Julia sneezed, glared at the trunk from which the cloud of dust was emanating, and sneezed again. she thought, covering her nose and mouth with her t-shirt in a futile attempt to keep out some of the dust rising into the air. she thought decisively. It was unusual that Tousan would allow any part of the house to become as dirty as their attic currently was. Of course, they didn't come up here very often, but still...
She was running out of places to look. Julia straightened up (well, as much as she could in the cramped space between the top floor of their house and the roof), and looked around one last time.
They were leaving the next day for L4 to visit Quatre and Trowa's house (mansion) for the annual family reunion, and Julia was looking forward to it, but right now it was causing her a great deal of frustration. There was a particular shirt that Quatre had given her as a present several years ago, and this past winter she'd finally grown enough to wear it, and she loved it. She'd packed it away when summer came, with plans to dig it out of storage in time to wear on this trip.
Well, she'd gotten her winter things down a while ago, and the shirt hadn't been among them. She'd been meaning for months to come up here and find it (presumably it had not simply vanished into thin air since she'd packed it away), but never quite managed to find the time. Now she was leaving tomorrow, and there wasn't any time left to put it off anymore.
She was getting close to giving up, though. She'd been searching in the dusty attic for well over an hour, and hadn't seen so much as a thread from that shirt. That was frustrating in more than one way: not only was she not going to have it to show off at the reunion, but she also really liked that shirt, and for months she'd thought it was up here! She didn't know where else it could be.
Julia was just about to give up when something she saw out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. She automatically turned in that direction, squinting into the near-total darkness in one of the corners of the already-dim attic. It took her several seconds to figure out what she was looking at. It was a small box, sitting by itself in that dark corner, practically invisible. She must have been up here a dozen times before and she'd never noticed it because of it's placement.
Her irritation upped a notch. Julia walked over to the box. It was unlikely that her shirt was in there, but at least she could put it somewhere a little better, so that someone else wouldn't have to go through what she just did to find it.
The dust on the box was extremely thick, even considering where it was. It looked like no one had disturbed it for many years, and she handled it gingerly, trying not to stir up any more dust than was absolutely necessary. She got a slight shock when she picked it up - it was a lot heavier than it looked. She carried it over to one of the boxes she'd searched earlier and set it down on top.
It took her several seconds to figure out how to work the catch on the box. When she finally did, she carefully swung the lid up, and got another surprise. While the outside of the box might look old and about to fall apart, the inside was incredibly clean. The box itself was made of some durable plastic, and probably had an air-tight seal, which explained the cleanliness. But all of that was forgotten when she lifted the top layer of foam and saw what was inside.
Two guns lay nestled inside the box, with the clips lying beside them, carefully packed in several layers of foam to keep them from banging around. What the hell was this doing in her attic?
Julia carefully picked up one of them by the handle, holding it between two fingers to make sure that she didn't accidentally set it off. It wasn't likely to happen, since she wasn't anywhere near the trigger and the clips were lying there in the box besides, but she wasn't taking any chances. She examined it as well as she could in the dim light. It looked very well cared-for, but that was about all she could tell, knowing next to nothing about guns.
She was about to put it back when another detail caught her attention - there was no registration number on the gun. She took another careful look at the gun and re-established what she already knew, that there were no sort of identifying numbers on any part of the gun. Julia put the gun down and checked the other, finding the exact same thing. Quickly setting it back in the box, she stared at it blankly for several minutes. She didn't know much about guns, but she did know that they were supposed to have numbers on them, and those numbers were supposed to be registered with the Preventers. Why were there two *unregistered* guns in her attic?
Julia wanted very badly to believe that they had belonged to whoever owned the house before them, that they had been left behind and her parents had simply overlooked it the way she had when they first moved in, but she knew better. She knew how careful Tousan was about little details like that. There was no way that he would have missed something like this when he was moving it. Which meant that he and Daddy must have brought them here.
Julia stiffened suddenly as the thought occurred to her, and slammed the lid closed. She hurriedly locked it, then took it back into the shadows, where it belonged. She fled the attic without looking backwards.
---------
Julia squirmed slightly, trying once again to get comfortable in the seat of the shuttle they were taking to L4. It was impossible. she grumbled to herself, finally straightening her legs as much as she was able, so that she could stretch them a little, then deliberately relaxing so she wouldn't get too stiff. She shuddered to think about what it would be like if she wasn't as short as she was.
She looked down at her laptop, and decided that she was tired of playing games. They weren't holding her attention any more, and that was a bad thing. If she didn't keep her mind occupied, she might start thinking about what she'd found in the attic yesterday, and that wasn't a good thing. She was sure that there were all kinds of reasonable explanations as to why her parents would have two guns hidden away in their attic, like that they'd belonged to a friend or something like that. There had to be some sort of reasonable explanation, and she'd probably figure it out if she thought about it, but she didn't want to. The thought of her parents and guns was just too... wrong. It didn't make sense.
But all of that meant that she needed to find something else to occupy herself. Automatically her mind traveled to her school project. There was no reason she couldn't get some work done on this trip. Julia sneaked a glance at her parents. Tousan was seated immediately to her right, and she hadn't really even needed to look at him to know what he was doing. The rapid sound of fingers hitting a keyboard told her what to expect. Sure enough, he was hunched over *his* laptop, typing away. She frowned slightly, wondering if this was going to be one of those vacations where she spent half of her time trying to drag him away from that damn thing. You weren't supposed to work when you were on vacation. Of course, it was completely different when she did it.
Just beyond him, Duo-daddy was engrossed in a comic book. Julia barely managed to avoid rolling her eyes. Normally it didn't bother her when her father engaged in childish behavior (in fact, most of the time, she loved it), but this one particular habit drove her nuts. It wasn't so much that he read comic books, it was the comic books he chose... pure garbage, all of it! If he was going to look at pictures, why couldn't he have picked well-drawn pictures with some semblance of a plotline? All his ever had was one epic battle after another!
In any case, her quick check revealed that they were both engrossed in their own activities and unlikely to notice that she'd switched from games to her project. Julia started opening the files that held her latest notes. She'd started concentrating on the individual Gundam pilots now, trying to figure out what she could from the way they fought. Pictures of each of the pilots had begun to form in her mind - not physical pictures, but mental images of them nonetheless, based, not on physical appearance, but on how they thought.
Pilot 01 creeped her out. For so many of the recorded battles, he was so mechanical... At first, she had thought that maybe he was some sort of machine, that whoever had created the Gundams had also created some amazing new form of AI, but during the later battles, the numbers he had faced forced the pilot into innovation. There was no way any computer that she'd heard of could do that sort of creative thinking, and as far as she knew, the technology was at least a century away. The Gundams had been state-of-the-art, but not that far ahead. So that argued for just a very-well-trained human. What made a human act like a machine?
Well, that was a dumb question. After all, that was basically what most armies tried to do to their recruits. Individuality was not exactly a prized quality to have in a foot soldier, mechanical obedience to orders was. And the Gundam pilot was a soldier, sort of.
In any case, he fought almost all of his battles with brutal efficiency, doing exactly whatever he needed to in order to accomplish his missions and then withdrawing, leaving his enemies behind. Or so she assumed. There were no records of his earliest battles (presumably he, along with the rest, had been under orders to keep their existence from being recorded in any way: no videos, no survivors), but that was certainly the behavior he demonstrated later on. At least, that's the way it seemed, based on what she knew about his objectives on some of the missions. It was so frustrating to be working from partial data!
Pilot 02 seemed to be the antithesis of 01, in every way except for his determination. His fighting style was as loud and flamboyant as 01's was economical. While most of 01's tactics were visible adaptations of tactics normally taught to MS pilots, she didn't think that 02 had any standard training at all. For some time she'd thought that maybe he didn't have any strategy at all, that he was just improvising, but then she'd taken a second look at the battles. He wasn't improvising, instead, he was using dozens of minor sequences over and over again, slipping from one to another with such fluidity that they were almost impossible to tell apart.
And there was something different about the way that he approached battle, too. Maybe she was reading too much into this, but 02 seemed to throw himself into battles. 01 entered a battle, 02 practically danced into it. Another difference between them, and Julia thought she might know why: 02 had a very personal reason to be fighting. They all had them, or else they wouldn't have been there, but 02 was there for revenge, the bloody kind, while 01 treated it more like a job. Was his machine-like attitude a deliberate choice or something unconscious?
03 was harder to read. He reminded her of 01 sometimes, with his efficiency and tactics, but his style was more... subtle. That was the best word she could come up with for the differences between their styles. Of course, how you could call someone who sprayed bullets wherever he went subtle was a question she wasn't ready to answer, but the description seemed to fit. His actions were always somewhat muted, he just slipped in, killed anyone who might see him (or so she assumed - sometimes the suits he destroyed were in random places, so she thought that meant that they'd stumbled onto him during missions - certainly he'd never left any witnesses behind for most of the war), and then got out. She still hadn't managed to figure out where he'd disappeared to in the middle of the war.
