Hollow Regrets

by Diamroyal

What's the line between innocents and soldiers? No pairings. Complete. In Disdain of Mortals arc part 1 of 6.

2. Chapter Two

Hollow Regrets—Ch. II

——————————————————————————

The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must—never for sport.

From the notebooks of Lazarus Long, care of Robert A. Heinlein

Wufei had the third watch, he was sitting on "his" cot, reading something in Chinese, when Quatre, the last one to wake up, blinked the last remnants of sleep from his eyes. When the blond stood up, the other boys stopped what they were doing to put the bunks back into order. Then Heero went back to his sit-ups, Trowa was playing with a pack of cards he must have had somewhere, Wufei back to his book. Duo, he hadn't seen yet, perhaps he was using the head. But Quatre, needing to use it, found the compartment empty, no Duo. As he came back out, already turned to go back to the others, he was surprised to hear Duo's voice from behind him, in the tractor.

"...you from?" Quatre envied Duo's honest curiosity. He was like a cat, always finding out everything about anything. He did it with people, machines and places.

An unintelligible rumble indicated to Quatre that Duo's current information quarry was Worser. He shook his head. Okay, so maybe it isn't always honest curiosity. With his head still shaking, he moved back to the others.

"So where're you from?" Sitting sideways in the co-pilot's seat, Duo's animated eyes were centered on Worser, who was driving.

"Sheesh, kid, give it a break. D'you ever stop?" The officer's voice growing rougher with exasperation.

"Nope, just ask Hy. So, where're ya' from?" Putting on a smashing grin, Duo re-folded his cramping legs in the seat.

Shooting the teen a look of annoyance, Worser gave into the inevitable. "This city to the east of here, used ta' be called Detroit," he glanced at the kid. "My turn: how come no one's made you cut that thing off?"

Duo didn't need any true reference to tell him what the officer was talking about. He pulled his braid over his shoulder to look at it. The gold-shot brown twisted, and with the bright sun shining in the cab, it shined so bright it could almost be called sparkling. He ran his hands over it once or twice, then looked up at the 'tenant. "I never gave 'em the chance." His voice had lost its impish spirit, the tone swallowed whole by his hands running gently down the curves of his braid.

"Hmph. What kind of answer's that?"

"A true one. Don't ya' know, I never lie." This time the grin was cheeky, full of vinegar. "How'd you end up in OZ?"

They were just cresting a hill, so Worser took the opportunity to ignore Duo for a minute, while he down-shifted. "It seemed the thing to do at the time."

"Ha! And you asked me what a vague answer was!" A quick glance got thrown at the boy as he began a small tirade. "Don't you know that anything you do seems the right thing at the time? I mean, if it wasn't, you wouldn't have done it, right?"

Worser frowned at the logic a little, but had to concede the boy's point with a nod. "Okay, so it's not an answer, but it's the absolute truth, kid. It was the best option at the time."

"What, you wouldn't choose the same thing now?" Another shift in the seat, the braid coming forward to trail down in the air, like a cat toy just waiting to happen.

"No, not today, not under these circumstances." More concentration on the road.

"Are you saying that I didn't do something very smart? That I should have avoided OZ rather than join it?" There was a note of something, dimly like arrogance in the boy's voice. Of course Duo didn't mean it, but let the man wonder at it, think he'd found a button, that childish arrogance, the childish belief that you know everything worth knowing, forget about anything else.

"No. I don't know why you did join." He glanced over, the bushes that passed as eyebrows raised in his creased face. "Which is?"

"Oh, I was ordered to." There was a slight frown that crossed the boy's face for a split second, but Duo didn't think the man had seen it before his face was cleared of it. He didn't like this mission, didn't like it at all.

"Ordered?" Worser thought about that for a second, then nodded in understanding. "Families can be like that."

Duo frowned again as a thought passed through his mind—that had sounded like a loaded statement. And he thought of a way to answer without lying. But if you thought about it, G and the sweepers were the closest thing he had to family, so he didn't have a problem. "Yeah, I suppose you could say that."

They sat in silence awhile as the mountains turned around them, and they went farther north. Then Duo shook his head like he was washing away the bad thoughts, and flashed a grin at the man driving.

"I should get back to the others. They aren't getting into enough trouble with me gone." His young body hopped up from the chair and disappeared down the "hallway" to the trailer before Worser could even have thought to respond.

Duo approached the group of boys separated from the others, as if the real trainees could sense the differences, with his usual grin plastered in place. He snagged the edge of a cot in between all of them, sort of equidistant, and talked low, barely loud enough for any of them to hear him.

"Yeah, he's interested alright, I just don't think he's goin' in the right direction." He frowned as he thought back over their short conversation. "He seems to be stressing the family point." That raised eyebrows.

"I can't imagine what he must be thinking about 'families'. I mean, around ninety-five percent of us in the corps are from the same background. There isn't much in the way of differences." Quatre's unconsciously cultured voice wouldn't be giving them away, that was for sure.

