It had been less than a month since Julia had decided upon her new approach, and the progress she'd made both delighted and frightened her. Delighted, because she'd come so far in such a short time, and frightened, because of how easy it was becoming for her to get into the mindset of the terrorists. It shouldn't be this easy, and she wasn't sure she liked the things she thought when she tried to *become* them, but she could understand where these thoughts were coming from, and maybe that was the most frightening thing of all.
The Gundam pilots were not madmen, or even crazed. Fanatics, certainly, and driven far beyond what most would consider sane, but they were not insane. There had been reasons, good reasons, for their actions, as she had suspected all along. And every time she tried to immerse herself in their imaginary personalities, she found it easier and easier to understand how they could become what they'd been.
She'd started with the assumption that there must have been *something* in each of their lives that would lead them to this, their upbringing, a traumatic shock, religion conviction, something... Assuming that they were, well, not balanced, but not so unbalanced that they would draw attention. She had a hard time picturing anyone handing a Gundam over to someone who was openly... um, disturbed. So she was assuming that they had to be, not normal, but not...
"Gundam pilot," she said aloud, ignoring the strange looks that people were giving her. That was the only word for it. Before they weren't, and then something happened, and then they were Gundam pilots. That was a definition in itself, at least in her mind, of which 'incredibly driven' was only a small part.
So they started out... relatively normal, and then something happened, and they became Gundam pilots. After a few days of intense concentration (and an entire weekend devoted completely to study), she had a vague idea on what sort of training the pilots must have received, in order to do what they'd done, and a very specific idea of the sort of training that normal mobile suit pilots got.
It had come as a surprise to her, how easily she absorbed the information she found about mobile suit combat. Tactics, schematics, history, strengths, weaknesses, she blazed through every book she found and filed the information away with an ease that frightened her. Even for her, this sort of retention was excessive. She didn't understand why this should come so easily to her. True, most things came easily to her, and she was used to that, but not like this. It just... it all fit together, like she was fitting together the pieces of a puzzle she didn't even realize she had.
Her initial impressions of the Gundams' fighting abilities had been correct, and she wasn't sure how she felt about that. The Gundam pilots weren't just better than the regular mobile suit pilots, they were better by several degrees of magnitude. They were so much better that it almost wasn't worth comparing. As she had said before, the differences were as pronounced as those between the Gundams and normal mobile suits. And she had seen it in just a few seconds of battle, before she'd known anything about their tactics, their abilities, before she'd known anything about mobile suits at all. It just wasn't... it wasn't right.
Julia noticed that her heart beat was speeding up again when she heard it thundering in her ears, and when the rustle of paper grated against her eardrums, she realized that she was as close as she'd come to losing control as she'd been in a long, long time. She abruptly stood up, managing to catch the chair she almost knocked over before it could fall on the floor and deafen her, and blushed at the looks she was getting from the other people in the library. "S... sorry!" she stammered, and stumbled out of the library, her hands pressed over her ears.
Maybe it was her imagination, but it seemed like it was getting harder and harder to shut out the sounds. It took her nearly five minutes until she was back to normal, and another five before she splashed some water on her face and exited the bathroom. She went back to the library and sat down heavily at the desk she'd vacated ten minutes ago.
She was beginning to really understand why the pilots had done what they had. Did that make her a bad person, or were the pilots just really misjudged? Or was it something else?
Up until a few weeks ago, Julia would have gone to her parents with all of this. She didn't have any really close friends her own age, even John was over five years older than her, and she wasn't really comfortable talking to him about serious topics. For as long as she could remember, her fathers had been her best friends and confidants. She was aware that this was not... well, normal. She didn't have a problem with it, never had, but now...
She couldn't talk about the Gundam pilots with them. Not when Duo-daddy had woken her up three more nights when he cried out in his sleep. She hadn't listened in on any more of their conversations, but she knew that somehow, she was to blame for his nightmares. She wouldn't do that to him, couldn't do that to him. Julia didn't want to upset either one of them any more than she already had, so she wouldn't discuss it with them, but she needed to talk to *somebody*.
Maybe she could talk to Richard. She'd met with him several times in the last month, and by the last time, she'd figured out that she was meeting with him for some reason other than just her project. She'd gotten all the information she needed by the third meeting, now she just liked talking to him. He had an interesting view on life, remarkably cheerful despite everything that had happened to him. He also didn't have many friends outside of his work and his home, and appreciated their talks a lot more than he'd ever tell her. Julia didn't feel sorry for him, exactly, but she thought it was a shame that he had so few friends because he happened to be blind, and she was considering inviting him over to dinner sometime. Duo-daddy would appreciate his sense of humor, at least.
But... she'd never talked to anyone about what she could do, what she was. She talked about it with her parents, but they already knew, so it wasn't like she actually had to tell them. She didn't know if she could do it. She needed to talk to someone though, and he was the only one who came to mind.
The bell rang, and Julia shoved her books into her backpack, bouncing it up and down a couple of times to settle the books and papers, then slung it over her shoulder, a note from her Daddy clutched in one hand. He'd written it this morning, then somehow sneaked it into her bag while she wasn't paying attention. He could be remarkably tricky that way, she hadn't let it out of her sight at all, and he'd still managed to plant, not only the note, but a candy in her lunch bag, which had been in her school bag. She still wasn't quite sure how he'd managed that one.
She had a doctor appointment today, just a regular checkup, but Daddy wanted to make sure that she didn't forget it. As if she ever forgot anything. Julia snorted mentally at the possibility. She'd managed to track down that move she'd used on John to something that her Duo-daddy had shown her when she was about seven. He'd told her that if anyone ever tried to hurt her, really hurt her, she should push that particular spot to make them let go, and then run. Of course, with the training she'd received, she automatically turned that into a slightly more legitimate move. And all she got for her trouble was a massive headache and the question of where her Daddy had learned it in the first place.
What sort of place taught you the quickest and most efficient way to hurt a person, to cause the most pain with the least effort?
-----------
Unlike most doctor's offices' that she'd heard of, Julia's almost always ran on time. She'd barely signed in when a nurse came in to escort her to an examination room, where she changed into a flimsy paper gown that barely covered the essentials, to sit by herself in a room that was just a few degrees too cold for comfort, until the doctor arrived.
She looked up as the door slid open and the doctor stepped through, dressed in a white coat, but there was no mistaking the two golden braids that hung over her shoulders. Julia flung herself at the doctor and gave her a big hug. "Sally! Or should I call you Dr. Chang while I'm here?"
"Sally is fine, but I'm going to need to breathe sometime soon!" Sally replied with a laugh. Julia released her, stepping back a few feet and smoothing out the wrinkles in her paper outfit.
"How are you? How is Wufei? And the twins and everyone else?" Julia asked.
"They're well, and they can't wait to see you. You are coming to Quatre's, aren't you?" Sally asked.
"Oh, yeah. I can't wait. No school, get to see the family, not a bad deal."
"Not bad at all," Sally said with a laugh. "And how have you been?"
