It was too late to be studying, but he couldn't sleep and it had seemed the best way to pass the time.

Trowa hadn't slept much at all since arriving at Ohtori, and consequently he suspected he had just about caught up to his classes. The truth was, it was easier to open a textbook and turn off every part of his mind but the logical part, than lie in the dark and let his thoughts run free. It was less painful.

Their argument was still fresh in his mind. How could it not be? Maybe it was all just a big waste of time in the first place. He kept hearing Quatre's defeated voice in his mind and wondered what he meant by saying such a thing. If it was true that their friendship had been more trouble than it was worth from the beginning, Trowa was ready to believe it; but that didn't mean it was so worthless that the truth shouldn't be pursued.

As though lying in wait by some subconscious will of his, or in cahoots with the relentless weather, the stack of pictures and notes happened to be in his path when he reached blindly for the glass of water sitting on the table beside the bed. They fell onto the floor, and Trowa automatically bent to pick them up, not sure if it was out of some instinct to protect himself from their association or them from his carelessness.

The fencing photo came to the top, and despite his feeble attempts to look away, his eyes lingered over the people in it.

How things had changed: Half of those people he seemed to hardly know anymore; they were a world away and as faded in his memory as something from a dream. As for Quatre and himself—those fourteen-year-old faces that stared back at Trowa were nothing but the faces of liars, now that he knew the truth about them. They all looked so foolish, robots programmed to smile for the camera, for the crowds, not even the most serious among them truly looking comfortable in his own skin. The obsequiousness in his own olive green eyes was embarrassing to look at, to speak nothing of Quatre's faux sincerity. Seeing it now, with the clarity of hindsight, the maliciousness behind his friend's smile was all too apparent.

And yet it still captured Trowa, moved him. He was wrong. He must have been. They had been fools back then, that was true, but only because they had been so young and naïve as to assume they were immune from the rest of the world. It was through ignorance and arrogance they'd made this hell for themselves. And yet, for some reason, looking back, it still seemed to Trowa like the best time of his life.

They had been so young as to think they could get away with dancing around the truth forever, never conceding eventually the music would have to stop. And yet something had been honest.

His fingers traced the image of his old friend, as though he could feel Quatre solid through the paper. The roughness of his fencing jacket, or the slight wave of his light blond hair against the back of his head.

Or the cold, smooth keys of his grand piano. Or the soft wetness of grass on the first warm day in the middle of spring.

Something had been honest. Something had been genuine. . . .

Even if Trowa could no longer put his finger on what it was.

It was difficult, but he managed to tear himself from the photograph. His traveling fingers pulled out Wufei's letter instead, which Trowa had forgotten in all that had happened during the past week.

"I must apologize," began the second paragraph of Wufei's letter, with a candidness that was just like his friend. "For Maxwell as well, but mostly for myself because it took me longer to get over it.

"I know we weren't very supportive of your decision to transfer—and don't say you didn't notice because I know it showed. I guess I was a little jealous, you had this opportunity I should have strived for myself and didn't, and I was wrong to take that out on you. If I can speak for Maxwell, I think he felt a little abandoned. But mostly we just didn't want to see you leave us.

"We—I mean, I didn't want things to change. It was selfish of me, but I didn't want to lose any more of my friends to that school. But I really was happy for you. I know how much this transfer means to you, and I want you to know, even if just in hindsight, that I'm sorry we didn't make it more clear how proud we are to call you our friend—"

With a wince, Trowa folded the letter. He couldn't read any more. Not now. Not when his own wounds were so freshly reopened.

It felt too much like judgment, however well-intentional on Wufei's part—like a mirror held up before him, the reflection in which Trowa was too disgusted to see. In truth, he had been too caught up in his own feelings those last few months before his transfer to notice if his friends had treated him any different. Knowing now, the letter made him ache inside with a bitter, nostalgic guilt, but it was not from the sincerity in Wufei's sentiments.

I never told him, Trowa thought and rested his forehead on his bended knees. I should have told him. . . .

He felt ashamed remembering how Quatre had asked him that very question: Why can't you just be happy for me? That happiness, above all else, Trowa should have been able to give his friend, and not when time and distance had worn the edges smooth. It was a thing one did because of love, without hesitation or need for flawless reasoning.

And it was one thing Trowa still couldn't give. After all this time, he wasn't happy for Quatre or the choice he had made. And in fact, now that he was here, at this school Quatre had given him up for, Trowa felt even less so.

However, the person who needed forgiveness wasn't Quatre, as Trowa had led himself to believe. And he, Trowa, was not the one to give it.

Nor did he deserve to receive it.

The letter was getting wrinkled in his hand. Out of respect for the one who wrote it, he straightened it out against his thigh, folded it, and placed it back on the nightstand. He could guess what Wufei would say in this situation. Trowa had asked him once, when he thought his friend would have no idea as to the context of his question, why people hated.

The answer was simple. "Because they are weak."

It was much sounder wisdom than Heero's advice to "act on your emotions." That had brought Trowa and Quatre both nothing but trouble, especially when swords had been placed in their hands—although, in their friend's defense, Heero had probably only been speaking about music.

And it was just like Wufei to say such a thing. Unfortunately, as true as his answer was, it did nothing to solve the problem that lay before Trowa now.

He got out of bed and decided to go for a walk, since it was bound to be at least somewhat cooler outside. It was past midnight; that was all Trowa knew for he refused to look at his watch out of some superstition that knowing would make it that much harder to sleep. Why he should care, he wasn't sure, because he had already resigned himself to getting little to none at all.