04 was very strange, and she wasn't sure what to make of the mixed messages. On one hand, he'd actually left survivors at some of his earlier battles, the only pilot to do so. He had support troops, again, the only one. And he'd destroyed several colonies. It didn't make any sense. The rest of them, at least, were fairly consistent in their tactics. But 04... why would he appear to be the most merciful of the pilots some of the time, and then ruthlessly slaughter the very people he was supposed to protect?
It had been a shock when she first realized that Gundam 01b was definitely flown by more than one of the pilots. At different times during the war she'd spotted at least three distinctive styles at the controls, and only in the later battles were the hands that of 01. Realizing that 04 had been the one in control when the Gundam blew away several colonies had been an even bigger shock. For a while she'd thought that she must be mistaken, but she replayed the scenes over and over in her head until she was sure. The tactics were wildly different. The pilot who'd destroyed the colonies was much more aggressive than the one at the beginning of the war, and his tactics were resultantly more risky, but it was still undeniably the same basic tactics. So what did that mean?
She didn't have any answers, so she turned to pilot 05. His style was, surprisingly, closer to 02's than any of the others. Not the style itself, but the way that he threw himself into battles. There was something almost desperate about the way he fought.
Well, that was another stupid comment. It was the five of them against a military force that ruled and entire planet. It would have been difficult to find a fight where their situation wasn't desperate. But still...
Back to the task at hand. Of all of the pilots, his fighting style was the one that seemed most familiar to Julia, which probably meant that he had some sort of martial arts training. That didn't tell her much, but she was guessing that he had to have quite a bit of it, for it to show up in mobile suit combat, which meant that he had a certain level of discipline to go along with the skills she observed. It was odd to think that she had anything in common with one of the pilots.
Julia frowned uneasily. It wasn't just odd, it was disturbing, too, but she... she was getting used to this kind of unease. First, finding out that she could understand why the Gundam pilots did what they did, then finding out that she could even understand the way they fought. When you came right down to it, finding out that she might have had something in common with one of them was a very minor shock.
Did all of this make her a bad person? She hadn't spoken to Richard since she'd told him what she was really working on. He'd been angry, with her, with the war, with a lot of things, when she left, and she wasn't unable to admit that she'd been afraid to try to talk to him again. She wasn't sure she could handle Richard thinking that she was a bad person - in the short time she'd known him, she'd grown to value his opinions. If he didn't want to talk to her anymore... she could deal with that.
Julia had almost managed to convince herself that it was true.
After a few seconds, she exited the file and turned off the laptop. Maybe the trip would pass faster if she took a nap.
---------
A loud gong startled Julia out of her sleep. She sat bolt upright, clapping her hands over her ears and wincing, looking around wildly for the source of the sound. It took her several seconds to realize that the 'gong' was the low tone that sounded as the fasten seatbelts light came on. They were about to land on L4 - 0012. Julia closed her eyes, afraid she was about to lose control completely, and took several deep breaths. She was getting better at this. Five deep breaths later, her hearing returned to a normal, bearable level. She uncovered her ears and opened her eyes to look at Tousan's intense stare.
"Are you all right?" he asked with a frown.
She smiled weakly and gave a slight shrug. "Just startled me a little." He didn't look convinced. "I... I've been having a little bit of trouble recently," she finally admitted. "Like I used to have when I was little." She gestured to her ears.
For a long moment, he didn't respond, and she wondered if he was about to ask her why she hadn't told him. Finally, in that gentle tone she'd only heard him use with her and Duo-daddy, he asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"I... I don't know."
"If it gets any worse, or doesn't go away, you tell me."
Julia nodded. "I will. And... Tousan?"
"Hn?"
"I... I just didn't want to worry you. I... I should have told you before," she said hesitantly. A second later she was enveloped in a hug by incredibly strong arms. Julia smiled slightly, and buried her face into her otousan's shoulder. "I'm sorry."
"It's... all right," he said softly. "You are allowed to have some privacy, if you want. But... if there's ever anything that you want to talk about, anything, you can," he said with startling intensity.
Julia stared at him for a second, then swallowed and nodded agreement. Some of the intensity left his expression, and his lips quirked upwards in his version of a smile. "Do you want to wake your father or should I?" he asked with a wicked gleam in his eyes. Over fifteen years of being married to her daddy hadn't left him completely unaffected.
"Ooh, let me," Julia said anxiously. She looked on her Tousan's tray, and saw that he still had a few ice cubes left in his drink. She automatically rubbed her fingers together to make sure that they weren't extra sensitive right now (she didn't want to think about what it would feel like to touch ice when her fingers were sensitive) and when they weren't, she picked up one of the ice cubes. Duo-daddy had fallen asleep sitting straight up (she wondered how you learned to do that, both of her parents did it) so she leaned across Tousan's lap and dropped the ice cube down the front of his shirt.
"Ieeeeeee!" Duo-daddy shrieked, getting the attention of every other person on the flight as he jumped out of his seat and started dancing in the aisle, trying to get the ice cube out of his clothes. He did so rather quickly, and sat back down in his seat, grinning sheepishly at the passengers who glared at him, and then leveling his own glare at Julia, who did her best to appear innocent.
"Oh, you're going to pay for that," he muttered under his breath while smiling at the flight attendant who'd come to check and see if anything was the matter.
Tousan's lips turned up slightly at that announcement.
"And don't think that I don't know that you put her up to it," Duo-daddy continued. Tousan shot him a 'what, me?' look that wasn't any more convincing than the one Julia had just tried, and his smile widened slightly.
Julia entertained herself by looking out the window and smirking as they landed on the L4 colony. Whoever was flying the shuttle was very good, there was only a tiny bump as the wheels touched down. Julia felt the slight shift in gravity as the gravity generators on the shuttle shut down, now that they were in the artificial gravity of the colony. She'd heard that most people couldn't tell the difference, but she always had been able to. She'd also noticed that her parents seemed... well, relaxed wasn't the right word, just... more at home in the colonies, and the change was evident as soon as they were under the colony's gravity.
Julia waited impatiently while the shuttle taxied to a stop and all of the proper checks were made. When the pilot finally announced that they could turn off their seatbelts and start to get off, she practically flew out of her seat. Both of her parents beat her to the aisle, though, being closer to it when they started. The three of them were nearly the first ones off the shuttle, Julia and Duo-daddy dragging Tousan between them, carrying the smaller bags with their free hands.
Julia saw a large crowd of people waiting just inside the terminal. "Quatre!" she shouted, recognizing the blond hair first. She let go of Tousan's arm to run towards the large group, which she now saw consisted of Quatre, Trowa, Sally, Wufei, and their three children, Rashid, the head of Quatre's security team... and Katie?! For as long as Julia could remember, Katie had never met them at the plane before. She always met them at the house. Julia wasn't even sure if she'd ever seen Katie off her father's estate. When she was very little, her parents had explained that Katie had some strange sort of psychological problem that made it difficult for Katie to deal with large groups of people. Julia had decided it would be incredibly rude and hurtful for her to question Katie about it. Katie almost always acted fairly normal around her, anyway.
"Katie!" She ran up to her cousin and gave her an enthusiastic hug.
"Take it easy, you're going to break me in half!" Katie said, laughing, and Julia set her down.
"You came out to meet us!" Julia exclaimed, stepping back and taking a good look at Katie.
Katie was strange-looking. It always made Julia feel slightly guilty when she thought that, but it was the truth. She had very pale skin that always made her look a little ill, although Katie had assured Julia that she was perfectly healthy. Her eyes were just a shade or two lighter than Quatre's, but with the pale skin it made her look like a ghost. Her hair was dark, almost black, and she was very thin, always had been. Julia was both relieved and pleased to see that Katie had finally started to develop a figure, the same as her. They were both late bloomers.
Katie smiled shyly at her. "Yeah. I'm getting better, see?" She gestured to the crowds in the airport.
"That's great!" Julia exclaimed, giving her another quick hug before turning to the rest of her extended family. First she hugged all of her uncles and her aunt, then she turned to the rest of her cousins. Yuko was Wufei's oldest daughter, and she was thirteen years old, and very serious. Next was Kiara, who was almost nine, and then Meiran, who was only five. The two-year-old twins were Robby and Michael (Sally had told her that she was tired of having the only Western name in the family). She gave each of them a hug - the twins had grown so much since she'd last seen them a few months ago, it was amazing. Last time, they'd been little more than babies, this time, Robby greeted her with a broad smile and a wave of his hand, and Michael even whispered hello to her (in Chinese).
