Aishiteru

Chapter Six

Family?

(A.K.A. - The Battle of the Blondes)

10:30 PM Local Time, Winner Mansion, L4-A01


Quatre took her hand again and led her across the room to a small door partially hidden in the shadows. He turned the knob and it swung open silently, revealing a narrow and Spartanly adorned hallway with plain white walls and carpeting. The pair padded down the corridor quietly, passing many small doors identical to the one they had used in Quatre's room. After a short walk, Quatre stopped in front of a door, that Hope could only assume led to the afore mentioned study. Quatre gave her a reassuring smile as he placed his fingers on the handle, but he started when he touched it and drew back slightly. He seemed puzzled and simply stared at the door. Hope in turn was mystified and also stared at the door in hopes it might reveal a clue. The door remained mute. There was nothing inertly spectacular about it, but it appeared to baffle Quatre by the way his brows knit together as he scrutinized it. After a few moments, he merely shrugged and pushed the door open.

*

"You mean to tell me this has been going on for five years?!" Zechs was aghast. He was startled out of his debilitation, however, by the bookshelf behind Quatre's desk swinging open without the merest whisper. His ice blue eyes narrowed as he was met with the visage of one Quatre Raberba Winner clad only in the lower half of his night garments. His eyes widened in horror and he gasped sharply as he caught a glimpse of a small, blonde child peeking out from behind Quatre's legs. A small blonde child that seemed to have been born in the last five years.

Fire burned in his eyes as he returned his glare to Relena and growled, "What is THAT!?"

Silent fury welled within Relena's small frame and she took on the air of a lioness: more ferocious than anyone present in the room had ever seen her.

"'That,' as you so callously put it, is my beloved repercussion. And I will not tolerate you continuing this persecution in front of her. She's had nothing to do with any of it, and will not fall victim to your witch-hunt." Scanning the scene briefly, Quatre turned abruptly around to retreat the way he came; small child in tow. In an instant, Zechs had closed the distance between them, hooking a hand roughly around Quatre's shoulder and jerking him back around. Without anyone having seen him move, Trowa suddenly appeared in the small space separating the two blondes, forcing Zechs to step back with no more than a fiercely promising glare. At the borderline-violent turn of events, Hope's gaze flickered around the room in panic, hiding herself as best she could behind the defensive stance Quatre's legs formed.

"My god-" Zechs choked, "do you have the slightest idea what you've done?"

"Get away from them this instant," Relena hissed, a blazing pillar of protective maternal instinct, "you're terrifying her! Let Quatre take her back to bed." Trowa crossed his arms over his chest, in apparent agreement with Relena's statement. And Noin, all but forgotten across the room, contributed her own concession in attempt to persuade Zechs from traumatizing the child any further. Zechs, however, remained blissfully unaware of his effect on Hope and turned on Relena to grasp her by the arm.

"With your own brother!?"

"I told you before, you are no longer my brother. I'll thank you to take your hostility and leave before I have you bodily removed," she said while yanking her arm free. Quatre lowered his arm behind him until his hand found the top of Hope's head, stroking her hair reassuringly before stepping out from behind the shield Trowa had embodied.

"Zechs, I can see the current state of affairs has you understandably agitated, but you are causing undue distress among my guests, and I'm afraid it would be best right now if you were to leave. Perhaps after you've had the night to sleep on it, we might be able to undertake this discussion more civilly."

"You've poisoned our bloodline in that child. She should never have been born, let alone, conceived-" Whatever more Zechs was going to say was eclipsed by a ringing slap. Relena looked ready to kill, and Hope was suitably horrified. "You dare strike me after having such an abhorrence of an affair and producing a child from it without even telling me?" Noin, who had taken up stance behind his left shoulder, kicked him in the ankle and coughed something that sounded like "glass houses."

"Get out, Zechs. I won't say it again." Zechs shifted his attention to Quatre once again.

"And you. This is unforgivable from you. The peerless strategist, and alleged empath. How could you have failed to figure it out? How could you not know your mother took the fruit of her womb from our mother?" Relena sucked in her breath sharply and Quatre bristled, his face and tone taking on a severity and coldness very few had ever seen from him.