"Well, think about it. I wouldn't put it past OZ to mess around with everyone's heads." Trowa's sharp comment made perfect sense to all the boys. Who knew what Worser could be expecting? All of them could see several angles where OZ might want to exploit the power they wielded to find out more information. OZ had been using their superior information network from the very start. Just because they had officially "come out" didn't mean that they were going to stop it all now.

Duo broke up the stiltedly quiet discussion. "Well, what's there to do? And no more chess games."

It didn't take a genius to know he meant more than just chess. No games where they risked revealing too much about themselves. Trowa showed his pack of cards to Duo, who exclaimed over the oddness of them. They weren't normal playing cards, but simply stiff card-stock with no plastic veneer, woodcut illustrations, and captions on all of them, under the pictures.

Trowa called them Tarot cards—they were actually Cathy's—who used them to tell fortunes, not play games. But they were fine with Duo, because you could still use them to play like normal cards, you just had to pull about twenty-five of them out first. Heero examined the discarded ones as Trowa and Duo played mindless games of almost pure chance, like War and double solitaire.

Quatre, interested really for a lack of anything else to do, looked at the cards with Heero. As he went over each card, his mind hit on the high points of the different pictures, and he wondered what each one stood for. Wufei, pulled from his book by Quatre's musings, had apparently studied the ideas behind the cards a little bit when he was younger, in a class for the Western superstitions and cultish tendencies in his old life as a student. He remembered just enough to explain some of the meanings, but not very many, only the ones that had stuck in his mind.

"No, Death, in this case, doesn't mean Death, or dying." That caught Duo, who looked up from the double war he was engaged in. "It's more like a card for change, transformation, or something that might affect your entire life. If you want a card more representative of disaster or death, the Tower card is better. That one is sort of for catastrophe—a complete overturn, forcing a new start." Heero held another one up, called the Chariot. It was a man, standing in the back of a covered "chariot", his hands holding invisible reins to a pair of sphinxes, who were pulling him. "That one—" Wufei's forehead creased as he thought. It had been a long time since he'd studied the cards, and then, it had only been briefly. Eventually he had to shake his head. "I don't remember."

Trowa filled it in for him. "That one represents confinement, and the inner self, and the conquest of illusion, more the illusions you give yourself than anything else." Heero nodded, minutely examining the entire surface, looking at the different colors, the expression on each of the five faces: the two sphinx, the man in armor, and the two crescent moons on his shoulders, then the walls in the background, and the winged symbol on the front of the chariot.

Quatre, sitting there with Wufei and Heero, while the other two played, caught a faint smell, something that didn't fit with the odors already swirling around him, and unobtrusively began to sniff, trying to locate where it was coming from. It took him nearly five minutes of concentrating, and moving around in a rather off-hand manner to disguise what he was doing, before he thought to smell the cards he was holding.

It was coming from them. So what was it? It was acrid, and Quatre's nose, that sense organ that best triggers memory, placed it definitively from somewhere, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out why it was so familiar.

He didn't push it, knowing that he, or his subconscious mind, would work it over and figure it out in the end, and that end would only come sooner if he wasn't pushing it, so he dropped it, and went back to the pictures, wondering about the different visual elements.

They passed the rest of the day finding various things to do. Wufei ended up having several books, two of which were not in Chinese, so the rest of them could read them, though the thought crossed Heero's mind that perhaps the only reason some weren't reading them was because they didn't want to give knowledge away. He'd seen Duo glance over the titles to the ones in Chinese with the same interest he'd paid to the ones in Standard. Heero also looked the entire set over, but only saw various treaties on war, all of which he'd read during training. He didn't need to read them again.

It took nearly half an hour, but everyone settled down again. Wufei, Quatre and Duo each were reading, Trowa was playing with his cards still, and Heero, like the trained soldier he was, took the opportunity to sleep.

They stopped once again for fuel, this time around mid-day as the truck ran low. None of the passengers were allowed out or into the tractor as the truck chugged fuel into its large tank. So they ignored the interruption of their dreary activities, and continued on with their assorted diversions.

This was basically how they passed the entire day, each overcoming the boredom that threatened to overwhelm. But it might be noted that each of the five pilots would, at some point, slip into a daze of thought, maybe staring off into space, maybe lying down on the bunks, and, though they would close their eyes, the others would catch the flicker of their eyes as they peeked at the world; they would note the very lack of motion, or the slightest hitch in the rhythmic rise and fall of their chests, an action so subtle that even they would have difficulties believing it.

As the clock ticked towards night, they again prepared for sleep, using the ever gaining cold to rearrange the bunks. Quatre got first watch, and as he lay back, arms behind his head, his eyes bright in the darkness, the mystery of the smell hit him. He knew where he'd smelled it, exactly when he had come across it before.

