Aishiteru
Chapter Eight
The Morning After
December 20th, 8:25 AM Local Time, Winner Mansion, L4-A01
Hope knew from experience that waking Mommy up in the morning before she was ready to be woken up could be a deceptively dangerous undertaking. Judging by the bluish color under Mommy's eyes, she wasn't ready to be woken up. This decision made, she wriggled carefully out from under Mommy's arm and slid off the bed. She first tiptoed over to the window, looking out over the gardens in the morning light. As well as she knew that it wasn't real, the L4 colony was so impeccably maintained that there wasn't the slightest glitch in the holographic sky. It was even going to snow on Christmas Eve. Mister Trowa had told her so. She was somewhat doubtful, considering how warm the air was, but, she had to remind herself, Quatre controlled the colony and so Quatre controlled the weather. She really didn't know how he was going to do it though.
Withdrawing her attention from the statues and birdcages highlighting the lush fantasy land below her, she crossed quietly over to the door leading back to Quatre's room, hoping he might be awake. She was surprised to see that Mister Trowa was there as well, but if Grandma's shows were any indication, such things were not unusual for grownups. Carefully, she slipped past the door, and, remembering Quatre's trick the night before, tiptoed curiously over to the bedside to be sure they were asleep. One green eye opened to meet her.
Not knowing what else to say, she simply whispered, "Hi."
At the sound of her voice, light as it was, Quatre's eyelids fluttered open as well. He made no move to raise his head, however, and after seeing her, simply let his eyelids slide shut again. Trowa smirked at her and winked, shifting his shoulders to unsettle the blonde, despite incoherently mumbled protests. She giggled in response while Trowa continued to sit up, disturbing him further until he had no choice but to submit to wakefulness, glaring blearily at nothing in particular.
"Next time, you can just leave once I'm asleep ... I already have an alarm."
"Masochist." Quatre quirked a brow at the accusation and snorted, glancing around for the clock, momentarily ignoring Hope's presence.
"Breakfast is served at nine ... we both need to get up. . . ."
"Good. You should eat something."
"Don't start, I don't argue well until after I shower."
"Why do you insist on being a zealot?"
"I am not a zealot," he defended, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
"When it's in sacrifice of your health, you're a zealot." Trowa moved to get up as well.
"Or a martyr," Hope offered. The two men glanced down at her as if just remembering she was there.
"Someone agrees with me," Trowa nodded at her approvingly.
"I'm not on my deathbed, you know. I'm a healthy young man who isn't going to get the vapors over missing a couple of meals. And neither of you have the credentials to dispute that point."
"I don't need to be a doctor to recognize when you need a few vitamins."
"I can wait for the iftar."
"That's at least twelve hours from now."
"After sundown."
"We're on a colony. There is no sundown." Quatre responded to the statement with a huff. "Well, there isn't. I could always pirate the weather controls so you can have your," he hesitated for a moment, glancing back at Hope, "darn sundown."
"I would be very much amused to see you try. This is becoming tedious."
"I won the last time, that should tell you something."
"The last time you 'won' I was out of three hours of surgery and lacking a few liters of blood, it would have been dangerously impractical."
"Shhh!" Hope held her finger up to her mouth urgently. "You'll wake up Mommy," she explained in a loud whisper.
*
Heero accepted the proffered sandwich after a brief scrutiny. "Appreciate it."
"I thought as much. You've been living off protein bars, I assume? You can only skulk around back here undetected for so long." Wu Fei crossed his arms and turned his head to scan the array of screens for a moment. "Zechs and Noin?"
"Left at 0600. Opted to relocate to a hotel for the remainder of their stay. They may or may not approach Quatre again; they definitely intend to see Relena."
"Have you slept at all?"
"Of course."
"In the last twelve hours?" He was met by a resounding silence, and nodded. "Are there any other developments worth noting?"
"Duo's wife and ... child ... are scheduled to dock in roughly one hour. Dorothy, Une, and Mariemaia have just entered the colony cluster, so we can anticipate their arrival by noon. Sally is picking up Catherine from L3-G8482 and should dock sometime between 1300 and 1600. Trowa spent the night with Quatre and they and Hope are awake now. I haven't had the sound on, so their course of conversation is unknown. Relena is still asleep, and Duo is foraging for food."
