*********
Long Lost
Disclaimer: I still don't own GW or any of its characters. I tried, but Evilnmalice outbid me. (Fortunately it didn't pay up, so it doesn't own them either.)
Warnings: None
Pairings: so far, only 3x4, we'll see how things develop
Archive: Desolation Angels. Previous parts can be found at http://www.dreamwater.net/ashura/LongLost.html
***********
Chapter Five: Path of Memory
***********
Relena had never really noticed Peygan looking old before. He'd simply always been there, ageless and eternal, offering her advice she didn't follow and comfort she'd never earned. Now he huddled in an oversized armchair pulled up close to the fire, dozing comfortably with a book lying open across his knee.
"Peygan?" she asked, breaking a silence dominated by the crackling of sparks in the fireplace, kneeling close to his chair on the hearth. "Can I ask you something?"
"Relena, child," he replied gently, the opening of his eyes his only movement, "when have you ever not?"
She smiled ruefully at that, nodding. "You're right. I'll just come out with it then. Peygan--do you remember my mother?"
His gaze, so dreamy and vacant only a moment before, darkened into acute alertness. "Of course, child, but what about her do you want me to remember?"
And Relena, who had composed and performed speeches that could make grown men applaud and put the world itself in tears, blurted out, "Why did she leave?"
Peygan looked startled, and he sighed, his fingers dropping to stroke gently through her hair. "Now, how did you find out about that?"
Relena's eyes fixed on her hands, twisting around each other in her lap. "Quatre looks like her. More than I do." Pleading, her gaze lifted, meeting his kind blue eyes. "We need answers. I was tiny. Why did she leave me? What are the missing pieces of thiis puzzle we've stumbled on?"
The hand dropped from her hair. "Relena, I wish there was more I could tell you." Peygan shook his head sadly, resting back into the depths of the chair. "Katrina was fleeing the Sanq kingdom, but I don't know why. Whatever made her leave, she never confided in me...and neither did your father. He was hurt, I think, but he told me nothing about it. Then...it was less than a year, when we heard she was dead."
"Childbirth," Relena finished quietly.
Peygan shook his head, his voice sad. "No. We here were told only that she had been sick...not what the true cause of her death was."
"But you knew?"
Again, that faint shake of silvered head. "No. I had suspicions, but only after I met Quatre Winner two years ago. The likeness, as you say, is remarkable. It made me wonder, but you've only just confirmed it for me now."
Relena sighed, resting her head against his knee, twisting a strand of honey hair through her fingers. "I used to think I didn't want to know anything about them," she began softly. "I was so angry with them for abandoning me, for giving me away--but it was the best they knew to do, wasn't it? The Sanq kingdom was falling apart before the war ever destroyed it."
Peygan nodded sadly. "I'm afraid so."