***
It was six o'clock. If I didn't hurry, my father would be angry. Not that he wasn't all the time anyway. I had completely lost track of time.
"Oh..." I murmured to myself as I packed up my books to head home. Releena had insisted that we stay and do our homework in her house, where she could watch us work. She had said she was impressed by our teamwork. Trowa had even let Toraneko look at his computer. She was still yapping avidly about it, how incredible it was to look through.
"Siri, why are you in such a hurry to get home?" Raine asked. "You aren't usually, not at this time."
"Yeah, but my house is on the other side of the library, and if I don't get home in half an hour, my father is going to murder me..." I stated firmly, stuffing my Algebra II book into the pack. He would literally murder me. "And it'll take me longer than that if I walk my usual pace, so I'll have to run the majority of the time to make it home."
"Why don't you just ask for a ride?" Tari asked. If I'd looked up, the others would have seen an intense look of shock and fear. Ask for a ride? That was just about like asking for a steak knife instead of a shotgun as the murder weapon.
"Can't."
"Why not?"
"He'll get mad. I know my father." Boy, did I know him.
"Heero, why don't you give them a ride?" Releena asked him, a little presumptuously, if you asked me.
"Hn."
"That's all right, Releena, I live around here," Raine said, smiling at the encased teacher.
"Me too," said Tari.
"Me three," said Toraneko and Telex.
"It's all right, I can run."
"Nonsense," Releena stated as though it were obvious. "Drive her home, at least, Heero." He nodded, pushing himself off the wall on which he'd been leaning. I slung the heavy pack onto my back and tentatively followed. He'd drive me home...alone! Wait, why was I so worried about the stoic Perfect Soldier driving me home? He was a soldier, an honor-bound one at that. My poor pendant was getting its exercise for the year.
But there were some strange soldiers that I knew of. Like that one, Treize. He was a strange one. My father had hired him to do "passionate" work; something I was only too familiar with when my father didn't pass out after only a few minutes into the door.
Who on Earth would guess that my father had been the one to restart the war with Treize? The one to fuel all of Treize's desires and dreams and ambitions?
Stupid of people to believe he did it all on his own. But the most stupid of all had been my father...it was bad enough that he'd messed with Treize. But to mess with his (Treize's) fiance as well? My mother had been her; I remembered her only by a few cherished memories from the first five years of my life. The happiest times. My mother, Lady Ashley Une. (AN-I'm not sure about Lady Une's first name, all I know is that I never saw it mentioned, so I made up one. Please tell me if she does have one, though, so I can correct this. Please, it is vital for my story coming up.)
And who on Earth would stop to think about the dire consequences being that offspring had been when Lady Une had been forced to surrender me, her only child at the tender age of five, to the father through court? Who would stop to think that I'd one day meet up with the very same people who had been within my mother's circle?
"Which way?" Heero Yuy asked in monotone, snapping me from my thoughts. I hadn't realized at all that, not only had we gone outside, but we'd climbed in the car and were now driving in the general direction of my house.
"Straight that way," I answered as evenly as I could. Why was I so nervous? It wasn't like he would hurt me. Oh...yeah...he would see my house! He'd know where I lived! Oh, no, now what do I do?
"Hn."
Silence reigned in the car, leaving me all the more room to stew in my heated thoughts about what would happen if my father found out that a soldier knew where he lived. If my father heard the car...I was a dead girl. Dead meat. No, worse than meat; I was minced dead meat, ground to a fine powder and burned to a broiled crisp. The pendant was twisted so much around my neck that it'd begun to choke me. I released it, letting it spin back to its normal place.
I saw the street where my house was. A quick glance to Heero and I made my decision; I would lie. It would be easy, considering the fact that I still had my hood up and he wasn't even looking at me.
"This next street up here," I found myself saying, pointing to the next street block over. When we reached it, I gave a mental sigh. Even if he waited till I was inside, it wouldn't matter. All these were apartment complexes. I could just wait until he left, then race over to my real house without him even guessing, and still make it home in time.
"That one," I pointed to the second apartment complex. He stopped the car and waited.
~~~
Siri Capri fidgeted the entire way to her house. She was nervous, but Heero couldn't tell why. Then, it hit him, very suddenly. She didn't want him to know where she lived. The other girls had asked him under their breath to tell them what her home was like; they'd never seen it. Why didn't Siri let people in her home?
As he turned down a street, she told him which apartment it was. He could easily tell this was not her home. These were for upper-society people, whose children had long since gone on. This was the place for rich old veterans to live in, not family men with children.