"Hey, Triton," said a boy in his class who was returning to his own room from the bathroom. "What are you doing up?"

"Going for a walk."

"This late at night?"

Trowa shrugged. He did not care enough to match his classmate's geniality, as forced as even that seemed at this hour. Over the last several days, in fact ever since the duel with Quatre, Trowa had become something of a celebrity in the dorm. But that did not automatically make him approachable. Here Trowa had thought it would be nice to be the center of attention for once, if only for the reversal of roles. If only to see Quatre sweat.

In reality, it only made him feel more alone. And he ached for company, though the company he most desired was unattainable. He ached for home, to be with his friends, to be with Cathrine, even if it meant suffering in that large, empty house in the middle of nowhere.

That is, if any of that was still real. If the world outside Ohtori still existed, if he wasn't trapped inside this bubble universe forever.

But to be alone—to be absolutely and utterly alone—that was what Trowa deserved. Quatre had rejected him, and St. Gabriels had as well, in its own way. He would relish this pain he felt inside, mirrored in the discomfort of a stone bench in the park. He would sit there as long as he had to for Ohtori to suck him into that dream Quatre had spoken of, if it was half as real as Quatre made it sound. He couldn't fight what he had coming to him, his punishment: to be awake to see the sunrise with the precise knowledge of where they had gone wrong tormenting him over and over until the morning.

Even though it might mean seeing the last of his hope fading like the stars.

"'O, think'st thou we shall ever meet again?'"

"'I doubt it not, and all these woes shall serve for sweet discourses in our time to come.'"

"'O God, I have an ill-divining soul,'" Relena read. One student cleared his throat, another's chair creaked, but all were intent on their classmates' reading, lost in the words, in the emotion of them.

Quatre looked over at Trowa to see him no different. His harsh expression of late softened as his eyes moved across the page. Strange how Quatre no longer felt bitterness toward him, though he thought for sure he would, for only one night had passed since he had been convinced he hated his old friend.

Impatience was all Quatre felt now, for a clock that didn't move fast enough, for a play that never seemed to end.

"'Methinks I see thee now thou art so low, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Either my eyesight fails, or thou lookest pale.'"

Quatre didn't notice the awkward silence that followed until the professor's voice boomed: "Romeo: 'And trust me, love—'"

Quatre started. "'And trust me, love,'" he quickly resumed—he didn't need to glance at the page, "'in my eye so do you. Dry sorrow drinks our blood.'" It was not acting this time that softened those words.

Trowa looked up and met his eyes across the aisle. He really did look pale, Quatre thought. He had to turn away, unwilling in some vaguely superstitious way to say the last words to those sad eyes.

Instead, he said them to the book, and felt a peaceful smile come upon his lips as he did so: "'Adieu, adieu.'"

After a brief pause, Relena resumed, her voice clear and theatrical, more the voice of an orator than a lovesick fool. But Quatre could not fault her for that. "'O fortune, fortune, all men call thee fickle; if thou art fickle, what dost thou with him that is renowned for faith? Be fickle, fortune; for then I hope thou wilt not keep him long, but send him back.'"

Send him back. No, that was one thing Quatre couldn't rely on fortune alone to do.

He spent lunch that day lost in thought. In order to avoid suspicion he pretended to take an interest in the heated debate Relena and Dorothy had over their own lunches on the credibility of Romeo and Juliet—which was fascinating if for no other reason than that the two girls had completely opposite viewpoints of what one might have expected from their personalities.

But over the course of lunch Quatre often contradicted himself, agreeing with one side and then the other without any rhyme or reason. His thoughts simply preferred to travel elsewhere. He lapsed into a strange silence so many times his classmates finally asked him if he was feeling ill. He managed to convince them otherwise by his having wolfed down his lunch, even though by their own words he never showed a healthy appetite.

And where had Triton been since last Saturday? they couldn't help wondering aloud. Every now and then, Quatre thought he would look over and see his friend eating hunched over some open science textbook. Quatre even found himself worrying about whether Trowa had eaten any lunch at all since the last time the four of them had gotten together. Trowa seemed more distant than usual during phys. ed., hardly acknowledging his classmates' words of encouragement.

Of course, Trowa would not want to talk to me of all people, Quatre told himself, after what was said. Who would? It was perfectly understandable that they should be avoiding one another so soon after the argument they had. Surely Trowa was spending his time studying, since he had a few months of material to catch up on with his transfer.

Which was something Quatre realized now he should have done. He arrived to history that afternoon only to have the professor announce they were having a test. Starting, Quatre glanced around at the other students, but none seemed surprised. It was a moment before he remembered they had been notified of it a week ago.

He stumbled his way through, sure he would receive a dismal grade in return. But after an hour or so with the fencing club, and even when he arrived to the science lab equally unprepared—and with just as little sleep—the next morning, Quatre was surprised to find it didn't bother him.

How out-of-character, he mused. Any other time it would have felt like Quatre's worst nightmare come true. Oddly enough, he felt relaxed, as though a great weight had been lifted from him. He might have even described his own mood as cheerful, and there was no reason for it to be. At any other time, he would have taken that as a clue that something was wrong, this sudden apathy concerning his academic and social life, but it was difficult to truly think the peace that had so long escaped him needed correcting.

It was Friday, a week since he had first seen Trowa again in over a year. There had been a time Quatre had yearned so much for nothing else but to see his old friend, that every waking moment—and some sleeping moments, as well—had been torture.

