Part Seven:

As it turned out, Fate wanted Lon Yao to be my worst nightmare.  Not only did he look way too much like Heero for my own personal comfort, he acted too much like him too.  Except for one trivial fact: he was engaged to Relena Peacecraft, former Queen of the World.  I bet Relena was thrilled about that, getting married to someone who was almost exactly like the one person she had been pining after for nearly forever.  And it made even more sense that she would come here after the engagement.  She knew exactly how much seeing someone who could pass for Heero himself was going to hurt us.  Me, especially.  And I wasn't quite sure that hurting me was not her only intention.

It wasn't until gym class, yet another class that I shared with Lon, that I figured all that out.  My teacher for gym wasn't nearly as nice as the English teacher, and I had the feeling that he wouldn't take to kindly to my new, adorable, and innocent pet.  So I showed up for the first five minutes, for roll call, with my kitten in my bag, then ditched the class.  He wouldn't notice anyway, I was sure; this teacher tended to doze off and let the rest of us do whatever we pleased for the remainder of the class.

Lon watched me go, but didn't say anything.  I was grateful for that, at least.

When Lon had moved into my dorm, or our dorm, as I guess it was now, he had apparently packed light.  There was a trunk at the end of the bed closest to the window, which I supposed was his, and a laptop set on the end table.  The laptop bothered me a little bit, but I let it slide.  After all, a lot of people own laptops nowadays.  I had even considered getting one myself not to long ago, then decided not to waste my money when I could just "borrow" someone else's.  It wasn't thievery, it was a simple matter of transferring ownership.  Besides, Quatre didn't care all that much, once he discovered where his had gone.  I had returned it, though, after about a week.  With all that stupid beeping and those annoying error messages, I didn't see what the big deal was.

Of course, it might have helped if I had stolen the owners manual along with the computer.

The kitten was very happy to be let out of my bag.  I couldn't blame her, really.  I don't like to be around schoolbooks any longer than I have to, either.  She jumped onto my bed with a sudden spring of fur and muscle and made herself at home, lying down immediately on my pillow.  She peeked up at me with her green cat eyes.  I sat down there too with a sigh.  Reaching over, I stroked her back carefully, and she closed her eyes, purring happily.

"Now, little one," I said softly.  "What am I going to do with you?"

There was no answer from the said party but for the soft rumble of purring.

"Cats need all sorts of things."  I twisted around suddenly, trying to get a good look at the owner of the sudden voice.  Trowa stood there, leaning slightly against the door, arms crossed and eyes closed.  "Litter and food are among the least of them.  I could probably get most of those for you, if you like."

"Hey, Trowa.  Didn't know you were here.  And that would be great, if you could."

"I thought not."  Trowa opened his eyes.  "I have a free period during these hours, and I saw you in here.  You left the door open," he informed me nonchalantly.  I rolled my eyes.  That was obvious enough; it would have had to been open, unless Trowa has some sort of X-ray vision that he hasn't told us about.  "When did a kitten come into your possession?"

"Just before lunch ended, after you and Q left on one of your exertions," I told him.  Trowa didn't bother to react to my off-handed reference to his earlier activities.  "Silly thing was playing with my braid."

"One of the library cat's, I assume."

"Did everyone know about that dumb library cat but me?" I exclaimed, not quite surprised.  This was Trowa, after all, and Trowa was an animal person.  He had to be.  "I guess it is.  How did a cat who spends all her time in the library end up with kittens, anyway?"

Trowa almost smiled at that.  "She is a cat.  It is instinct."

"Whatever."  There was a short paused.  "I met Relena's new friend.  He's in my English class, and gym."  I looked at Trowa suspiciously.  "How is it that you have a free period?  I thought we all had full schedules."

Trowa shrugged.  "My math course is of a higher level than yours.  We are allowed to teach ourselves, if we wish."

"Whatever floats your boat," I said, rubbing the kitten's fuzzy chin.  Her purring got to be louder than ever.  "Hey, does this school allow you to have pets?"  Stupid question, I realized too late, since the library had its own cat. 

Trowa ignored me anyway, so my stupidity didn't matter at all.  "What is the infamous fiancĂ© like?"

I stared at my feet.  "His name is Lon Yao, and... well, he's pretty much exactly like Heero.  Except that he was stupid enough to get hitched with Relena.  And his eyes aren't blue, they're kaleidoscope gold.  And I almost got him to smile."