So, almost two-and-a-half hours into his watch, nearly midnight, he crept off his cot, and, using all the skills of stealth he could muster—and even if he were not the best among the pilots, surely the least among their number could be counted among the greatest anywhere else—he went to Trowa's side in the near-black. Knowing better than to shake him awake, or to raise his voice at all, his pale hand reached for the sleeping boy's where it lay on top of the blankets. Carefully, and very lightly, the gentlest of touches, he swept his fingers over the palm, using only his pads.

"Tristan." His whisper was just a hint of sound as he knelt by the cot. When the boy did react, and woke up, it was immediately apparent, his hand shooting up to grip Quatre's forearm and his other hand grasping something hidden under the woolen blankets. His piercing green eyes, no more than dark blobs, focused after the barest moment of confusion on "Quinn's" composed face as, in spite of the darkness, the blonde's halo of hair nearly glowed above him. When he recognized him, his tensed body relaxed, the hand holding on not letting go, but the harsh grip loosening.

"Quinn." A nod from 04. A flash of dark eyes as Trowa checked the extents of the trailer, noting the dark shapes of the other pilots, the only thing revealing where they were as they slept on, and the snores of various other occupants to further set them apart. "It's not my watch." There was an implied question hidden in the statement. Quatre shook his head, just a little, and it was small in the night.

"No. I had a question." Trowa looked at him, waiting patiently. "How'd you do the cards? And how do we use them?" It got a startled widening of Trowa's eyes, both of which were revealed as he lay sideways on the cot. The blond could see him registering the words, and the implication behind them. A slight smile glanced across the taller boy's face as he felt the barest glimmer of satisfaction that someone—one of his companions, and hopefully for the future, one of his team—had noticed.

"Solvent. To use them..." He focused in hard on Quatre's face, "to use them, you just do. Set them with—" he cut off, not wanting to say too much, though he knew if anyone had overheard what had been said so far, they could figure it out. Quatre got it, nodding his head "yes" as little as he had shook it "no" a minute ago.

"Okay. Thanks." He gave a smile, easily visible despite the dark, and Trowa thought he might also have winked before the blond head moved off through the shadows on silent feet.

Sleep was slow to come for Trowa, but deep down, past his training, he welcomed the time to think, interrupted only by the breath as it left his new companions. His green eyes, shadowed from discovery in the pitch-blackness of the trailer, settled on Quatre, where his slight breathing, only barely off rhythm, gave away his position. These pilots, all of them, they struck a chord deep within the nameless boy's chest—as if, were he to ever find his name, whatever it may be, these companions would tell him that he never really needed it, not with them.

The thought was a disturbing one, but Trowa had never shied away from discomfort, and he pulled the thought, and the emotions, so very controlled where they sat like un-needed piles of gold in his heart, closer in his mind, to dissect, and understand.

Unmoving, there raged a quiet argument in his head, full of only half-understood things, hopes and dreams that, should they have crossed someone else's face, he could have understood, and, more importantly, used them, but in himself, they only brought up questions and partially seen emotions that gave him small flashes of insight, un-known to him before. He could feel a frown trying to take over his face, and he fought it, winning, and keeping his face impassive, even if no one could have seen it.

They both sat awake, the watcher and the one confused, but when Quatre got back up to give the watch over to Heero, and then returned to his cot to sleep, still Trowa stayed awake, listening to the even breathing of the others around him He noted that while there had been a very distinct difference—at least, to him—in Quatre's breathing while awake and sleeping, Heero's was indiscernible from what it had been before. His own, he knew, rarely changed at all. It was part of his mask, and his mask was only flawed to those who could see as well as himself.

As the time wore on, he let his thoughts drift back into their orderly channels, and after he did that, it didn't take very long for his mind to settle into a calm lull, and when it did, he fell into a deep sleep, where his subconscious, which didn't really have any say in the deductive logic of his waking mind, told him strange things, things that he would puzzle at, as much as he had the conscience thoughts the night before, when he woke to remember whatever he'd dreamt, and then, failing in his self-examination, he would forget them, and live the life under his feet.

Dawn, or what passed for it, came over them all: Worser, running through the trailer with a slab of metal and a wrench, drumming a smart tattoo across the already pitted surface of the scrap.

"Rise and shine, ladies." The pilots, coming awake only to sit straight up in their bunks, hands clenched on hidden weapons, watched from the end of the trailer, where they'd gathered themselves, as Worser did his performance.

He did know how to drum, and Reveille has never had a more enthusiastic round. "Come on, boys, today I get ride ya', so I wan' ya' nice and tired by the time we get in, meanin' ya' hafta' get up an' righta' 'bout NOW." The last word was a roar, making it completely impossible for any who had, by some miraculous occurrence, been able to ignore the drumming to stay asleep. Groans issued forth from different areas, and not all of them could be stated as coming from the trainees as the soldiers clustered at the front end were also forced to wakefulness.