Now Quatre didn't know what he wanted. Even if he did, it wouldn't matter. His actions over the past week had made sure that, whatever happened now, fate was out of his hands.

Maybe that was why Quatre finally felt at peace.

The bustle that filled the halls after the end of class on a Friday was like a sigh of relief. The week was almost over, with a break from tests that had somehow been unfairly coordinated, and no postings or duels to stir up tension in the already stagnant summer air.

Utena sighed into her open locker, feeling as though she could just dump the remainder of her stress into it, and not have to worry about picking it back up until Monday morning at the earliest. "You seem to be in high spirits, Miss Utena," Himemiya said, coming up beside her.

Utena shut the locker and smiled. "Yep!" she said, "and nothing can ruin it. No homework and the weather's great. I hear it's finally supposed to rain late tomorrow. Until then, I just want to sit in the sun and enjoy it, and not have to care about anything."

She slung her book bag over her shoulder, stretching as she beamed, and Himemiya returned the look with a grin of her own. Chu-Chu had hitched a ride and was gazing at her from under the flap of his mistress's bag, which rested against the front of Himemiya's thighs. "Wanna join me?"

"Chu," said the monkey, which Utena took as an affirmative.

"I promised to help move the projects out of the art room," Himemiya said. "It won't take long."

"Well, in that case, I'll go with you." With a spring in her step, Utena walked beside her, exchanging an enthusiastic look with her friend. It was one of those odd days where any chore seemed like anything but. In truth, it was the feeling of being home free—or so near it as to be good enough—that lifted her spirits. Quatre's graciousness in refusing the duel the other day had finally rubbed off on her and was as refreshing as the deep blue of a clearer sky.

It didn't occur to her, though in retrospect Utena knew it should have, that it could be too good to be true.

"Tenjou, wait up!"

They had hardly stepped into the sun when one of their classmates, a boy, came up to them, holding something in his hand. "Hey, Tenjou," he said, "I think this fell out of your locker."

"Um, thanks."

The boy nodded with a small bashful smile, but Utena hardly noticed as she studied the object he had given her—and realized with a sinking feeling in her gut what it was.

An envelope with her name in a cursive print, and a card inside. She knew the contents without looking, though she had hoped against hope it was something other than the invitation stamped with the school's ubiquitous rose seal. "Meet me at the duelists' field, eight o'clock tonight."

Himemiya watched the smile disappear from her lips. "What is it?" she asked, though she must have already known. Her voice was filled with apprehension.

"Another challenge." With a sharp hiss through her teeth, Utena crumpled the card and envelope in her fist. "He lied!" she said. "Quatre lied to us. He said—he promised he wouldn't fight. I should have known we couldn't trust him to keep his word."

Her voice broke slightly as she lowered it. It was one thing for Quatre to have accepted his duties in the first place. But to break his promise, and in such a cowardly manner, to betray them like that. . . .

That was low. She could not forgive it.

"Did he sign it?" Himemiya asked, and Utena couldn't help but envy her calm.

"No."

"Then how can we be sure the challenge is from Mr. Winner?"

"Because!" Utena said. "Because they're all the same, those student council members. They're all after one thing after all. Aren't they?"

Himemiya didn't answer.

Juri was surprised to hear her name called as she was leaving her last class of the day. She recognized the voice instantly, but it was the tone of it that made her turn with a question on her lips. "Quatre?"

He was smiling. One hand was in his pocket, the other holding his books. The rose seal ring looked uncomfortable and out of place with his casual poise—and Quatre, for once, did not. "Do you have a minute? Or ten?" he asked. "I want to show you something in the music room."

She regarded him skeptically. "What do you have up your sleeve now?"

"Nothing. I only thought this would be a good day to hear a live piece. I promised you I would play a solo for you one day, to convince you my talk wasn't just bragging." He was teasing her, gently, though even such a gesture could not break down the awkwardness that Juri felt would always remain between the two of them.

However, it was for another reason that Quatre's smile wavered and held on, a quiet desperation and urgency that she found impossible to dismiss easily with much decency, even though she did not know the reason for it. Perhaps because she did not know the reason for it.

"I think I could spare ten," she said. If he needed her that badly, she could spare sixty.

The practice room was empty except for Miki, who stood from the piano bench and lowered the cover over the keyboard when he saw them enter.

"Please, stay," Quatre asked him before he could utter more than a syllable. He deposited his books on the table, next to which lay his violin case, and opened the latches. "If you have the time, I'd appreciate it if you would."

"Stay for what?" said Miki.

"A private concert," Juri told him as she pulled out one of the chairs around the small table and sat, crossing one leg over the other. Miki in turn took a seat on the windowsill where the sound of insects reached him through the open window.

Quatre lowered his head. "To be my witnesses," he corrected. "I guess."

Baffled, the two looked to him.

But Quatre's eyes remained downcast and focused on his violin as he ran his fingers over the strings to grip the neck, a ritual of touch before he tenderly lifted it out of its case.

He hesitated before bringing the instrument to his shoulder. "I . . . owe both of you an apology," he said.

"For what?" Miki asked again, but his voice never traveled past the window, and his words were lost under the first strains of music as bow touched strings.

It was a Bruch adagio that Quatre played, a Romantic piece of the kind so often overlooked in the practical times in which they lived. He attacked the melody immediately, drawing the high notes out long and poignant, the sound hanging weightless for a brief moment before falling again to the bottom, forced to climb its way back up in stops and starts of quick trills.