By the time that Julia had finished saying hi to all of her cousins, her parents had finished the strange ritual they had for greeting their 'brothers'. It seemed to consist of a greeting that was half a celebration, half checking to make sure all body parts were still in place.
"You guys ready to get out of here?" Quatre asked with a smile, and Julia winced as three of Wufei's children shouted their readiness to go. Julia could already feel a headache forming from all the noise, and the shrieking right next to her eardrums wasn't helping.
"You OK?" Katie asked softly, her voice little more than a whisper.
"Yeah. It was just a long flight, and that was just a little loud," Julia responded with a weak smile. She grabbed Katie's hand, intending to pull her a little away from the group, but froze when Katie winced.
"Are you all right?" Julia asked anxiously, immediately dropping her hand. When she was little, odd things used to bother Katie, and she was obviously on edge already from being out in public.
"Yeah, I'm fine, let's get to the cars," Katie said, looking slightly more gray than usual. Almost instantly Quatre and Trowa were there, Quatre with one hand on the back of her neck, Trowa holding out an arm to steady her. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she repeated several times, shaking her head and pushing them away. Her parents gave her the same look that Julia's parents gave her when they didn't believe what she was saying but didn't want to accuse her of lying.
Katie glanced at Julia and smiled slightly. "Come on, let's go, I'm sure Dad will get someone to get your bags."
Julia allowed herself to be towed outside, to where a long line of limos waited. There were eight of them. Julia stopped short and stared, like everyone else on the loading platform. "Are all those waiting for us?" she squeaked, then felt very embarrassed at how childishly she was acting.
Katie nodded, looking pleased. "He wanted me to have some space if I needed it," she confessed. "And once he decided to take a couple of limos... and the others found out that he was coming to pick you guys up..." she trailed off and gestured at the long line. "It just sort of built up. Then we were running late, and I think he just told a bunch of drivers to follow us. I don't think even he meant to have it become like this, though," she commented as their parents caught up with them.
"Oh dear," Quatre murmured, frowning slightly as he surveyed the lineup. "I don't remember there being this many of them before."
"They're multiplying," Trowa remarked, straight-faced. Did he have any other face?
Katie and Julia started giggling at the same time, while Quatre shot a dirty look at his husband. Then he turned and glared at the line of limos, as if they were somehow responsible.
"All right, just get in," Quatre finally said with a sigh. He headed for the first limo, and they followed him. Julia glimpsed Sally, Wufei, and their children climbing into the second as the driver opened the door for them with a slight bow.
Julia climbed in, and found that there was plenty of room for all six of them. "Hey, Daddy, why don't we have one of these?"
"Because I don't own a colony," Duo-daddy replied with a grin. Quatre blinked, then shrugged and smiled. Tousan was busy studying the interior of the limo and merely grunted once. Trowa's eyebrow twitched slightly.
"Oh, no, don't you two start that again!" Duo-daddy warned with a fake frown. "We haven't been on the ground for ten minutes yet, at least wait until we get to his mansion before you descend into complete silence, please!"
"Duo, it's not a mansion..." Quatre started, but Julia cut him off.
"Did you really just tell a bunch of drivers to follow you, Uncle Quatre?" Julia asked sweetly in her most innocent voice. She was immediately regarded by four skeptical gazes from her parents and uncles. She probably gave herself away by using the word 'uncle'. She never called her uncles anything but their given names.
"I think so, actually," Quatre admitted after a second. "We were running late, and..." he suddenly cut himself off.
"You can say it, you were worried about me," Katie said, sounding somewhat annoyed. "I appreciate it, but I would have told you if... something was going wrong. I'm never going to get used to going out in public if you keep trying to shield me, Father! I'm not going to break!"
There was a long, awkward silence in which Quatre and Katie just stared stubbornly at each other, then Katie sighed and moved to give her dad a hug. "Sorry," she apologized to Julia and her dads. "We've been having this argument for a long time now. I know they're just worried about me."
As usual, it was Duo-daddy who broke the silence. "Of course he does! What else is he supposed to do with all his free time? Run that corporation of his?"
That joke, poor as it was, broke the tension in the vehicle, and her fathers and uncles launched into the very serious business of catching up.
---------
When they got to Quatre's mansion (it really was obscenely large), Katie immediately headed for her own room. Julia watched her go, then shrugged it off. Katie always spent most of the family reunions in her own rooms with a visitor or two. Besides that, she was probably stressed out from coming to meet them, and Julia could always talk with her later. Besides, there was the rest of her family to catch up with, the twins to play with, and her problems with her senses to deal with.
Julia was doing fine until Quatre's hundred sisters and their thousands of family members showed up. Now, that wasn't quite fair, Julia knew that Quatre only had a couple dozen sisters, actually, and half of them weren't even married, but when you were confronted by all of them at the same time, it certainly seemed like there were hundreds and thousands of them.
It happened sort of gradually, as they started filing in a few hours after she arrived, and a few hours after that, she started to lose control of her hearing, again. At first it was just one word that would come through far too loud, every couple of minutes. Julia took several deep breaths, trying to regain control. She was not letting this ruin the reunion.
For a while that worked and it went away. Then it came back again, worse than before. She forced it down again.
By the time it came back the third time around, her head was beginning to throb, and she had to press her hands against her ears to keep it from getting worse. She started looking around, trying to find her parents, so that she could get some help, or some comfort, or at least so they could tell her where there was an empty room so she could go get this sorted out.
Before she found them, though, Julia raised her eyes to the top of the stairs leading out of the main room, and Katie was standing there. Julia automatically tried to smile, but it was difficult to even think with the noise around her and the pounding in her head. Katie frowned, then gestured with her hand, indicating that Julia should follow her. Julia practically ran up the stairs, following Katie as she led the way to a room that Julia had never been in before.
Katie stopped and waited for her to enter. Julia did so blindly, closing her eyes now to cut down on the distractions. She feared she was about to lose control of that, too. She heard (clearly, far too clearly) the door sliding closed behind her, then stumbled to her knees. The surface of the floor was somewhat springy, so she didn't hurt her knees, but it wasn't rug or anything else she could identify. Julia started counting, trying to concentrate on that to the exclusion of all else, trying to get her hearing back under control. She couldn't concentrate, she was distracted own racing heartbeat, and the pain in her head. Then she realized that she could hear a second heartbeat: Katie's calm, steady one.
Her mind latched onto that, and she started count again. One beat at a time, she got herself back under control. Her hearing dialed back down to normal, and when she was unable to hear Katie's heartbeat any more, she cautiously removed her hands from her ears.
She couldn't hear anything. Julia panicked. Had she permanently damaged her hearing? She always could hear things, always. She could still hear her own heart beat, which was normal, but she should have been able to hear conversations going on down stairs, individual conversations if she chose, but she couldn't.
"Julia?" Katie asked softly, hardly more than a whisper.
Julia opened her eyes... and saw nothing. "Katie!" she squeaked, terrified.
"Shh, it's fine, just shield your eyes for a second," Katie instructed, and Julia obeyed. Even with her eyes covered, she could see the room brighten slightly. "OK, you can uncover them."
Julia opened her eyes and was relieved to find that she hadn't gone blind, Katie had just turned all of the lights in the room off. Now she'd turned them back on, very low, so they didn't bother either of their eyes after the darkness, but enough so that she could see the room. There wasn't much to it, it was just an empty room with a few pillows thrown in one corner, painted light gray. Everything was exactly the same color, and the floor appeared to be some sort of mat, now that she looked at it. But none of that explained why she couldn't hear anything, or what this room was, or why Katie had turned off the lights in the first place.
"Katie..."
"I thought that turning off the lights might help you get control back," Katie explained. "Less to deal with. I'm sorry if I scared you."
Julia stared at her. "How did you know..."
Katie shrugged, a small enigmatic smile on her face. "I have my problems, you have yours. I remembered when we were little, and you used to get those headaches. You looked like that just now, and I thought this might help," she gestured to the empty rooms.
"It did, thanks," Julia said gratefully, surprised that Katie had both recognized the signs and known what to do to help her. She did remember the headaches, but what was really surprising was that Katie remembered them. They'd both been about five the last time Julia had a major one here, and if she remembered correctly, Katie had spent most of that visit hidden away in her room. "What is this place?"
"It's... one of my rooms," Katie said hesitantly. "It's all I could think of on short notice. There's shielding in the walls - they're completely soundproof."
"Oh." That explained it. But why did Katie have a room like this?
Her confusion must have been pretty obvious, because the next thing Katie said was, "You can ask me, if you want."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Julia asked, guessing that that it had something to do with Katie's condition, whatever it was, but she didn't even know what that was, exactly.
"I... I don't know. I never do."
"Me neither."