Julia hesitated for several seconds, wondering if she should tell Sally what had been going on, with her hearing and her sight, but decided against it. It didn't bother her that much, not yet. It was probably just because she was so worked up about the Gundam pilots, that she was losing control. She used to have this problem, when she was younger, before she learned to concentrate probably. It would probably just go away with time. "Fine. I... I'm working on my senior project."
Sally hesitated, and Julia thought she saw a hint of worry flash across her face. Did everyone in her parents' generation react this way, or just all the adults she knew? "Oh, yes, your parents mentioned it to me, the Gundam pilots, right? Find anything interesting?" Sally asked, turning her back to Julia, probably trying to hide the reaction that Julia had already noticed.
Julia shrugged, not wanting to upset anyone else. "It's interesting stuff, but you probably know all about it, you lived through it. So, what first, ears, eyes, or do you want me to cough for you?"
"Why don't we start with the eyes?" Sally suggested with a smile. "Now, you know the drill. Just stare straight ahead, look at the light."
Julia obediently stared straight ahead, as Sally took a small device with a light on it and lifted it up. She started to point it at her eyes...
"Ow!" Julia abruptly turned her head away from the blinding light and attempted to shield her eyes with a hand. "What have you got it set for, small sun?" she demanded of Sally, who had hurriedly covered the light with her own hand, and now shut it off, slipping it into her pocket.
"I'm sorry, Julia!" Sally exclaimed. "Someone must have been playing with this! I'll find out who did it..."
"It's OK," Julia replied, rubbing her eyes, trying to restore her vision. "I'll be fine. Just no more lights, OK?"
"No more lights," Sally quickly agreed. "Let me just take some blood first, and then I'll do the rest of the standard tests, and you can go home."
"Fine," Julia replied with what grace she could muster, after almost being blinded. She held out her finger, and managed not to wince as Sally took the necessary sample of blood. Julia held a swab of cotton to her finger for the few minutes Sally was gone as she took the samples to wherever it was they had to go to be analyzed, and entertained herself by looking at the posters covering the walls. Then Sally returned, and walked over, taking hold of Julia's hand. She removed the cotton, asking, "Is it done?"
Julia rubbed her thumb against her index finger, and examined the digit. It wasn't bleeding anymore, and the mark was almost invisible. "It's fine."
"All right, then. You ready for the standard tests?" she asked with a smile that was half grimace.
Julia sighed. "There's no way you can skip these and just say that I took them?"
"Sorry, kiddo."
"All right, let's get this over with."
----------
Sally quickly checked with the receptionist to make sure that her schedule for the rest of the afternoon was clear, then went to her office and closed the door. She sat at the desk and contemplated the screen in front of her for several seconds, mentally preparing herself. This was not going to be fun.
She quickly dialed a number, and a few seconds later Heero's face appeared in the view screen. "Hello, Heero."
"Is she still there?" he asked.
"She just left."
"One second, I'll connect us." He did something off-screen, and suddenly the screen split itself in two, and she was staring at two separate images. On the right, Heero Yuy sat studying her with the same intense glare he'd perfected years earlier. On the left, Duo Maxwell sat, leaning back in his chair, his arms stretched over his head, his stance deceptively relaxed. "Report."
Sally resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "As far as I can tell, the enhancements are still progressing, getting stronger."
She'd been right about Duo - he abruptly leaned forward, eyes flashing. "I thought you said they'd stop when she hit puberty!" he said accusingly.
"I said that I *thought* it *might* stop when she *finished* puberty, and she hasn't done that yet," she said coldly. "You know that she hit it late, probably because so much of her energy was going into the enhancements throughout her childhood. And I'm only guessing that the enhancements will stop progressing after puberty ends, I never said that it was guaranteed!" She saw Duo sit back, looking chagrined, and added in quieter tones, "To be frank, we should be grateful that she went through it at all. Remember what I told her when she was younger, that she might just keep growing? It looks like she will stop, eventually."
She saw alarm flicker on Heero's face for a second before it was replaced by the usual mask, and Duo closed his eyes for several seconds, obviously getting control of himself. "You're right, Sally, as usual," Duo finally said. "And I shouldn't be taking this out on you. You've done so much for us, this isn't much of a way to say thanks. It's just that we're talking about Julia..."
Sally briefly thought about how she would feel if it were one of her children who were going through what Julia was, and nodded her head. "I understand completely. However, we do have a problem now. As I said, the enhancements are progressing, and until they stop, she's going to have to keep adjusting."
"What's going on with her, exactly?" Duo asked.
"It's hard for me to say, exactly..."
"Tell us what you know," Heero ordered softly.
"Her eyesight is still becoming more sensitive, for one thing," Sally informed them. "She actually cried out... she said I nearly blinded her when I directed the light we normally use to test pupil dilation into her eyes. It was set on the lowest setting I could manage, so now there's no way for me to test that. All aspects of her sight, actually, have progressed beyond my ability to test, at least with the equipment I have here. It's the same with her hearing. The only reason I know that she still is changing is because last time, the light didn't hurt her eyes, and I did manage to reach the limits of her hearing, if just barely. There are no definitive tests that I can give her without raising her suspicions for so many of the things... But when I tested her for blood, the puncture healed itself in a minute or two, and she almost broke my back when she gave me a hug when I arrived. She's either getting stronger, or losing control, or both. I think it's both, when I asked her if everything was all right, she hesitated for a long time before she told me she was fine. I think something isn't right, but she won't tell me." Sally paused for a moment, then asked, "Has she said anything to either of you?"
She saw the two of them glance at each other on the screens, and then Duo said, "She hasn't been talking to us as much as usual. I don't know..."
"Why not?" she asked, surprised. They were as close to her daughter as anyone she'd ever seen, and she wasn't pleased to find out that Julia wasn't talking to them anymore. She didn't think Julia had any good friends, and if she was bottling things up inside of her...
"It's because of her project," Duo said, running a hand through his hair. "It's occupying so much of her time, and she knows that it upsets us to talk about a it."
"She does? How..."
"You know how smart she is, and she'd have to be a complete idiot not to notice that something was wrong. So far she thinks its something about our generation and the war, but..."
"So she doesn't know yet?"
"No, not yet. We're still trying to figure out how to tell her."
"Before or after she figures it out on her own?"
"We don't know."
Sally sighed again and did her best to push the matter out of her mind. They would do whatever they wanted, and if she really wanted to discuss it with them, she'd see them in a week. "All right. But that still doesn't deal with the issue of her enhancements. You're going to have to do something." She hesitated, then said, "If you want, I could give her some medicine..."
"No drugs!" Duo practically shouted, and Sally barely restrained a wince. She'd mentioned, a long time ago, the possibility of giving Julia some drugs to dampen the effects of her overactive senses, to relax her muscles slightly so she wouldn't risk injuring someone unintentionally. Duo's reaction then had been substantially more violent than this one.
Sally didn't know why Duo had such strong prejudices against any types of drugs, but she suspected that it dated back to his childhood, that he had some bad experience with them then that he carried with him now. Whatever the reason, he remained vehemently against them in any form; she was just grateful that to the best of her knowledge, Julia had never gotten sick, so she'd never required any sort of medication.