Back and forth the melody weaved, always reaching out for something high above and just out of reach: Farther and farther it reached, but, alas, never far enough before gravity exerted its pull. The violin sang in a plaintive voice under the deft touch of Quatre's fingers and the sweeping of the bow, the vibrations of the strings echoing in the high-ceilinged room.

Gradually his pace slowed until the music was like a long sigh of resignation, slowly transforming itself into something entirely different, something less violent though no less passionate, something like the recollection of a fond memory.

Mesmerized by the music, Miki failed to see Trowa sitting below him, enjoying the tender strain of the violin perhaps more than either of Quatre's guests—and with more pain than either of them could imagine.

Trowa had come to hear Miki's piano playing, which traveled brightly down to him through the open second-storey window, carried on a breeze, a pleasant background to his reading beside the rhododendrons. That playing had made Trowa feel nostalgic. Even with the bitter knowledge that there was something missing—a different hand, a different interpretation—he could not help trying to grasp some distant memory and, embarrassed to be caught at it, hoped no one would come idly by to read that struggle in his eyes.

He had not expected anything else. Therefore, it came as a surprise when Trowa did hear those first familiar notes, and recognized the hand that made the violin sing so high and so tender, even if it had never sung so well before. He almost swore his heart stopped, and the blood rushed throughout his limbs, to his cheeks, the pit of his stomach. It was funny how the physical reaction of embarrassment was the same as that one experienced at the moment of feeling his heart was understood.

And how a simple melody could trigger that.

Trowa could not help turning his gaze to the music room window. It was a melody that demanded he look up, and he only hoped that in doing so the music would not fade, as stars often did when one attempted to look at them directly. There was nothing pretentious in that playing, nothing like the empty technical skill that won its player such acclaim from the students in their practice sessions, and in concert from the adults who knew no better. It was the exact antithesis of Heero's precise organ concertos, so constant in their tempo and pattern, that had excited him a year ago.

It was sincere, a pure melody that made everything outside of it in contrast, including Trowa himself, seem insincere. It was agony to listen to. It was too personal, too condemning. Too sympathetic.

And it was almost what he come all this way in search of.

Almost.

Quatre's downcast eyes saw only his fingers and the bow gliding over strings as he played, if they saw anything at all. His hands knew how to play this piece from memory. He let them take control and lead the rest of his body, and in doing so allowed his feelings, even those whose existence he had tried to deny and bury, to flow through them and be released by the violin.

Regret and failure. Resentment, self-loathing. Jealousy, fear and uncertainty. . . .

But also happiness, sadness, laughter and excitement. Tenderness and a hope that it might be returned—all became vibrations in the air as the music took on a new eagerness. Quatre felt each one penetrate his heart in turn, and pull at his limbs until they felt the strain of those attacks and parries carried out on the fencing strip—forcing him to watch that past he had avoided for so long unfold like one long prologue, until nothing would remain but the waking present.

I can't go back, he thought to himself, and for once the notion resonated within him with real conviction, as he dragged the notes from the violin up and down the scale. Forward, back, and stubbornly forward again. The good times, the deceptions and the hubris that they'd managed to avoid for so long—that illusion Quatre had shattered long ago when he had made his decision to come here. He could no longer pretend innocence in the matter. Whether his and Trowa's friendship was eternal or doomed from the start, who could know?

The fact remained Quatre had maimed it. He could not avoid that reality with more illusions. When something is wounded so badly, it either dies or recovers. It doesn't choose to wallow in its pain forever, he thought. Then why have I?

He closed his eyes, and a smile came onto his lips.

"Excuse me. . . . Excuse me, are you Quatre Winner's friend?"

Trowa started when he realized the speaker was referring to him. It had, in fact, been hearing that boy's name that finally got his attention.

He looked her over: a middle school girl with long limbs hanging in flirtatious postures, platinum blond hair pulled back that reminded him of Dorothy, and haughty, deep blue eyes that somehow did not. He didn't study her for long, but long enough to know her company was not to be particularly desired.

Trowa turned back to the book open on his lap in the hopes she would take the hint; and he answered just as coldly as she had addressed him: "Former friend."

Instead of leaving, however, she uttered a long, "O-o-oh. . . . I see. . . ." Her gaze turned upward, toward the open music room window. In doing so, she seemed a perfect intruder. Her index finger was held demurely to her lip. "Well, I guess I can't say I wouldn't feel the same way if I were you, if the person I trusted most did that to me."

Head still bowed, he glanced up.

"You must feel betrayed. And you'd be justified, you know."

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean," Trowa said.

"You don't have to be so coy," she said. Her manner was falsely intimate; she was no more interested in him than she would be a snail crossing her path.

But she sold the illusion of interest—and sympathy, and pity—with everything she had. Trowa had to wonder if it fooled anyone. "So many of the boys here get caught in that trap at one time or another," she said. "How could you have known? Was it she who told you? Or did Quatre confess it to you himself?"

"Confess what?"

"His feelings for Himemiya, of course."

Trowa blinked. She thinks Quatre and I are both after that girl?

He began to tell her she had it wrong, Himemiya had nothing to do with it.

But something inside stopped him. The truth was none of her business; only that of the two it concerned. Merely her presence here disrupted the fragile tether woven by the waves of music that reached his ears, corrupting their sincerity somehow with her presumptuousness.

Still, Trowa remembered his own short-lived jealousy at seeing the two of them together, Quatre and Himemiya, and how foolish he had felt after meeting that girl properly to think there could have been anything remotely serious between them. Who was this girl to suddenly bring that up?