"You, sir, are grossly mistaken. I have no mother, and I would appreciate it greatly if you would leave now."

"Don't be a fool, of course you had a mother, and she-"

"I have no mother, I was born of a petri dish of genetic material grown into a test tube of organic matter. And I'll thank you not to speak of it again. I don't believe we have anything further to discuss, so you won't mind me having you escorted out."

"You don't know? You never even asked? Are you such a spoilt brat that you never bothered to find out your mother was Quatrine Satir Raberba-Winner?" Quatre didn't say a word. He turned silently on his heel and disappeared without so much as a glance at either Trowa or Hope. Back through the hallway from whence he came. If Relena had looked ready to kill, Trowa was.

"So much for diplomacy," Noin hissed furiously in his ear.

Before Trowa could direct the force of his deadly quiet remuneration at the offending party, Zechs was reprieved by virtue of Hope having climbed into the haven of Quatre's desk chair and drawing attention to herself with a cry of "Mommy!"

The four adults turned to see her attention captured by a small framed photograph she had somehow pulled down from a shelf. She was proudly displaying her prize - a quick glimpse of five young men not quite out of their boyhood, standing candidly around a desk, each clad in some form or another of the sleek Preventer uniform.

"Mommy!" she cried again. "It's Duo, and Uncle Wuffie, and Quatre, and Mister Trowa, and Otousan's with them!" Relena went pale.

"Wh-what did you say?" Relena stuttered. "Who is with them?"

"Otousan," she repeated less vehemently, not sure what she had said to make the color drain from her mother's face so quickly. Relena, in turn, looked at the picture and felt her pulse quicken as she found herself caught in "Otousan's" glare at the anonymous photographer.

She returned her attention to her daughter's puzzled gaze and took a breath to calm herself before continuing, "How do you know him?"

Hope seemed reassured by her mother's voice returning to its former stability and answered nonchalantly, "I met him when we got on the satellite. I got lost, but then I found Otousan and he took me back to Duo and Wu Fei. He was mean at first, but he got me ice cream and ... and he said his name was Otousan. Did he lie again...?"

"Lie again. . . ?"

"Well, first he said he was Duo, but he's not Duo. I could tell. And he thought I was Duo's daughter, and Quatre's, and then he said you were my mommy and we got ice cream and he took me to the bathroom. Then I had to go back on the shuttle. Is he coming for Christmas too?" Relena was spared finding an answer to that by a muffled thud from the hallway. Trowa threw open the door to reveal the real Duo recovering his balance on hands and knees, an incriminating glass on the floor beside him.

"Duo."

"I ... thought I saw a spider. I could, um, trap it in here and take it outside. Oh look, there it goes-" he was prevented from crawling away by a rough hand catching his collar and dragging him unceremoniously to his feet. "Yo, Wu-man."

"I told you to leave them alone, idiot."

"I was just looking for your contact lens..."

"I'm wearing them, Duo."

"Ah! Well! Another mystery solved! I guess I'll be going to bed now."

"I thought you were trying to catch a spider." Trowa interjected calmly.

"Little bugger's too fast for me! I can't see it around here anywhere."

"You were eavesdropping."

"I cannot tell a lie." Silence ensued.

"Well?"

"Domestic espionage."

"Next time, use the security room."

"Well ya see, Tro, I would have ... but it was a little ... occupied. Good hiding place for Christmas presents, if you catch my drift. Wouldn't be very holly-jolly of me to ruin all the surprises, would it?" Trowa surveyed him calmly for a few moments, barely nodding his recognition of the silent message that seemed to pass between the two men.

"Make yourself useful, then, and go after Quatre. I think it would be best for Hope to go with Wu Fei for now, it's very late. The grownups need to have a little talk."

*

Wu Fei's voice was low and hypnotic as he continued his story of Pangu separating the earth and the sky, lulling her closer and closer to the edge of sleep. This, of course, she knew, was his intent. Grownups could be very tricky that way. To maintain her resolve of staying awake, she occasionally broke her mind away from the legend he was weaving to turn over in her mind everything she had seen and heard in Quatre's office. She didn't know what fruit of the womb meant, but suspected it might be undergarments of some kind. She couldn't make sense of anything that the tall man had been saying to Mommy and Quatre, but she knew it had made Mommy very, very angry, and Quatre very, very upset. And it had something to do with her. That was enough to cement her dislike for the time being.

