Decadence 2/?*was Tones of Red* By R-chan (Reveena)

Trowa closed the office door softly behind him before he tugged off the offending piece of satin from around his neck and shrugged his jacket off. Unbuttoning the first
three of his white cotton shirt he made his way to the large window and pressed his forehead to the cool pane of glass.

Earth's star was making it's decent once more into the night's embrace, leaving shadows of gold in its wake along the blue body of the Atlantic. Was Quatre still out there he wondered. Or had the ocean really claimed him? Was the Minister correct in
her assumptions?

I love the ocean Trowa. It's not like endless sand at all. It's like a living thing with emotions, possible of both love and hate. Not just dry and unforgiving.

The dark haired man tried to will the reminiscent voice away from his thoughts. But the gentle voice of his blond haired lover wouldn't take its leave of him. It was a bittersweet torture he could have gone without.

Was I too much like you're desert Quatre when you felt you could change me into an ocean? Or did I simply become too dry and unforgiving for you to hold on to anymore?

He closed his eyes and pressed
his hands to the smooth surface. He didn't know. He wasn't sure he *wanted*
to know. Shifting through the ashes of his soul trying to find the answers was like navigating a labyrinth. One soot -covered path always let him to another, and each dead end was nothing but fragile coals of memories that threatened to crumble into dust. How much had been a lie? How many words had been truth?

The cold night cloak January had fallen over the city finally and reached out before him like a land of lights that stretched out to the sea. It was a night for lovers, with the full moon shining and the sky clear, it was just the atmosphere France was known for. But how many people where in their beds now, wishing their lovers where there with them and not out with another?

Trowa then knew of at least one. Turning slowly he spoke
softly, "Hello Heero."

Yuy, said to be his less then better half, walked softly away from the shadows of the wide work room, holding his crumpled dress coat over on his forearm.

"Duo won't be pleased when he finds you missing Heero."

The Japanese in question give him a wolfish smirk, gunmetal blue eyes almost glowing with what may or may not have been mirth. "No, I don't suppose he will be." He responded.

Trowa answered the look with a
brief and amused gaze. His friend moved to be beside him, arms folded and
back against the glass, seemingly comfortable in the silence. Quite suddenly
the former clown didn't want silence.

"How is he, Duo, I mean?" The gundam pilot turned Preventer turned his head in an angle and looked out at the lights from over his shoulder with an expression unmarred by readable emotion. "Duo possessed great affection for Quatre...his assumed passing hit him hard," death trained eyes flickered to Trowa's. "He's been his usual
sickeningly cheery self otherwise."

"That's good to hear" he responded without missing a beat.

"You know Quatre's alive."

"Yes."

"Will you go looking for him?"

"No."

"Why?"

Trowa stepped back from the window and turned to his desk, once Quatre's, and picked up a framed photo of the two of them right after the last true war. The blond had his hand in both of his and pressed to his Arabian heart like a small secret he wanted no one but himself to see and he himself was actually smiling in it.

"Quatre and I died a long time ago." He finally said.

"Trowa-"

"Don't" he interrupted setting himself down in the leather covered chair. It smelled like Quatre, just like the rest of the place. "There's no point in it." He turned the small object face down on the oak surface. He didn't want to see it. Any more of it all
was like rubbing salt in a fresh wound and he already stung.

"Does Relena know?" Heero asked, shattering the growing still, walking around the desk to the other window and pressing a verinian down with his fingers. Trowa rested
his chin in his hands, staring out in to the darkness of Quatre's-*his* office. He'd never become accustom to that concept. His office.

You left it all on my shoulders Quatre. Everything, all of it in my name. Why?

That was the question keeping him up into the dark hours of the night. Reading and
rereading documents of ownership, transgressions and wills till his eyes began to itch and he had almost every word burned into his memory like a branding. How long had Quatre planed it, kept it all hidden away till the day till the day came? Just how much of what his lover ever told him was truth? That was the paradox that kept him in the dark searching for illumination.

The want to find Quatre was hallow in his chest but the desire to know what had driven the blond desert walker to those extreme lengths was the driving force that woke him each morning. It was a type of pain that cursed his thoughts each moment of the day.

A soft whisper in his ghost asked if the Minister was being driven by the same thing. Did sleep avoid her too when she left the Preventer's Head Quarters and retired to her own chambers? Did the wrongs she committed in her own marriage hunt her with
such startling vividness that it made her question how anything could have
gone right? His eyes clouded like storms of green ivy. How long had the
Minister known the truth?

"Trowa?" The clown turned diplomat released the breath he didn't know he's captured in his lungs.

"Yes, She was the first of us to say so."

The tall Japanese man watched the woman in question from behind the blinds of his main office, the one that adjoined his own for convenience.

"Hn." Trowa turned his head to the side in order to look at Heero. The moss haired man was watching the Minister with a slight smirk.

"Peeping Tom."

"Clown." He shot back without blinking then he turned away and laid the wrinkled dress coat over the chair facing him.

"Trowa." he started again but the slender man stopped him with his hand.

"The thing I've appreciated most about our relationship is that it's never been based on pity Heero."

Duo's husband held his gaze for a few moments before the grandfather clock chimed from beside the entrance ringing in the room and rocking the silence like a scream would in a church.

"I won't look for him...or her. Not until you chose to."

Trowa nodded as his companion turned back to the shadows of the room and left, silent as a phantom.

Chose for Quatre? He stretched his arms out in front of him, feeling the muscles of
his back burn from the strain, then slowly relax. Setting them down he regarded the vertical frame with uncharacteristic coyness.

The last twenty-four months with Quatre had been like a battle he knew he was
loosing. A Kamikaze mission. Difficulties and conflicts had arisen with the consistency of any Oz mobile suit he'd silenced in the past. The casualties of those fights had been paid with unapproachable silence and unspeakable angst. A price he was paying for now.

He could have eliminated armed enemy's but he hadn't been able to silence the spectrum of screaming emotions that had strung between him and Quatre over two years in the window of a mere three. Three years that nearly restored his concept of humanity. He was twenty-two and widowed to a man that was still alive and with the woman who'd nearly killed him. The irony did manage to penetrate his exterior.

I love the ocean Trowa. It's not like endless sand at all. It's like a living
thing with emotions, possible of both love and hate. Not just dry and
unforgiving.

"Did Dorothy become your ocean Quatre?"