They were both silent for a minute, then Katie asked, "Are you really all right? You... you didn't look very good."
"I'm fine, now. This place is great," Julia said honestly. This was the first time she could remember in a very long while that she was this relaxed. It wasn't just the silence, although that helped. The room was quiet in every way that Julia could think, from the lack of furniture or any sort of decoration that might attract the eye, to the soft surface of the floor, to the dim light that didn't bother her eyes.
"Really, you like it?" Katie asked. "We can go to my room, if you like."
"No, really, this place is great. Very... peaceful."
Katie sat silently for another minute, then asked, "Have you talked to them about it?"
Julia knew instantly what Katie was talking about. "Not very much. I'm... I don't want to make them worry."
"I know what you mean," Katie responded immediately. Another minute passed. "So what have you been up to? You're graduating this year, aren't you?"
"Yup. I'm spending a lot of time on my senior project."
"What are you doing?"
"I'm studying the Gundam pilots."
Julia had become so used to the reaction she got from all the people she told that she was surprised when Katie just blinked and leaned forward slightly. "That sounds interesting," she said. "What have you done so far?"
Now it was Julia's turn to blink and stare. Then she realized that Katie was her own age, and certainly hadn't lived through the war, so why should she have the same reaction as all the adults? Julia could have smacked herself. Sometimes she thought that she had to be the dumbest person she'd ever met.
"You really want to know?" she asked hesitantly. There was no logical reason that Katie would be upset, but after the reactions she'd gotten so far, she was more than a little nervous about discussing this with someone.
"Sure."
"OK, but you probably don't want to mention this to your parents. It upsets them, because of the war," Julia warned.
Katie shrugged slightly. "All right."
"Well, I started by looking up all of the normal information, you know, the stuff in the history books..."
----------
Heero was distracted from Wufei's latest complaint about how horrible the schools were and why he was thinking about educating his children himself when Duo poked him in the side with an elbow and whispered, "Hey, where's Julie?"
Heero turned to where he'd last seen her, standing and watching some of Quatre's nieces play some game that involved a lot of giggling, but she wasn't there anymore. He automatically began to scan the room, looking for his daughter. Despite the fact that there were well over a hundred people present, he had no difficulty establishing the fact that his daughter was not among them. It wouldn't have mattered if there'd been a thousand people, he still would have been able to establish whether she was among them or not in seconds.
The training J had given him in locating a target for assassination had other applications, and she *was* his daughter.
He frowned and shook his head slightly at Duo, letting him know that he didn't know where she was.
"What's wrong?" Quatre asked, noticing the exchange.
"Did you see where Julie went?" Duo asked.
"She was playing with Meiran and the twins before," Wufei remarked without meeting their eyes. Heero hadn't missed the fact that Wufei hadn't taken his eyes off Julia for an instant when she was playing with his children.
Duo hadn't missed it, either. "She didn't hurt them, Wufei. And she isn't going to," he said, his voice quiet, but his face conveying a world of accusation and hurt.
"Not on purpose..." Wufei started, then cut himself off. "I am sorry," he apologized. "I know that she would never intentionally hurt them. But Sally mentioned that she was having some difficulties, and they *are* my children..." he trailed off, and Duo's expression visibly softened.
"It's all right, Wu," he said softly. "I understand. Hell, I'd probably do it too, if it was Julie who was the little one." He paused for a second, then continued. "And you're right, a little. I don't spar with her anymore."
The other three turned to stare at Duo. "Why not?" Quatre asked, voicing the question they all had to be thinking.
"It was getting a little rough," Duo admitted, rubbing the back of his head. "When she's practicing in her dojo, she always controls herself a lot - that sort of restraint is part of the atmosphere they build there. It's an interesting place." Duo looked thoughtful for a second, then shrugged. "Anyway, neither of us were taught - or learned - that kind of restraint when we learned to fight, and it shows in the way we approach any fight, even if we're just sparing. She responds to that, and..." he trailed off and shrugged again.
"Did she hurt you?" Wufei asked.
Duo shrugged again. "Just a couple a bruises, nothing serious." That wasn't quite true, she'd nearly cracked his ribs the last time they sparred. Duo had not only managed to finish the match with nothing more than a slight grimace that he waved off when she questioned him, he had managed to make it through dinner that evening before he collapsed on their bed and let Heero take a look at his side, which had turned entirely black and blue by that point. Duo had made Heero promise not to mention it to Julia right before the pain killers Heero gave him kicked in. "But Heero spars with her most of the time, now."
"Are you all right?" Quatre asked, a worried frown on his face.
Heero grunted an assent, mentally going over the layout of Quatre's house, marking off places that he knew Julia wouldn't have gone.
"That still doesn't answer the question," Duo pointed out sharply. "Now, lets try this again, does anyone have any idea where she went?"
Heero happened to be looking at Quatre right then, so he saw when Quatre stiffened and his eyes glazed over. "Quatre?"
"Julia's with Katie," Quatre remarked matter-of-factly, still staring into space. "Katie says that the noise was beginning to get to her, so she brought her up to the quiet room." He shook his head slightly and then blinked several times, clarity returning to his eyes. "They're talking now."
There was a short silence, then Duo asked, "Did she... just tell you now?" he asked slowly, tapping his own forehead.
Quatre nodded. "Her range has gotten better. She can reach me almost anywhere in the colony, now, and she can get through to Trowa if she's near enough." He smiled at the taller man, whose lips quirked upwards slightly in return.
"Man, that is just so creepy," Duo commented, relaxing now that he knew where Julia was.
"Oh, you get used to it," Quatre replied, his eyes still somewhat distant.
"I don't see how you ever get used to something like that," Duo said, shaking his head and shuddering. "She's crawling around in your head!"
Quatre finally turned and looked directly at Duo, instead of into space. He looked distinctly irritated. "It's not like that, Duo! She's not looking around in my head for information, she's just projecting her thoughts so that I can hear them!"
Duo just shook his head, while Heero watched, amused. The two of them had acted this way, sometimes friendly, sometimes antagonistic, for as long as he could remember. Duo said it had something to do with the fact that they were the only ones who talked in their odd group. Heero knew that Duo meant what he'd said about Katie 'crawling around in his head' no more than Quatre was as irritated as he now appeared. Duo wasn't completely comfortable with Katie's abilities, but as was demonstrated by Wufei, the others weren't completely comfortable with Julia, either. Heero could understand that; he would never admit it, but there were times that Julia's abilities scared him.
He wasn't afraid of her, although she was strong enough now that she could seriously hurt him if he wasn't careful and she ever lost control. He was very afraid for her, though. He remembered all too clearly the blinding headaches that had afflicted her when her powers first started developing, the helpless frustration he'd felt until they figured out how to give her some kind of control. Even worse, he remembered the barely-concealed panic in Quatre's voice during the time when Katie's powers suddenly appeared.
It was a long time, months, before they were able to find something that would help quiet the voices in her head. By that time, she couldn't bear to be around Quatre, who had abilities similar to her own (though of a much lower scale), and Trowa had sat for long hours by her bedside while Quatre got as far away as he could, so he didn't make the situation worse by projecting his thoughts at her without meaning to. Even though they'd never mentioned it specifically, Heero also knew that it had caused a real strain on their relationship for a while.
It had been sheer luck when they stumbled across the odd alloy that would stop mental projections, and provide Katie with some measure of quiet and rest. Now half of the rooms in the house were lined with the metal, so that Katie could relax and let the shields protect her mind whenever she needed to rest. It was only the discovery of the shield metal that had saved Katie's sanity, and maybe even her life.
Heero was terrified that one day Julia's powers would finally be too much for her, that they wouldn't stop getting stronger when she finished growing, that they'd just keep on getting stronger and stronger until she couldn't bear to be around people at all. That one day she'd be limited to a quiet room, a place where every thing that her senses had to process could be completely controlled. When he thought of that, Heero tended to grind his teeth and wish that he'd gotten to the doctors before the Preventers had, so that he could have delivered a suitable punishment to them. How could they have thought that they could meddle with people this way, and expect the children to pay the price for it?
With a noticeable effort Heero pulled his thoughts away from this dark path, forcing himself to watch Duo and Quatre's good-natured arguing, and trying not to worry about his daughter.
Sorry that this chapter took so long to get out. Life has been a little crazy, and I just spent the last week taking care of my brother, who just had major reconstructive surgery for his ACL. Taking care of him did not leave me in a mood that was conducive to writing, so this took about six times as long as it should have.
I'm not crazy about this section, specifically the way I portrayed Quatre and Trowa's relationship and family, but I've already rewritten it a couple of times, and it's not getting any better. Any suggestions would be welcome.