One bold soldier, who the pilots had noted before because of his familiarity with the Lieutenant, gave forth a great stream of colorful words. Quatre watched in open-mouthed awe, Duo grinned shamelessly, Heero and Trowa ignored it, as they got up and began to move around, and Wufei just gave an inelegant snort, full of contempt, the closest response to any of the other trainees, who used their upbringing to try to give the impression that the soldier was merely a bug, and not even worth their contempt. The soldier wasn't bothered, and gave a light grin, more awake than he had been before his swear-word lesson, when Worser tucked his implements of audile torture under one arm and burst into applause. Eventually the Lieutenant was satisfied that everyone was up, removing himself from the glowering soldiers' presence and returning to the cab.

It was only moments before all the pilots were sitting back where they had before, the bunks re-arranged into their normal order; they sat there, and looked at each other, as if they were waiting for one of them to speak first. All of them were content for a least a few moments more before Quatre, in the interests of fellowship, and a true desire to further their possible comradeship, cleared the silence and his throat as one, the forced noise pulling the others' eyes to him.

"So what should we do today? We still have about nine hours left." Nine hours before they started again. Nine hours before their mission went back into real time, not this slow dragging that always came before action. He wouldn't even call it the calm before a storm, because it wasn't a true calm, not even when it was described like that. It was a sick dread that fell over the world, filling everyone with the same feeling of sick anticipation. Storms could kill, they could maim and destroy. Just like us. He fought against the urge to give a snort of caustic laughter.

"We?" Quatre knew, had to know, that there was not really malice or resentment in Wufei's voice, but he responded to the tone nonetheless.

His voice came out in as close to a snarl as he would ever let it go. "Yes, we. You know why, too." Vague, as it always was, but they understood. They'd been ordered to this. Another snort of disgust attempted to escape. But the short, stunted conversation stopped there. The blond wracked his brain, trying to come up with something that would teach them about each other—and wasn't as boring as sitting through Calculus—again. His mind, in its search, was drawn back to the Corps, holed up somewhere, repairing and polishing, whiling away the time with the festivals and the tempestuous weather that always plagued this time of year. If you were in the equatorial zone, you dealt with hurricanes and tornadoes, or sudden snows and blistering heat. He lost himself to the thoughts of his friends in the Corps, and when he had last seen them, preparing for the harvest festival. That stopped him, and a smile spread across his face. They were all from different cultures. It could work. But how to approach it...ah, that would work. He wiped the smile off his face. Another sarcastic thought crept through his mind when it didn't just disappear. No, that would be too normal. The smile would brighten: happy thought, thinking about something that makes a cheery response. Then the brow furrows, and the eyes pucker, the lips draw into an annoyed frown. Perfect acting, a defense against any eyes, a blind to hide what was really happening, automatic after training, and life.

His voice, when he spoke, was equally perfect, a blend of amusement and annoyance, and jealousy. "Hey, you know what Rashid is doing right this moment, Donald?" And inquiring look, asking whether this was important or not. "He's in the middle of a Harvest Festival." Act as if he were another friend, someone their age. "Dancing, music, food. Everything. And we're stuck in the back of a truck." That got a slight chuckle from the braided youth. He still remembered that one festival, apparently. "And imagine. I could have been there, too." Another chuckle, even though the other pilots weren't really interested. They still watched though, trying to become interested. They all knew it was in their own best interest to at least feign interest. The cover and all.

Quatre had a plan though. He called upon his ingrained manners, which he didn't think would ever leave him, much though he had tried to forget them all, and turned to Heero, sitting next to him on the dreary cot.

"Do you celebrate anything in the fall, Hy?" Just a shake of the head, but Quatre felt the slight flash of discontent and regret. But Heero wasn't guarding his words as he did when he was being himself. He added a word to the silent negative. "No."

Wufei entered into the budding conversation. "My clan does. It's called the Moon Festival." He stopped there, only going on when all the others looked at him, waiting. He was quiet when he started, perhaps for him a sign of hesitancy, though in others it would have been unnoticeable. "During the fall, the moon becomes brighter, because of it's proximity to Earth." They all knew that. Any colony pilot did. "The fifteenth of the eighth lunar month is when the festival is held. Children, grown up and moved away, will visit their parents, because the full moon represents reunion, and families, or couples, will go outside to watch the moon, and the moon fairy that comes out to dance."

Quatre's head tilted at him in inquiry. "Moon fairy?"

Wufei nodded, solemn. "Chang Er. She's trapped on the moon forever, with Wu Kang the woodcutter, and the Jade Rabbit."

"How did she become trapped there?" The blond could hardly be faulted for his curiosity. After all, the other pilots were also listening.

"Her husband, a great hero and tyrant, was once called upon because there were ten suns in the sky, burning all the crops. So he shot down nine of them, returning the world to balance." An elegant shrug punctuated it. "One of the gods gave him the Elixir of Immortality, but Chang Er, knowing that he would forever remain a tyrant, stole it from him, and drank it before he could. It made her float up to the moon, where she remains forever. It is said that she is most beautiful when the moon is so close, when she comes out of the crystal moon palace to dance."

