end of the pool. "Better," he comments.
"Should be," Heero states. He holds a hand out to her and she takes it, lets him pull her from the water. "She only has until Friday to prepare for her meet." He nods his head to the block. "Come on, back to it."
. . ... . .
Lady Une is on the phone in the office, the door closed firmly. That usually means it's Important or Top Secret. Mariemaia rolls her eyes and tiptoes past, heading upstairs to shower and change into her lay-about clothes. She's toweling off her hair when she pauses in front of her vanity, studies the face of her Uncle Trowa in the photo stuck to the mirror. It bothers her that she's started to forget the exact color of his eyes, the timbre of his voice.
She spends an hour reading and tidying up her room before the grumbling in her stomach urges her downstairs for a snack. She's heading back upstairs, bowl of fresh cut fruit in her hands, when she notices that the office door is open.
"Mariemaia, come here."
Sighing, she makes her way to the office door and pokes her head in. The walls are paneled mahogany, the desk large and ornately carved. She'd found it odd at first that the office didn't have windows, but Lady Une had simply pointed out it was harder for someone to spy or break in that way.
Lady Une isn't seated at the desk though, she's on the smaller settee next to the fireplace. There are a stack of books on the coffee table in front of her. Mariemaia hesitates in the doorway until Lady Une looks up and sees her. Her guardian gives her a small, tight-lipped smile.
"I thought I heard you in the kitchen." Mariemaia holds up her bowl of fruit and nods. "How was practice?"
"Alright," she replies. She takes another look at the books and realizes they're photo albums. She didn't know they owned photo albums. "I saw…" she trails off, takes a breath, "I saw Trowa Barton's injury."
Lady Une's face is carefully blank and Mariemaia frowns, leans against the doorjamb. "Terrible accident," her guardian says finally.
Mariemaia bites her tongue and doesn't say what's on her mind. Doesn't ask if he got it doing one of Lady Une's jobs, one of Preventers' missions, even though he isn't officially on the roster. She knows, she's checked the databases when Lady Une's forgotten and left her computer unlocked. She pushes the thoughts away, locking them in the back of her mind, and turns her attention to the photo albums.
"What are those?" she asks.
Lady Une gives her another small smile and pats the spot next to her. "Come, I want you to look at them."
Mariemaia crosses the room and sits down next to her guardian. Lady Une picks up the top album. It's leather bound with gold leafed pages. It doesn't look like Lady Une's taste. It looks like…
Lady Une flips open the cover and finds the first page of photographs. "These were left over after your father passed. I've held onto some of them, and Dorothy has the rest. I thought you might want to take a look through them."
Mariemaia is glad she's sitting. Her throat feels tight and her hands are trembling. She sets the bowl of fruit down so that she doesn't accidentally spill all over the photographs. Lady Une shifts the album so that it's in Mariemaia's lap. She points to the first set of photos. They're similar to all the others she's seen: her father in military dress, giving a speech, shaking an aristocrat's hand…
"Ah, here we go," Lady Une says, flipping to somewhere near the middle. "This was at his estate in the east."
Mariemaia blinks and finds that of their own accord her fingers are tentatively brushing the photograph. Her father is sitting on the lip of a marble water fountain, head thrown back and laughing. He looks younger, more carefree. His hair is slightly longer, sun streaked with the barest hint of copper in the sunshine. It's the first photo of him that she's seen where he isn't dressed in his uniform. His sleeves are rolled up and she wonders if his skin freckles in the sunlight like hers does.
It takes her a moment to notice the other people in the photograph. Dorothy is seated next to her father, a large sunhat protecting her fair skin. Even through the photo Mariemaia can sense her cousin's fierce stare, but her smile seems genuine. A blonde boy in over-sized sunglasses and a dark-haired girl sit on her father's other side. Zechs Merquise and Noin, she realizes.
"You'll have to ask Dorothy what was going on here, if she remembers," Lady Une murmurs. "I remember that they would spend the holidays at your father's estate though."
"They really were friends," Mariemaia comments. She taps Zechs's face. "Those sunglasses are ridiculous."
"They are," Lady Une replies, and there's a laugh hidden beneath her words.
Mariemaia finds herself flipping pages slowly, automatically. Her father waltzing with Dorothy. Her father waltzing with Noin. Zechs and Dorothy fencing. Zechs, Dorothy, and her father lounging on the deck of a ship, glasses of champagne in hand and skin pinked by the sun. Her father in uniform again, next to Une. Her father shooting skeet. She reaches the end of the album and finds that she has to blink away sudden unbidden tears.
Lady Une reaches for the next album, sets it in Mariemaia's lap. "I should have shown you these before," she says, voice soft.
"Why didn't you?" she asks. "Why now?"
She wants to be happy with it. She wants to think this was done as a gesture of peace, but it feels too much like a bribe. Dekim used to do the same thing. A small gift and you never knew the price of that gift until it was too late. Mariemaia closes her eyes, reminds herself that Lady Une isn't her grandfather.
"These last five years haven't been all bad, have they?" Lady Une asks. "I know we've had our ups and downs, but you are happy here, aren't you?"
Mariemaia looks at her guardian and feels a stab of pain at the sadness she sees reflected in Lady Une's eyes. "I am," she replies. Her voice is more honest than she'd like it to be.
Lady Une shifts and wraps an arm around her shoulders. Mariemaia wants to shrug it off, but she forces herself to remain still, lets herself lean into Lady Une slightly. She feels more than hears Lady Une release a breath. "You frightened me yesterday. When Henri called I thought the worst had happened."
Mariemaia lets her fingers trail over the cool sheen of the photographs, careful not to get fingerprint smudges on them. "I'm sorry. I didn't think." She can't help but look up though, feels the fire in her eyes. "I can take care of myself."
"You can," Lady Une replies after a moment. "But you don't have to."
Mariemaia frowns, turns the words over in her head. Before she can respond Lady Une pulls away and stands.
"I'm famished, let's order something in for lunch. Thai alright?" Mariemaia nods automatically, senses Lady Une moving toward the office door. "The albums are yours," Lady Une says, pausing on the threshold. "You can look through them as often as you want, keep them in your room or down here."
Mariemaia looks up, meeting her guardian's eyes. There's still a pain there that Mariemaia doesn't understand, doesn't know how to ask about. "Thank you," she says.
Lady Une nods, hesitates in the doorway another moment, before she disappears to place their order. Mariemaia silently collects the albums and carries them upstairs to her bedroom to examine in private. Ruthlessly, she squashes down on any faint hope of finding an image of her mother in the albums. She can't imagine her father would've kept any reminders of his indiscretion around. It didn't do to broadcast any potential weaknesses that could be used as leverage. Dekim had always made sure she understood that.