He erased the last name from the notepad, his heart singing and sinking at the same time. Heero was alive and Trowa's self-appointed mission to convoy him all around the globe, searching for the ones who held the right to pass judgement on him, was over. Would it be separate ways from then on? Change was hanging in the air and the lithe soldier could almost scent it.
They started descending the hill, the Mediterranean beauty of the landscape comforting their eyes, if not their troubled hearts. The sun, set high on the unclouded sky, was warm on their faces and Trowa was glad for his hair that allowed at least one of his eyes to remain in shadow.
The road was circling the hill. The asphalt under the soles of their shoes was slowly becoming heated and they were absently kicking small pebbles that had fallen on it from the rock-side. Heero was looking straight ahead, but the taller pilot was stealing glimpses around them… the scissors-shaped tail of swallows ripping the air hunting insects, the shy bent heads of poppies beyond the asphalt borders, the fresh greenness contrasting the red, the yellow, the white of spring flowers.
There was a car moving slowly behind them, yet there was only one road towards the town and maybe the driver lingered in order to enjoy the scenery. They ignored it, but didn't dismiss it. The estate was already long hidden from the curves of the country road. Trowa slit his eyelids against the white-golden brilliance of the blue sea, reflecting the melting sun. In the periphery of his vision, he caught a movement on the ground and with the second look, he stopped. He sat on his heels and watched the glossy creature.
When he realized that the lanky youth fell behind for more time than usual, Heero paused and turned his head. He studied Trowa's inclined position for a moment and then walked back towards him. Without a word, his piercing gaze tracked down the object that held the other pilot's attention. It was a large beetle, moving slowly among the verdure and glistening red and mauve and silver, its slim bullet-shaped body like a lost jewel dropped on the soil.
"It's a bug", Heero stated after a while.
"It's a Coleoptero of the family of Buprestidae", determined Trowa, softly taking it and letting it crawl on the back of his hand.
Heero wondered if that was irritation in the other's voice.
"It remains a bug."
"That word is also used for cockroaches."
'Annoyed.' confirmed the pilot of Wing, seeing a fleeting hint of emotion show on Trowa's face. The polished beetle was now crawling up his dark blue pullover with difficulty, its legs coughing on the wool fibers.
"Hn", was the only sound he uttered and turned back to the road.
Willowy fingers tugged at his white sleeve, stopping him. He studied the bent boy that was looking up at him. The sun was warming flexible limbs, scented breeze stroking the small hair at the end of a long neck and tousling the unusual haircut hiding one of his eyes, a liability for a pilot, a hideout for a soldier. Smoldering eyes that were green, too green. Heero was suddenly and inexplicably unsettled. They should move on, not lazing pointlessly around. The shiny black limousine passed them by and continued.
'A worry less', he thought.
"It's a childhood memory", Trowa's serene voice said, indicating the small creature.
Heero felt that he didn't want to learn, but Trowa rarely needed to talk, so he listened.
"I met someone once. I was a boy. He was too kind for a mercenary. I used to think that he wouldn't last long."
Trowa had placed the living gem on his open palm and was looking at it. The sun and the heat and all that white and brilliance were turning the Japanese boy dizzy. There was a surreality to the present, as if the time had shifted. It seemed to him that the voice he was listening to was drifting away -or was it reaching him from afar?
'Are you lost, nii-san?', a haunting image of a small smiling face under a wide-brimmed hat started him. He shook his head wildly and the short black bangs danced around his brow. He tried to concentrate on Trowa's words.
"…intrigued by nature. He spent time with me, teaching me the names of plant and animal species. He sought that more than the others' company. He had been a student, never told me why he left it all to join the troop." Trowa reflected for a moment. "He was too kind to last", he repeated.
Heero remained silent. He wanted to urge Trowa to hurry with his story, but something held him back. A fingertip now gently touching the upper part of the beetle, the quiet voice continued.
"I was calling them bugs. He taught me the scientific name. It's very old. Coleoptera means 'case for the wings'. The hard colored wings we see protect the diaphanous ones underneath. One day we fell upon this same species, it's a fairly common one on Earth, but very rare on Colonies. He was excited. He told me he would give me a gift of knowledge. He told me that I should learn from nature and make my heart like them, in order to survive. Hard outside in order to protect the fragile underneath. It was a useful gift."
Heero didn't ask needless questions, the living answer was right in front of him. Trowa raised his head and gazed at the cultivated plain below, then to the distant alighted sea. He let the polychromous beetle go and stood up.
