The doctors had gotten used to him

The doctors had gotten used to him. He didn't know if it had been around three or four in the morning when their eyes had finally stopped sliding over to glance at the thin young man sitting rigidly in his self-appointed post in the corner before jumping to linger on their patient with a grim air that deepened the shadows under their eyes and washed the color out of their faces. If he were any sort of poet, he would have only heightened his anxiety by imagining them as shades, servants of the god of the dead who maintained some semblance of life by bringing the souls of the dying to rest at their master's feet. The comparison had run through his mind several times, but it brought no feeling along with it. His head told him that they were helping, so he sat quietly.

A breeze ran cold fingers over the back of his neck, and he brought his eyes up, noticing that the room had lightened to gray. He was in a large, sparsely furnished room on the first floor of the Earth Sphere United Nation's headquarters. Quatre lay unmoving under the white sheets of the bed across from Trowa's seat. Trowa took little comfort in the prognosis the doctors had given him. Quatre would recover, they said. The dagger had missed his major organs. Yet, each breath that he labored to bring into his lungs seemed to drain more color out of his face. His lashes lay like shrouds over his palled cheeks, and the breeze that skipped merrily across the room did little to lift his bangs from his sweat-streaked forehead.

Trowa glanced at Quatre from the corner of his eye, watching the blonde boy from behind his bang. He felt suddenly wary of the other boy. He wasn't sure why he was showing so much of himself to Quatre now, except that he knew that it was a calculated risk. He wanted Quatre to know him. It disturbed him, though, that he wasn't sure what he wanted to let the other pilot know.

Quatre looked slightly surprised, and thought a moment about Trowa's comment before answering. "You're talking about peace," he said almost as if he spoke to himself. "You don't have to study anything to know that, Trowa. It's inside all of us. I don't believe that anyone's life is locked in constant battle." He looked up at Trowa with a warm smile. "There's a part inside everyone that war can't touch."

Trowa looked down at his hands, one draped over the edge of the table, the other unmoving on his lap. Examining his feelings quickly, he decided that he felt restless. Not as if he were about to go into battle, though. He couldn't place where the feeling came from, or if it was even a feeling at all and not some vague stirring in the back of his mind that was trying to tell him something. Suddenly, a picture of Catherine imposed itself in his thoughts. He looked at her sparkling blue eyes fondly before tucking the unbidden memory in the back of his mind.

"When you played the flute with me…" Quatre said slowly. "What did you feel then?"

Trowa turned to face Quatre, putting his feet on the ground and both hands on his lap. "Nothing."

Quatre's eyes widened slightly, and when he spoke, his voice was tinged with shock and perhaps a little sadness. "Trowa…nothing?"

He couldn't bring himself to look at Quatre and instead forced his eyes to look past the other pilot to the wall behind him. "I don't think I began to feel until I forgot my life," he said slowly, trying to remember how it felt to stand, exhausted, in the rain and look up to see a concerned face that he felt he should know but couldn't remember. He felt…

"Catherine," Quatre said, nodding slightly, in the manner of a person who stumbled upon the right conclusion after only just being shown the path. "You see?"

Trowa shook his head and heaved a ragged sigh. "That was just a fake. It didn't last. Maybe that time was just meant to show the soldier what he could not have. ZERO gave me back my real memories, my real self." He laughed, and even he felt the bitterness in it. "They say that Wing ZERO shows people their destinies. Maybe my destiny is my past. Perhaps my path just leads in a circle—or maybe it goes nowhere at all."

"No!" Trowa was surprised at the vehemence in Quatre's voice, and he couldn't stop himself from jumping slightly as the other boy grabbed his arms just below his shoulders. "I won't let you believe that, Trowa! There's so much more that you can be," his voice had dropped to a whisper, though it held a note of desperation and sincerity that held Trowa spellbound. Their eyes were locked together, and the whole room became nothing more than deep black pools in the middle of blue clouds. "You fought even when you didn't remember that you were a soldier. It wasn't a way of life for you then, and you didn't even want to do it. But you did, and don't lie to yourself by saying that it was some instinct that remained from your past. The only instinct that could have driven you to do that is love."

"Was…" Trowa protested weakly, his voice sounding strained.

"Is," Quatre said firmly. "You don't have to stay on the path; the forest on either side isn't as dark as you might think. And you won't get lost," he said, his eyes shining with determination. "I'll help you."

