Disclaimer: Fanfiction has been around for ages and I personally don't believe anybody actually owns the series they're writing about. Until now … Kidding, of course. ^^

Warnings: Not beta-read and digressive at numerous points. ^^

Chapter 17: Playing God

It was ghastly. Completely and utterly dreadful. The walls seemed to close in on him as Quatre gritted his teeth and tried his hardest to bear it.

It didn't work.

Hiiro had never talked much before and Usagi had never talked much to Hiiro … so why was it so quiet when the two were giving each other the silent treatment? He shook his head and groaned.

Quatre had been absolutely shocked – shocked! – when Usagi refused Hiiro. After all, who initiated everything? Who actually was true to her emotions? Usagi didn't even have to say that she loved him – she had already done that.

He fretted when the ticking of the clock echoed in the room – he had never heard the ticking of the clock before. Apparently the Hiiro-Usagi silent treatment affected everyone else. On the average, people were more jumpy, especially around him. Duo had already packed his bags and moved out for the next three days or three years depending on how long the silent argument might last. Trowa and Wufei have kept themselves scarce, out of his way and out of his sight. Usagi and Hiiro were both in their respective rooms, taking their meals on trays and privately.

Quatre hated it when he was frustrated and had almost no one to yell at.

………………….

They ordered Chinese takeout that night and Quatre had demanded that everybody was present at the dinner table, including Duo who was staying in some motel downtown. He had calmly asked each Maguanac to deliver messages to each person, asking that said person should attend dinner that night if he wished to have his head attached to his body the next morning. He also mentioned that he felt this situation should be settled maturely, not through silent treatments.

Usagi snorted when she got the message. He wanted to rip their heads off for not attending and gave his reason as the cliched "we should act as adults" deal? But, out of courtesy to the owner of the house she was staying in without fee, Usagi decided to go. And refuse to speak.

"What're the chances of our getting out of this okay?" she whispered quietly to Duo after he entered through the front and smiled weakly at Quatre.

"Don't bother wondering. With Quatre, even if you know what will happen, you don't know."

"Okay then. I'll just pretend I understood that."

Duo grinned nervously and let go of a high-pitched giggle as Quatre turned to the two at that moment.

"Usagi, Duo! You're here. Take a seat " Duo decided that he didn't like the way Quatre uttered his name as opposed to Usagi's. Just to be safe, he decided to stick to the blonde artist. Quatre seemed to balk at the idea of hurting anybody directly in front of her.

Usagi sat in an unspecific seat, not in the middle nor on either side. Duo plopped down next to her.

"Everybody, there are name tags on each seat. Please find your own and sit there," Quatre ordered pleasantly but Duo's blood ran cold. He sighed, dragged himself up reluctantly, and searched for his name taped on the backs of each chair. His heart sank as he realized he was farthest away from Usagi. Not surprisingly, Usagi sat at one end of the table with Hiiro to her left and Quatre to her right.

Though it was obvious Hiiro wasn't comfortable with the arrangement, he was given plenty of opportunities to glare at the mastermind behind everything as Usagi glanced from Quatre to Hiiro, Hiiro to Quatre, wondering what to do and settling for just looking straight ahead at Duo sweating.

"Now, everybody. Let's eat." Quatre clapped his hands twice. The food instantly started circulating around the table and Usagi gritted her teeth and tried to ignore it when Hiiro's fingers brushed against hers. Hiiro, however, was far from that discreet and openly glared at her. Seeing this, she retaliated by glaring back. And so there commenced a glaring contest. Duo glanced at them and then uneasily at Quatre as the blonde clutched his head in his hands, seemingly ready to scream.

The whole table went silent as each person, all four other pilots and Relena, stared at the contest as one would stare at a chess match.

Hiiro hissed and looked away when Trowa passed the soup to him and the side came into contact with the side of his arm. He glared at Trowa but Trowa remained impassive. Duo's eyes darted from one fight to the other, muttering under his breath, "Checkmate, Hiiro."

Duo continued to study the three at the other end of the table curiously, glancing up so often that he almost forgot his food. He stared at them as Usagi leaned over and whispered something into Quatre ear to which he nodded. Then, carefully, the blonde artist tapped at her glass with her spoon and cleared her throat when the already almost-silent table went deadly quiet.

"Everybody, I would just like to tell you that starting tomorrow, I'll be leaving in two weeks."

Quatre stood up, wide-eyed, and shot Hiiro a look. The dark-haired pilot was staring down at his hardly-touched sesame chicken, mentally grappling with his fear. Finally, reluctantly, he stood up as well.