"When I met you, I saw one who also knew the ways of nature", he said emotionless, his gaze still away and inward.
A pang of something alien in the Japanese boy's stomach. He ignored it. Trowa turned to get back to the road. Their eyes met. The green ones were now dull, emptied from life.
"What happened to your species teacher?" Heero asked.
Trowa passed him by without an answer. The beetle suddenly appeared under his raised gray short boot, but with a swift elegant movement, he avoided stepping on it.
"Its hard wings aren't useful against a stronger enemy", Heero pointed out and followed the acrobat on the asphalt.
The tall youth's open stride tarried and his back, covered with the blue turtleneck that hid powerful muscles, the feel of which Heero still had under his fingers, stiffened slightly. Then Trowa resumed his pace and spoke calmly as ever.
"He became an enemy. I killed him."
And after a while, when Heero didn't expect other words from him anymore, he spoke as if he was finishing aloud a thought.
"He wouldn't follow his own lessons. He was too kind."
Heero fell back a step and the sour fragrance of citrus trees, mixed with the saltiness of his sweat, made him close his eyes and inhale. He turned his face towards the warmth that pressed on the skin of his cheeks, his white, slightly unbuttoned shirt reflecting off the rays of the ripe sun. When at last he opened his over-heated eyelids, he glimpsed for a single moment thousands of brilliant Coleoptera flying around him, sparkling and glimmering, sprinkled with crystal chips, the sunlight that reached him through their veined transparent wings, bathing him in tinsels of rainbows.
* * *
They arrived at the busy town without any hostile meetings. Nonetheless, upon entering the market, the black car that had followed them on the hill appeared behind them again, assuring them that it was no coincidence. Heero turned around decidedly, ready to fight.
"Wait, you're still injured! You leave and I'll take them out", the spindly youth ordered, spotting a red motorcycle nearby.
"Trowa!"
The surprised murmur stabbed Trowa through the heart, but, as always, he showed nothing. Heero left, hidden in the back of a fruit seller's truck, and the circus clown prepared to face their enemies alone.
The hunt was brief. It came abruptly to an end when Trowa let the stolen motorcycle dive into the sea and the car crashed upon a wooden column. While his body performed turns in the air, like an Olympic diver aiming at the pool's water -only he flew upwards, defying gravity-, he saw the world whirling around and below him and his eyes caught the reflection of the sun-rays on the bluest sea's surface, blinding him momentarily. And in that moment of white blindness, with his world literally turned upside down, the axis of his being was shifted, while his vision was filled with Prussian blue that came rushing in to replace the absence of images and colors. In that single moment, realization bloomed, his mind learnt what his heart knew already and he accepted living.
In the outside world, his body began its inevitable fall, not able to ignore gravity any longer, and Trowa heard a female voice shouting: "The ones who love you will cry for you!", and he saw her tear-sparkling eyes facing him. His sight returned and he flipped his body to the correct position just before his feet touched the wire. He tucked his hands in his pockets and walked off, avoiding the clothes that hung to dry under the warm sun, balancing himself with the counter-weight of his revelation, the truth of the inevitability of love.
When he met again with Heero in the darkened alley, he knew that it didn't matter if he was loved in return or not. Time would soothe away the pain and obscure the numbing details of memory. Catching with an easy deft movement the apple which the Japanese pilot threw to him, he stated that they had to move on.
Heero agreed, but while they were discussing the details of how to transport HeavyArms, a woman appeared. The chestnut-haired youth had let the red fruit fall, drawn his gun and aimed it at the enemy, all in a swift motion. She offered her help, informed them what she wanted the pilot 01 to do in exchange and they debated things briefly. Trowa, following his nature, was distrustful and preferred to find another way out, but Heero accepted her help and agreed to fight with Zechs. When Trowa offered his Gundam to the black-haired boy and in reply he received, for second time that day, the same surprised exclamation of his name, the sorrow was bittersweet, for it was joined with knowledge, knotting the final thread to the lustrous cloth that had been woven in his heart.
'No more anger or mourning', he thought. 'Things between us are what they are. More battles are ahead and the colonies still need this soldier.'
And the resounding within his hollow heart altered its melody.
He missed the different shade in the piercing eyes that kept following his moves for a long time after they took off in Officer Noin's aircraft. The day that was pregnant with change had indeed given birth, but she was carrying twins, and Trowa was ignorant that there were two the newborns who exhaled their first cry into life's hurtful light.