There are about a hundred little scenes I would have loved to put into this section, about the reunion and the pilots' families and how they act around each other, but I had to streamline the plot somewhat in order to keep this section to under a hundred pages. Hope you enjoy. And sorry for another incredibly long author's note.
Marika 11/25/01
She was running out of places to look. Julia straightened up (well, as much as she could in the cramped space between the top floor of their house and the roof), and looked around one last time.
They were leaving the next day for L4 to visit Quatre and Trowa's house (mansion) for the annual family reunion, and Julia was looking forward to it, but right now it was causing her a great deal of frustration. There was a particular shirt that Quatre had given her as a present several years ago, and this past winter she'd finally grown enough to wear it, and she loved it. She'd packed it away when summer came, with plans to dig it out of storage in time to wear on this trip.
Well, she'd gotten her winter things down a while ago, and the shirt hadn't been among them. She'd been meaning for months to come up here and find it (presumably it had not simply vanished into thin air since she'd packed it away), but never quite managed to find the time. Now she was leaving tomorrow, and there wasn't any time left to put it off anymore.
She was getting close to giving up, though. She'd been searching in the dusty attic for well over an hour, and hadn't seen so much as a thread from that shirt. That was frustrating in more than one way: not only was she not going to have it to show off at the reunion, but she also really liked that shirt, and for months she'd thought it was up here! She didn't know where else it could be.
Julia was just about to give up when something she saw out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. She automatically turned in that direction, squinting into the near-total darkness in one of the corners of the already-dim attic. It took her several seconds to figure out what she was looking at. It was a small box, sitting by itself in that dark corner, practically invisible. She must have been up here a dozen times before and she'd never noticed it because of it's placement.
Her irritation upped a notch. Julia walked over to the box. It was unlikely that her shirt was in there, but at least she could put it somewhere a little better, so that someone else wouldn't have to go through what she just did to find it.
The dust on the box was extremely thick, even considering where it was. It looked like no one had disturbed it for many years, and she handled it gingerly, trying not to stir up any more dust than was absolutely necessary. She got a slight shock when she picked it up - it was a lot heavier than it looked. She carried it over to one of the boxes she'd searched earlier and set it down on top.
It took her several seconds to figure out how to work the catch on the box. When she finally did, she carefully swung the lid up, and got another surprise. While the outside of the box might look old and about to fall apart, the inside was incredibly clean. The box itself was made of some durable plastic, and probably had an air-tight seal, which explained the cleanliness. But all of that was forgotten when she lifted the top layer of foam and saw what was inside.
Two guns lay nestled inside the box, with the clips lying beside them, carefully packed in several layers of foam to keep them from banging around. What the hell was this doing in her attic?
Julia carefully picked up one of them by the handle, holding it between two fingers to make sure that she didn't accidentally set it off. It wasn't likely to happen, since she wasn't anywhere near the trigger and the clips were lying there in the box besides, but she wasn't taking any chances. She examined it as well as she could in the dim light. It looked very well cared-for, but that was about all she could tell, knowing next to nothing about guns.
She was about to put it back when another detail caught her attention - there was no registration number on the gun. She took another careful look at the gun and re-established what she already knew, that there were no sort of identifying numbers on any part of the gun. Julia put the gun down and checked the other, finding the exact same thing. Quickly setting it back in the box, she stared at it blankly for several minutes. She didn't know much about guns, but she did know that they were supposed to have numbers on them, and those numbers were supposed to be registered with the Preventers. Why were there two *unregistered* guns in her attic?
Julia wanted very badly to believe that they had belonged to whoever owned the house before them, that they had been left behind and her parents had simply overlooked it the way she had when they first moved in, but she knew better. She knew how careful Tousan was about little details like that. There was no way that he would have missed something like this when he was moving it. Which meant that he and Daddy must have brought them here.
Julia stiffened suddenly as the thought occurred to her, and slammed the lid closed. She hurriedly locked it, then took it back into the shadows, where it belonged. She fled the attic without looking backwards.
---------
Julia squirmed slightly, trying once again to get comfortable in the seat of the shuttle they were taking to L4. It was impossible. she grumbled to herself, finally straightening her legs as much as she was able, so that she could stretch them a little, then deliberately relaxing so she wouldn't get too stiff. She shuddered to think about what it would be like if she wasn't as short as she was.
She looked down at her laptop, and decided that she was tired of playing games. They weren't holding her attention any more, and that was a bad thing. If she didn't keep her mind occupied, she might start thinking about what she'd found in the attic yesterday, and that wasn't a good thing. She was sure that there were all kinds of reasonable explanations as to why her parents would have two guns hidden away in their attic, like that they'd belonged to a friend or something like that. There had to be some sort of reasonable explanation, and she'd probably figure it out if she thought about it, but she didn't want to. The thought of her parents and guns was just too... wrong. It didn't make sense.
But all of that meant that she needed to find something else to occupy herself. Automatically her mind traveled to her school project. There was no reason she couldn't get some work done on this trip. Julia sneaked a glance at her parents. Tousan was seated immediately to her right, and she hadn't really even needed to look at him to know what he was doing. The rapid sound of fingers hitting a keyboard told her what to expect. Sure enough, he was hunched over *his* laptop, typing away. She frowned slightly, wondering if this was going to be one of those vacations where she spent half of her time trying to drag him away from that damn thing. You weren't supposed to work when you were on vacation. Of course, it was completely different when she did it.
Just beyond him, Duo-daddy was engrossed in a comic book. Julia barely managed to avoid rolling her eyes. Normally it didn't bother her when her father engaged in childish behavior (in fact, most of the time, she loved it), but this one particular habit drove her nuts. It wasn't so much that he read comic books, it was the comic books he chose... pure garbage, all of it! If he was going to look at pictures, why couldn't he have picked well-drawn pictures with some semblance of a plotline? All his ever had was one epic battle after another!
In any case, her quick check revealed that they were both engrossed in their own activities and unlikely to notice that she'd switched from games to her project. Julia started opening the files that held her latest notes. She'd started concentrating on the individual Gundam pilots now, trying to figure out what she could from the way they fought. Pictures of each of the pilots had begun to form in her mind - not physical pictures, but mental images of them nonetheless, based, not on physical appearance, but on how they thought.
Pilot 01 creeped her out. For so many of the recorded battles, he was so mechanical... At first, she had thought that maybe he was some sort of machine, that whoever had created the Gundams had also created some amazing new form of AI, but during the later battles, the numbers he had faced forced the pilot into innovation. There was no way any computer that she'd heard of could do that sort of creative thinking, and as far as she knew, the technology was at least a century away. The Gundams had been state-of-the-art, but not that far ahead. So that argued for just a very-well-trained human. What made a human act like a machine?
Well, that was a dumb question. After all, that was basically what most armies tried to do to their recruits. Individuality was not exactly a prized quality to have in a foot soldier, mechanical obedience to orders was. And the Gundam pilot was a soldier, sort of.
In any case, he fought almost all of his battles with brutal efficiency, doing exactly whatever he needed to in order to accomplish his missions and then withdrawing, leaving his enemies behind. Or so she assumed. There were no records of his earliest battles (presumably he, along with the rest, had been under orders to keep their existence from being recorded in any way: no videos, no survivors), but that was certainly the behavior he demonstrated later on. At least, that's the way it seemed, based on what she knew about his objectives on some of the missions. It was so frustrating to be working from partial data!
Pilot 02 seemed to be the antithesis of 01, in every way except for his determination. His fighting style was as loud and flamboyant as 01's was economical. While most of 01's tactics were visible adaptations of tactics normally taught to MS pilots, she didn't think that 02 had any standard training at all. For some time she'd thought that maybe he didn't have any strategy at all, that he was just improvising, but then she'd taken a second look at the battles. He wasn't improvising, instead, he was using dozens of minor sequences over and over again, slipping from one to another with such fluidity that they were almost impossible to tell apart.
And there was something different about the way that he approached battle, too. Maybe she was reading too much into this, but 02 seemed to throw himself into battles. 01 entered a battle, 02 practically danced into it. Another difference between them, and Julia thought she might know why: 02 had a very personal reason to be fighting. They all had them, or else they wouldn't have been there, but 02 was there for revenge, the bloody kind, while 01 treated it more like a job. Was his machine-like attitude a deliberate choice or something unconscious?
03 was harder to read. He reminded her of 01 sometimes, with his efficiency and tactics, but his style was more... subtle. That was the best word she could come up with for the differences between their styles. Of course, how you could call someone who sprayed bullets wherever he went subtle was a question she wasn't ready to answer, but the description seemed to fit. His actions were always somewhat muted, he just slipped in, killed anyone who might see him (or so she assumed - sometimes the suits he destroyed were in random places, so she thought that meant that they'd stumbled onto him during missions - certainly he'd never left any witnesses behind for most of the war), and then got out. She still hadn't managed to figure out where he'd disappeared to in the middle of the war.
