Well here it is--the chapter you've all been waiting for, where we get all the answers laid out at last. There'll be one more part--I want an epilogue to tie up a couple loose ends. But this is the big ol' climax of the mystery. *grin* I hope you like it.
Ashura
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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: 3x4, 1+C, 2xOC
Archive: Desolation Angels. Parts 1-10 can be found at http://www.dreamwater.net/ashura/LongLost.html
(11-15 will be posted there as soon as I have access again!)
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Chapter Fifteen: Pieces Come Together
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Duo rested is weary head against the cold metal framing the shuttle's porthole, hugging the end of his braid to his chest like a favourite toy. Wisps of matted hair protruded from his head, and shadows ringed his violet eyes, dark against his pasty skin. "Explain to me again," he moaned, "why this couldn't have waited til /after/ we slept?"
"Because," Quatre answered logically, "if we waited til morning, we'd be hitting lagrange-four at about three in the morning. This way we get in at dinnertime, and don't wake up my sisters."
"You can sleep on the trip over, Duo," Heero added sourly.
Duo grumbled under his breath, and Relena smiled at him sympathetically. "You don't have to come along unless you want to," she reminded him gently. "It's really only Quatre and I--and Trowa, I suppose--who have any real investment in this."
Duo summoned a sleepy, faded version of his best indignant glare. "Excuse me? Who here found half your answers while certain other folks were busy flirting?" he demanded, focusing the glare on the rest of the group. "I'm gonna see this through to the end too. I'll just be tired while seeing it!" He crossed his arms defiantly across his chest.
Relena stifled a laugh. "I wasn't telling you not to come. Just giving you an out if you wanted one." She covered a yawn of her own, her head drooping against Quatre's shoulder. "Besides, none of the rest of us have slept yet either."
"I'm not tired," said Trowa softly, his lips twisting into a smile as Quatre snuggled up against his shoulder. "Fortunately I'm not planning on moving, either," he added dryly, wrapping an arm around his lover as Relena made herself comfortable against Quatre's other side.
"Well I am. Tired, that is. Be my pillow, will you Heero?" Duo whined, cuddling up to his roommate without waiting for an answer.
"Do I have a choice?" Heero muttered under his breath, but he did let the braided boy nestle into his chest.
Catherine, on Heero's other side, chuckled. "Doesn't look like it." Watching the others drift off to sleep, she began digging through her pack for a book. "By the way--what is it Iria found?"
"It sounded like letters," Trowa answered, absently stroking Quatre's hair. "She started going through all Quatre's father's things when this all started; apparently she came across some things they'd never noticed before."
Catherine finally extricated _The Pirate Prince_ from her bag. "And that doesn't seem a little strange?"
Trowa shrugged his unoccupied shoulder. "They weren't really looking before."
"That's true," his sister agreed indifferently, flipping open her book. "By the way--if either of you want something to read, I've got extras."
Trowa donned a superior expression. "No thanks. I already know what happens in your books. There's a beautiful orphaned heroine sent off to live with rich relatives. Then there's a Mr Tall, Dark and Dangerous, and a Mr Boy-next-door. She falls for the first one, but he ends up being the same evil bastard responsible for killing her parents all those years ago, despite the fact he was ten years old at the time. Then the blonde fellow saves her just in time to live happily ever after."
Heero's amused eyes flickered from one sibling to the other as Trowa finished his summary of the romance-novel world and Catherine wrinkled her nose.
"You forgot the part about escaping arranged marriages," she informed him flatly. "Besides, /this/ is about pirates."
It was amasing how much expression Trowa could fit into a gently-arched eyebrow. "Let me guess. She's running away from the arranged marriage and the pirate captures her? Then falls in love with her, of course. And let's see...does he end up being the estranged younger son of some hideously wealthy nobleman?"
"You know," Catherine stated calmly, "you should really be nice to me, Trowa...you never know just when my perfect aim might start to go, and then where would you be?"
Somehow, Trowa didn't look intimidated.
"Actually," said Heero, almost meekly--and not exactly thrilled by the prospect of several more boring, wakeful hours either--"pirates sounds kind of interesting. Is there fighting in it?"
Catherine shot her brother a triumphant look. "Swordfights galore!"
Trowa rolled his eyes. "Heero, you're turning pathetic, you know that?"
Heero glared at him. Trowa just winked, and turned his attention to braiding miniature plaits in Quatre's silky hair.
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"I told you so," Trowa hissed to Heero under his breath as Iria led the small procession through the maze of hallways that made up the house she shared with Quatre and two of their remaining single sisters.
Heero glared back at him, but his once-feared Death Glare was but a shadow of its former potency. "I didn't know it was a /kissing/ book," he growled. "I just wanted to read the swordfights!"
"Do you mind?" Quatre snapped irritably over his shoulder, and the boys subsided with muttered apologies. Since waking up--just before entering the colony--the blonde had been high-strung and antsy, a condition which only seemed to increase the closer they got to the study where Iria had stored her newly-discovered secrets. Relena, by contrast, had gotten quieter, staring pensively at her hands until her attention was forced away.
Trowa, Heero, Duo and Catherine were only along for the ride.