"That's beautiful." There was a sad, somber look on Quatre's face. But there was also a smile, as he thought about whatever he might have been thinking about.

Duo, seeing the melancholy, felt the urge to ask about it. "What's the matter, Quinn?"

"Hm? Oh, just. Well, none of the stories I know are quite so special." A much happier smile replaced his slightly pained one. "Though, the ones I was told are fun, and full of adventure."

"Oh, yeah? Well, tell us one." Was he trying to cheer him up? Or was he genuinely interested? Did it matter?

"Well, okay. Umm." Quatre, in his thinking, pulled his bottom lip in while he thought, his eyes focused down on the wooden floor of the trailer. The other pilots waited, watching him. After a minute, his eyes raised up to them. "Okay. Here's one." He settled back into the cot, sliding down the little bit until he was suspended, cross-legged, in the middle of the dip. "Once, a long, long time ago, there was a sultan, who had thirty children, but only one son." They usually started that way in Quatre's family. "The son, youngest of them all, was spoiled, and had all he could desire, from jewels to servants to great beasts as pets." The others were all watching him, watching his face as he told the story. "One day, when the prince was eighteen years old, the sultan came to him where he was, sitting outside in the great gardens of the palace, eating fruit and taking naps in the bright sunshine." He paused, and was about to start again when a shadow fell over him, someone standing where they blocked the light. Looking up, he saw the rugged features of Worser, looking at him expectantly.

"Well? What did his father want?" His gruff voice had a smile in it, though the expression on his face was invisible from the angle that Quatre was staring up at him.

"Sir?" When in doubt...

"Oh, come on, kid, yer not just gonna stop there, are ya'?" And to further confound the pilots, he casually glanced around and, spotting one of the blanket piles tossed haphazardly about, settled his bulk surprisingly easily onto it, obviously waiting on Quatre to continue, looking at him with raised eyebrows—and quite a bit of raised flesh as well.

Quatre, quickly deducing that he had no choice, cleared his throat nervously and decided to ignore the officer as much as he could. Not much, but enough to allow him to continue. "Well, the sultan went out into the gardens, followed by his retinue, and stopped in front of his son. 'Son,' he said, 'you are in your eighteenth year, and you have yet to venture out into the world.' At this the prince nodded. 'Yes, father, you are right. For my entire life I have stayed within the walls of the palace grounds.'"

Quatre paused for a moment, glancing at the Lieutenant before he went on. "'Well, son, that is going to change. Should you want the throne, you must embark upon a quest.' The prince became startled. He was not an adventurer. 'A quest, father?' The sultan nodded. 'Yes. The prophets have decided upon it. You must journey into the land of the common man, and you must learn humility.'" Another pause, for breath this time.

"The prince, without hesitation, leapt to his feet, and, kneeling down in front of his noble father, proclaimed that he would go on this quest, and would return victorious over it. The sultan, waiting until the prince had raised himself from the ground, told him further that he could not take anyone with him, that he must do it alone. So, though the prince couldn't be anything but unhappy about going by himself, he believed that, as the prince, he could do it, or any other task set to him by his father." Quatre settled down again into his blankets, noticing while he did that the other pilots had done similarly, all "relaxing" into semi-reclining positions, even if Quatre could see their readiness should the need arise. Duo was sprawled across one of the top bunks, leaning over the end of it to see Quatre, with Heero, who had shifted when the story had begun, seated underneath him, leaning against the trailer wall. Wufei was sitting in the lotus position on the floor in between the bunks, and Trowa was leaning up against the wall in the space between the bunk and the "sentry" cot. Worser was in the hallway created by the bunks past the cot Quatre was sitting on. It was an interesting group, to say the least.

"So the very next day, the prince left the walls of the palace, and walked down the great avenue that led from the enormous gates, into the city. He had no companions, nor any money, though, every day, he could go to the gates of the palace, and be fed. That first day, he wandered through the various markets, his clothing as plain as those around him, and watched the people in their daily lives. But he did not learn humility that day, as the sultan clearly saw when he came back to the gates at night fall, so he was not allowed back into the palace, and slept instead under the open stars, in one of the many back alleys of the city." Quatre watched his comrade's faces as he spoke, wondering if they were caught up in the story, finding the hidden meanings within it, or it they were really just dazing as they sat there. He shot a quick look at Worser, as well, but the man's face was, as usual, impossible to read. "The next day was repeated as the day before that, and the boy-prince learned no humility, and did not see any joy in the lives of those he watched. The days drew on, and soon, the prince had been outside the palace walls for nearly one lunar cycle. His appearance had lost much of its charm and grace, and the alleys he slept in failed to help his odor. Despite his lack of progress, he refused to become frustrated, and instead concentrated harder on those he surrounded himself with in the markets. Very rarely, now, did he venture outside of the market area, except to the gate, to eat, or to an alley, to sleep.

