In the dark of his own room, at last Max Barton was alone. He sighed as his head hit his pillow.
His first thoughts were of his mother, Elizabeth Bloom and his grandmother who for the most part raised him, Catherine Bloom. His mustard-brown hair settled on his forehead as he forced himself to sleep.
In the rooms to the right of him, Basim carefully lay his clothes for the next day out. A nice pair of khaki pants, a light blue shirt, and a nice dark blue vest, a gift from his grandpa. He smiled slightly as he slipped under the covers, and looked around on the new base.
Kiyoshi Yuy sat on the bed, the only light the one in his private bath behind the door. He thought, as he has thought always. He had been the quiet one in his family, his grandmother Relena had often commented on that to Heero… Heero would only look at Relena blankly then would return to whatever he was doing before. He sighed as he leaned back. To him, his past was a mystery in itself. His parents had died in a car crash early on in his life, leaving him with only his grandparents to look after him. He, of course, had family elsewhere. The Peacecraft family, Lucretzia and Milliardo, Milliardo Jr. who had divorced, and Milliardo the Third, who everyone called Zechs. He lay down and went to sleep.
Scarlet sighed as she disrobed, un-did her braid and lay down. She felt older than she was, her eyes were tired, and everything was tired, right down to her toes. She closed her eyes, but could not sleep. It was too quiet in the room. She was used to the noise of the city, the loudness of the cars which whizzed by. She closed her eyes and entered a restless sleep… and dreamt of better days.
*~*
Darkness… a void of black deeper than night… deeper than even the soul of the God of death.
The rubble from the explosion of the base lay still in the sunset. The mess of stones, suit and mechanical equipment lay as if a great battle had been fought.
A hand broke through the rubble, in a panicked frenzy to reach for the sky. A dusty, bloodstained hand grabbed hold, and lifted the battered person out of the dust.
They were going to have to try harder to kill them than that.
*~*
Scarlet awoke to the sounds of someone calling her… except she was no longer in the quarters on the Pod-Hopper Two. She awoke back in the narrow mattress on the floor that served as her bed on the L2 colony. She shivered, the winter of the colony a little colder thanks to the random weather devices. She stood up and called out for Mr. Maxwell to start getting up too, since she had to make breakfast.
She walks into the kitchen, and realizes that Mr. Maxwell wasn't home… or that he would ever be home. She shivered and pulled on one of the black shirts she had constantly had to mend for her trainer. She looked in the mirror, the countless un-seen seems of black thread were like the scars on her heart she tried to hide. She knew where every single one of them was. She ran a finger over one right over the heart… and felt a tear come to her eye.
"Some tears can not be mended… just like some hearts." She whispered. She closed her eyes and envisioned her trainer… more than her trainer, her friend. She closed her eyes and turned, walking back to her room.
*~*
Kiyoshi Yuy stood at the door to Scarlet's room. The crimson-haired pilot's braid was un-done; the hair that Kiyo subconsciously wanted to touch and stroke so badly lay in tangles around the tossing and turning pilot. The pained look on the woman's face disturbed Kiyoshi… he had never felt this way before about anyone. He wanted to comfort her… but she was a pilot… no different from him.
"Kiyoshi." A voice came from behind him. Kiyo turned and laid eyes upon Chen Lian.
"Let her be tonight, Kiyo. We've all had a rough day." He said, then walked down the hallway into his room. Kiyoshi nodded to himself, and walked into his own room, letting the redhead sleep.
*~*
"WOMAN! I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO EMBARRASSED IN MY LIFE! YOU HAVE YOUR OWN BATHROOM STAY OUT OF MINE!"
Scarlet ran, skidded on the carpet and put a hand to the ground as she took a sharp turn, then bolted into her room, shouting
"If you don't want me in there Lian, don't lock the door!" she laughed and held up her prize… Lian's personal herbal shampoo.
Kiyoshi looked up, hearing pounds on the door to the room next to his, Scarlet's. He stood and walked to his entrance, and poked his head into the hallway… and lifted his eyebrows in surprise.
Chen Lian stood banging on Scarlet's door, with only a towel around his waist.
"SCARLET ERIN! YOU HAD BETTER GIVE ME BACK MY… oh… hi Kiyoshi…" he said, turning to the surprised Japanese pilot.
"Don't tell me this fuss is over shampoo, Lian."
"She… but… Scarlet… herbal… UGH!" he threw up his hands… a big mistake…
Kiyo turned away immediately.
"GAH! I WILL GET YOU FOR THIS WOMAN!" Lian shouted, and ran into his room. Kiyoshi growled… he would not allow this type of… stupidity… aboard a ship. He was the designated leader of this team, and he WOULD keep order!