"Here we are." Iria ushered them into a study, scattered with old shoeboxes and files and scraps of nostalgia. "It's the box on the chair you want to look at...." She shifted awkwardly, then sighed. "I'll get out of your way."
"Thanks...." Quatre barely responded, dropping to his knees next to the indicated chair and lifting the box reverently. "Wow," he said after a long moment of silence. "I'm--I'm nervous now."
Relena swallowed. "I am too, a little. I don't know why--it's silly, isn't it? I mean, it's not like we can do anything to change it--but--" She sagged, and Quatre twisted to scan the line his friends formed against the wall.
"Trowa--will you--?"
"Of course." Trowa strode forward, kneeling next to his lover, lifting the lid from the box and rubbing his nose against the assault of dust and age that tickled his allergies. "Do you want me to just pick something and read it, or..?"
Quatre and Relena nodded, and he complied--drew a folded, yellowed letter from the box, opened it, and began to read.
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The story that had formed was simple enough, if heartrending. As Peygan had already explained, the Sanq kingdom was crumbling under the weight of its own beliefs, with Louis Catalonia doing everything he could do speed its fall. His faction, while it had lost some power after the duel with the world's darling Philip, was never completely eradicated, and its members dissipated into the Romafeller foundation after the kingdom's fall.
Haroun Winner had first met Katrina Cressida Peacecraft at her brother's funeral. They had fallen immediately, tempestuously in love, but according to their own letters, nothing had ever come of it but words. Still he extracted a promise from her--to come to him for help, or protection, if she ever needed it. When the foundation of the Sanq court began to crumble beneath her, he urged her to join him--"Come to me," he had written. "Come to where I can keep you safe. I can live without touching you, as long as I know you live."
And Katrina had held out as long as she could. The end came when Louis himself discovered her secret, innocent as it still was, and showed Haroun's letters to the King. In delicate script she wrote of the confrontation with her husband when Louis had left--"I am on the verge of losing my kingdom," he had said. "Am I doomed to lose my queen as well?"
"No," Katrina had replied. "The queen will stand by you forever...it's the lover you've already lost."
The temperature rose in the court, and relations between the royal couple grew more strained. In public, they presented to the world a single face and a single mind, but Katrina wrote to Haroun of the storm that pervaded their more private moments, of arguments and tears and a widening gulf that no amount of reconciliatory words could breach.
Finally, the enthralled readers reached the culmination of their search: a short note, written hastily and stained with tears--
Three simple words: "I need you."
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Quatre dragged a hand across his eyes as the letter drifted to the ground. Trowa sat next to him, still, an arm around his shoulder. Nearby, Heero did the same for Relena, a comforting presence even if he had no words, and Duo and Catherine looked on.
"So that's when she came here," Duo explained, flipping through the wornout pages of a musty scrapbook. "She started calling herself Quatrina Winner, but it looks like they weren't ever actually married. She stayed holed up in the house; hardly anybody outside ever saw her, and that was with a veil. Your dad doted on her, Quatre--I mean, look at all the stuff he kept. Must be everything she ever wrote to him, every picture anybody ever took...." He sighed, reaching across the motley pile to squeeze his friend's hand reassuringly. "And the rest you all know. She got pregnant, refused to have a test tube baby, and died having Quatre. There's only a couple more letters here. This one's from Giorgio--King Peacecraft--to his queen, and it's kinda bitter. I don't think he was dealing with it to well. And this one--"
Duo's violet eyes froze halfway down the page, and he swallowed. "Maybe one of you better read this," he said, slipping the paper from the booklet and thrusting it toward Quatre and Relena. "It kinda closes things up."
Relena took it from him, and Quatre eased from Trowa's embrace to lean over it with her. "Oh..." she whispered, and he began to read aloud.
//My old friend--
Words cannot express the depth of my grief at your news, but then, you of all people in the world are in a position to understand it. I feel my very soul has been ripped away, and what shreds remain are now ashes in a colony burial urn.
I accept your apologies and condolences with the good will they were intended. The game is over, and we are both the losers of it. Such is ever the folly of arrogant men.
The boy is, and remains, yours. Raise him well, I beg. As I have lose my soul, I stand to lose my kingdom as well, and already find I must surrender my daughter to be raised by someone else's hand.
...And still I pray that both these children live to see the peace we sacrifice our lives to strive for.
My heart is with you.
Giorgia//
His voice faltered, and silence fell. He turned his face into Trowa's chest, and his breathing ragged but controlled. Heero rested a hand comfortingly on Relena's shoulder, and her fingers sought out and twined around Quatre's hand.
"That's it, then," she said softly.
"We wanted answers," Quatre agreed, forcing a wan smile. "And we found them. I guess it's silly to get so worked up, isn't it?"
Duo shook his head, his customary grin flickering at the corners of his lips. "No it isn't. The rest of us all get teary over our pasts too, when we get to indulge in 'em."
Catherine nodded. "We've been there too," she reminded both Peacecraft siblings tenderly, "and got all emotional with a lot less proof, I promise you." She dropped a kiss on Quatre's forehead and winked at Trowa. "And didn't I promise a good ending?"