"Then, one day, he did just that, and wandered farther into the city, tracing the large roads and the tiny alleys. Near the midday, when the sun became cruel, the prince came across a small well, set into the wall of mud-brick, and he leaned against it, his garments hiding him from the sun as he sipped from the well bucket, now very used to the crude arrangement. He stood there until his legs became quite tired, and then he sank down to the ground beside the well, and stayed there for many minutes. After that indeterminate amount of time, a woman, laundry basket balanced carefully on her head, and a young boy approached the well, their intention easily discerned. Together, mother and child did the wash, and they were very happy while they did, so, when they were finished, and the wet laundry was again loaded up on the woman's head, the prince decided to follow the happy companions. He was not very careful while he followed them, but they were so joyful, they did not notice their extra shadow, and happily continued on.

"They had a small courtyard outside their home, and there, the prince rested his shoulders up against one of the walls, and watched as they hung the clothes and linens and cloths from the many lines, both of them smiling, singing and laughing. All of it puzzled the prince. There they were, constrained by society to do such manual labor, but they were happy with it, and so, he decided to speak to them.

"'Woman, why do you do your chores with such un-concern?' The woman, startled by him, merely stared at him for a minute, before she dutifully lowered her eyes in the face of a man. "Because, sir, this is my life, and I cannot imagine doing anything but giving to myself the gift of joy, and the enjoyment of my life.' The boy-prince stood there, a look of confusion concealing any other thoughts as they crossed his face. Shortly, though, he nodded, and left, only to go back to the well where he had first observed the woman and her son, and sank back down beside the well, to think. This was the first day that he didn't appear at the gates of the palace, and the sultan his father became worried, and began to pace restlessly across the floor of his great throne room. The day slipped soundlessly to evening, with no great disturbances for the prince, and so he stayed where he was, and kept awake the night, only to rise, stiffly, in the light of dawn, to venture forth once more to the palace.

"There, the guards gave out a great cry, and the sultan moved with great haste to his son, but when he got there, his son looked at him in a serious manner, his eyes steady. 'Father,' he said, 'I have not learned humility, as you asked me to, but I did learn something yesterday.' This stopped the sultan, who looked at him, curious. 'And what was that, my son?' "My father, I learned that, no matter what your place in life may be, you yourself are responsible for your own happiness.' And this father smiled at him, a great smile full of joy. 'My son, perhaps you have not learned the lesson I set you, but you have learned a lesson that could be deemed equally important. Come, my son, and break your fast with me.' And so, the son entered the palace gates once more, but from then on, he ventured out again and again, and continued to walk the paths of the common man, observing and learning about the human spirit." Quatre looked around that the boys he was hoping to find as his friends, and smiled, momentarily forgetting the OZ officer seated off to the side of them. "The end."

There was silence for quite some time, as each of his audience members thought about the story, but it was broken by Trowa, who spoke up in his quiet way from where he was seated. "I know a poem, it's nearly a story."

Duo, his head now resting on his arm instead of hanging off of the bunk, tilted his head so he could partially see the quiet boy. "Oh, yeah? Well, tell it then."

None of the others spoke up in agreement, or encouragement, but then, they didn't really need to, Trowa began to speak: "Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché,
Tenait en son bec un fromage.
Maître Renard, par l'odeur alléché,
Lui tint à peu près ce langage:
«Hé ! bonjour, Monsieur du Corbeau.
Que vous êtes joli! que vous me semblez beau!
Sans mentir, si votre ramage
Se rapporte à votre plumage,
Vous êtes le Phénix des hôtes de ces bois.»
A ces mots le Corbeau ne se sent pas de joie;
Et pour montrer sa belle voix,
Il ouvre un large bec, laisse tomber sa proie.
Le Renard s'en saisit, et dit: «Mon bon Monsieur,
Apprenez que tout flatteur
Vit aux dépens de celui qui l'écoute:
Cette leçon vaut bien un fromage, sans doute.»
Le Corbeau, honteux et confus,
Jura, mais un peu tard, qu'on ne l'y prendrait plus." His voice was smooth, somehow conveying the right inflections without really changing the tone. Duo laughed at nearly every line of the poem, a merry sound, and Quatre smiled, recognizing the message in it, and also the actual story, which he had heard in his childhood.

The last two pilots had no real reaction, but then, Quatre wasn't really expecting any, and let it go. It was when Worser cleared his throat, a grating sound, that his presence was even remembered.

"What's that mean, kid? I don't speak French." The pilot's heads all turned towards him, three of them registering surprise, the last two, no visible emotional response whatsoever.

Duo, as Quatre was beginning to see was his wont, broke the slightly strained silence. "I don't know it in Standard." He looked at the other's faces. "Does anyone?"

Trowa shook his head, as did Heero. Wufei, from his position at the very back, simply replied with a "I do not." The blond boy smiled sweetly at the Lieutenant, and began to recite the poem in Standard.