He pressed the comm button and heard the buzzer sound inside.
"Hello Kiyoshi. If Lian wants his shampoo back, tell him not to take my cookbooks."
"Cookbooks?" Basim said as he poked his head out. "Is that what they were fighting over?"
Max walked down the hallway, his eyebrows raised and shrugged at Basim.
"I'm not sure." He replied. Both boys walked to where Kiyoshi was trying to negotiate the terms of release of the hostage shampoo.
"If you don't give the shampoo back right now… why… I'll… blow up the door!"
"Then I'm taking over your room. Tell Nose-Boy he can have his shampoo back when I get my Cantonese cooking back. I pleaded SIX WEEKS for that thing!" she said defiantly.
"Scarlet… I am NOT going to argue with you any more. Give me the shampoo. NOW!"
"I do what I want, when I want to… and… that includes you Kiyoshi Yuy!"
*~*
Inside her room, she could HEAR Basim's eyes open as wide as they possibly could… she heard him exclaim something about in-appropriate behavior. She could sense Max's embarrassment… but couldn't see anything coming from Kiyoshi. She had been bold in that move, true… but… what good would it do her in the end?
She sighed to herself
"Stupid… Scarlet… VERY stupid." She muttered to herself as she leaned against the door.
She opened the door, stopping it about five inches across, and pushed the shampoo out. Someone grabbed her hand, and shoved the door the rest of the way open. Kiyoshi pulled the near panicked girl out of the room, his hand tight on her wrist. His cold Persian blue eyes met with her forest green; Max and Basim backed away from the two. Lian came out, still pissed but at least dressed.
"I'm going to tell you once… and ONLY once Scarlet… I'm not going to put up with childish crap like that. None of us are. This is a war, next time you pull some shit like that on this ship I'm going to shoot you. That's not a threat, that's a promise."
Scarlet's face went pale, so pale that her eyes seemed to be red in comparison.
Kiyoshi's hand pulled her up slightly higher, his strength lifting the young lady off the ground so they saw eye to eye.
"Is that clear?" he said. His hand squeezed her arm tighter.
Scarlet gave a squeak of pain, and Kiyoshi threw her to the ground in disgust.
"You'll never be a pilot. Not until you can prove to everyone here that you can do it. Now get out of my sight."
Scarlet's eyes starred over with tears as she held her wrist, nearly broken in her good hand, looking at Kiyoshi with such emotion… not quite fear, more like surprise.
Kiyoshi turned to the rest.
"Well? Do you have anything to add." He said, making it more of a statement than a question, and walked away from the grouping.
Basim knelt by Scarlet.
"Here, let me help you." He said with a slight smile.
Scarlet pulled away from him, and stood on her own.
"I don't need anyone's help. I don't care what Kiyoshi says, I'm a Gundam Pilot, whether he or you want to believe it or not." She commented quietly, then retreated to the solace of her room. Lian, Max, and Basim heard the door click as it locked.
"That was un-called for." Basim said quietly. Max and Lian shrugged then went about their business. Basim went back to his room.
*~*
Her blue eyes opened, trying to re-adjust to the darkness she had lived the last two years in. She straitened, and the once springy back able to copy Trowa's circus tricks groaned in protest. She swept her hair, half in and half out of a braid, to the side as she reached over and grabbed her glasses.
"Glad to see you awakened, Scorpion." Someone said. The woman gave a snort.
"No thanks to you." She muttered.
"The pilots. Where are they?"
"As far as I know… retirement." She said and leaned against the wall, sitting on the hard bed.
"You know I'm talking about the young ones." The skeleton-like man entered the room and turned on a bright overhead yet.
The woman balked a moment, then settled into her usual calm. Though her age was beginning to get to her, her eyes with still vibrant blue. She stayed silent.
"It is by my will alone you are alive, woman! TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE!" he growled.
"Not by the non-existent hair on your chinny-chin-chin bucko." She said.
The man, also known as Scorpion, laughed slightly.
"Oh… my dear. You are quite tiring. The young pilots… I need their identification codes… and you would know them… since you helped design the original Scorpion Gundams."
"My father designed Eros and Diabolic, Mathew. I combined them to form my own. I do not know the identification codes for the new ones. Go away." She said plainly. The man slapped her across the face.
"You bitch! Right now, Milliardo Peacecraft the Third and Nicholas Catalonia are out hunting them! They could die!"
She turned to him, Her blue eyes full of silent anger.
"Yuy and Winner will not kill their cousins. And if anything, with a Barton, a Maxwell and a Chang aboard, your boys should know what they're doing. After all, you taught them how to loose so gracefully to kidnap an woman, defenseless in her old age and take her to some dank prison where she's decaying worse than the rat shit she found in her morning coffee?"