"Trust me," he said. Two could play this game, and he flashed a charming and equally insincere smile. "You wouldn't understand." He made a point of returning to his studies.

"He refused to fight for her, you know."

Trowa started. Somehow he knew whom she meant before she could elaborate.

"The Rose Bride. Quatre had the right, but he gave it up. See? It's a sign he already cares too much. He's hopeless, that boy. I thought at least you would want to know, seeing as how you used to be such good friends. If you can't put an end to his delusions, who can?"

The Rose Bride. . . . Just the mention of that name made Trowa burn with curiosity. Somehow he kept silent, and forced his eyes not to stray from the page.

"If you don't believe me," she said, and held something out to him, slipping it into Trowa's field of vision, "take this."

It was a small card, a little wrinkled. Beyond it, her fair, adolescent thighs disappeared under her short skirt. Reluctantly, Trowa took what she offered him. "An invitation?" he asked as he read the contents. An invitation to duel. . . .

"Mm-hm. You have the ring with the rose seal. I won't ask how you got it, but that makes you eligible."

He turned the card over and over again, hardly registering the rose seal as the ominous thing he knew it in the back of his mind to be. "This is for me?" His own voice sounded distant to his ears, as if out of a fog.

"Well, it was Quatre's—"

"What?"

"But he didn't want it." She sighed heavily. "So he gave it back to my brother."

For a moment Trowa could only stare up at her while this new information fell into place. Quatre had been invited to duel. He had been meant to duel. But he had rejected his duty. And now there was a chance that he, Trowa, could take his place—his undesired place. The irony was perfect; and he understood that what this girl was offering him, though she was careful not to say it aloud, was a chance to take his revenge.

But whether she saw it as being Trowa's right or whether it was for her own sake that she approached him was not so clear. How could he distinguish the two?

Rather, what did it matter?

Trowa turned toward the rhododendrons. "He should have torn it up."

Had only a week passed since all this trouble began? It seemed like a year. And the last year like a week.

I must have been living in a dream, Quatre thought; I must have been walking around with my eyes to the ground and the only way I ever had of knowing it was to have someone knock me down so I could see the sky. To finally see it, itself, not just some reflection in a pool. That's what it feels like to be awake—that's what it feels like to be sincere with myself for the first time since I can remember. . . .

The pure blue of the summer sky stood out clear through the frames of the windows. He saw it in his mind. His heart, even now so full of painful memories, began to feel that light despite them. The bow across his violin, like a jet across that blue, pointed out a direction.

At last the song's close drew near as the tempo slowed and the notes drew out, ascending that invisible spiral staircase in the air where their conclusion waited. And at last he was able to reach it, that shining thing that had drifted so far up out of his grasp. The violin's voice climbed higher and higher, to an exhausted, breathy note that trembled as it first came off the strings, but somehow found the strength to grow bit by tiny bit, and finish contented.

It was a long moment after the last vibrations had died away before Quatre lowered the instrument, and yet another before anyone spoke. Ten minutes had passed since he started playing. For those ten minutes he had felt like the only person in the room. Yet it was grounding when he opened his eyes to know the person he had meant the piece for, the one person who would have read his meaning from it, was not and had never been here with him to hear it.

Still, there was a smile on his lips, full of so much the music still left unsaid that it was impossible for Juri to respond with the sarcasm she was used to using with him, knowing Quatre had, in some way, shared something deeply personal, if inexplicable, with her and Miki. It felt to both something like voyeurism.

"I'm sorry," Quatre said. "That's all I really wanted to say."

"For what?" Juri breathed.

"For everything!"

It came out in a bark of a laugh. But if there was anything funny in this, it was only how foolish he had been. Setting the instrument down gently, Quatre said: "But I can't leave it at that, can I? I guess the reason I asked you here wasn't just to hear me play. It doesn't seem right, given how we've treated each other over the last year. Speaking ill behind one another's backs, being sarcastic to each other's faces. . . . You probably suspect me of having some other motive."

Miki opened his mouth to say that had all been in friendly competition on the strip, but thought better of it. He turned his gaze toward the rhododendrons below the window instead, and the empty pathway that ran beside the building. The seconds continued to change over on his digital stopwatch.

"I came here to ask you if you would take my place tonight, in the duel," Quatre said to Juri. "You were the only one I could think of who doesn't seem afraid of the whole idea of dueling, in whatever strange context it exists in this school. You're the only one who doesn't treat it like a game—therefore, the only one I felt I could trust. But I knew it was too much to ask you to do this for me."

He smiled uncertainly.

"I wanted you to do it for you. I wanted you to take this opportunity to win like I can tell you want to do. You still carry it in you, don't you, that precious thing? If you won, it would be all yours, and then you might be able to find happiness again—wouldn't you?"

"Perhaps. . . ." Inexplicably terrified, Juri hesitated. She wanted to grab the locket that rested against her breastbone, but stopped herself in time. "But—"

"But I changed my mind."

She looked up.

"This is my duel," Quatre said. "It was given to me, for me to fight. I can't just ignore it and expect it to go away, or resolve itself without my participation. Even if I don't want it. I was so selfish, to think I was so special I could just pass my burden on to someone else. But I was afraid of what might happen if I won."

He brushed his fingers absently over the worn brass latches on the violin case. "If I were to win, if I were to gain the Rose Bride, it would be all they would need to chain me to this institution, with its promises and its dream—a dream it's taken me this long to realize I'm already trapped in. If I won, perhaps I might never wake up from it. And I want to wake up. I want to live in the real world, even if it is more painful. At least it's genuine. That's all I care about.