"Well, you're going to have to do something," she repeated, slightly louder this time.
Duo frowned. "She isn't controlling it?"
"I don't think so, or if she is, not very well. The things you taught her when she was little... I don't think it's enough."
Duo closed his eyes for several seconds, while Sally waited for a response. When Julia had been much younger and her abilities had first started to get out of hand, they'd taught her a series of concentration exercises, bordering on meditation, that taught her how to limit the amount of information going into her brain by filtering out extraneous information: to tone down her hearing, her extremely acute eyesight, and hopefully anything else she ran into that she hadn't told them about. So far it had worked, but there was only so much she could do without knowing what the real problem was. And the problem was getting steadily worse...
"We'll think of something," Duo finally said, glancing at his husband.
"Duo..."
"Sally, I said that we'll handle it!" Duo said a little bit sharply.
Sally hesitated for several seconds, then asked, "How?"
"I don't know. We'll think of something. If we have to, we'll tell her." He closed his eyes again. "We were going to do it when she graduated, anyway."
Sally's eyes widened. Julia was graduating in a little over four months. Somehow, when he'd said that they'd tell her eventually, she'd never pictured it being so soon. "But..."
"After she graduates, who the hell knows what's going to happen? She might go to college, she might stay here for a while, but she sure as hell isn't going to be here for the rest of her life, and we're not letting her go without her knowing!"
"I... understand."
"Yeah. Thanks again, Sally. See you in a couple of days."
"See you."
Heero nodded once to her, then disconnected. Duo grinned at her, although it was a pale imitation of his normal expression, then also disconnected. Sally sat back in her seat, then winced a little as her back twinged in protest. Julia was getting stronger, and if she wasn't careful, she'd start ripping out door knobs when she was in a rush.
After a few seconds, Sally turned to her computer, calling up some files she'd made over a decade ago. When it became obvious what had been done to the children, all of the pilots had allowed her to do some fairly extensive tests on them, to find out exactly what the limits of their abilities were, and to try to discover how they controlled them. Maybe there was something there that she could use to help Julia.
------------
After her doctor's appointment, Julia caught a bus to visit Richard. She probably could have walked the distance, but her eyes were still kinda sensitive from when Sally shined that light in her eyes, and she wanted to get away from the sun. Ten minutes later, she stepped out of the bus (still shielding her eyes), and quickly walked up to the main building. She let the receptionist know who she was, and sat down to wait for Richard. The waiting room was pleasantly dark, and Julia's headache started to fade a little.
"Julia!" Julia looked up from where she was tearing little squares of paper into even littler squares of paper. I have got to find a better nervous habit, she thought, dumping the handful of confetti into a trashcan as she stood up.
"Hiya," she replied. "How ya doing?"
"Fine, other than the fact that I stubbed my toe on the main table in the common room," he replied. "Some idiot moved it and forgot to tell me."
"That sucks."
"You want to go out to the gazebo? It's cold, but it's not that bad."
Julia winced. It had snowed recently, just a dusting, but going outside, in the bright sun with the snow reflecting it... just the thought hurt. "Um, can we stay inside today?"
"What's wrong?" he asked, his brow creasing slightly. Normally she loved going outside, no matter what the weather.
"I just had a doctor appointment today and when she was looking at my eyes, someone fiddled with the light, so it was way too bright, and my eyes are still a little sensitive." Julia decided not to mention that they'd been a little sensitive for days, and the thing with the light had just exacerbated the problem.
"That's fine, we can go to one of the lounges." He started working his way through the halls. "You know, the lights they use to examine your eyes... you can't turn them up enough to hurt people," he commented slowly.
Julia sighed. She really didn't want to talk about this - it would only give her a bigger headache. "They don't?"
"No."
"Well, maybe someone fiddled with this one. Nearly blinded me."
"Hm." He pushed open a door to a tiny room with a couple of comfortable chairs in a circle around a low glass table. "Three chairs in a circle around a glass table, the one closest with it's back to the door?" he asked.
"Yup."
"Thanks, I've been a little paranoid about people moving things on me since this morning." He held the door open for her, then carefully closed it and moved to the nearest chair. She took the one on the right, sinking down into a comfortable seat with a sigh.
"What's wrong?" he asked, setting his cane aside.
"Why does something have to be wrong?" she asked avoiding the question without really lying. It wasn't nice to lie.
He wasn't fooled. "Something's bothering you," he declared. "I've been watching you get more and more tense in the last few weeks, and I'm guessing this isn't a normal cycle you go through."
"Watching?" she asked, hoping to distract him.
"It's a figure of speech," he replied. "And you still didn't answer my question."
"It's... a lot of things. But mostly it's my project," she confessed. This was why she'd come over here, wasn't it? It was stupid not to tell him once she'd made the decision to do so. Right?
"What about your project?"
"Well, remember how I said that it was about the time period surrounding the appearance of the Gundams? The war, the people, the politics... That wasn't exactly the entire truth."
He frowned slightly. "It isn't?"
"Not really. I didn't... I didn't know you very well, and I wasn't sure... I didn't want to upset you," she finally finished with a mental grimace. That had to be the most awkward sentence in the history of the English language.
He waited for a second, then asked, "What didn't you tell me?"
"My report is actually on the Gundam pilots."
He relaxed a little. "I'd guessed that much, Julie. It was pretty obvious. Is that..."
She cut him off. "That's not all. I'm trying a new... um, technique. I'm... I'm trying to get into their heads - the Gundam pilots, I mean. I'm trying to understand why they did... everything that they did." Julia hesitated for a moment, then plunged on. "I've been looking at files about the colonies, historical records and first-hand accounts. I've also been watching a lot of the vids of the Gundam pilots in action, whatever recorded data I could find. I've also been studying MS combat tactics, to see, maybe, where the Gundam pilots were taught, and how much their tactics deviated from the standard." She took a deep breath. "And... it's working, I think. I'm starting to understand why they did... things... and it frightens me. I... I don't think I should be able to understand that stuff... I just..." she trailed off helplessly. "And I can't talk to my dads about it..." again she trailed off. How could she possibly explain this feeling she had, that it was almost painful for her parents to discuss it? How could she possibly explain that for some reason, she thought it was more painful for them than for Richard, who'd been blinded by them? It was probably just that she knew them better, so it made her more uncomfortable to see them upset at all.
"It's not just that you understand them, is it?" Richard asked quietly, a question that wasn't really a question. She heard his heartbeat speed up a little, heard the tightness in his voice, and knew that he was angry, but keeping himself under control... for now. "You agree with them, don't you?"
"Yes... I mean no, I mean... I don't know..." Julia finished lamely. "I just... I think I can see why they would have thought it was..."
"A solution?" he asked, more than a hint of bitterness in his voice.
"No, not a solution, but... a choice, I guess. I... I'm sorry," she said, seeing the tension in his clenched fist. He had a death grip on his cane. Much harder and he'd break it. "I... I'll go now," she said, getting up, gripping her bag tightly.
"No..." he reached out, and either through luck or through his highly-developed situational awareness, he managed to snag her wrist. "No. I need to talk with you about this."