Heero stopped the car and waited for her to make her move to get out. Watching her slowly move her small hand to the handle, he caught a flash of dark black against her pale skin. Were those bruises?
"You don't live here, do you?" he asked, very plainly. She gasped and pulled her hand to her chest in a very feeble manner, clutching the silver pendant there. He was curious as to why she did so.
"W-What do you m-mean?" she stammered. "Of c-course I live h-here." Siri gulped hard.
"These are apartments for veterans," Heero pointed with his head. "They aren't allowed children. Where do you really live?"
She nodded gently and pointed carefully back out the road he had come. He backed out and she pointed again, at the road he had just passed. If he could have shown horror upon his carved-from-stone face, that was exactly the emotion you'd see. The house she pointed at didn't even look like it was being lived in.
The porch was sinking and the wood that was the siding was bare and moldy. There was one shattered window, boarded up with a piece of recent plywood, probably put there in the past two months. The yard was a mess, like it had never been mowed before. One whole section of the black-tiled roof was caved in, with several bits of sheetrock following it. He could see none of the inner rooms, but he was certain they were in far worse disrepair.
"Thank you."
The emerald-eyed girl slung her pack on her shoulder and left as though she'd never been there. Heero felt vile and putrid just leaving that poor girl here. He almost called her back; though why, he wasn't sure. She was different to him, even though he'd never seen her face. A whole mystery unto herself, one he would strive to solve before the week ended.
But, somehow, secretly, he wondered if she would survive to the end of the week.
~~~
"Who was that, girl?!" shouted my father. His breath stank vilely of Jack Daniels with what I thought probably was a few Bloody Marys and perhaps a vodka.
"A friend," I answered carefully. "It was my teacher, sir, he said he was worried about me having to go home all alone."
"Right!" he shouted sarcastically. "You probably slept with him, too, you whore! You're mine, you hear? Mine!" He picked me up by the scruff of my neck roughly, like a tiny puppy who'd done it on the floor. But I was certain he wasn't going to scold me nicely and slap a newspaper to his palms a few times (AN-I found out something; that newspaper sound? It works!).
No, indeed. He threw me on his bed and began to tear off my clothes faster than I could try and knock him out...
***
I groaned as I awoke the next morning. My father lay snoring on the floor next to me, though how that'd happened, I didn't know. I noticed a few new bruises on my upper and lower arms and up and down my legs and stomach. There were, luckily, no cuts, so I gingerly picked up my clothes and crossed the hall to my simple bedroom.
When I say simple, I mean it. It had an army cot with a thin, patched baby blanket that had been extended to fit my taller form and a dresser. Within the dresser were the clothes I wore; pants, T-shirts, and jackets. There weren't many colors; they were mostly blue. My father had wanted a boy and had bought clothes for a boy. He'd ended up with me.
I dressed in a pair of black jeans, white T-shirt and cerulean jacket, replaced the make-up carefully, pulled on some shoes, shouldered my pack, and left for school. A quick, brisk walk in the crisp, pre-spring air was quite refreshing, especially for an exhausted, hollow being such as I. I loved my friends, dearly, but there was something more I was missing. Not quite love, I wouldn't say that, but the feeling of being needed, wanted, was simply not there.
And would never be. Never would half-empty-glass Siri be complete. Never.
***
"Capri," stated Heero, in his Harding guise. "In what colony was Maxwell raised?"
"He wasn't," I answered. "He was raised here on Earth by a church."
"Very good."
This continued on, but I paid almost no attention to the actual conceivable words Heero was saying as much as I was to him in general. He did not move about or lean or have any sort of tick or rhyme to him. Perfect Soldier in many ways, I decided. The perfect nickname. Maxwell had been right. I lazily twisted my pendant between my thumb and forefinger, studying him closely, though not seeming to.
No, instead of crossing and uncrossing his legs or standing stiff and prim before the class, he simply stood at a sort of relaxed alertness stance. One I believed was properly referred to as "parade rest".
His hands were perfectly clamped against his lower back, one coinciding fluidly with the other, and his legs were shoulders' width apart. He looked at each student as they spoke, giving neither a nod nor a shake. He said "very good" or "nicely stated" for correct answers, and "not quite" for those half-right and "ground zero" if they were wrong. He never faltered.
"Ichinoku, did Winner have any true blood siblings?"
"How should I know?"
"It is stated quite plainly in your textbook," Heero answered.
"I don't read the book."
"Do you wish to drop from this class?"
"Yes."
"Then do it. Do not waste my time, or your classmates', Ichinoku."