"Which is why I will go, but I'll lose. One way or another. Even if I have to tear the rose from my own chest, I'll lose, but at least I'll have gone up there. At least I'll have done something. It's my responsibility. I can't run away from it anymore. I owe him that much."

"'Him' . . .?" Miki asked the world outside the window.

"Up until now I thought I could solve everything by running away, and in doing that I was worse than I ever accused anyone else of being. How could I reasonably think I could solve anything by doing nothing? Only through action can a person hope to resolve anything, but whether that means the end for my own dream . . ."

Quatre shrugged a sigh. "I don't know. I suppose that's out of my hands now. I've wasted every opportunity that's been given me, always reassuring myself with the lie that there'll be another chance, somewhere down the line, and in the meantime I've been too blind or too arrogant to realize I didn't deserve one. If it's too late for me to be forgiven now, I'll just have to accept that as my fate and learn to go on living like everyone else."

The resignation that saturated Quatre's poise may have been related to the prospect of the duel, even if his words were clearly not. What was clear to the other two was that they were meant for someone else.

"At least," he said aloud to himself, "at least then I'll know for certain if I ever had that chance."

The watch clicked and the counter stopped. A surprised look came over Miki's features.

"Why are you telling us this?" said Juri.

Quatre looked up, momentarily startled, as though he had forgotten whom he was with and what he was doing. His brows furrowed. "I don't know," he said, shaking his head to himself.

He was silent for a long moment, until a smile broader than those shy ones that preceded it came onto his lips.

"I'm sorry," he said as he packed his violin away. His motions had a new energy to them, a determination, that struck them as so different from his mood just a few seconds before. "I have to go. There's something I have to do before."

The Duelists' Field.

That was where the girl had told Trowa to go. Sitting alone out past the track and sports fields, a mass of titan cedar trees grown thick around some sort of hill or large rock that formed its heart. At least, that was what he guessed it to be from the shape. Something that loomed so large and obvious over the far end of campus—what was it that kept students away from its shade during such a hot week?

The path leading in was deserted of all life. Trowa felt like an intruder himself. Somewhere inside birds were chirping, ordinary birds; but in the stillness of this time of day and the solitude of the wood, their sounds seemed alien, like something out of Earth's prehistoric past. The harsh angle of the evening sun created a scene in chiaroscuro among those few outermost branches it could reach.

There was just enough light coming through to guess the hour. Quatre's invitation said to meet his opponent at eight; Trowa was early with plenty of time to spare. But it never hurt to be prepared.

Not far in, he arrived at the gate. Even with forewarning, he had not known what to expect. Rectangular pools of water lined the path, the concrete around them covered sporadically with patches of moss. The gate itself was the same whitewashed stone of the school, grown darker with age and rain and years in the shade. The single handle emerged from a carved-out circle, from which the doors seemed to ripple outward. Above them, shielding the entrance with its wings, was a stone bird. One would have hesitated to call it a statue glancing at it, but he might not have known why right away.

One might have found it imposing. It was precisely for that reason that Trowa was drawn to it. His only hesitation, the knowledge that once he opened that door he would not be able to take back anything that happened inside. Automatically he put his right hand on the handle. He could feel the latch as the handle budged. But the door stayed put.

"Naturally, we can't just have anyone stumbling across our school's big secret," the blonde girl had said, "can we? You'll come to a gate with a single handle. It'll most likely be locked—"

"How do I get in, then?"

She grinned at his ignorance. It was a condescending look, but he didn't mind it.

"You use the ring you were given, of course. The Rose Seal. What did you think it was for?"

He switched hands. Somehow, it felt more comfortable this way, as if his fingers were slipping into grooves made by hundreds of like-minded hands over centuries. Immediately he felt something cool like water hit the ring on his finger. A laser? The latch gave and, curious, he bent his head to look, but the door was already changing as he did so.

Gears and pumps were moving inside; he could hear the machinery's rumbling inside the thick walls. Water cycled though, pouring down from the open mouths of spigots into the pools lining the path. Stone ground against stone as the bird dissolved into formless pieces of a puzzle, slowly reshaping into something else. He waited for the process to finish, unable to follow the shifting pieces. Whoever had constructed this entry had surely had it in mind to disorient the duelists who came here. He would not allow himself to fall for that trick. It was only a machine, after all.

When the machine at last stopped, and each piece locked into place with a final shunk, the end product was an open gate crowned with a rose, its stone petals unfolding upwards. It was an ugly, incongruous sight, this rendition of such a light and delicate thing in stone, as if someone had attempted to replicate a dragonfly's wings with 2x4's and plywood.

The same could not be said, however, for the spiral staircase that seemed to materialize out of the darkness inside. The wide white stairs, each one perfectly proportioned and immaculate of chips or moss, could even be called seductive. Like a strange fan it unfolded and curled around its center post—like filaments curling around a pale backbone, the fossilized remainders of the shell of some rooted, coiled sea animal, some crinoidal, gastropodal creature that had gone unknown on the Earth for hundreds of millions of years.

And it ended somewhere far above his head, high up in the forest's canopy. Where or how it ended, no one would be able to tell from the ground. It intrigued Trowa nonetheless. And he proceeded driven in equal parts by duty and curiosity: to see what lay beyond those steps that disappeared into the darkness above—to discover what it was everyone was so adamant this school was hiding.

He stepped onto the first stone. The bottom of his shoe made a dull sound on the step, as though the sound had been sucked up by the heavy air immediately as it was born.