Along with the steady breeze, the open window behind Trowa caught the gentle music of a wind chime that hung just outside of it. Refracted light from the metal pieces of the wind chime flowed languidly over the bed sheets, and Trowa found himself watching them, his thoughts showing no more direction than they did. He was exhausted, and as he bit back a yawn, he found his eyes traveling back to Quatre's face as they had done throughout the whole night. Except this time, Quatre's eyes met his own, and he gave Trowa a weary smile.

"Thank you, Trowa," Quatre said softly.

"I'm glad…" Trowa's voice faded away in the middle of the sentence, and he turned to look at the table beside Quatre's bed, the wind chime's song rising exultantly behind him as if it, too, had been waiting all night for Quatre to awaken.

"Trowa?"

Trowa stood slowly, resisting the urge to fall back into the chair. He wasn't all too sure that there would be anything behind him to catch him. He walked to Quatre's side and knelt on the floor across from Quatre's face. "I'm glad…that you're all right and that—" Again his voice failed him. He was about to look down to gather his courage and silently berate himself for being such a coward, when a slight movement caught his eye. Quatre was holding his hand out to him.

"Don't worry about me so much," he said, his voice still soft. His face seemed to grow paler with every word he whispered. Trowa hesitantly put his hand into Quatre's and saw Quatre smile and felt his hand close weakly around his own. "They are saying that I'll be all right, aren't they? I know I will be; I can feel it."

"You should rest," Trowa said. He couldn't help his eyes flickering back to their joined hands. Quatre's mouth turned up again into a tiny smile, but this time his eyes darkened. The smile faded after only a moment. Trowa nodded. "Relena."

"Something's going to happen to her, Trowa. I had a dream," he said in a rush.

"I'll go now and take care of it," Trowa said, but he noticed that the troubled look didn't leave Quatre's face even then. "There's not anything else, is there?" he asked anxiously, wondering if maybe he should squeeze Quatre's hand to bring him back. Quatre shook his head, and Trowa saw the weariness that etched his face and made him look as fragile and ragged as broken glass. Trowa got to his feet, and Quatre's eyes closed. His hand fell away a moment later, and he lost some of the pain on his face.

As Trowa's legs carried him from the room, his thoughts still by the bedside, he once again heard the wind chimes compose a new melody behind him.

The sky outside was a uniform gray that seemed to dull the color of the grass and trees. Trowa walked down the sidewalk that led from the Earth Sphere United Nation's mansion to the Preventers headquarters, which was on the same property. As he walked, he noticed one wispy, white cloud had broken away from the mass of gray and was being blown along in a fit of the wind's energetic abandon. He stopped to watch it for a moment, wondering how the molecules of that particular cloud had managed to break away from the others and how it had become so perfectly white. The wind broke through the cloud, splitting it into ragged scraps that scattered in different directions. Trowa let his eyes drop to the pavement beneath his feet and began to walk again. His foot stopped in mid-air, however, when he saw a little spot of light dancing on the ground before him. The clouds were blowing away; the sun was coming out behind the mansion and reflecting off a tiny wind chime that hung outside a window on the upper story of the building.

Quatre…

Trowa began to jog toward the Preventers building. Behind him, the lone spot of light faded as the sunlight washed over the pavement. Trowa felt it shining on his hair and warming his back. He smiled, and as the warmth touched his hand, he could almost feel another holding gently onto it.

Noin bent over her desk and scrawled a short note to her husband on a piece of paper, telling him that she was going to meet Sally Po in their favorite lunch spot, a small coffee shop in town. She tucked the note under a paper weight and grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair, smiling as she thought of the stories that Sally would most likely be telling her today. For the past week, Sally had been assigned to be the bodyguard for the Minister of Colony Commerce's spoilt son. I can almost see her joyful smile now as she's remembering the wine he spilled on her at a fancy dinner or the time he hid her radio in the laundry. Bet she spent the past week wishing for a good war to get her out of there.

Noin immediately sobered as she remembered that there would likely be a "good" war in the near future. Quatre Winner might still be alive, but some group out there was holding a grudge against him, his wife, and very likely, the whole Earth Sphere United Nation.

"The worst trouble starts when people feel that their whole way of life is wrong. Then they feel justified in erasing the whole system and starting over." She'd seen it happen once in her lifetime, and she knew that if this knew threat gained enough power, it wouldn't leave anything behind. Yet, she believed in the system, believed it was right with all her heart, so these people who weren't happy with their lives were her enemies. The only problem is that we're not supposed to have any enemies. But, even as we all curse them for hurting Quatre, can we truly say that they are our enemies? Who can blame people for attempting to make their lives better?