The man glowered at her angrily.
"YOU KNOW THEM! DAMN YOU WOMAN!" he shouted, then walked out of the room.
The woman settled back against the wall, a frown on her face.
A few moments later, the young man with the long blue hair walked in, and knelt by the cell door. He had a tray in his hand.
"Don't mind him, he's upset because he can't find the bodies of the original pilots." He said. The woman opened one eye and sighed.
"Perhaps you are right Zechs." She said quietly.
The young man looked at the entrance then looked back at her.
"You never told me you knew Heero Yuy."
"You never bothered to ask who I knew. You knew I was a pilot, and I flew a Gundam. It doesn't take the Zero system to put two and two together."
Zechs shifted his weight.
"Did you fly against my grandfather?"
"No. Milliardo was one of the few sane ones."
She leaned back, letting loose a long, sorrowful sigh. Zechs looked at the woman, then left.
*~*
She didn't know how they managed to do it, but they did.
They got caught.
She had been sitting in the darkness of her cell for hours, it could have been days or years, and she didn't care.
She had looked up as the door opened, and the other boy, Nicholas Catalonia, pushed five people in.
They were men, by their stature. The first one stood proudly though his hands were behind his back. The second was a little shorter than the others, with snowy white hair and quietness about him. The third moved as if without emotions, the second was protesting loudly that the first three walked too slowly. The last was in need of a cane… and her medical knowledge proved that it that was because of damage to the knee of his left leg by the way he was limping. She knew who they were… she was sure of it!
They were placed in the next cell over… since it was the bigger cell. Hers was solitary confinement. She watched Nick leave, then let her eyes adjust to the darkness.
"OWMYFOOT!" someone shouted in the cell next to her. She chuckled at the old… but still recognizable voice of her love.
"So we meet again, Chang Wufei, Quatre Winner, Trowa Barton, Duo Maxwell and especially Heero Yuy."
"Who's there!" Wufei wheezed through clenched teeth. Duo looked up from nursing his hurt foot. Lyla got up on the chair and put her head to the opening, and lit a candle that Zechs had sneaked to her. The light illuminated the cell.
It was they, all right. Heero leaned against the wall in a corner, a cut across his cheek and a battered arm, but otherwise none the worse for wear. Duo had bruises all over his head, his braid was a little matted over, but he was recognizable, even though she hadn't seen him for years. Trowa still had "the" hair, and his acrobat's body had worn well, and was still there more or less. Quatre had turned into a grandfatherly short man with a face that showed more smile wrinkles than she expected. Wufei, ever the stern pilot, had almost refused to age, except his gray hair and wizened face. They all wore the prison uniform, skin-tight gray.
"Duo…" she breathed holding out her hand through the bars. "I've missed you so much…"
The former Deathscythe pilot looked into her eyes, her sorrowful blue eyes, and grasped her hand.
"Lyla! Oh God… what are the chances of this, huh?"
She held his hand to her cheek, a tear slipping out from behind her glasses.
"You're alive! Oh thank anyone up there you're alive!" she whispered.
Quatre smiled slightly, recognizing his old friend.
"We're all together again. Now, how do we get out of this place?" Duo questioned. He felt Lyla's grip falter.
"I haven't found a way out of solitary, but there's a vent behind where Heero's standing. It's only wood there… behind is a well and there's a river. I hear it rushing every spring, but it should be stagnant now." She said.
"Come with us Lyla! You've got to get out of here!" Duo said. He looked at her through the grate, and saw only a shadow of the Lyla he once knew.
She had gotten skinnier, with hair the color of the stone around her. Her eyes were bright, but only with the flame of fury and determination not to die. At least that part was the same, he thought.
Lyla only shook her head.
"You need to get back to Scarlet. Please tell me you haven't let her pilot Duo…"
"WHAT? How do you know about Scarlet?" he asked, his eyes grew wide.
"I…" she started… he felt her hand pull away. "… can't tell you." She finished. Heero had in the mean time, shoved aside the false wall that someone had put there. Beside was a single oxygen tank, with LM written on it.
"No wonder she knew it was here." He thought aloud. He turned to the others and nodded.
"It's here."
Lyla turned, her hearing keened by the years of living in meager silence picked up someone walking.
"It's him! You must go, now, he's going to give you the serum!"
"Lyla… I promise we'll brake you out of here babe… just as soon as we get to our kids. I'll make sure Scarlet's OK…" Duo said, and blew her a kiss in a cocky way. He disappeared from view, and as soon as Lyla heard the five splashes, then blew out the light.
"Good luck guys…" she whispered.