Despite that, the next step came naturally, without hesitation.

•

The phone on the other end rang three times, then a click.

Trowa held his breath. He was sure of the time, yet he still held doubts, fears. That he might be confronted with his betrayal. That it might be him on the other side. . . .

"Winner residence."

It was a female voice. Irea, he guessed. "Is Quatre there?"

He could hear her sudden smile when she recognized his voice. "Hello, Trowa! No, I'm so sorry, you missed him. Father and I just got back from the airport."

"Oh." He was flooded with relief, and remorse.

"So, do you mind my asking what happened? We missed you the other day. Quatre was so disappointed you didn't make it to the farewell party."

Trowa closed his eyes. He leaned his forehead against the cold wall. "I couldn't get a ride." That at least was partly true. He hadn't actually asked his guardian for one. Even if he had, Mr. Bloom's decisions always depended on his current mood concerning Trowa: mostly, whether or not he wanted to acknowledge his existence. The whole day had been spent pacing by that man's office, watching the back of the head that looked too much like his own bend over the antique walnut desk. Watching the hours go by on the clock on the mantle. Avoiding Cathrine's questioning him: Wasn't there somewhere he was planning on going today?

"That's too bad. I wish you would have called me. I would have picked you up."

"I didn't think of that," he lied. A guilty man thinks of everything.

A long awkward moment of silence hung on the line. Then Trowa said, "Well . . . when you talk to Quatre, tell him I'm sorry I couldn't make it?"

"Of course." The ensuing pause was agonizing. She didn't believe him either. "Well . . . take care."

Defiance drove him on. It increased exponentially with every step, filling him with a sense of determination and righteousness that he had not been able to heed sufficiently in the past. A superstitious person might have dubbed it the beckoning of destiny, so absolute no one could resist its pull.

However, no external force was so absolute, so overpowering as that which existed inside. Destiny, fortune, chance—whatever one wished to call it, it played second to action. Too long had he straddled the fence that ostensibly separated love from hate, even as they bled unstoppably into each other on the ground below. Too long had he let his indecisiveness have hold of his self.

But not anymore.

Sors immanus et inanis, rota tu volubilis. . . .

The words returned to him suddenly with the mechanical turning of the path. The steady persistence of a ball clock slowly building up to twelve.

Fate: monstrous and empty, you turning wheel, you are malevolent—well-being is in vain and turns to nothing. . . .

One way or another, it had to be put to rest, this thing that he and Quatre had killed together. The Rose Bride was the answer. Quatre refused to fight for it. But Trowa's blonde page of swords was wrong: The fighting, not the prize itself but the possibility that he would either win or lose with finality, that was what held Quatre back. That was what he was afraid of, what he had always been afraid of.

The same fear existed within Trowa now; he could no longer deny it. It made his heartbeat quicken in his ears. But it was the same thing that kept him moving upward.

Toward judgment.

They said at the dorms that they had not seen Triton since morning. Likewise, no one had had him as an opponent at fencing practice, and Dorothy, ever-observant, confirmed he had not entered the gym.

As bouts went on around him, Quatre could not help the feeling of helplessness that sat at the bottom of his stomach: Everyone looked alike in those white jackets and blank masks. The high school boys who played frisbee on the lawn or sat in the evening shadows talking and laughing together were indistinguishable from one another, identical green-blue phantoms who all looked like Trowa out of the corner of his eye.

Until, of course, upon closer scrutiny, they proved not to look like him at all.

Keep moving. . . .

Quatre checked every table, every aisle of books in the library, jogged between abandoned classrooms to no avail. The echo of his polished shoes on the hallways' polished floors was a lonely sound. But he could not let it discourage him. He concentrated on the sound of his breathing instead, a constant rhythm of exhalation. There were only so many places to go. He was too close to acknowledge defeat. He would not, could not give up now.

He turned a corner, not noticing as someone called his name, and nearly ran into Juri.

He startled her. "Quatre," she said, "what are you still doing here? Shouldn't you be on your way—"

"I know I'm running out of time," he said while fighting to catch his breath, "but there's something I have to do first. By any chance, have you seen him?"

"Seen who?"

"Trowa. Triton." He shook his head. "My friend."

"You won't find him here," said a new voice.

They looked up to see Nanami coming down the hall toward them, a triumphant smile firmly in place on her lips. It was a look that sparked dread in Quatre.

"What do you mean?"

Skidding to a stop at the apartment complex, Trowa kicked the foot brake down and hopped off the bike. Then dashed up the stairs to the third floor. Except for the echoes of kids playing at the basketball court at the end of the block, the place seemed quite empty for an early summer midday, and it was a gamble when he rapped on one particular door.

But it did open, and a tired and curious Nichol greeted him. "Barton. What are you doing here?"

"I have a favor to ask of you," Trowa said. He must have looked up to something, because the young man's thick eyebrows arched suspiciously. Trowa elaborated: "Teach me everything you know."

Nichol slumped against the door frame. "You've gotta be kidding me—"

"About fencing, of course. I want to beat Quatre."

Now Nichol smiled. That must have been something he never thought he'd hear. "That I can do."

"What?" Quatre and Juri said simultaneously.

"I said, he accepted the terms and agreed to duel in Quatre's place as his second." Nanami tilted her head up in irritation at having to repeat herself. "He's probably on his way to the dueling field as we speak."

"What did you say to him?" Quatre asked.

She shrugged innocently. "Nothing but the facts."