She was so deeply buried in her thoughts that she almost ran into Trowa as the young man barreled through the door. She flung her head up and plastered herself to the wall as he ran past her. She was about to call out to him, but he stopped only a moment after he had run past her and came up to her with worried determination in his eyes.

"Noin," he said, nodding briskly to her. He stopped for a moment, his eyes darting around the narrow hallway as if he was gathering his thoughts. Finally, he met her gaze again. "Please, let me go to Moscow to protect Relena," he said softly and urgently.

Noin nodded immediately. She knew where he had spent the last night and much of the morning. "Does Quatre think that she's in danger?"

"He said that he had a dream."

"All right. You have my permission to go immediately, and I'll tell Une about it. Make sure you keep in constant contact, Trowa," she called to him as he started to stride down the hall.

She sighed softly as she gazed wistfully at the lawn outside, half in light half in shadow as the sun had just begun to chase the clouds away. Lunch would have to wait.

Two nights after she had left her home, Relena fell back onto the bed in her hotel room, closing her eyes and stretching luxuriously. Every part in her body either ached or felt as though it had been pushed past the point of weariness. The meetings that she had taken part in daily after she arrived had gone on so long today that the faces of the people she had been talking to had blurred with the numbers on the pages in front of her which represented all the people she could not see—the people she was supposed to be helping. She couldn't help but feel guilty when she realized that she didn't really know what was plaguing them. The numbers said that there was a housing and food shortage, but the numbers didn't show the tears of the women watching their starving children play bare-footed in the crowded feet or the strained stubbornness of the men who fought to keep their families' place in the shelters. The numbers didn't show her what those people saw everyday that made them want to fight, and because of that, she felt absolutely useless. And alone. She felt more alone now than she had after Heero had left her and before she married Quatre.

She was just beginning to ponder this when the vidphone on the desk across the room beeped loudly. Relena got up to see Noin's face appear as the connection was established.

"Is this line secured?" Noin asked by way of a hello.

"Yes," Relena said, nodding. "The governor made sure of that when this room was booked for me."

"Personalized service, huh?" Noin asked with a tired smile showing itself at the corner of her mouth. "Nice to know that the government at least is behind us." Relena smiled at the older woman and sank into a chair, kicking off her shoes.

"How are things going?" Noin asked, somber now.

"As well as these things usually go. We're making progress in the talks at least."

Noin nodded, not acknowledging the tired faintness of Relena's voice. Noin knew what Relena's life was like; she knew how much Relena could take. Perhaps Relena was tired—definitely more tired than Noin would like her to be, but she had faith that Relena could handle much more than she was burdened with now. Of course, that didn't stop her from feeling resentful that Relena had been forced to handle so great a burden in the first place.

Catching her eyes, Noin fixed Relena with a stern stare. "Relena, you have to be very careful. More so now than ever." She sighed bitterly. "Quatre was attacked last night," she said with reluctance. Relena's eyes widened, and she gripped her arms, her knuckles turning white with the shock. "The doctors say that he'll live, and he was well enough to speak to Trowa earlier. Trowa left for Moscow this morning. He should be arriving soon."

"Why…" Relena said, stumbling over the word. Her eyes felt hot. "Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?"

"Relena…" Noin said, looking at her young friend with concern. "For awhile we weren't certain that he was going to live. We didn't want to worry you then, in case it would distract you. Then, Trowa told us that Quatre thought you might be in danger, and we had to prepare to send him in to help you." Noin began to speak faster, with more urgency. "Relena, you have to promise me that you'll stay in your room and not see anyone until Trowa gets there."

Relena nodded numbly. Noin gave her a smile that was probably meant to be encouraging but instead looked guilty and worried. Then her face disappeared, and Relena allowed the tears to trickle slowly down her cheeks. She pushed herself out of the chair and stumbled the few steps to throw herself on the bed, curling up there and obstinately wiping at the tears that refused to stop falling.

"Why didn't they tell me?" she said, her throat choked with the tears that she wouldn't allow to escape. "Oh Quatre, and I wasn't there to help you at all."