04 was very strange, and she wasn't sure what to make of the mixed messages. On one hand, he'd actually left survivors at some of his earlier battles, the only pilot to do so. He had support troops, again, the only one. And he'd destroyed several colonies. It didn't make any sense. The rest of them, at least, were fairly consistent in their tactics. But 04... why would he appear to be the most merciful of the pilots some of the time, and then ruthlessly slaughter the very people he was supposed to protect?
It had been a shock when she first realized that Gundam 01b was definitely flown by more than one of the pilots. At different times during the war she'd spotted at least three distinctive styles at the controls, and only in the later battles were the hands that of 01. Realizing that 04 had been the one in control when the Gundam blew away several colonies had been an even bigger shock. For a while she'd thought that she must be mistaken, but she replayed the scenes over and over in her head until she was sure. The tactics were wildly different. The pilot who'd destroyed the colonies was much more aggressive than the one at the beginning of the war, and his tactics were resultantly more risky, but it was still undeniably the same basic tactics. So what did that mean?
She didn't have any answers, so she turned to pilot 05. His style was, surprisingly, closer to 02's than any of the others. Not the style itself, but the way that he threw himself into battles. There was something almost desperate about the way he fought.
Well, that was another stupid comment. It was the five of them against a military force that ruled and entire planet. It would have been difficult to find a fight where their situation wasn't desperate. But still...
Back to the task at hand. Of all of the pilots, his fighting style was the one that seemed most familiar to Julia, which probably meant that he had some sort of martial arts training. That didn't tell her much, but she was guessing that he had to have quite a bit of it, for it to show up in mobile suit combat, which meant that he had a certain level of discipline to go along with the skills she observed. It was odd to think that she had anything in common with one of the pilots.
Julia frowned uneasily. It wasn't just odd, it was disturbing, too, but she... she was getting used to this kind of unease. First, finding out that she could understand why the Gundam pilots did what they did, then finding out that she could even understand the way they fought. When you came right down to it, finding out that she might have had something in common with one of them was a very minor shock.
Did all of this make her a bad person? She hadn't spoken to Richard since she'd told him what she was really working on. He'd been angry, with her, with the war, with a lot of things, when she left, and she wasn't unable to admit that she'd been afraid to try to talk to him again. She wasn't sure she could handle Richard thinking that she was a bad person - in the short time she'd known him, she'd grown to value his opinions. If he didn't want to talk to her anymore... she could deal with that.
Julia had almost managed to convince herself that it was true.
After a few seconds, she exited the file and turned off the laptop. Maybe the trip would pass faster if she took a nap.
---------
A loud gong startled Julia out of her sleep. She sat bolt upright, clapping her hands over her ears and wincing, looking around wildly for the source of the sound. It took her several seconds to realize that the 'gong' was the low tone that sounded as the fasten seatbelts light came on. They were about to land on L4 - 0012. Julia closed her eyes, afraid she was about to lose control completely, and took several deep breaths. She was getting better at this. Five deep breaths later, her hearing returned to a normal, bearable level. She uncovered her ears and opened her eyes to look at Tousan's intense stare.
"Are you all right?" he asked with a frown.
She smiled weakly and gave a slight shrug. "Just startled me a little." He didn't look convinced. "I... I've been having a little bit of trouble recently," she finally admitted. "Like I used to have when I was little." She gestured to her ears.
For a long moment, he didn't respond, and she wondered if he was about to ask her why she hadn't told him. Finally, in that gentle tone she'd only heard him use with her and Duo-daddy, he asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"I... I don't know."
"If it gets any worse, or doesn't go away, you tell me."
Julia nodded. "I will. And... Tousan?"
"Hn?"
"I... I just didn't want to worry you. I... I should have told you before," she said hesitantly. A second later she was enveloped in a hug by incredibly strong arms. Julia smiled slightly, and buried her face into her otousan's shoulder. "I'm sorry."
"It's... all right," he said softly. "You are allowed to have some privacy, if you want. But... if there's ever anything that you want to talk about, anything, you can," he said with startling intensity.
Julia stared at him for a second, then swallowed and nodded agreement. Some of the intensity left his expression, and his lips quirked upwards in his version of a smile. "Do you want to wake your father or should I?" he asked with a wicked gleam in his eyes. Over fifteen years of being married to her daddy hadn't left him completely unaffected.
"Ooh, let me," Julia said anxiously. She looked on her Tousan's tray, and saw that he still had a few ice cubes left in his drink. She automatically rubbed her fingers together to make sure that they weren't extra sensitive right now (she didn't want to think about what it would feel like to touch ice when her fingers were sensitive) and when they weren't, she picked up one of the ice cubes. Duo-daddy had fallen asleep sitting straight up (she wondered how you learned to do that, both of her parents did it) so she leaned across Tousan's lap and dropped the ice cube down the front of his shirt.
"Ieeeeeee!" Duo-daddy shrieked, getting the attention of every other person on the flight as he jumped out of his seat and started dancing in the aisle, trying to get the ice cube out of his clothes. He did so rather quickly, and sat back down in his seat, grinning sheepishly at the passengers who glared at him, and then leveling his own glare at Julia, who did her best to appear innocent.
"Oh, you're going to pay for that," he muttered under his breath while smiling at the flight attendant who'd come to check and see if anything was the matter.
Tousan's lips turned up slightly at that announcement.
"And don't think that I don't know that you put her up to it," Duo-daddy continued. Tousan shot him a 'what, me?' look that wasn't any more convincing than the one Julia had just tried, and his smile widened slightly.
Julia entertained herself by looking out the window and smirking as they landed on the L4 colony. Whoever was flying the shuttle was very good, there was only a tiny bump as the wheels touched down. Julia felt the slight shift in gravity as the gravity generators on the shuttle shut down, now that they were in the artificial gravity of the colony. She'd heard that most people couldn't tell the difference, but she always had been able to. She'd also noticed that her parents seemed... well, relaxed wasn't the right word, just... more at home in the colonies, and the change was evident as soon as they were under the colony's gravity.
Julia waited impatiently while the shuttle taxied to a stop and all of the proper checks were made. When the pilot finally announced that they could turn off their seatbelts and start to get off, she practically flew out of her seat. Both of her parents beat her to the aisle, though, being closer to it when they started. The three of them were nearly the first ones off the shuttle, Julia and Duo-daddy dragging Tousan between them, carrying the smaller bags with their free hands.
Julia saw a large crowd of people waiting just inside the terminal. "Quatre!" she shouted, recognizing the blond hair first. She let go of Tousan's arm to run towards the large group, which she now saw consisted of Quatre, Trowa, Sally, Wufei, and their three children, Rashid, the head of Quatre's security team... and Katie?! For as long as Julia could remember, Katie had never met them at the plane before. She always met them at the house. Julia wasn't even sure if she'd ever seen Katie off her father's estate. When she was very little, her parents had explained that Katie had some strange sort of psychological problem that made it difficult for Katie to deal with large groups of people. Julia had decided it would be incredibly rude and hurtful for her to question Katie about it. Katie almost always acted fairly normal around her, anyway.
"Katie!" She ran up to her cousin and gave her an enthusiastic hug.
"Take it easy, you're going to break me in half!" Katie said, laughing, and Julia set her down.
"You came out to meet us!" Julia exclaimed, stepping back and taking a good look at Katie.
Katie was strange-looking. It always made Julia feel slightly guilty when she thought that, but it was the truth. She had very pale skin that always made her look a little ill, although Katie had assured Julia that she was perfectly healthy. Her eyes were just a shade or two lighter than Quatre's, but with the pale skin it made her look like a ghost. Her hair was dark, almost black, and she was very thin, always had been. Julia was both relieved and pleased to see that Katie had finally started to develop a figure, the same as her. They were both late bloomers.
Katie smiled shyly at her. "Yeah. I'm getting better, see?" She gestured to the crowds in the airport.
"That's great!" Julia exclaimed, giving her another quick hug before turning to the rest of her extended family. First she hugged all of her uncles and her aunt, then she turned to the rest of her cousins. Yuko was Wufei's oldest daughter, and she was thirteen years old, and very serious. Next was Kiara, who was almost nine, and then Meiran, who was only five. The two-year-old twins were Robby and Michael (Sally had told her that she was tired of having the only Western name in the family). She gave each of them a hug - the twins had grown so much since she'd last seen them a few months ago, it was amazing. Last time, they'd been little more than babies, this time, Robby greeted her with a broad smile and a wave of his hand, and Michael even whispered hello to her (in Chinese).
By the time that Julia had finished saying hi to all of her cousins, her parents had finished the strange ritual they had for greeting their 'brothers'. It seemed to consist of a greeting that was half a celebration, half checking to make sure all body parts were still in place.