"Is that all?" Wu Fei pressed, with a note of sarcasm.
"The chambermaid in charge of the south wing is having an affair with the grounds keeper."
"I'm sure Quatre will be glad to know."
"Zechs and Noin have a child as of two years, eight months, and fourteen days ago."
"And you, as of four years, three months, and sixteen days ago."
"Plus five hours and thirty-nine minutes," he added after a flickering gaze across a computer monitor for the Universal Time.
"Good, you've caught up with the rest of the class."
"I took it upon myself to do my homework." A cursory glance across the monitors prompted the clicking of a few keys, rearranging the images again so that Relena's room was now the one on the main screen. Trowa had just entered, led by Hope, and seemed to be trying to rummage through the child's suitcase without waking the mother. Alone, he might have been successful, but Hope's input on what clothing he ought to select was more verbal than necessary. To her credit, Relena took the man's presence, with her undressed child, in her bedroom in stride.
"Maxwell's on the move." Wu Fei pointed out suddenly. A bit more tapping and the images moved in such a way as to enable them to observe Duo's entry to Quatre's room.
*
"Quat?" He'd given up knocking relatively quickly, simply pressing past the door into Quatre's inner sanctum. Never mind that he'd locked him out the night before. Shinigami was in top form. A quick glance around told him the room was empty. Soft voices from the mistress' chamber, but not Quatre's. Running water from the bathroom. He gravitated towards that. He was eager to see Quatre's bathroom again, anyway. "Heeeeeeeeeey, Q-what the hell did you do?!" Was his dejected greeting to Quatre as the braided wonder broke through yet another door.
"Duo?!" Came the startled, and somewhat flustered voice from behind the textured glass of the shower door. Duo wasn't paying attention. Everywhere he looked it was ... normal. Well, as normal as anything ever was in a Winner home. Marble and gold; elegant but tasteful. "Duo, what are you doing in my bathroom?"
"Wondering what you did in here since last year! My God!"
"I redecorated."
"Obviously. Why?"
"Well, your last visit called to my attention the inappropriateness of the decor."
"But it was cool."
"It was designed before I was born. It was meant for a child."
"Well, Ezra's a child."
"But it's my bathroom. I saved the tub, in case you want to take it back to L2."
"With the fixtures?"
"Yes, with the fixtures."
"Hilde'll kill me. Can you make it a gift for Ezra? She'll be obligated out of politeness."
"I don't know if I'd be comfortable using her manners against her...."
"But it's so effective! Think of all the stuff you've gotten roped into."
"What are you doing in here?" came a third voice from the doorway. Quatre groaned audibly.
"What is this, a space port?! Isn't there anywhere else we can congregate besides my shower? Or should I just install a com-link in-"
"Good morning, Quatre," the third voice interrupted.
"Heero. Thrilled as I am that you've decided to reveal yourself, I wish you'd chosen a more opportune time."
"He can be a real bitch in the morning," Duo not-quite whispered.
"And you derive a sick pleasure in observing the transformation." Heero and Duo turned in a synchronized movement to regard Wu Fei's arrival to the conversation. There was a thud from the shower.
"Quatre? You okay?" There was another thud.
"It is unwise to pick fights with walls. They tend to win." Wu Fei advised.
"Not to mention, banging your head against the tiles'll give you a really nasty headache." Duo added.
"Confucius would be proud of such an epiphany," Wu Fei responded tartly. "And what is all this about bathtubs?"
"Oh you shoulda seen it, Q had the most incredible bathroom. I mean, the sailboats on the walls were kinda dorky, but, like, the sink? It had a dolphin for a faucet. You turned it's flippers for hot and cold. The bathtub though, that was absolutely wicked. Clear, hollow fiberglass, blue around the outside, and stuffed with sunken pirate ships and mermaids and fish and all kinds of crap."
"The last time he visited, he insisted on carrying Ezra up here for every bath," Quatre added dryly.
"The toilet seat had a turtle cover. And the shower head was sculpted to look like a rock formation, so it had this freaky waterfall effect."