Julia uneasily settled back in her chair, watching him warily.
He took several deep breaths, then spoke slowly, as if he was measuring each word before he used it to make sure that he didn't start screaming. Julia was fairly certain this was actually the case. "All right. I am... aware... that my superiors, and the Alliance in general, always portrayed the... Gundams in the worst light possible. They needed us willing to give our lives fighting them," he admitted unwillingly. "But, what you're saying... That's a lot to take in. I consider myself pretty open-minded, but *still*..." he cut himself off before he could raise his voice even further. He took several more deep breaths, then said, "I'm assuming that you have some sort of solid evidence, not just rumors you found on the internet?" He barely managed to keep his comment from sounding sarcastic.
"No, it's not rumors," Julia responded.
"Can you show it to me?"
Julia blinked, then fumbled around in her backpack for a second before coming up with the discs that she'd stored all of her information on so far (at least, the stuff she'd found from legitimate sources - she wasn't stupid enough to keep records of the other stuff). She handed them over.
"You should be able to read most of them with a standard text-reading file," she offered hesitantly.
He nodded slightly before setting them on the table. "I... I need some time to think about all of this..." he said. "I... I want you to know that I'm... touched that you came to me with this, it's just..."
"No, I understand," she said quickly. "I... I'll go now, you can look it over, or whatever..."
"Thank you."
Julia started shoving stuff back into her bag, but before she could stand up and leave, Richard spoke again. "Julia... you're not... a normal girl, are you?"
She froze. "What do you mean?"
"Julia... You don't sound like a child. You're graduating high-school, right? I think your teacher mentioned that this is your senior project." Without waiting for a response, he asked, "How old are you? Seventeen? Eighteen?"
"Sixteen," she muttered when he actually did wait for a response this time. "I skipped a grade." That was entirely the truth: she had skipped a grade. She omitted the fact that she was still falling asleep in class, probably could have skipped three or four grades, and had her fathers tutoring her at night to keep her mind occupied.
Julia saw shock on his face before he concealed it. Well, attempted to conceal it. She supposed that most people would have thought that his face was fairly emotionless, but they hadn't lived their whole lives with her otousan. He did a fairly credible imitation of a stone wall. "You act... you don't act like a child. And Julia... the sort of research you're talking about... I don't know much about your school or this project, but I don't think this is what they had in mind for a high-school student. I mean, just learning about combat tactics... people study that for years! I know you're just skimming the material, but still..." Julia wasn't quite sure how to tell him that she wasn't skimming the material. She was reading the same texts that young MS pilots would have read, just a lot faster, and was absorbing it a lot faster than they would have, apparently.
"Julia?" he asked, and she realized that he was waiting for some kind of response.
"I... I just got really interested in this."
"Julia, it's not just being willing to spend the time. The sort of research you're doing..."
"I... I'm pretty smart."
His eyebrows narrowed until they disappeared behind his dark glasses. "You're a genius of some sort, aren't you?" he asked softly.
Julia started guiltily, then looked down at her hands. "Yes." She looked up at him. "How did you know?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. There was this guy at the Academy... I only saw him a couple of times, he was a mobile suit pilot, and we didn't socialize with them much, but it would have been hard to miss him. He wore this mask all the time, had the longest hair I'd ever seen, too. But he was a genius, supposedly, graduated young from the Academy with the highest scores every recorded. You remind me of him."
I remind him of Zechs Marquise? Julia thought, feeling a little sick to her stomach. Based on the research she'd done, it wasn't difficult to figure out who he was talking about. The time frame was right, and besides, how many cadets were allowed to walk around with most of their faces covered? She was not particularly happy about being compared to the most notorious Oz pilot in the history of the organization, the man with the biggest number of kills of anyone in the war, save the Gundam pilots. The man who eventually went insane and tried to destroy Earth.
She swallowed once and asked, "Why?"
"You're alone."
If there was anything she wasn't expecting, this was it. "What?"
"He didn't have any friends. Everyone admired him, or was jealous, and a lot of people wanted to be him, but no one was his friend. I doubt you could find one person who'd know why he had that big helmet thing on." He shrugged slightly. "But that's what reminded me of you. I know I haven't known you very long, but as far as I can tell, you've never mentioned any friends at school, just your parents and a few people at the... um..."
"Aikido..." she said automatically.
"Yes. And I get the impression you don't talk to them very much outside of practices."
"So now loner equals genius?"
"No, loner plus sixteen-year old about to graduate plus the sort of effort you're putting into the project plus acts like an adult plus unwilling to talk about it equals genius," Richard said, his joking words only partially successful at masking the serious content.
Julia sighed. "I'm a genius," she told him. "They found out when I was younger, and some group wanted me to come live with me so that they could study me, but my parents managed to stop them. That's mostly why I don't talk about it. And you're right, I don't have many friends in school. They're all older than me." There was a lot more to it than that, but she didn't really feel like getting into it right now. "And the reason I threw myself into this project... I wanted to know. I'm bored in school, a lot of the time, so when I find something that interests me..." she trailed off, seeing him stiffen up at the mention of her project.
"Um... I'm going to be away for most of next week. We have holidays, and I always go visit my family on L4," she told him. "I... I guess I'll see you the week after." She got up and left.
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"Sally's right, she is hiding something from us," Duo commented that night as he sat on the bed, struggling to get a comb through his hair. The elastic he used to keep it in a braid had snapped, and it had been several hours before he could find another one. The tangle resulting from several hours of having his hair loose was a nightmare, and one he wished that he could just leave until the morning. But if he did that, it would be even worse. The mess had to be tamed before sleep. Unfortunately, Duo was not at his most patient right now, and patience was a necessary requirement for this task. As it stood right now, Duo was closer to getting all of his yanked out than getting it untangled.
"Baka, let me do it," Heero said, snatching the brush out of his hand and settling onto the bed behind him.
"Thanks, Heero." Duo closed his eyes for several minutes and enjoyed the bliss that was someone else dealing with his hair, when he realized that Heero had never responded to his original statement. "You saw it at dinner, too, didn't you?"
"I turned down the lights in the hall and in her room and in the practice room," Heero responded. He was referring to the way that Julia kept blinking her eyes and rubbing at them during dinner in the well-lit kitchen. She hadn't said anything to them about the problem, assuming (correctly) that her parents would have realized something was seriously wrong if she mentioned it.
"Good idea. But what if this doesn't go away? If this new sensitivity is permanent..." Duo couldn't even bring himself to say it. So far, despite everything, Julia was able to live a fairly normal life. Not completely normal, but he doubted that ever would have happened, given who and what her parents were. If she kept changing, she was going to be unable to function 'normally', like Katie. "Heero, we have to tell her soon. This is different than just not wanting to tell her about what we used to do."
"Hai."
"So... when?" Duo asked nervously.
"We should tell the others," Heero said after a moment's pause. "After the visit. We shouldn't ruin it for her."
"OK."