"You guys ready to get out of here?" Quatre asked with a smile, and Julia winced as three of Wufei's children shouted their readiness to go. Julia could already feel a headache forming from all the noise, and the shrieking right next to her eardrums wasn't helping.
"You OK?" Katie asked softly, her voice little more than a whisper.
"Yeah. It was just a long flight, and that was just a little loud," Julia responded with a weak smile. She grabbed Katie's hand, intending to pull her a little away from the group, but froze when Katie winced.
"Are you all right?" Julia asked anxiously, immediately dropping her hand. When she was little, odd things used to bother Katie, and she was obviously on edge already from being out in public.
"Yeah, I'm fine, let's get to the cars," Katie said, looking slightly more gray than usual. Almost instantly Quatre and Trowa were there, Quatre with one hand on the back of her neck, Trowa holding out an arm to steady her. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she repeated several times, shaking her head and pushing them away. Her parents gave her the same look that Julia's parents gave her when they didn't believe what she was saying but didn't want to accuse her of lying.
Katie glanced at Julia and smiled slightly. "Come on, let's go, I'm sure Dad will get someone to get your bags."
Julia allowed herself to be towed outside, to where a long line of limos waited. There were eight of them. Julia stopped short and stared, like everyone else on the loading platform. "Are all those waiting for us?" she squeaked, then felt very embarrassed at how childishly she was acting.
Katie nodded, looking pleased. "He wanted me to have some space if I needed it," she confessed. "And once he decided to take a couple of limos... and the others found out that he was coming to pick you guys up..." she trailed off and gestured at the long line. "It just sort of built up. Then we were running late, and I think he just told a bunch of drivers to follow us. I don't think even he meant to have it become like this, though," she commented as their parents caught up with them.
"Oh dear," Quatre murmured, frowning slightly as he surveyed the lineup. "I don't remember there being this many of them before."
"They're multiplying," Trowa remarked, straight-faced. Did he have any other face?
Katie and Julia started giggling at the same time, while Quatre shot a dirty look at his husband. Then he turned and glared at the line of limos, as if they were somehow responsible.
"All right, just get in," Quatre finally said with a sigh. He headed for the first limo, and they followed him. Julia glimpsed Sally, Wufei, and their children climbing into the second as the driver opened the door for them with a slight bow.
Julia climbed in, and found that there was plenty of room for all six of them. "Hey, Daddy, why don't we have one of these?"
"Because I don't own a colony," Duo-daddy replied with a grin. Quatre blinked, then shrugged and smiled. Tousan was busy studying the interior of the limo and merely grunted once. Trowa's eyebrow twitched slightly.
"Oh, no, don't you two start that again!" Duo-daddy warned with a fake frown. "We haven't been on the ground for ten minutes yet, at least wait until we get to his mansion before you descend into complete silence, please!"
"Duo, it's not a mansion..." Quatre started, but Julia cut him off.
"Did you really just tell a bunch of drivers to follow you, Uncle Quatre?" Julia asked sweetly in her most innocent voice. She was immediately regarded by four skeptical gazes from her parents and uncles. She probably gave herself away by using the word 'uncle'. She never called her uncles anything but their given names.
"I think so, actually," Quatre admitted after a second. "We were running late, and..." he suddenly cut himself off.
"You can say it, you were worried about me," Katie said, sounding somewhat annoyed. "I appreciate it, but I would have told you if... something was going wrong. I'm never going to get used to going out in public if you keep trying to shield me, Father! I'm not going to break!"
There was a long, awkward silence in which Quatre and Katie just stared stubbornly at each other, then Katie sighed and moved to give her dad a hug. "Sorry," she apologized to Julia and her dads. "We've been having this argument for a long time now. I know they're just worried about me."
As usual, it was Duo-daddy who broke the silence. "Of course he does! What else is he supposed to do with all his free time? Run that corporation of his?"
That joke, poor as it was, broke the tension in the vehicle, and her fathers and uncles launched into the very serious business of catching up.
---------
When they got to Quatre's mansion (it really was obscenely large), Katie immediately headed for her own room. Julia watched her go, then shrugged it off. Katie always spent most of the family reunions in her own rooms with a visitor or two. Besides that, she was probably stressed out from coming to meet them, and Julia could always talk with her later. Besides, there was the rest of her family to catch up with, the twins to play with, and her problems with her senses to deal with.
Julia was doing fine until Quatre's hundred sisters and their thousands of family members showed up. Now, that wasn't quite fair, Julia knew that Quatre only had a couple dozen sisters, actually, and half of them weren't even married, but when you were confronted by all of them at the same time, it certainly seemed like there were hundreds and thousands of them.
It happened sort of gradually, as they started filing in a few hours after she arrived, and a few hours after that, she started to lose control of her hearing, again. At first it was just one word that would come through far too loud, every couple of minutes. Julia took several deep breaths, trying to regain control. She was not letting this ruin the reunion.
For a while that worked and it went away. Then it came back again, worse than before. She forced it down again.
By the time it came back the third time around, her head was beginning to throb, and she had to press her hands against her ears to keep it from getting worse. She started looking around, trying to find her parents, so that she could get some help, or some comfort, or at least so they could tell her where there was an empty room so she could go get this sorted out.
Before she found them, though, Julia raised her eyes to the top of the stairs leading out of the main room, and Katie was standing there. Julia automatically tried to smile, but it was difficult to even think with the noise around her and the pounding in her head. Katie frowned, then gestured with her hand, indicating that Julia should follow her. Julia practically ran up the stairs, following Katie as she led the way to a room that Julia had never been in before.
Katie stopped and waited for her to enter. Julia did so blindly, closing her eyes now to cut down on the distractions. She feared she was about to lose control of that, too. She heard (clearly, far too clearly) the door sliding closed behind her, then stumbled to her knees. The surface of the floor was somewhat springy, so she didn't hurt her knees, but it wasn't rug or anything else she could identify. Julia started counting, trying to concentrate on that to the exclusion of all else, trying to get her hearing back under control. She couldn't concentrate, she was distracted own racing heartbeat, and the pain in her head. Then she realized that she could hear a second heartbeat: Katie's calm, steady one.
Her mind latched onto that, and she started count again. One beat at a time, she got herself back under control. Her hearing dialed back down to normal, and when she was unable to hear Katie's heartbeat any more, she cautiously removed her hands from her ears.
She couldn't hear anything. Julia panicked. Had she permanently damaged her hearing? She always could hear things, always. She could still hear her own heart beat, which was normal, but she should have been able to hear conversations going on down stairs, individual conversations if she chose, but she couldn't.
"Julia?" Katie asked softly, hardly more than a whisper.
Julia opened her eyes... and saw nothing. "Katie!" she squeaked, terrified.
"Shh, it's fine, just shield your eyes for a second," Katie instructed, and Julia obeyed. Even with her eyes covered, she could see the room brighten slightly. "OK, you can uncover them."
Julia opened her eyes and was relieved to find that she hadn't gone blind, Katie had just turned all of the lights in the room off. Now she'd turned them back on, very low, so they didn't bother either of their eyes after the darkness, but enough so that she could see the room. There wasn't much to it, it was just an empty room with a few pillows thrown in one corner, painted light gray. Everything was exactly the same color, and the floor appeared to be some sort of mat, now that she looked at it. But none of that explained why she couldn't hear anything, or what this room was, or why Katie had turned off the lights in the first place.
"Katie..."
"I thought that turning off the lights might help you get control back," Katie explained. "Less to deal with. I'm sorry if I scared you."
Julia stared at her. "How did you know..."
Katie shrugged, a small enigmatic smile on her face. "I have my problems, you have yours. I remembered when we were little, and you used to get those headaches. You looked like that just now, and I thought this might help," she gestured to the empty rooms.
"It did, thanks," Julia said gratefully, surprised that Katie had both recognized the signs and known what to do to help her. She did remember the headaches, but what was really surprising was that Katie remembered them. They'd both been about five the last time Julia had a major one here, and if she remembered correctly, Katie had spent most of that visit hidden away in her room. "What is this place?"
"It's... one of my rooms," Katie said hesitantly. "It's all I could think of on short notice. There's shielding in the walls - they're completely soundproof."
"Oh." That explained it. But why did Katie have a room like this?
Her confusion must have been pretty obvious, because the next thing Katie said was, "You can ask me, if you want."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Julia asked, guessing that that it had something to do with Katie's condition, whatever it was, but she didn't even know what that was, exactly.
"I... I don't know. I never do."
"Me neither."
They were both silent for a minute, then Katie asked, "Are you really all right? You... you didn't look very good."
