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. ^_^