Sorry to do that to Julia, she's going through some rough stuff right now. It's never fun learning that you can empathize with mass-murderers, and everything else on top of that is not helping. Richard's going to deal with this, eventually, but it was a lot to ask of him to just accept. Next section we get to meet Katie, Wufei and Sally's kids, and see what everyone's been up to for the past 15+ years.
Marika 10/27/01
The Gundam pilots were not madmen, or even crazed. Fanatics, certainly, and driven far beyond what most would consider sane, but they were not insane. There had been reasons, good reasons, for their actions, as she had suspected all along. And every time she tried to immerse herself in their imaginary personalities, she found it easier and easier to understand how they could become what they'd been.
She'd started with the assumption that there must have been *something* in each of their lives that would lead them to this, their upbringing, a traumatic shock, religion conviction, something... Assuming that they were, well, not balanced, but not so unbalanced that they would draw attention. She had a hard time picturing anyone handing a Gundam over to someone who was openly... um, disturbed. So she was assuming that they had to be, not normal, but not...
"Gundam pilot," she said aloud, ignoring the strange looks that people were giving her. That was the only word for it. Before they weren't, and then something happened, and then they were Gundam pilots. That was a definition in itself, at least in her mind, of which 'incredibly driven' was only a small part.
So they started out... relatively normal, and then something happened, and they became Gundam pilots. After a few days of intense concentration (and an entire weekend devoted completely to study), she had a vague idea on what sort of training the pilots must have received, in order to do what they'd done, and a very specific idea of the sort of training that normal mobile suit pilots got.
It had come as a surprise to her, how easily she absorbed the information she found about mobile suit combat. Tactics, schematics, history, strengths, weaknesses, she blazed through every book she found and filed the information away with an ease that frightened her. Even for her, this sort of retention was excessive. She didn't understand why this should come so easily to her. True, most things came easily to her, and she was used to that, but not like this. It just... it all fit together, like she was fitting together the pieces of a puzzle she didn't even realize she had.
Her initial impressions of the Gundams' fighting abilities had been correct, and she wasn't sure how she felt about that. The Gundam pilots weren't just better than the regular mobile suit pilots, they were better by several degrees of magnitude. They were so much better that it almost wasn't worth comparing. As she had said before, the differences were as pronounced as those between the Gundams and normal mobile suits. And she had seen it in just a few seconds of battle, before she'd known anything about their tactics, their abilities, before she'd known anything about mobile suits at all. It just wasn't... it wasn't right.
Julia noticed that her heart beat was speeding up again when she heard it thundering in her ears, and when the rustle of paper grated against her eardrums, she realized that she was as close as she'd come to losing control as she'd been in a long, long time. She abruptly stood up, managing to catch the chair she almost knocked over before it could fall on the floor and deafen her, and blushed at the looks she was getting from the other people in the library. "S... sorry!" she stammered, and stumbled out of the library, her hands pressed over her ears.
Maybe it was her imagination, but it seemed like it was getting harder and harder to shut out the sounds. It took her nearly five minutes until she was back to normal, and another five before she splashed some water on her face and exited the bathroom. She went back to the library and sat down heavily at the desk she'd vacated ten minutes ago.
She was beginning to really understand why the pilots had done what they had. Did that make her a bad person, or were the pilots just really misjudged? Or was it something else?
Up until a few weeks ago, Julia would have gone to her parents with all of this. She didn't have any really close friends her own age, even John was over five years older than her, and she wasn't really comfortable talking to him about serious topics. For as long as she could remember, her fathers had been her best friends and confidants. She was aware that this was not... well, normal. She didn't have a problem with it, never had, but now...
She couldn't talk about the Gundam pilots with them. Not when Duo-daddy had woken her up three more nights when he cried out in his sleep. She hadn't listened in on any more of their conversations, but she knew that somehow, she was to blame for his nightmares. She wouldn't do that to him, couldn't do that to him. Julia didn't want to upset either one of them any more than she already had, so she wouldn't discuss it with them, but she needed to talk to *somebody*.
Maybe she could talk to Richard. She'd met with him several times in the last month, and by the last time, she'd figured out that she was meeting with him for some reason other than just her project. She'd gotten all the information she needed by the third meeting, now she just liked talking to him. He had an interesting view on life, remarkably cheerful despite everything that had happened to him. He also didn't have many friends outside of his work and his home, and appreciated their talks a lot more than he'd ever tell her. Julia didn't feel sorry for him, exactly, but she thought it was a shame that he had so few friends because he happened to be blind, and she was considering inviting him over to dinner sometime. Duo-daddy would appreciate his sense of humor, at least.
But... she'd never talked to anyone about what she could do, what she was. She talked about it with her parents, but they already knew, so it wasn't like she actually had to tell them. She didn't know if she could do it. She needed to talk to someone though, and he was the only one who came to mind.
The bell rang, and Julia shoved her books into her backpack, bouncing it up and down a couple of times to settle the books and papers, then slung it over her shoulder, a note from her Daddy clutched in one hand. He'd written it this morning, then somehow sneaked it into her bag while she wasn't paying attention. He could be remarkably tricky that way, she hadn't let it out of her sight at all, and he'd still managed to plant, not only the note, but a candy in her lunch bag, which had been in her school bag. She still wasn't quite sure how he'd managed that one.
She had a doctor appointment today, just a regular checkup, but Daddy wanted to make sure that she didn't forget it. As if she ever forgot anything. Julia snorted mentally at the possibility. She'd managed to track down that move she'd used on John to something that her Duo-daddy had shown her when she was about seven. He'd told her that if anyone ever tried to hurt her, really hurt her, she should push that particular spot to make them let go, and then run. Of course, with the training she'd received, she automatically turned that into a slightly more legitimate move. And all she got for her trouble was a massive headache and the question of where her Daddy had learned it in the first place.
What sort of place taught you the quickest and most efficient way to hurt a person, to cause the most pain with the least effort?
-----------
Unlike most doctor's offices' that she'd heard of, Julia's almost always ran on time. She'd barely signed in when a nurse came in to escort her to an examination room, where she changed into a flimsy paper gown that barely covered the essentials, to sit by herself in a room that was just a few degrees too cold for comfort, until the doctor arrived.
She looked up as the door slid open and the doctor stepped through, dressed in a white coat, but there was no mistaking the two golden braids that hung over her shoulders. Julia flung herself at the doctor and gave her a big hug. "Sally! Or should I call you Dr. Chang while I'm here?"
"Sally is fine, but I'm going to need to breathe sometime soon!" Sally replied with a laugh. Julia released her, stepping back a few feet and smoothing out the wrinkles in her paper outfit.
"How are you? How is Wufei? And the twins and everyone else?" Julia asked.
"They're well, and they can't wait to see you. You are coming to Quatre's, aren't you?" Sally asked.
"Oh, yeah. I can't wait. No school, get to see the family, not a bad deal."
"Not bad at all," Sally said with a laugh. "And how have you been?"
Julia hesitated for several seconds, wondering if she should tell Sally what had been going on, with her hearing and her sight, but decided against it. It didn't bother her that much, not yet. It was probably just because she was so worked up about the Gundam pilots, that she was losing control. She used to have this problem, when she was younger, before she learned to concentrate probably. It would probably just go away with time. "Fine. I... I'm working on my senior project."