"Master Crow sat on a tree,
Holding a cheese in his beak.
Master Fox was attracted by the odor,
And tried to attract him thus:
"Mister Crow, good day to you.
You are a handsome and good looking bird!
In truth, if your song is as beautiful as your plumage,
You are the Phoenix of this forest."
Hearing these words the Crow felt great joy,
And to demonstrate his beautiful voice,
He opened his mouth wide and let drop his prey.
The Fox seized it and said: "My good Sir,
Know that every flatterer,
Lives at the expense of those who take him seriously:
This is a lesson that is worth a cheese no doubt."
The Crow, embarrassed and confused,
Swore, though somewhat later, that he would never be
tricked thus again." Still smiling, he went on. "It's the retelling of an Aesop's fable by La Fontaine."

Worser nodded. "Thanks, kid."

Quatre just smiled a little more, and turned to the two pilots yet to offer anything. "Well, since it seems it's story time, would either of you care to tell one?"

The braided pilot shook his head, the braid going down in a straight line towards the ground. "Nah, not me. I don't know any good ones." His grin flashed at the blond, but Quatre though he could see the edges of some other expression wanting to cross his face.

He didn't want to push, so instead, he lowered his eyes to the pilot sitting on the bunk below Duo. "What about you, Hy? Do you know any stories?"

Heero was silent for a moment, his arms crossed over his chest, his back resting against the side of the trailer. He spoke in a quiet voice, but there was that note of force in it that Quatre had noticed before. "I know another fable."

Worser, settled down so nicely on his pile of blankets, gave out a short little half-laugh. "Let's hope 'sen Standard, huh, kid?"

The hidden face turned to the Lieutenant. "It is."

"'K then."

There was a short nod, and he then told his short fable. "One day, a wolf met a large, well-fed dog. The dog wore a large, heavy collar around his neck, so the wolf asked, 'Who feeds you, yet makes you wear such a heavy collar?' 'My master,' the dog said. 'I would not be you,' The wolf told the dog, 'not to wear your master's collar, no matter what he fed me. The weight of it would spoil the taste." After he finished, silence settled down once again, until Wufei broke it, even going so far as to open his eyes.

"Where's the moral line?" He looked at the blue-eyed boy, his black eyes nearly accusing.

Heero shrugged, an odd-looking thing against the wall, "That was all I was told."

"Well, does anyone else know it?" The Chinese pilot glanced around, but didn't look up at Duo, where he once again hung over the edge. But he was the one that answered, his voice soft, and sad.

"Half a meal in freedom is better than a full meal in bondage." Again, silence.

They all were content to sit there, but Quatre hadn't completed his mission yet—Duo hadn't told a story. He looked up the short distance to him, and met the other pilot's eyes. "Don't you want to tell one? I mean, surely you know at least one story!"

Duo, wrapped up in his own defenses, could only smile, and not give in to the depressed air like he wanted to. He stared into the sharp eyes of the blond for nearly thirty full seconds, before he nodded, slowly, his smile straining even more. "Yeah, I suppose I do know some."

"Well, then, tell us one then." Quatre swiveled around in his dipping cot to look at his new backup—Worser, who winked at him.

"Okay." He didn't begin immediately, sitting there, perhaps collecting his thoughts as he stared down at the wooden floor. When he did look up, his face wore a bright smile, and his eyes twinkled. "Okay, here goes. This is a story Father told me, it's an old fairy tale, very old, over five hundred years.

"Once there was a poor little girl," Duo's voice was quiet, like his mind was really focused on something other than the story, "walking alone in the streets of the city, nearly bare-footed," he smiled at us, wryly, "she had lost the old slippers of her mother's that she had been wearing dodging two carriages, one she couldn't find, the other was stolen by a boy, who made fun of it's size, saying he could use it as a cradle, it was so large—and without a hat, even though it was horribly cold, and almost dark."

He paused a moment. "So the little girl walked, her feet blue with the cold, trying to sell matches. She had an old apron tied around her waist, and in the pockets were bundles of the matches, as were her hands." Another one of those odd smiles, which Quatre could only think of as being sarcastic. "But no one had bought any all day, and no one had taken pity on her and given her a penny."

"By the time dark came, bringing snow with it, she was a miserable sight to behold, shivering with cold, and terribly hungry. The beautiful snowflakes would fall on her curly blonde hair, but she didn't even see them." As he listened, the cadence of the words became, to his mind, less and less like the Duo he, admittedly, barely knew. They were more formal, without the smoothly sarcastic edge that haunted his normal voice. The farther into the story he got, the more Quatre began to think that he was nearly repeating the story from someone else, as if he had memorized the words, and was spitting them back out, complete with inflection, but surely without the facial expressions, because there were very few people that Quatre had ever seen with that particular expression of sadness, mirth and irony.

