A motorcycle with two passengers roared up to a small, wooden house screened in a dark green forest. Quatre peered out the window from behind a blackout curtain, a blob in the center of a sheer, startling ray of light in the darkness outside.

"Guys! Duo and Heero are back!" he called into the house, replacing the shade and quenching the dangerous gleam. The two black figures dismounted the bike, and one turned to put it away. Removing his helmet, Duo murmured to Heero.

"I'm not going in for a while. Tell the guys I'll say hello tomorrow morning." Heero only nodded in reply and finished concealing the bike. Then he turned at disappeared into the house, momentarily sending out another, larger shaft of light to strangle in the deep blackness all around.

Duo looked over his shoulder once, then practically skipped into the woods. His goal was under a half mile away, a large pine tree in the center of tangled undergrowth that only the knowledgeable could navigate in silence. As Duo slipped through the thorny brush calmly, his posture relaxed, his breath moaning into the air as he dropped every struggle, trauma, and stressful moment from the week-long mission into the scrub. Reaching the tree at last, Duo began to climb. Up and up and up and up, farther, as far as he could go. Not until he reached his own special place in the tree did he allow himself to think, and even then it wasn't anything important.

You are the oddest tree I've ever seen. You're a pine tree, but your bark isn't rough. It feels like the bark of a white birch, but the color of it is like a maple. The needles are too long and too soft, too. They're like the needles of a Southern Pine, and this is too far north for those. Heh. You're a mutt, just like me. And you're perfect. Duo wasn't sure how he'd found the tree. But there was a spot, about forty feet up in it, where the trunk had broken off. Six thick limbs had grown up crown-like around the broken off spot, making a perfect seating place, as well as making him invisible to eyes both on the ground and in the sky.

The tree gently swayed in the wind, needles brushing dryly against his hands and face. Duo took off his jacket, hung it over a convenient branch next to him, to feel the needles float over his arms as well. The night felt warmer than it really was, and the dark gray clouds obscuring the sky were mesmerizing in their slow, bulky movement.

Duo sought out these woods, this tree, because he was tired of the press of people around me constantly, tired of fabricated matter that hold up people's lives like pillars, tired of conjured wars and mock peace. He wanted something real, and the tree gave him that. Duo slipped off his shoes and socks, hanging them on less convenient branches where they wouldn't be knocked off. Almost as an afterthought, he removed his shirt as well.

The breath of the wind brushed against Duo, rocking the tree like a mother rocks her child. The smooth, yet rough, bark pressed against his skin comfortingly and the clouds shifted ponderously, uncaringly overhead. No beam of light broke through from anywhere, and Duo sat in total darkness.

What the hell. Why not?

Without hurry, his pants were also hung over a bough, to absorb the piney scent of the great tree. Duo sat in it's embrace like a newborn child in his mothers arms. He didn't think, he didn't fidget, he didn't chatter. He sat. And for a while, he wasn't sitting. He just *was*. After a time, Duo couldn't say how long, he come out of his trancelike state feeling like he'd slept for a week. Nothing had changed around him, but he felt… calmer, certainly. Content, definitely. Happier, maybe. Perhaps if everyone had time, time to just *be*, wars wouldn't happen. But I doubt it.

Duo stood up, stretching into the dark, reveling in the quiet. Reminded of the war, of the risks he fought everyday, Duo suddenly wanted something… more than a memory. Having something substantial, *anything* that might last to remind him of this ephemeral instant was incredibly important, somehow.

Duo leaned over and reached into a limp pocket, pulled out his jackknife. He flipped it open, bent to carve something in the tree, and paused. No. I spoil enough as it is. Not here, not now. The jackknife was closed and replaced.

He had another idea, and this one was much better. Duo stood up again, reached up as high as he could, and grabbed another branch. Slowly, carefully, he worked his way up to heights truly unsafe, and for a moment, hung suspended there. Swiftly, he unsnapped the gold chain of his cross, the only clothing not yet removed. Slipping off the cross and holding it between his teeth, Duo reached around the main trunk until he found a branch on the opposite side. He wrapped the glinting chain around the limb, tugging on it to be sure it would stay put.

"I'll come back. Before heaven and hell and the earth beneath me, someday, I will come back." Duo whispered fiercely into the uncaring night. One lone cicada answered him.



* * *

"Hey guys, I'm back!" Duo grinned cheerily into the house. "Didja miss me?" His grin pasted firmly in place, Duo marched into the living room and greeted his friends. Some conversation and a TV show later, the inevitable question came up.

"Duo? Where's your cross?" someone asked. Duo fielded the question easily.

"The chain is somewhere back in the woods. Probably got hung up in a tree branch or something, cause I couldn't see it when the cross fell to the ground. It's in my pocket right now." Not quite a lie. The cross *had* fallen to the ground when Duo dropped it, and he couldn't see the chain when he looked for it from the ground, either.

"I think I have a gold chain that'll work as a replacement. Lydia gave it to me a few holidays back." Quatre suggested hesitantly. Duo didn't ^seem^ upset, but…

"Hey, thanks man. If you'll show me where it is, I'll get it, and then go to bed, I'm bushed." Duo thanked Quatre.

"No problem. It's up in my room." Quatre replied, and the two of them climbed the stairs. Heero, Trowa, and Wufei went back to watching the news.

Somewhere in the forest, a tree winked goldenly and a cicada sung of an unbreakable pledge.