Trowa smirked.  "Those seem to be more than a few differences."  He was silent for a long moment, but I had the feeling that he was trying to say something important.  So I waited.  "I am sorry that we did not tell you about Heero," he said finally.

"It's not a big deal, Trowa.  You guys were just trying to keep me from hurting.  You failed, of course," I said, rolling up my sleeve and resting my hand on the bandage I had applied not two days before.  "But it all turned out okay.  I have no plans to kill myself just yet, I haven't completely snapped, and life is turning out pretty good.  And," I continued, grinning widely, "my day has been okay so far.  No Relena in sight."

"Yes.  I suppose that is a good thing."  Trowa looked not at me, but at the wall behind me.  I suddenly knew that he had more to say to me than that.

"What is it, Trowa?"

He cleared his throat.  "When you in the cafeteria, you said some very unusual things, Duo."

"During or after my brief spout of insanity?"

"Before, during, and afterwards," he admitted, and I realized that this little speech was something he had been thinking about for quite a long time.  Perhaps since before we even came to this pit of a school.  "I have spoken with Wufei and Quatre, and we have all agreed that you have been acting oddly for awhile now.  I, personally, believe that you should converse with the school's resident psychiatrist."

Well, that stopped me dead in my tracks.  Whatever I had planned to say before erased itself from my tired and dream-ridden mind.  It's one thing to think that you're crazy, but an entirely different thing to have your friends think that you're crazy.  And having Trowa tell me I should see a shrink did not make me a happy camper.

"You think I'm crazy."

"No.  Duo, I think you have a problem you need to work out.  A doctor would only help you along the path to recovery.  I do not think that you are incapable of helping yourself, I just, as a friend, am trying to make it take as little time as possible."  A man of little words, this was probably as long a speech as I had ever heard Trowa give me.  And it still hadn't ended.  "You are not insane, I am sure of that.  Duo, you must believe me when I say that I am only trying to help you the best way I know how."

I stared at him.  My mouth opened and shut like I was a goldfish, but no words were coming out.  I had long ceased petting my kitten, and it stared at me with curiosity in its eyes.  I finally pulled myself together just enough to speak.

"What did I do in the cafeteria that I can't remember?"  Trowa was silent.  "Tell me, god dammit!  Trowa, if you're my friend, I want you to tell me what the hell is going on!"  I stood up and got a good grip on his arm.  "Trowa," I threatened through gritted teeth.  He was a good head taller than me, and a lot stronger, I knew that, and could probably have broken my grip as easily as he could breathe, yet he made no move.

He was silent still.

I blinked a few times and let go of his arm.  I sat heavily on the bed, face in my hands.  "Trowa, please tell me what's happening."  I was close to tears and I honestly didn't care who knew it.  I was suffering from lack of sleep, I had just been told I was crazy, and now my friend wasn't even going to give me any answers.

I swallowed hard, but the lump in my throat wouldn't budge.  "What's wrong with me?" I sobbed quietly into my hands.  I couldn't stop my tears this time.  It was only a few tears, one or two, but I never cried, so it was shocking to me.  I don't think I even cried back home on L2, when everyone I knew and loved had died.  Being a war orphan had hardened me to pain, and it was impossible for me to cry.  In some ways, I may have put more barriers and walls around me than even Heero had.  The strongest walls to breach aren't made of stone and mortar, but of fear and anxiety.  And somehow Trowa and I had managed, in all a matter of minutes, to break down every source of protection I had against my emotions.

Trowa saw my difficulty and crossed over to me.  Sitting just behind me on my bed, he put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me back towards him, so that I was leaning against his chest.  He was comforting to me right then, in my state of need, and something in my brain told me that I was going to be okay.  But I still couldn't stop the few tears that trickled down my cheeks.  He whispered something to me, probably the same thing my brain was trying to tell me, but I couldn't hear him.  Instead I twisted at the waist and threw my arms around his shoulders and let my sobs wrench themselves out of me.  Trowa knew what I needed, I think, even if I didn't, and he removed his hands from my shoulders and repositioned his arms so that they were hugging me slightly around the waist.  I totally lost control then, and the floodgates opened.

I wept like the child I never was allowed to be, the child that war had forbidden to let appear.  I heard the bell ring for the next class, but neither Trowa nor I payed it any attention.  We just sat there, me crying and Trowa encouraging me to do so.  It wasn't good to hold back tears, he told me sometime later, when everything was over with, and it was better to let them all out, even if it was just sometime during the night and you had to cry into your pillow to muffle your sobs.  Good advice, even if it did come from a clown.