"The windows of the great house put large boxes of light onto the snow, and there was the rich smell of roast goose, because it was New-year's eve, and many were celebrating. She huddled down in a deep corner between two houses, one of which projected farther than the other into the square, trying to warm her feet. But that didn't work, and she couldn't withstand the cold, and she couldn't go home, because she had sold no matches, and surely her father would beat her. And it wasn't even that much warmer at home, because there were great holes in the walls, and the roof leaked, and the wind would howl through.

"As she sat there, her hands began to go numb, they were so cold. She thought, and realized that she had her matches—perhaps, if she lit one, it would warm her hands a little, so she pulled out one of her little bundles, and struck it against the wall, watching as it sputtered. It gave off light, like a tiny little candle, and she held her hand over it to absorb the small warmth of it. She was happy, because even the light seemed warm, as if she were sitting by a large iron stove, the feet of it polished brass, with a brass ornament on top. The fire burned, and seemed so beautifully warm that she stretched out her feet, and then, the match went out."

He smiled at us, and this time, there was that edge that had been missing in his voice in the smile, hard and unkind. "The match went out, leaving her with only the half burnt end. But she had more matches. Again, it burst into flame, and where the light fell on the rough brick, it became like a window, and she could see the room beyond it. There was a great table, covered in a table cloth whose bright whiteness rivaled the snow, and on the table cloth was a beautiful dinner service, and a roast goose, stuffed with apples and plums, the juices easily seen as they gathered in the platter below it. Then, even more wonderful, the goose jumped down from the table and waddled along towards her, a carving knife and a fork stuck in its breast. And again, the match went out, leaving her with only the cold, damp wall.

"When she lit the next match, she was under a towering Christmas-tree, greater, and more beautiful than any she had seen through any window, even the rich merchant's. Thousands of taper candles burned along the green branches, and colored pictures, like those she had seen on other trees, looked down upon her. Just as she stretched out her hand to touch the great tree, the match went out.

"But this time, the lights didn't go away, instead rising higher and higher, until they looked like the stars in the sky. She was a star fall, trailing a bright streak of fire, and thought, 'Someone is dying,' because her grandmother, the only one to ever care about her, had told her, before she died, that when a star fell, a soul was going up to God. She rubbed another match on the wall, and as the light fell around her, she saw her grandmother in its brightness. 'Grandmother,' she cried, 'take me with you, I know you'll be gone when the match dies. You'll vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the Christmas tree.' And she lit the whole bundle of matches, wanting to keep her grandmother there. The matches glowed with a light greater than the sun at noon, and her grandmother had never appeared so loving and beautiful. She took up the little girl, and they both flew to the brightness and joy above the earth, where there was no hunger, cold or pain, because they were with God.

"At dawn, she was still there, her face holding no color, her lips smiling, leaning up against that handsome wall. She was dead, frozen on the last evening of the old year, and the New-year's sun shone down on a corpse. Some, seeing the burnt matches in her hands, said she tried to warm herself, but no one could imagine the beautiful things she had seen, nor the glory with which she had risen into heaven with her grandmother on the very eve of New-year's day. The end." , re-phrased/told)

This time, the silence was just slightly horrified, as each absorbed Duo's last words. Quatre repressed a shudder. Freezing to death was one of the last entries on his list of "How I Wish To Die".

Duo just looked at them all, a mischievous gleam visible in his bluish eyes and an almost-nasty smile curving his lips.

Worser was the first to venture a comment. "You know, kid, your father needs to speak to a doctor, telling you stories like that." Wait. Father? Quatre could feel his brows drawing together, as he went through Duo's files mentally, because he knew that Duo had been stated as an orphan....wait, oh, yes. The Maxwell Orphanage. It was run by a priest and a nun. He didn't hold down the slight shaking of his head, knowing that it would be interpreted as being for some other reaction. Duo was very good at bending the truth. First, with the part where he could have any name—because, officially, he didn't have any name, and now the "father" comment. It was something that Quatre could certainly admire in the Deathscythe pilot, that learned ability to avoid a lie, and yet, lie with the truth.

He was drawn from his thoughts by the movement of Wufei in the back, as he stood up gracefully. "Well, I think that's enough of that. I think that I shall occupy myself with a book yet again."

Duo was quick to sit up as well. "Well, may I look them over, and borrow one?"

"That would be fine." The brown braid followed him a split second after he slid off the bunk to kneel by the one Trowa was sitting on as Wufei pulled out his duffle and they began to sift through it. Quatre turned to Trowa.

"Would you be interested in cards?"

"Sure." The Arabian glanced with raised eyebrows at the last pilot, receiving a nod, and the three of them settled down into the gap between the bunks to play, of all things, BS, much to the amusement of the soon-occupied Duo.

Worser, standing more gracefully than many would assume, played his eyes over the boys, and watched as they interacted, seeing them completely absorbed into their own little world, but each of them giving off the feelings of belonging, and he couldn't help but wish that when he was their age, he could have had such a group of friends.

He was already turned and on his way back up to the front, and so he didn't see the looks shot at him, or the slight, barely perceptible lessening in the tension as he left.