"Usagi … I hope … that you make this decision knowing that I love you and wish you the best." He looked aside and quietly excused himself from the table.

Five pairs of eyes followed him before turning back to Usagi. Her eyes stayed on Hiiro's diminishing figure the longest and when she turned back, she met all five stares. Biting her lip, she grinned weakly and fidgeted. "What are you guys doing? Go back to eating." Even as she was saying this, she was edging away from the table. After everybody turned their attentions back to their food, she quickly excused herself as well and slowly walked after him.

"Well, Quatre. It looks as if this time, your plan might actually work," Trowa remarked quietly.

…………………

Hiiro tensed when he heard the soft knock at the door and wondered whether or not he should pretend to be asleep. He decided against it. "Come in."

Usagi peeked in through his door and smiled nervously. "Hiiro?"

He stood up. "What?"

"Did you … did you really mean what you said at the dinner table?"

He didn't look at her. "I always mean what I say."

"Well…" Usagi was at a loss for words. "I'm not really sure what to think right now. And I'm not positive that I'm willing to try this for two weeks…"

"If you want to say no, just say no. You don't have to give excuses."

She bristled at this. "That was not an excuse, Hiiro. That was a legitimate reason. I have to think this relationship over."

He shrugged and nodded.

Usagi's face gradually softened as she stared at him. "Hiiro, nobody can live happily with unrequited love. Not even you. Trust me; I've had experience."

He didn't answer.

"And what's possibly worse is loving somebody but not knowing if he or she loves you back. No matter what you do, there is always the slimmest slivers of hope that keeps you in pain."

Hiiro looked away and out the window.

"That's why I need to tie up all loose ends before I leave."

With that, Usagi exited the room, closing the door gently behind her.

…………………

"But what do you feel about being a Gundam pilot?"

"I don't feel anything."

Usagi sighed. "No, really, Trowa. Can you honestly say you don't care either way?"

Trowa stared at the blonde quizzically. Her questions unnerved him and only because she had declared the interview to be integral to the manga did he agree to it. "Well … I don't suppose there is anything besides being a pilot in this life for me."

"So … would you call that hopelessness?"

Trowa shook his head. "I would call that 'no comment'."

He watched her as her blue eyes widened and she was caught off guard. "Aha! You know how to crack jokes, Trowa!" She scribbled notes onto her notebook paper as Trowa stared on puzzledly, too confused to ask.

"Is that supposed to be surprising?"

Usagi blinked up at him, tilting her head to one side perplexedly. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought Trowa sounded hurt. "No, it's just…" she tried to think of a way to phrase if nicely but couldn't come up with anything plausible. "It's just … I'm the person who created you and you have a trait that I didn't even think about putting in you…does that make sense?"

Trowa didn't answer but instead looked away, out the window. Slowly, he returned, as if thinking the answer out as he spoke it, "Why don't you tell me that? You're the mind behind all of us, this entire world. What do you plan for us?"

She blinked slowly. "Oh, I see." Her tone had a note of finality in it, as if she had finally figured out the meaning of life. "You think I'm playing God."

"I don't think. You think for me."

Usagi shook her head. "That's not it, Trowa. Don't you get it? You're developing traits I never planned for you to have! You have a will of your own! I don't control every aspect of your life!"

"Just most of it?" His tone was neutral and his expression as well but the words were sarcastic and bitter, burning like acid through her nice ideas of the relationships between herself and the people of the manga. "It doesn't change anything. I'm just part of a book, a comic book, with no purpose in life other than to entertain the 'real people' in your world."

No words passed between them as she thought hard for an answer and came up with none.

"Well tell me, Usagi. What makes you think that you're not part of somebody else's 'manga', entertaining a world of other people more 'real' than you are? What then?"

"I…" Her brow furrowed as she thought hard, examining her feelings. "I suppose I'd question life and reality."

Trowa nodded. "Bingo. That's how I feel." He stood up. "I'm skeptical about life and I'm not willing to lay down my cards until it lays down its."

She watched him as he walked out of the room and disappeared when he turned to travel down the hall.

…………………

Usagi stared blankly at the pencil sketches in front of her, so rough and unperfected. She had never realized how her visit to Gundam Wing would affect its characters until after her chat with Trowa. Did she believe it? How was she to know that this entire stay was anything more than a long, long dream while she remained in a coma in the real world.

The real world.

What an odd way of phrasing it.

Who's to know what was real and what was imagined?

She could go home that very day and burn every copy of Gundam Wing she had ever published. Then Hiiro, Trowa, Duo, Quatre, Wufei, Relena, Rashid … all of them … would only exist in her memories and mind. Would they not be real then? Would they not be real simply because they were created by her? Or would they simply be an extension of herself? Her imagination, her will, her essence?