"No wonder your servants still refer to this as the nursery, Quatre."
"Thank you for your insight, Wu Fei. If there had been a child after me, that title would have been passed on, but I'm the youngest and I'm stuck with it. Is there anything else you all would like to humiliate me with?"
"Well, it does kinda make me wonder what the rest of your room looked like. You know, when you were little."
"It was an enchanted forest." Three pairs of eyes turned back to the doorway. And Quatre groaned from the shower. "Fairies and knights and unicorns, that sort of thing." Trowa shrugged. "There are photographs."
"And the castle. Please, don't forget the castle. Complete with drawbridge folding out from the wall and Rapunzel's braid from a tower. Now that we have thoroughly examined the roots of my overly romantic mentality, are we quite finished?"
"You had a castle?"
"I am shutting off the water and getting out now."
"Could you walk into the thing or was it just flat?"
"I mean it, I'm getting out." The sound of the water stopped.
"But the enchanted forest, is it still in there? Under the paper and whatnot?" His only answer was the squeak of the glass door as Quatre, blushing furiously beneath his skin but too proud to let it seep into his face, stepped out. Wu Fei held out a towel quietly, which Quatre snatched and wrapped around his waist, ignoring Duo's comment about natural blondes.
*
"Quatre will be joining us shortly," Trowa directed towards Relena, while settling into the chair on the right of their host's empty place. "He's at prayer now." Duo and Wu Fei nodded a bit from their seats and Relena followed their lead, while Hope was infinitely more interested in the lavish breakfast being laid out before them. She giggled as Duo nearly stood to lean over the table, plate in hand, to scoop up some of everything he could reach. He chatted amiably about nothing in particular as he then took it upon himself to load up Wu Fei and Trowa's plates for them as well. Hope was surprised to see that neither of them protested it. She then realized he was looking at her.
"Well, how about it, sweet thing? Gonna pass your plate over? What do you like? I'm partial to the waffles myself, cause you can load 'em up with all the stuff you aren't supposed to have at breakfast. I ... mean fruit, of course, Rel." He winked at her nonetheless and added a modest scoop of whipped cream to the veritable fruit salad he'd created. "How about you, Lena? Eggs? You look like you could use the protein. Trust me, I'm a dietary genius. Even Stone-face and Justice-boy submit to my expertise."
"I leave it in your capable hands, Duo." Again Hope was surprised. Mommy was usually very picky about her nutritional needs. Duo flashed a grin and quickly returned her plate with more fried food than Hope had ever seen in one meal. Somehow, things seemed very different here.
Grownups, she had learned, had a way of forgetting the presence of a small child while within the company of friends, if she were to keep quiet and appear not to be listening. She set about making herself appear absorbed with her food, and therefore invisible, to observe the conversation.
"What would you recommend for Quatre?" Trowa was saying.
"Oh, heck no! I'm not jumping on the 'force-feed-Blondie' wagon. You two want to bicker about it? Fine. But leave me out of it. As long as he isn't about to keel over from starvation, it's his business."
"Under normal circumstances, I would keep out of it too, but these are not normal circumstances. You've seen him, he looks pale already."
"Iron deficiency. In any case, he didn't look too pale this morning." Wu Fei snorted at that and Hope wondered what it meant.
"That was from the hot water," Trowa stated simply.
"Really? I could have sworn it was the audience."
"Drop it, Maxwell," Wu Fei commanded. Duo shrugged and shoved a fork-full into his mouth. At the same time Hope heard the footsteps behind her and turned to her right to see Quatre sink into his seat on the other side of Mommy. She chirruped a good morning at him and was rewarded with a tired, but sunny smile. The door leading to the kitchen opened again and she looked up curiously, wondering if they were going to add more to the table. Instead, a glass of water was poured for Quatre, to which he nodded, and a small plate of pills was placed before him, to which he raised an eyebrow. A sort of staring contest seemed to ensue between him and Trowa while the room remained oddly silent. After what seemed to Hope like forever, Quatre scooped up what she assumed were vitamins in one hand and quickly swallowed them. Duo began to chatter again, seemingly signifying the end of the battle.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*