Or maybe it meant all the more because it came from a clown.

When I finally ran out of tears, class was already mostly over.  It was only literature, which I really didn't care about anyway, so I decided not to go at all.  Trowa stayed with me, maybe just to make sure I was all right, but maybe, just maybe, because he knew I needed him to stay there for a little while.

"What class are you missing?" I asked him when I finally got my voice under control.

"Music.  Quatre will be wondering where I am, no doubt.  I'll tell him later."

I gave Trowa the best glare I could, teary eyes and all.  He chuckled.  "You better not tell him that I cried.  Or Wufei either.  I'd never live it down."

Trowa nodded.  "No need to worry about that.  I wouldn't say anything."

I eyed him suspiciously.  Then I laughed.  "I believe you."  I looked around for my kitten, then saw that she was lying where I had last seen her, on the pillow, with her eyes closed and her furry little chest rising and falling with the streams of her breath.  I sighed. 

"Trowa, I'm so confused," I told him, brushing my long bangs away from my face.  "Everything should be all right, but it's not.  I mean, the war's over, and I know that Heero's still out there, somewhere, and I still have all you guys.  But I feel like I'm in a room with a lot of people, and I'm blindfolded, but no one else is.  So they can see what's going on, and I can't."  Trowa watched my face closely with concerned eyes.  "Do you have any idea what I mean?"

"I think I do."  Trowa looked away from me.  "Wufei is a better friend to you than I.  Perhaps you should talk this over with him."

"No.  Trowa, Wufei may be the closest thing to a best friend that I have right now, but I don't think he can understand exactly what I'm trying to tell him."  I stared up at the ceiling.  "Man, I sound pretty morbid, huh?  Happy Duo, that's me."  I laughed.  "Bet you never thought you'd see the day when I started talking serious."

"I can't say that I expected to see such a day, no.  But I am glad I was here to witness it."  Trowa was silent for a moment.  "You know that the three of us are always here if you need to talk, Duo, but I still want you to make an appointment with the psychiatrist."  I was about to protest again, but he raised a hand to stop me.  "Not because you are crazy, but because you seem to want to get the help."

I hesitated.  I really didn't want to give in, but I didn't feel like fighting, either.  Especially not after the time I'd just had.  Crying into your friend's shirt was not my idea of a good time, and I kind of doubted that being on the receiving end wasn't Trowa's cup of tea either.  And he had to go around the rest of the day in a soggy uniform.  I somewhat doubted that he would care about that, though, since he holds the uniform in just as much contempt as I do.  I even got him to wear his old clown garb to chem once.  Just once.

It doesn't take much to please me.  Just a few mild catastrophes and one or two disasters, and I'm good to go.  Now that is my idea of fun.

And that was exactly why everyone thought I was one sock short of a pair.

I stood up and stretched a little.  Then I looked back at Trowa.  "Does this school have a shrink?" I asked, a bit sheepish.  "And if so, where's the office?"

"Yes, they have quite a few psychiatrists.  I'll show you to their office tomorrow, if you like."

"Fine."  I guess I should have known.  This place had everything, and I was the only one ignorant of it all.  I had found out quite a bit in the past two days, not the least being that I was crazy.  Libraries, cats, and shrinks, oh my!

The bell for chemistry was going to ring at any minute, so I handed Trowa his books.  "Q is going to be waiting for you in your music class.  I'm not going to go to chem today, alright?  Tell the teacher that I'm not feeling so hot, and tell the assistant that she doesn't have to schedule any labs today.  I swear, she assigns those things just so she can exclude me from them!"

"I believe you may be right."

"You aren't helping."

Trowa shrugged.  "Don't say I did not try."

I grinned.  "I won't.  Have fun in chem, Trowa."  I opened the door as the bell rang, and Trowa walked out, nodding to me as he went.  I sighed and fell back onto my bed, petting the cat.  She was happy, anyway.  That was more than I could say for myself.  A lot more than what I could say for myself.  I'd stopped crying, at least.  That was always a plus.

I guess I fell asleep again, because the next thing that I remember was waking up to my door shutting and someone walking in.  I propped myself up on my elbows, well aware that I was in a rather strange position.  Lon gave me a look, then set his stuff down on a table nearby. 

"Class is over, I take it?"