Quatre's picture made her head hurt less to think about. She knew it had to be pretty old since Quatre was almost a head shorter than Duo, and Wu Fei's shoulders were considerably narrower. Not to mention, Otousan looked sort of like one of those funny highschool boys on the soap operas Grandma liked to watch. She knew Quatre and Mister Trowa were Preventers, just like Duo and Wu Fei; Mommy had told her so. She said they'd even fought together in the war. The war her Daddy'd won, she amended in her head proudly. Duo'd fought alongside her Daddy even. If Quatre and Wu Fei and Mister Trowa had all fought together too, they had probably known her daddy as well.

But why was Otousan in the picture with them? They must have been friends, too. After all, he'd known who Duo and Quatre were when she'd met him on his ship. If he was a Preventer with them, he'd probably fought in the war too.

But how come she'd never heard anything about him before? Mommy liked to tell stories about the brave things they'd done in the war, and Duo had told many (if less idyllic) war stories himself. Unless....

Something in her mind seemed to click into place. Was it possible Otousan was really her daddy...? But Mommy had said that her father had given her Mr. Snuffullufagus and Otousan didn't seem to know anything about that. And she seemed to remember Duo calling her father by name once. She strained to recall what he had said to the letter. Something like: "kids'll be kids, and Hero's kid is bound to be adventurous." Was that it? Was that her father's name? Hero? It did seem to make sense, what with the way Mommy always described him. So Otousan couldn't possibly be Hero. Of course, he'd lied about his name in the first place, what was to stop him from doing it again? And besides, Otousan didn't seem like a shining white knight. He was even kind of mean. Unless - maybe he'd been acting so she wouldn't know it was him and be sad when he went away again. She tugged urgently on Wu Fei's sleeve.

*

"You thought Quatre was Hope's father?"

"What else was I supposed to think? Your Preventer friends confirmed your affair."

"But we thought you were talking about the threat on Hope's life," Duo defended.

"I thought you were going after Quatre."

"Well, he had his door locked, so I figured he didn't want company." Trowa made no response.

"What I don't understand is what was so urgent about a tabloid that you'd come all the way out here. I would think an affair with Heero would be more scandalous, but you seem relieved."

"Because Heero is not a Peacecraft."

"You're saying Quatre is?"

"A Greywoods, technically: the shared DNA is on Mother's side."

"But how could we share DNA?"

"Our mother was the egg donor in Quatre's conception."

"So his father used a natural zygote rather than a selective genetic code?"

"No. His wife wanted to have a child naturally."

"Then it was true? What you said to him about having a mother?"

"Of course."

"Well he didn't know that!" Relena emitted a rather hysterical laugh. "And he really is my brother."

"Half brother."

"Brother enough to send you charging out here to separate us after five years in exile," she snapped. She then turned on Duo, "Now maybe you'd better tell me just what happened when you lost my daughter."

"I don't know, exactly. She wandered off and we found her with Heero."

"And you didn't think that this was worth mentioning?"

"Well, we thought it would just upset you-"

"Damn straight, I'm upset! I'm upset at all of you right now! This is rapidly becoming the worst Christmas of my life. And that includes the Eve War and the Mariemaia Uprising! And Otousan is the name he gave her? Is that what he's going by now?"

"Actually," Duo offered uncharacteristically meekly, "'Otousan' ... is a word ... for Father." For the second time that evening, Relena's face drained of all color.

"Oh God," she whispered. "He knows. . . ." She was filled with conflicting emotions. Part of her was relieved that he hadn't appeared to confront her, part of her was furious that he didn't care enough to, another part was hoping that he would show up, and yet another was praying he wouldn't.

"Rel, its been a very long day. Maybe you really should try and get some sleep now, and worry about this in the morning. Tomorrow Hilde and Ezra, and Une and Mariemaia will be here and everything will seem a whole lot more festive."

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