For a few minutes she lay tangled in the sheets of the bed with her head buried in a pillow that didn't seem to muffle her sobs very much. A gasp fought its way through her sobs as strong arms closed around her shoulders and lifted her face from the pillow. The arms turned her around gently, and then her head was resting against a warm shoulder. She curled her fingers in the person's shirt and lifted her head to see who it was.

"Heero—"

He stared down at her, his eyes dark, his expression unreadable. Relena had only looked at him for a moment before she felt the tears return. She rested her head against his chest and felt the tears soak into his shirt. Suddenly horrified that she was leaning on him, that her tears were staining his shirt, and that he had even shown up at all, she pushed herself away from him and wiped her eyes, willing the tears to stop.

"Relena…" Heero said with a note of confusion in his voice. "It's fine. I heard."

Relena turned away from him and got off the bed. "You heard that my husband almost died, and you thought that maybe you could slip in here in the middle of the night and comfort me with your presence—give me a shoulder to cry on? Thanks for making things worse, Heero," she said icily and was rewarded by seeing him reel away from her slightly in shock. However, his eyes never left hers, though he didn't make a reply.

Heero gazed at Relena as she turned away from him, violently striding to the window across the room. He had been expecting the anger, but he had been taken by surprise at how quickly it had come. It stung him a bit. More than a bit, he admitted to himself as his hands, which rested on the sheets, clenched into fists, the only visible signs of the anger that pulsed through his veins. He wasn't angry with Relena. How could he be, when she had caused none of this? He couldn't pinpoint a target for his rage, which made him feel unbalanced.

He saw her shoulder's tremble and realized that she was crying again. Why does everything settle on her? Why can't these people take care of themselves? He had one foot off the bed, about to go to her, when she spoke again in a ragged voice.

"Did we ever have love, Heero? Is love what you feel for the noble man you wake up beside? Or is it what you feel when a man that was lost comes back to you? I don't feel love for the second man, Heero. When someone repeatedly turns their back on you and walks away, you begin to feel that you're turning round and round in a dream. You're not real, Heero. I love my husband."

He walked quickly toward her and pulled her stiff body into his arms, holding her back against his chest. "I didn't want to leave," Heero whispered fiercely in her ear.

Relena shook slightly in his arms. He wanted to press her closer to him, but he wasn't sure how she would react.

"I'm…so confused," she whispered, almost to herself. "What didn't you want to leave, Heero? Me? Or your job?"

Her tone was so dull that he couldn't tell if she was angry with him or not. Slowly, he turned her around to face him, and his eyes met crystalline blue ones that shimmered with tears that had not yet been shed. His gaze searched her face for a long moment. Even as he felt her gradually warming in his embrace, he saw her eyes fall to the floor uncomfortably. He was about to speak when she stopped him. "Don't," she whispered. "I don't think I should know." He lifted his hands from her shoulders and took a step backward, but she grabbed his wrists in a gentle grip. "Please…don't leave me. I want to be able to hold onto something for a night, instead of waiting for the floor to crumble beneath me. Don't leave, Heero."

A chill wound itself around his heart. He took her hands in his own and pushed them away from him. She looked up at him, hurt showing itself plainly on her face. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, her gaze still imprinted on his mind in bitter memory. Bending down slightly, he kissed her cheek, soft from the tears that had flowed over it. "Get some sleep, Relena," he whispered, straightening and opening his eyes. "I'll guard your door tonight."

He turned and was at the door almost before he realized that he had taken a step. He stared down at the doorknob for a moment before placing his hand on the cold metal. Closing his fingers around it with a deliberate movement, he yanked the door open. After he had closed it, he took up a post against the wall opposite it, staring broodingly at the white door long into the night.

After Heero left, Relena sagged against the wall, suddenly unable to support herself. "What was I thinking?" she moaned. "What did I almost do?" She walked over to the bed and lay down, feeling lightheaded and sick at heart. The fact that we didn't actually do anything excuses nothing, she thought, loathing for herself making tears once more come to her eyes. I deserve nothing like love. I hope that I don't come home to you, Quatre. Hating herself, she slipped into a sleep full of nightmares where her life was an illusion on the surface of a pond, and in the dark water under the surface, her friends' faces ran with blood, and they looked up at her where she floated near the light and asked her, "Why?".

AN: Expect the next part next weekend, guys. As of now, I'm planning on this story only having two more parts, but I'd like to know if you guys want an epilogue. If you do, then I'll go ahead and write one, so tell me what you want in your review. Arigatou. ^_^