Sally hesitated, and Julia thought she saw a hint of worry flash across her face. Did everyone in her parents' generation react this way, or just all the adults she knew? "Oh, yes, your parents mentioned it to me, the Gundam pilots, right? Find anything interesting?" Sally asked, turning her back to Julia, probably trying to hide the reaction that Julia had already noticed.
Julia shrugged, not wanting to upset anyone else. "It's interesting stuff, but you probably know all about it, you lived through it. So, what first, ears, eyes, or do you want me to cough for you?"
"Why don't we start with the eyes?" Sally suggested with a smile. "Now, you know the drill. Just stare straight ahead, look at the light."
Julia obediently stared straight ahead, as Sally took a small device with a light on it and lifted it up. She started to point it at her eyes...
"Ow!" Julia abruptly turned her head away from the blinding light and attempted to shield her eyes with a hand. "What have you got it set for, small sun?" she demanded of Sally, who had hurriedly covered the light with her own hand, and now shut it off, slipping it into her pocket.
"I'm sorry, Julia!" Sally exclaimed. "Someone must have been playing with this! I'll find out who did it..."
"It's OK," Julia replied, rubbing her eyes, trying to restore her vision. "I'll be fine. Just no more lights, OK?"
"No more lights," Sally quickly agreed. "Let me just take some blood first, and then I'll do the rest of the standard tests, and you can go home."
"Fine," Julia replied with what grace she could muster, after almost being blinded. She held out her finger, and managed not to wince as Sally took the necessary sample of blood. Julia held a swab of cotton to her finger for the few minutes Sally was gone as she took the samples to wherever it was they had to go to be analyzed, and entertained herself by looking at the posters covering the walls. Then Sally returned, and walked over, taking hold of Julia's hand. She removed the cotton, asking, "Is it done?"
Julia rubbed her thumb against her index finger, and examined the digit. It wasn't bleeding anymore, and the mark was almost invisible. "It's fine."
"All right, then. You ready for the standard tests?" she asked with a smile that was half grimace.
Julia sighed. "There's no way you can skip these and just say that I took them?"
"Sorry, kiddo."
"All right, let's get this over with."
----------
Sally quickly checked with the receptionist to make sure that her schedule for the rest of the afternoon was clear, then went to her office and closed the door. She sat at the desk and contemplated the screen in front of her for several seconds, mentally preparing herself. This was not going to be fun.
She quickly dialed a number, and a few seconds later Heero's face appeared in the view screen. "Hello, Heero."
"Is she still there?" he asked.
"She just left."
"One second, I'll connect us." He did something off-screen, and suddenly the screen split itself in two, and she was staring at two separate images. On the right, Heero Yuy sat studying her with the same intense glare he'd perfected years earlier. On the left, Duo Maxwell sat, leaning back in his chair, his arms stretched over his head, his stance deceptively relaxed. "Report."
Sally resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "As far as I can tell, the enhancements are still progressing, getting stronger."
She'd been right about Duo - he abruptly leaned forward, eyes flashing. "I thought you said they'd stop when she hit puberty!" he said accusingly.
"I said that I *thought* it *might* stop when she *finished* puberty, and she hasn't done that yet," she said coldly. "You know that she hit it late, probably because so much of her energy was going into the enhancements throughout her childhood. And I'm only guessing that the enhancements will stop progressing after puberty ends, I never said that it was guaranteed!" She saw Duo sit back, looking chagrined, and added in quieter tones, "To be frank, we should be grateful that she went through it at all. Remember what I told her when she was younger, that she might just keep growing? It looks like she will stop, eventually."
She saw alarm flicker on Heero's face for a second before it was replaced by the usual mask, and Duo closed his eyes for several seconds, obviously getting control of himself. "You're right, Sally, as usual," Duo finally said. "And I shouldn't be taking this out on you. You've done so much for us, this isn't much of a way to say thanks. It's just that we're talking about Julia..."
Sally briefly thought about how she would feel if it were one of her children who were going through what Julia was, and nodded her head. "I understand completely. However, we do have a problem now. As I said, the enhancements are progressing, and until they stop, she's going to have to keep adjusting."
"What's going on with her, exactly?" Duo asked.
"It's hard for me to say, exactly..."
"Tell us what you know," Heero ordered softly.
"Her eyesight is still becoming more sensitive, for one thing," Sally informed them. "She actually cried out... she said I nearly blinded her when I directed the light we normally use to test pupil dilation into her eyes. It was set on the lowest setting I could manage, so now there's no way for me to test that. All aspects of her sight, actually, have progressed beyond my ability to test, at least with the equipment I have here. It's the same with her hearing. The only reason I know that she still is changing is because last time, the light didn't hurt her eyes, and I did manage to reach the limits of her hearing, if just barely. There are no definitive tests that I can give her without raising her suspicions for so many of the things... But when I tested her for blood, the puncture healed itself in a minute or two, and she almost broke my back when she gave me a hug when I arrived. She's either getting stronger, or losing control, or both. I think it's both, when I asked her if everything was all right, she hesitated for a long time before she told me she was fine. I think something isn't right, but she won't tell me." Sally paused for a moment, then asked, "Has she said anything to either of you?"
She saw the two of them glance at each other on the screens, and then Duo said, "She hasn't been talking to us as much as usual. I don't know..."
"Why not?" she asked, surprised. They were as close to her daughter as anyone she'd ever seen, and she wasn't pleased to find out that Julia wasn't talking to them anymore. She didn't think Julia had any good friends, and if she was bottling things up inside of her...
"It's because of her project," Duo said, running a hand through his hair. "It's occupying so much of her time, and she knows that it upsets us to talk about a it."
"She does? How..."
"You know how smart she is, and she'd have to be a complete idiot not to notice that something was wrong. So far she thinks its something about our generation and the war, but..."
"So she doesn't know yet?"
"No, not yet. We're still trying to figure out how to tell her."
"Before or after she figures it out on her own?"
"We don't know."
Sally sighed again and did her best to push the matter out of her mind. They would do whatever they wanted, and if she really wanted to discuss it with them, she'd see them in a week. "All right. But that still doesn't deal with the issue of her enhancements. You're going to have to do something." She hesitated, then said, "If you want, I could give her some medicine..."
"No drugs!" Duo practically shouted, and Sally barely restrained a wince. She'd mentioned, a long time ago, the possibility of giving Julia some drugs to dampen the effects of her overactive senses, to relax her muscles slightly so she wouldn't risk injuring someone unintentionally. Duo's reaction then had been substantially more violent than this one.
Sally didn't know why Duo had such strong prejudices against any types of drugs, but she suspected that it dated back to his childhood, that he had some bad experience with them then that he carried with him now. Whatever the reason, he remained vehemently against them in any form; she was just grateful that to the best of her knowledge, Julia had never gotten sick, so she'd never required any sort of medication.
"Well, you're going to have to do something," she repeated, slightly louder this time.
Duo frowned. "She isn't controlling it?"
"I don't think so, or if she is, not very well. The things you taught her when she was little... I don't think it's enough."