So. Would falling in love with Hiiro be like falling in love with herself?

She shook her head hard and squeezed her eyes shut tiredly. No, that couldn't be it.

"Usagi?" Relena poked her head through the doorway and smiled at her. "Trowa wanted me to talk to you. Something about manga and the real world."

She hurriedly sat up and stared at Relena wide-eyed.

"Just tell me one thing, Relena. Do you think you're real?"

The dark blonde pacifist frowned. "Well … before you came here talking about the real world and how we were only part of a book, yes. I thought I was real."

"Is your world equally important to you? Do you believe in it and believe it is tangible?"

"Well … yes. I mean … who would honestly think that they're simply part of a book? It's not as if we don't have books in this world too. It's just … so mind-boggling, thinking that."

"You have a very strong spirit, Relena."

Relena blinked and looked up.

"And I know that you try your hardest to do the right thing but sometimes it's just so difficult."

"I-"

"And I finally understand why I never got you to be able to work for me in the manga."

"W-why?"

A smile stretched over Usagi's face. "I never believed you were real."

…………………

There was a knock at the door for the second time that day. She looked up as the door opened and the last person she had expected to see wishing to talk to her stood, neutrally staring at her.

"What is this, let's all bother Usagi day?" she joked weakly and mentally beat herself up for such a lame joke. "What do you want, Hiiro?"

"I want you to stay here."

Usagi looked puzzled. "Well, where would I go if I didn't stay here?"

"I want you to stay in this world." Before she could argue, he hurriedly added, "You yourself said that you didn't know whether or not your world could be real! What's the difference, Usagi? This world is just as real as yours. And I'm just as real as you are."

She gulped as he stepped closer. "W-well … it's not just that, Hiiro. I have a life back at home."

"Are you willing to give that up?"

Usagi frowned to herself, wondering whether or not she could live without ever seeing Shingo, or Mom, or Dad, or any of her cousins ever again. What would she do without Mom waking her up every other day with a phone call? What would she do without Shingo pulling her hair and calling her short? What would she do without Dad bringing out the shotgun every time she brought home a boyfriend?

She didn't know.

But she did know one thing.

"Y-yes. I'm willing. To stay here."

She tensed as his arms involuntarily encircled her but slowly relaxed after looking up at his face. "I love you, Usagi."

The words seemed so out of place coming from his mouth that she almost laughed but didn't. "I'll stay here. I'll stay here forever."

…………………

Six pages! Six pages! I'm so proud of myself … ^^;;; Shocking news: Picture This is actually done. Yeah, I know. I've been doing this a lot lately – finishing it chapters before I post but … it's nice this way. Plenty of relaxation. ^^;;; There isn't much left and, truthfully, I think the relationship and events are pretty rushed. There's no definite … anything after confessions, etc. Sooo…

As always, thanks for reading. Yours, Angel.

Ok … I've been holding off on this for a long time but I've decided I am going to cut the responses down to just … "useful" ones. It's a bit awkward for me to find nothing to say back other than "thanks for reading! Here's the next chapter." And I'm sure it's not exactly pleasant for you to scroll down to your name and find nothing more than that. So! Here goes.

Cheska: Wow … you can actually get excited over the last chapter? Lol. ^^;;; Errr … I can't really answer any of those questions primarily because they are key to the ending … but … yeah, I realize they didn't kiss. ^^;;; Hmm … I wonder if they ever kiss … checks chapters

Hikari-chan: Usa and Hiiro's interaction was a bit … redundant and forced last chapter so … I guess it's a good thing that you didn't care much about it! :D

Firefly Princess: I'm still amazed that anybody can still remember the story line because I had to check back to previous chapters when I took this up again. Haha … loved your dinner menu. :D I should've wrote it in. ^^ Her cousins? Wow! You still remember them! It's been awhile since I've mentioned anything in the real world … a bad thing, I suppose. ^^ Thanks for the review!

Ashika: Hmm … so antagonistic, ne? ^^ But anyhow … yeah, you've sent this chapter back to me so don't worry about it! You're not a dork. ^^

Dreamertwin: Quatre … heh … poor Quatre … he's going to die young from all this stress, ne? Nope, Hiiro isn't perfect. That at least gives us something of a chance that somebody like him lives in our world . ^^ Thanks for the review! :D

The Desert Fox: Actually … I've never seen the Three Stooges. Yeah, my friends call me insane too but … haha. I will do sap … just … not willingly. ^^;;;

Thanks for all of your time and effort in the reviews, guys. :D