"Aren't we the smart one."  It wasn't a question, it was an insult.  And it did not take kindly.  I glared at him, then returned to lying on my back, staring up at the ceiling.  He didn't care.  That didn't surprise me much; he was a lot like Heero, after all.  Why should anything I say or do vex him in the least?  It hadn't Heero, in any case.

The ceiling, I quickly discovered, was probably the most boring part of the entire room.  It wasn't long before I grew to dislike it.  I think I may be the first person to hate a ceiling.  Or maybe not, the world had been around for quite a long time, longer than I had been, anyway.

You can tell a lot from a ceiling.  Well, a little, anyway.  Like how old a building is, or what kind of person first owned it, or even a little about the time period it was made in.  Really, you can.  There are almost as many different styles of ceiling patterns as there are houses, which makes sense, as each house has its own style.  It's almost like people with their clothes.

Ceilings are wonderful things.

"So, how was your first day of prep hell?" I asked my incredibly talkative roommate.  He didn't answer, surprise surprise.  So I knew I would have to worm answers out of him.  I hadn't done that for a long time, not since awhile before Heero had disappeared.  I mean, even Wufei and Trowa were talking  more now.  "Did you enjoy it?"

"Hn."

He even sounded like Heero.  Man, this was turning into my own private hell, wasn't it?  I guess Fate had it in for me, considering all those times I'd cheated her.  Shinigami always lands on his feet, in my experience, anyway.  Even when he has a date with Fate.

Only this little get together wasn't going so well.  Poor me.

"How's Relena?"  I couldn't believe I was asking this.  I couldn't stand Relena, and I was pretty sure that if there was anyone in this school who didn't know it right now, they'd know before the week was out.

Lon only shrugged.  "Fine."

"Well, aren't we Mr. Personality today.  What's wrong, woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something?"

Lon shrugged again.  "Something like that."

He wouldn't talk any more, no matter how much I tried to make him.  I sighed.  Lon, I decided, was probably going to be a pain the ass.  It would be best just to pretend that he wasn't there.  Which would be easy enough, if he continued to ignore me and type on that stupid laptop of his.  He was even worse than Heero had been!

I reached down under my bed and pulled out the book containing dream interpretations I had just taken the night before.  Lon looked up at me as I sat back down on my bed, book in my lap.  As the leather cover of the book cracked, due to its age, Lon snorted.

I glared up at him.  "What now?"

Lon smirked.  "Nothing, except that Relena would be shocked to find that you know how to read," he told me.  It wasn't the words he said, but the tone in which he said them in that really got to me.  The hairs on the back of my neck bristled a little in my anger.  It took quite a lot of control to keep me from shoving my new roommate off the balcony- which, I suddenly realized with a mental smirk, was extremely convenient, if I wished to commit homicide.

I nodded instead, fists clenched and mouth pressed into a firm line.  Two could play at this game, I was sure.  "I'd be surprised to see if Ojousan knows how to tie her own shoe laces."

Lon didn't respond.  There was a long pause, and I finally gave up and went back to staring at the book in front of me.  Then, as he fixed his kaleidoscope gaze on me, he spoke again.  "Who is the boy in your picture?"

"What?"  It took a minute for his words to connect within my brain.  The picture he was talking about was a pretty old one, that I'd gotten framed for my birthday one year.  Nothing fancy, just a picture of me and Heero joking around.  Well, I was joking around, anyway.  Heero was just kind of sitting there watching me with this really weird look on his face, like he couldn't believe I was being that stupid.  He was almost smiling, and the picture really flattered him.  I kept it in a drawer now, because I'm not really the type of person who likes to dwell on sad stuff that happened in the past.  Even if the picture did capture a happy moment, I really didn't want to have to be reminded of my lost friend every time I looked at the thing.

"You went through my things?"

He ignored the question.  "Who is he?"

I glared at him from under half closed eyelids.  He had no right, whatsoever, to go through my things like that.  "Just some random guy who happened to look like you.  How should I know his name, it's just a picture.  And, since I keep it in my drawer, it's not like I don't want to think about it or anything."

"Hn."  Lon paused a moment, but the brief silence was the silence of expectation.  I was waiting for him to continue, and he was waiting to think of just the wrong thing to say.  "Tell me who he is?  Or was, I suppose."

"That was Heero.  I'm rather surprised you haven't heard all about him from the Ojousan.  Bitch couldn't leave him alone for a damn second."  My voice was touched with both rage and sarcasm.  It would have made any normal person cringe.  But no, of course not, Lon Yao was just as abnormal and above it all as Heero Yuy had been.