Duo closed his eyes for several seconds, while Sally waited for a response. When Julia had been much younger and her abilities had first started to get out of hand, they'd taught her a series of concentration exercises, bordering on meditation, that taught her how to limit the amount of information going into her brain by filtering out extraneous information: to tone down her hearing, her extremely acute eyesight, and hopefully anything else she ran into that she hadn't told them about. So far it had worked, but there was only so much she could do without knowing what the real problem was. And the problem was getting steadily worse...
"We'll think of something," Duo finally said, glancing at his husband.
"Duo..."
"Sally, I said that we'll handle it!" Duo said a little bit sharply.
Sally hesitated for several seconds, then asked, "How?"
"I don't know. We'll think of something. If we have to, we'll tell her." He closed his eyes again. "We were going to do it when she graduated, anyway."
Sally's eyes widened. Julia was graduating in a little over four months. Somehow, when he'd said that they'd tell her eventually, she'd never pictured it being so soon. "But..."
"After she graduates, who the hell knows what's going to happen? She might go to college, she might stay here for a while, but she sure as hell isn't going to be here for the rest of her life, and we're not letting her go without her knowing!"
"I... understand."
"Yeah. Thanks again, Sally. See you in a couple of days."
"See you."
Heero nodded once to her, then disconnected. Duo grinned at her, although it was a pale imitation of his normal expression, then also disconnected. Sally sat back in her seat, then winced a little as her back twinged in protest. Julia was getting stronger, and if she wasn't careful, she'd start ripping out door knobs when she was in a rush.
After a few seconds, Sally turned to her computer, calling up some files she'd made over a decade ago. When it became obvious what had been done to the children, all of the pilots had allowed her to do some fairly extensive tests on them, to find out exactly what the limits of their abilities were, and to try to discover how they controlled them. Maybe there was something there that she could use to help Julia.
------------
After her doctor's appointment, Julia caught a bus to visit Richard. She probably could have walked the distance, but her eyes were still kinda sensitive from when Sally shined that light in her eyes, and she wanted to get away from the sun. Ten minutes later, she stepped out of the bus (still shielding her eyes), and quickly walked up to the main building. She let the receptionist know who she was, and sat down to wait for Richard. The waiting room was pleasantly dark, and Julia's headache started to fade a little.
"Julia!" Julia looked up from where she was tearing little squares of paper into even littler squares of paper. I have got to find a better nervous habit, she thought, dumping the handful of confetti into a trashcan as she stood up.
"Hiya," she replied. "How ya doing?"
"Fine, other than the fact that I stubbed my toe on the main table in the common room," he replied. "Some idiot moved it and forgot to tell me."
"That sucks."
"You want to go out to the gazebo? It's cold, but it's not that bad."
Julia winced. It had snowed recently, just a dusting, but going outside, in the bright sun with the snow reflecting it... just the thought hurt. "Um, can we stay inside today?"
"What's wrong?" he asked, his brow creasing slightly. Normally she loved going outside, no matter what the weather.
"I just had a doctor appointment today and when she was looking at my eyes, someone fiddled with the light, so it was way too bright, and my eyes are still a little sensitive." Julia decided not to mention that they'd been a little sensitive for days, and the thing with the light had just exacerbated the problem.
"That's fine, we can go to one of the lounges." He started working his way through the halls. "You know, the lights they use to examine your eyes... you can't turn them up enough to hurt people," he commented slowly.
Julia sighed. She really didn't want to talk about this - it would only give her a bigger headache. "They don't?"
"No."
"Well, maybe someone fiddled with this one. Nearly blinded me."
"Hm." He pushed open a door to a tiny room with a couple of comfortable chairs in a circle around a low glass table. "Three chairs in a circle around a glass table, the one closest with it's back to the door?" he asked.
"Yup."
"Thanks, I've been a little paranoid about people moving things on me since this morning." He held the door open for her, then carefully closed it and moved to the nearest chair. She took the one on the right, sinking down into a comfortable seat with a sigh.
"What's wrong?" he asked, setting his cane aside.
"Why does something have to be wrong?" she asked avoiding the question without really lying. It wasn't nice to lie.
He wasn't fooled. "Something's bothering you," he declared. "I've been watching you get more and more tense in the last few weeks, and I'm guessing this isn't a normal cycle you go through."
"Watching?" she asked, hoping to distract him.
"It's a figure of speech," he replied. "And you still didn't answer my question."
"It's... a lot of things. But mostly it's my project," she confessed. This was why she'd come over here, wasn't it? It was stupid not to tell him once she'd made the decision to do so. Right?
"What about your project?"
"Well, remember how I said that it was about the time period surrounding the appearance of the Gundams? The war, the people, the politics... That wasn't exactly the entire truth."
He frowned slightly. "It isn't?"
"Not really. I didn't... I didn't know you very well, and I wasn't sure... I didn't want to upset you," she finally finished with a mental grimace. That had to be the most awkward sentence in the history of the English language.
He waited for a second, then asked, "What didn't you tell me?"
"My report is actually on the Gundam pilots."
He relaxed a little. "I'd guessed that much, Julie. It was pretty obvious. Is that..."
She cut him off. "That's not all. I'm trying a new... um, technique. I'm... I'm trying to get into their heads - the Gundam pilots, I mean. I'm trying to understand why they did... everything that they did." Julia hesitated for a moment, then plunged on. "I've been looking at files about the colonies, historical records and first-hand accounts. I've also been watching a lot of the vids of the Gundam pilots in action, whatever recorded data I could find. I've also been studying MS combat tactics, to see, maybe, where the Gundam pilots were taught, and how much their tactics deviated from the standard." She took a deep breath. "And... it's working, I think. I'm starting to understand why they did... things... and it frightens me. I... I don't think I should be able to understand that stuff... I just..." she trailed off helplessly. "And I can't talk to my dads about it..." again she trailed off. How could she possibly explain this feeling she had, that it was almost painful for her parents to discuss it? How could she possibly explain that for some reason, she thought it was more painful for them than for Richard, who'd been blinded by them? It was probably just that she knew them better, so it made her more uncomfortable to see them upset at all.
"It's not just that you understand them, is it?" Richard asked quietly, a question that wasn't really a question. She heard his heartbeat speed up a little, heard the tightness in his voice, and knew that he was angry, but keeping himself under control... for now. "You agree with them, don't you?"
"Yes... I mean no, I mean... I don't know..." Julia finished lamely. "I just... I think I can see why they would have thought it was..."
"A solution?" he asked, more than a hint of bitterness in his voice.
"No, not a solution, but... a choice, I guess. I... I'm sorry," she said, seeing the tension in his clenched fist. He had a death grip on his cane. Much harder and he'd break it. "I... I'll go now," she said, getting up, gripping her bag tightly.
"No..." he reached out, and either through luck or through his highly-developed situational awareness, he managed to snag her wrist. "No. I need to talk with you about this."
Julia uneasily settled back in her chair, watching him warily.