The leader of the Dragons stood, fluffed his leather jacket, and strode out of the room without another word. Inside, I was fuming.
***
"Good morning, class," said Mr. Fawkes as he entered the room. "Today we will begin working with our partner teachers. I have assigned you each to one. Check the list in the back, then report to your teacher. They all have planning period now."
Tari and I packed up our things slowly, waiting for the twenty-some-odd people to file out of the room.
"How's this supposed to work again?" Tari asked doubtfully as she checked the list.
"You partner up with a teacher who's planning period is the same as this and you do a research project with them. It'll take six months to do, at least. You'll do a Power Point presentation, the both of you, to this class at the end of those six months," I explained carefully. "Who you got?"
"Mr. Shin."
"Oh, Toraneko's gonna be jealous," I sing-songed her.
"I know I'm jealous," Tari said, looking at my name. "You've got the one guy you'll be seeing too often anyway. Harding. It was supposed to have been Peacecraft, obviously, but..."
"But she got hurt and now I'm stuck with Mr. Monotone!" I groaned. "Gee, is my life gonna get worse or what?!"
"I should think so," Tari said grimly.
"Why's that?"
"He wants to do a project pertaining to his last class."
"What's his last class? I thought Ms. Peacecraft only taught one kind!"
"He's started a new one, in the empty slot, her second planning period."
"On his own?" I asked. What the heck? Why would a temporary teacher start up a new course?
"Yeah."
"What is it?" I was curious, duh. What class could he possibly teach?
"Martial Arts and Self Defense."
***
Tari left for Mr. Shin's and I grumbled all the way to "Harding's" classroom. Stupid Heero, why'd he have to go and make a whole new class? Ms. Peacecraft knew almost nothing about Martial Arts, she'd said so herself! What did that idiotic Perfect Soldier have up his sleeve?
"Just perfect," I muttered hotly as I climbed down the stairs to my first-period class. "Just had to get stuck with Monotone. Just had to."
What was I going to do?
My pack shouldered, I stepped into the room. Heero was typing away robotically on his laptop, concealed only just within his briefcase. He hadn't noticed at all that I'd come inside.
"You know, that could get you in a lot of trouble," I told him matter-of-factly. He didn't suddenly jump up or look at me in surprise. In fact, he didn't even acknowledge me. "Hey, I'm talking to you, Perfect-"
"Refrain from referring to me by that name here," he stated simply, supposedly finished because he closed the briefcase. "Call me what you like outside; in here, I am Mr. Harding." I rolled my eyes but nodded; I wasn't stupid, regardless what my normally-drunk father said.
"Why'd you start a new class if you'll only be here three months?" I asked, scowling. How on Earth were we going to give a presentation to my Gen Y class on such a physical topic?
"Releena is hurt worse than she thought," Heero answered smoothly, as though he rather was amused by the thought. However, there was no true amusement in his face, eyes, or voice, so how had I reached that bewildering conclusion?
"So how long will she really be out?"
"Remainder of the school year or more."
A silence fell over us. I couldn't think of another topic to discuss for several minutes, and Heero seemed quite comfortable to not speak. Well, not exactly comfortable; I don't think he ever actually was such a thing. But the silence ate at me, like some kind of worm in my gut. I twisted my pendant around a moment. Finally, I found the words I needed and dropped it.
"So...what are we doing for this project? I mean, we have to give a report to the class in six months, and it's supposed to be research and-"
"We will train you during this time," he answered instead. "The research will be different techniques."
Well, this was shock Class A.
"And...why, pray tell, would we want to do something like that?"
He was silent a moment, then spoke. His voice was gruff, as though he were trying to hold back tears, but I saw no evidence whatsoever of this, and his voice wasn't choked. It was still a monotone, but...it sounded like as close as he could get to being on the verge of crying.
"I do not wish to research history."
That answer baffled me for a few minutes before understanding dawned on me. How stupid of me. He had lived history, he'd had to have history fed directly into his brain from a synthetic computer system for hours. Heero Yuy had seen too much of history to look back on it. It would pain him too much.
But did Heero really feel pain? Was that the only ulterior motive to starting up a new class, among other things? From what I had seen of the Perfect Soldier, perfection was a cross on every "t" and a dot on every "i" and every enemy trampled like insects. However, I had the deepest feeling that Heero was lying.
Lying to his friends. To what family he had. He was lying. Just like me.
Chalk up likeness number one. Maybe Heero and I had more in common than I had previously thought.
"All right, then," I nodded bravely. "No history. You're my sensei and I'm your pupil."
"Good. Come, Capri. Training begins today."
***