"Was he your catamite?"

I choked on my own breath at that.  "Are you calling me a pederast?!  A lover of boys?"

Lon smirked, and that smirk hit a nerve.  He turned off his computer.  "Perhaps I was mistaken, and you are the catamite."

"Now you're calling me a whore?"

"Perhaps.  It's possible, he could have been a pederast, after all."

I rose from my spot on the bed and crossed over to where he sat, grabbing him by the shirt collar and pushing him up against the wall.  "Look, I don't really care how often or how horribly you insult me, but you leave Heero out of it.  Got it?"

Lon smiled menacingly.  There was a spark in his eyes that I really didn't like.  "I knew I could wipe that stupid grin off your face," he murmured, half to himself.  The he hit me in the gut.  I let him go pretty quick after that, falling to my knees, holding my sides.  Having the air knocked out of you is not a whole lot of fun, trust me.  Lon only smirked, then smoothed his shirt and walked out into the hallway, shutting the door behind him and not once looking back at my pathetic form.  I guess I was a little grateful, for that tiny courtesy.  Not much though, you can be sure.

It was about an hour after I'd recovered from my surprise attack and climbed back onto my bed to read that there was a knock on the door.  I jerked up, startled, letting the book fall to the ground with a thud, and I checked the clock; it wasn't close to dinner hour yet, so Quatre or the others would have no reason to come by.  The knock came again, gruff and impatient, and a bit louder this time.  So I got up.

The one thing I really hated about this school was the doors to the rooms.  There's no peephole or anything, so there's no way to see who's on the other side of the door.  For all we know, it could be some maniac with a machine gun, or some strange kind of hand-held beam cannon.  And, not to sound conceited or anything, but we Gundam pilots had more to worry about than anyone else here.  There were still some renegade OZ sympathizers roaming around, and any one of them could easily find the information they need to make sure we pilots are never able to fight again.  Honestly, everyone knows that Wing Zero was demolished, when it crashed, but no one else but the four of us knew that the Gundams had all been destroyed.  We chose secret places to self-destruct for a reason- if no one knew that the Gundams were kaput, who was going to try to attack?  The four of us- five, if Heero had still been hanging around- could easily just pop up out of thin air and destroy any enemy forces that could possibly be hanging around.  So all we really had to worry about was our personal safety; OZ still wanted to hang our heads on their walls.  Mine, especially.  After all, I was one of the first ones they caught- and the only one they made public about it.  I can just imagine the embarrassment they all went through when I got busted out of there.  But they learned their lesson after that.  No reporting having caught Gundam pilots to the common people until we were executed.

Besides that, I had no qualms about opening the door.  "Who is it?" I called, hoping to get a response loud enough to be heard through the thick door.  It was answered with what sounded like a really low-pitched growl.  But it was a growl I knew.

My feet moved by themselves to the door and my hands touched the lock before I realized what I was doing.  I pulled my hands away as though I had been burned.  If I was wrong, and it was someone else, there was no telling what could happen.  But if I was right...

Before I could change my mind, I yanked open the door, part nervous, part angry, and part ecstatic.  There was a brief moment where nothing happened, there was just me staring at the figure standing out in my hallway and the figure staring at me.  Then the figure came in.  I took a step backwards as the person shut the door with his foot, watching me carefully under curious brows.  I was startled, to say the least, and it was all I could do to keep staring into that steady gaze.  I didn't even see the face, those first few moments, I could only stare at those amazing, observant eyes.

But that didn't matter much.  I had known who it was even before I had asked.

Heero hadn't changed much.

~tbc

Ugh... sorry that this last chapter was pretty bad.  But I had some great ideas for it, and I had even finished writing a really good version of this part when I managed to delete my entire hard drive.  ARGH!!!   Sorry... but, if you've never had that happen to you, it is the most annoying thing in the world.  Anyway, after trying endlessly to recover all my lost data, I finally gave up and rewrote part seven.  So, being as frustrated as I was, this version of part seven didn't turn out as good as I'd originally intended.  I'm still going along the same plot that I had, but I tend to write in short, eccentric spouts late at night and have trouble remembering what I wrote.  So I know that this is nowhere near as good as the original, but I hope it will pass.  Gar…  Oh yeah!  Next part is a lemon, so don't say I didn't warn you!  Don't say it, don't!!!