"I'm fine, now. This place is great," Julia said honestly. This was the first time she could remember in a very long while that she was this relaxed. It wasn't just the silence, although that helped. The room was quiet in every way that Julia could think, from the lack of furniture or any sort of decoration that might attract the eye, to the soft surface of the floor, to the dim light that didn't bother her eyes.
"Really, you like it?" Katie asked. "We can go to my room, if you like."
"No, really, this place is great. Very... peaceful."
Katie sat silently for another minute, then asked, "Have you talked to them about it?"
Julia knew instantly what Katie was talking about. "Not very much. I'm... I don't want to make them worry."
"I know what you mean," Katie responded immediately. Another minute passed. "So what have you been up to? You're graduating this year, aren't you?"
"Yup. I'm spending a lot of time on my senior project."
"What are you doing?"
"I'm studying the Gundam pilots."
Julia had become so used to the reaction she got from all the people she told that she was surprised when Katie just blinked and leaned forward slightly. "That sounds interesting," she said. "What have you done so far?"
Now it was Julia's turn to blink and stare. Then she realized that Katie was her own age, and certainly hadn't lived through the war, so why should she have the same reaction as all the adults? Julia could have smacked herself. Sometimes she thought that she had to be the dumbest person she'd ever met.
"You really want to know?" she asked hesitantly. There was no logical reason that Katie would be upset, but after the reactions she'd gotten so far, she was more than a little nervous about discussing this with someone.
"Sure."
"OK, but you probably don't want to mention this to your parents. It upsets them, because of the war," Julia warned.
Katie shrugged slightly. "All right."
"Well, I started by looking up all of the normal information, you know, the stuff in the history books..."
----------
Heero was distracted from Wufei's latest complaint about how horrible the schools were and why he was thinking about educating his children himself when Duo poked him in the side with an elbow and whispered, "Hey, where's Julie?"
Heero turned to where he'd last seen her, standing and watching some of Quatre's nieces play some game that involved a lot of giggling, but she wasn't there anymore. He automatically began to scan the room, looking for his daughter. Despite the fact that there were well over a hundred people present, he had no difficulty establishing the fact that his daughter was not among them. It wouldn't have mattered if there'd been a thousand people, he still would have been able to establish whether she was among them or not in seconds.
The training J had given him in locating a target for assassination had other applications, and she *was* his daughter.
He frowned and shook his head slightly at Duo, letting him know that he didn't know where she was.
"What's wrong?" Quatre asked, noticing the exchange.
"Did you see where Julie went?" Duo asked.
"She was playing with Meiran and the twins before," Wufei remarked without meeting their eyes. Heero hadn't missed the fact that Wufei hadn't taken his eyes off Julia for an instant when she was playing with his children.
Duo hadn't missed it, either. "She didn't hurt them, Wufei. And she isn't going to," he said, his voice quiet, but his face conveying a world of accusation and hurt.
"Not on purpose..." Wufei started, then cut himself off. "I am sorry," he apologized. "I know that she would never intentionally hurt them. But Sally mentioned that she was having some difficulties, and they *are* my children..." he trailed off, and Duo's expression visibly softened.
"It's all right, Wu," he said softly. "I understand. Hell, I'd probably do it too, if it was Julie who was the little one." He paused for a second, then continued. "And you're right, a little. I don't spar with her anymore."
The other three turned to stare at Duo. "Why not?" Quatre asked, voicing the question they all had to be thinking.
"It was getting a little rough," Duo admitted, rubbing the back of his head. "When she's practicing in her dojo, she always controls herself a lot - that sort of restraint is part of the atmosphere they build there. It's an interesting place." Duo looked thoughtful for a second, then shrugged. "Anyway, neither of us were taught - or learned - that kind of restraint when we learned to fight, and it shows in the way we approach any fight, even if we're just sparing. She responds to that, and..." he trailed off and shrugged again.
"Did she hurt you?" Wufei asked.
Duo shrugged again. "Just a couple a bruises, nothing serious." That wasn't quite true, she'd nearly cracked his ribs the last time they sparred. Duo had not only managed to finish the match with nothing more than a slight grimace that he waved off when she questioned him, he had managed to make it through dinner that evening before he collapsed on their bed and let Heero take a look at his side, which had turned entirely black and blue by that point. Duo had made Heero promise not to mention it to Julia right before the pain killers Heero gave him kicked in. "But Heero spars with her most of the time, now."
"Are you all right?" Quatre asked, a worried frown on his face.
Heero grunted an assent, mentally going over the layout of Quatre's house, marking off places that he knew Julia wouldn't have gone.
"That still doesn't answer the question," Duo pointed out sharply. "Now, lets try this again, does anyone have any idea where she went?"
Heero happened to be looking at Quatre right then, so he saw when Quatre stiffened and his eyes glazed over. "Quatre?"
"Julia's with Katie," Quatre remarked matter-of-factly, still staring into space. "Katie says that the noise was beginning to get to her, so she brought her up to the quiet room." He shook his head slightly and then blinked several times, clarity returning to his eyes. "They're talking now."
There was a short silence, then Duo asked, "Did she... just tell you now?" he asked slowly, tapping his own forehead.
Quatre nodded. "Her range has gotten better. She can reach me almost anywhere in the colony, now, and she can get through to Trowa if she's near enough." He smiled at the taller man, whose lips quirked upwards slightly in return.
"Man, that is just so creepy," Duo commented, relaxing now that he knew where Julia was.
"Oh, you get used to it," Quatre replied, his eyes still somewhat distant.
"I don't see how you ever get used to something like that," Duo said, shaking his head and shuddering. "She's crawling around in your head!"
Quatre finally turned and looked directly at Duo, instead of into space. He looked distinctly irritated. "It's not like that, Duo! She's not looking around in my head for information, she's just projecting her thoughts so that I can hear them!"
Duo just shook his head, while Heero watched, amused. The two of them had acted this way, sometimes friendly, sometimes antagonistic, for as long as he could remember. Duo said it had something to do with the fact that they were the only ones who talked in their odd group. Heero knew that Duo meant what he'd said about Katie 'crawling around in his head' no more than Quatre was as irritated as he now appeared. Duo wasn't completely comfortable with Katie's abilities, but as was demonstrated by Wufei, the others weren't completely comfortable with Julia, either. Heero could understand that; he would never admit it, but there were times that Julia's abilities scared him.
He wasn't afraid of her, although she was strong enough now that she could seriously hurt him if he wasn't careful and she ever lost control. He was very afraid for her, though. He remembered all too clearly the blinding headaches that had afflicted her when her powers first started developing, the helpless frustration he'd felt until they figured out how to give her some kind of control. Even worse, he remembered the barely-concealed panic in Quatre's voice during the time when Katie's powers suddenly appeared.
It was a long time, months, before they were able to find something that would help quiet the voices in her head. By that time, she couldn't bear to be around Quatre, who had abilities similar to her own (though of a much lower scale), and Trowa had sat for long hours by her bedside while Quatre got as far away as he could, so he didn't make the situation worse by projecting his thoughts at her without meaning to. Even though they'd never mentioned it specifically, Heero also knew that it had caused a real strain on their relationship for a while.
It had been sheer luck when they stumbled across the odd alloy that would stop mental projections, and provide Katie with some measure of quiet and rest. Now half of the rooms in the house were lined with the metal, so that Katie could relax and let the shields protect her mind whenever she needed to rest. It was only the discovery of the shield metal that had saved Katie's sanity, and maybe even her life.
Heero was terrified that one day Julia's powers would finally be too much for her, that they wouldn't stop getting stronger when she finished growing, that they'd just keep on getting stronger and stronger until she couldn't bear to be around people at all. That one day she'd be limited to a quiet room, a place where every thing that her senses had to process could be completely controlled. When he thought of that, Heero tended to grind his teeth and wish that he'd gotten to the doctors before the Preventers had, so that he could have delivered a suitable punishment to them. How could they have thought that they could meddle with people this way, and expect the children to pay the price for it?
With a noticeable effort Heero pulled his thoughts away from this dark path, forcing himself to watch Duo and Quatre's good-natured arguing, and trying not to worry about his daughter.
Sorry that this chapter took so long to get out. Life has been a little crazy, and I just spent the last week taking care of my brother, who just had major reconstructive surgery for his ACL. Taking care of him did not leave me in a mood that was conducive to writing, so this took about six times as long as it should have.
I'm not crazy about this section, specifically the way I portrayed Quatre and Trowa's relationship and family, but I've already rewritten it a couple of times, and it's not getting any better. Any suggestions would be welcome.
There are about a hundred little scenes I would have loved to put into this section, about the reunion and the pilots' families and how they act around each other, but I had to streamline the plot somewhat in order to keep this section to under a hundred pages. Hope you enjoy. And sorry for another incredibly long author's note.
Marika 11/25/01