He took several deep breaths, then spoke slowly, as if he was measuring each word before he used it to make sure that he didn't start screaming. Julia was fairly certain this was actually the case. "All right. I am... aware... that my superiors, and the Alliance in general, always portrayed the... Gundams in the worst light possible. They needed us willing to give our lives fighting them," he admitted unwillingly. "But, what you're saying... That's a lot to take in. I consider myself pretty open-minded, but *still*..." he cut himself off before he could raise his voice even further. He took several more deep breaths, then said, "I'm assuming that you have some sort of solid evidence, not just rumors you found on the internet?" He barely managed to keep his comment from sounding sarcastic.
"No, it's not rumors," Julia responded.
"Can you show it to me?"
Julia blinked, then fumbled around in her backpack for a second before coming up with the discs that she'd stored all of her information on so far (at least, the stuff she'd found from legitimate sources - she wasn't stupid enough to keep records of the other stuff). She handed them over.
"You should be able to read most of them with a standard text-reading file," she offered hesitantly.
He nodded slightly before setting them on the table. "I... I need some time to think about all of this..." he said. "I... I want you to know that I'm... touched that you came to me with this, it's just..."
"No, I understand," she said quickly. "I... I'll go now, you can look it over, or whatever..."
"Thank you."
Julia started shoving stuff back into her bag, but before she could stand up and leave, Richard spoke again. "Julia... you're not... a normal girl, are you?"
She froze. "What do you mean?"
"Julia... You don't sound like a child. You're graduating high-school, right? I think your teacher mentioned that this is your senior project." Without waiting for a response, he asked, "How old are you? Seventeen? Eighteen?"
"Sixteen," she muttered when he actually did wait for a response this time. "I skipped a grade." That was entirely the truth: she had skipped a grade. She omitted the fact that she was still falling asleep in class, probably could have skipped three or four grades, and had her fathers tutoring her at night to keep her mind occupied.
Julia saw shock on his face before he concealed it. Well, attempted to conceal it. She supposed that most people would have thought that his face was fairly emotionless, but they hadn't lived their whole lives with her otousan. He did a fairly credible imitation of a stone wall. "You act... you don't act like a child. And Julia... the sort of research you're talking about... I don't know much about your school or this project, but I don't think this is what they had in mind for a high-school student. I mean, just learning about combat tactics... people study that for years! I know you're just skimming the material, but still..." Julia wasn't quite sure how to tell him that she wasn't skimming the material. She was reading the same texts that young MS pilots would have read, just a lot faster, and was absorbing it a lot faster than they would have, apparently.
"Julia?" he asked, and she realized that he was waiting for some kind of response.
"I... I just got really interested in this."
"Julia, it's not just being willing to spend the time. The sort of research you're doing..."
"I... I'm pretty smart."
His eyebrows narrowed until they disappeared behind his dark glasses. "You're a genius of some sort, aren't you?" he asked softly.
Julia started guiltily, then looked down at her hands. "Yes." She looked up at him. "How did you know?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. There was this guy at the Academy... I only saw him a couple of times, he was a mobile suit pilot, and we didn't socialize with them much, but it would have been hard to miss him. He wore this mask all the time, had the longest hair I'd ever seen, too. But he was a genius, supposedly, graduated young from the Academy with the highest scores every recorded. You remind me of him."
I remind him of Zechs Marquise? Julia thought, feeling a little sick to her stomach. Based on the research she'd done, it wasn't difficult to figure out who he was talking about. The time frame was right, and besides, how many cadets were allowed to walk around with most of their faces covered? She was not particularly happy about being compared to the most notorious Oz pilot in the history of the organization, the man with the biggest number of kills of anyone in the war, save the Gundam pilots. The man who eventually went insane and tried to destroy Earth.
She swallowed once and asked, "Why?"
"You're alone."
If there was anything she wasn't expecting, this was it. "What?"
"He didn't have any friends. Everyone admired him, or was jealous, and a lot of people wanted to be him, but no one was his friend. I doubt you could find one person who'd know why he had that big helmet thing on." He shrugged slightly. "But that's what reminded me of you. I know I haven't known you very long, but as far as I can tell, you've never mentioned any friends at school, just your parents and a few people at the... um..."
"Aikido..." she said automatically.
"Yes. And I get the impression you don't talk to them very much outside of practices."
"So now loner equals genius?"
"No, loner plus sixteen-year old about to graduate plus the sort of effort you're putting into the project plus acts like an adult plus unwilling to talk about it equals genius," Richard said, his joking words only partially successful at masking the serious content.
Julia sighed. "I'm a genius," she told him. "They found out when I was younger, and some group wanted me to come live with me so that they could study me, but my parents managed to stop them. That's mostly why I don't talk about it. And you're right, I don't have many friends in school. They're all older than me." There was a lot more to it than that, but she didn't really feel like getting into it right now. "And the reason I threw myself into this project... I wanted to know. I'm bored in school, a lot of the time, so when I find something that interests me..." she trailed off, seeing him stiffen up at the mention of her project.
"Um... I'm going to be away for most of next week. We have holidays, and I always go visit my family on L4," she told him. "I... I guess I'll see you the week after." She got up and left.
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"Sally's right, she is hiding something from us," Duo commented that night as he sat on the bed, struggling to get a comb through his hair. The elastic he used to keep it in a braid had snapped, and it had been several hours before he could find another one. The tangle resulting from several hours of having his hair loose was a nightmare, and one he wished that he could just leave until the morning. But if he did that, it would be even worse. The mess had to be tamed before sleep. Unfortunately, Duo was not at his most patient right now, and patience was a necessary requirement for this task. As it stood right now, Duo was closer to getting all of his yanked out than getting it untangled.
"Baka, let me do it," Heero said, snatching the brush out of his hand and settling onto the bed behind him.
"Thanks, Heero." Duo closed his eyes for several minutes and enjoyed the bliss that was someone else dealing with his hair, when he realized that Heero had never responded to his original statement. "You saw it at dinner, too, didn't you?"
"I turned down the lights in the hall and in her room and in the practice room," Heero responded. He was referring to the way that Julia kept blinking her eyes and rubbing at them during dinner in the well-lit kitchen. She hadn't said anything to them about the problem, assuming (correctly) that her parents would have realized something was seriously wrong if she mentioned it.
"Good idea. But what if this doesn't go away? If this new sensitivity is permanent..." Duo couldn't even bring himself to say it. So far, despite everything, Julia was able to live a fairly normal life. Not completely normal, but he doubted that ever would have happened, given who and what her parents were. If she kept changing, she was going to be unable to function 'normally', like Katie. "Heero, we have to tell her soon. This is different than just not wanting to tell her about what we used to do."
"Hai."
"So... when?" Duo asked nervously.
"We should tell the others," Heero said after a moment's pause. "After the visit. We shouldn't ruin it for her."
"OK."
Sorry to do that to Julia, she's going through some rough stuff right now. It's never fun learning that you can empathize with mass-murderers, and everything else on top of that is not helping. Richard's going to deal with this, eventually, but it was a lot to ask of him to just accept. Next section we get to meet Katie, Wufei and Sally's kids, and see what everyone's been up to for the past 15+ years.
Marika 10/27/01