"That's a riot," said Juri, forcing a bitter laugh.

"Why should I lie to that guy?" Nanami asked her. "I didn't even have to sell the idea or anything. He wanted to do it."

"But that wasn't your place. Nanami, you don't know the situation!"

"I don't know why you're so upset!" the girl insisted. "You ought to thank me for what I've done! Quatre was in a predicament, he put the school in a predicament with his refusal, and now I've solved it for him. What more is there to know?"

"But he was going to duel!"

Juri grabbed her arm, but Nanami shook it off, her eyes flashing with surprise and indignation that someone would touch let alone speak to President Touga's little sister that way. "That's not what I heard," she said in her own defense. "I hope you're not suggesting this is my fault. I was only trying to help. Quatre's the one who was on the fence the whole time! He missed his chance! Someone had to step up and do what was necessary."

"You didn't do it for him," Juri said, but her accusation mattered little.

Quatre had already turned and left them at a sprint. There was nothing more he needed to hear, no time to argue and deny further what was already happening. Swinging into the stairwell, he took the steps two at a time. Either luck or sheer will kept him from tripping. But if he didn't hurry, if he couldn't make it in time—

No. He shook his head. There could be no "if." He had to make it in time.

"You'd be surprised how much you can learn about a person by their behavior on the strip," Nichol told him, parrying his attack effortlessly. Trowa had heard it so many times it was past the point of irritation; it became a mantra. Each point as staccato as the beating of their blades. "Their personalities, their strengths. Their doubts. Like any language, it's the subtle variations in its usage, word choice, pronunciation that give someone away."

Confidence without arrogance, authority, and a grudging patience that had learned to coexist with frustration—that's what Nichol's calculated moves had to say about him. He would not let emotion drag him down, instead focusing the passion of the sport to become the force behind his thrusts. It was something to emulate.

Nichol's character showed through the surface of his performance like a bruise through the skin as he replicated Quatre's moves. Lunge to sixte, parry, counterattack. "Imagine I'm Winner," Nichol said, as though he needed to.

That was easier said than done. "But you're far better than he is."

Behind his mask, Nichol smirked. "Then what's the problem?"

He went to deceive Trowa, planning to dip his blade under Trowa's when the parry came and score a touch where there would be no opposition. Not quite as subtle as Quatre—and on reflection, purposefully so—but Trowa caught the feint. His parry was hesitant, far from ideal, but enough for the button of Nichol's weapon to land just wide of the target, and a touch.

Letting out a breath of relief, Trowa's counter parry was more confident. "I saw it coming," he said aloud. The set-up of the line he only recognized now that it was made obvious to him.

"Good," said Nichol, "but don't get sloppy yet." Even as he said so, he scored a touch to Trowa's hip. "You may have survived the feint, but don't forget you're still in the game."

"Right," Trowa said between breaths. Behind the mesh of the mask he glowed, knowing victory was possible.

They retired to the bleachers, where Une watched and Trowa's friends cheered him as they waited for some word as to whether he was abandoning them that summer.

Still student body president in mind though she had graduated the month before, Une duly handed him the student exchange information he had requested. She only now suspected, if Trowa read her straying glances correctly, that he may have had some ulterior motive for asking her to meet him here. She and Nichol quickly established that they had both made no plans for after.

It was harder to stay the suspicions of his friends, however, that were roused by that small pile of booklets and brochures. "Oh. It's just scholarship information," was what Trowa told them, holding it closer to his body. It wasn't much of a stretch.

Duo and Wufei looked at him with surprise. "What? You're thinking about that already?" said the latter.

"We're only going into high school."

"It's never too soon to start planning ahead."

"This from the guy who has an A in every subject," Duo teased.

"This school doesn't provide much of a challenge," Trowa said more to himself than either of them. And he thought, not anymore.

The villain, the opposer, King of Cats—that was the role he had been only too content to play as long as he assured himself that at least he was no traitor who abandoned his truest friends.

But he was that too.

The column's girth suddenly expanded, as did the circumference of the stairs as Trowa began to circle the base of the platform. Treading on purposefully through its shadow, his gaze focused on those shallow steps that continued to rise endlessly above him.

The dream.

He knew now that what Quatre had tried to explain to him was true in some sense. It was true here, in the duelists' field. Somewhere beyond the borders of this school there was a world that truly existed, a world Trowa had abandoned without quite knowing what he was doing. Restricted it to his memory, buried its inhabitants under cobblestones and whitewashed plaster and rose murals. Chose to live among the phantoms who had done the same to him. The resentment he had nurtured for Quatre all through this past year now set itself against him.

Fate is against me, in health and virtue, driven on and weighed down, always enslaved. . . .

I will become everything I hate, Trowa vowed as the immaculate blue of the sky came into view through the wrought iron tympanum of a crumbling stone archway. I will become everything he hates. To revolutionize this world.

It's no less than what we deserve. It's the only way this will end.

So at this hour, without delay, pluck the vibrating strings—

For Fate strikes down the strong man. . . .

At last he reached the top of the stairs.

Chapter notes: The Romeo and Juliet quotes can be found in Act III Scene Five, lines 51-64.

"Sors immanis . . ./Fate—monstrous . . .": from the opening/closing of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, "O fortuna" (the piece that inspired "Absolute Destiny Apocalypse").

The piece I originally had in mind for Quatre's solo is Max Bruch's Adagio appassionato for violin and orchestra, Opus 57. Debussy always struck me as Quatre's piano style; I think his contemporary Bruch fills the violin half nicely.