Chapter Summary: Quatre saves Iria from a Nazi officer's advances as he struggles to keep the others hidden.

Quatre04: All right! Another reviewer! dances

Misanagi: Wow, you're still reading. Thanks for the multiple reviews. I guess I wind up writing the stories with 'niche' interest in my attempts to avoid so many clichés that everyone else seems to have used. (i.e. stick all the guys at one of Quatre's safe houses/city full of vampires with hunters/random high school/colony that didn't get blown up in the war, add lemon and stir.) Been there, done that, got bored.

Sabrina-fowler: Sigh So quick to judge. China joined the Allies since they were at war with Japan. You'll see in this chapter how Heero ends up as friends with the other characters. The R rating? Yeah, that kinda shows up here. Trust me; I already know all the origins of their names.

(blank): Haven't really received any negative feedback yet. But accuracy is usually a sign that someone put a lot of effort into what they were doing.

Author's notes: Okay, Zechs is a bastard, graphic violence and Quatre angst. I've warned you, so I'm not in the mood to hear any wimps come whining to me afterwards, got it? No 13x4 yet, not for a bit anyways. Yet another long chapter here, enjoy.

Chapter 2: The Hidden Stars

Treize spent the entire night in a drunken, fitful sleep. The only thing I could do was quietly arrange a cot nearby and make sure that he stayed on his side, as Iria had taught me to do if someone were drunk. I lay on my cot, quietly hoping that the others made it to the villa safely and that Iria would let them in and both my problems would be solved.

You could certainly see why I didn't want to leave the compound; I didn't want to abandon my friends, but I'm sure that you want to know why Iria and I were so happy to leave. Well, I didn't feel safe for a moment in that compound. Most would think that as a servant of a Major, I would be well protected, but most things in life are never as simple as they seem.

Major Treize was not German, he was Russian. His family was part of the nobility, the elite class that had ruled until the Communists took over in the early 1920s. Although nearly all his family had moved to Germany and he spoke perfect German, the soldiers in the compound still considered him a foreigner. He also had many disagreements with his second in command, Zechs. I think Zechs really resented taking orders from Treize. The son of a poor German hat maker, Zechs had fought and bled hard for his rank, while Treize had attained his mostly because of his family's connections. That's not to say he didn't have any good leadership qualities, quite the opposite. But Zechs felt he surely would have outranked him had he not had the blind luck of being born to a man who had been richer then his father.

The two of them were also different in their manners too. Treize was more detached from the soldiers, whom he had never met before being stationed in Ternopol, he enjoyed delicate food with brandy by himself or with me in the room. Zechs was friends with and had fought alongside many of the other soldiers before he had been promoted, he was content with beer and whatever food was available in the mess hall. I also thought that Zechs was far crueler. Treize treated his orders like work; it was something that needed to be done. But when Zechs gave an order to kill, he did it with the same pleasure that a housewife has in crushing a mouse or cockroach. Or maybe I was just seeing him this way, since I spent more time with Treize. I had to remind myself that they were both, after all, Nazis, who would have thought nothing of putting a bullet in my head if they ever found out who I truly was. In any case, this rivalry was the main reason that Treize had decided to buy the villa, so he only had to deal with Zechs during the day.

If this had been the only trouble I ever experienced, I would not have cared if I stayed or left. Zechs was civil when I was around, and visitors and soldiers simply ignored me unless they wanted me to get something for them. But I also knew that it wasn't in the best interests of my sister to stay. Iria, unmarried with gentle features, curly hair and a pretty figure turned heads whenever she left the laundry room. Soldiers didn't care that she was 27, she was still pretty and she caught the attention of one soldier in particular; a large man named Otto. Even though he was a good friend of Zechs, fiercely loyal to Treize and kind to Iria and I, the thought of him with my sister still made me shudder.

Treize awakened the next day before I did. He gently woke me and asked what had happened the night before.

"You were drinking last night, Herr Major."

"I know that, tell me what I said."

"Nothing of consequence." I replied, a bit taken aback by this strange request. But he was adamant.

"Tell me what I said!"

"You talked about your wife, and daughter, your friend, you said I was handsome, that's about all I can recall that made any sense." I stammered out.

"I didn't say anything else, or hurt you, did I?" he asked.

"No, sir."

He promptly calmed down.

"That's fine, then." He said as he gently stroked my hair. His gesture reminded me of my father so much that I actually felt sad for a moment. After I told him that all his things had been moved to the villa, he requested that I go there and help Iria the clean the house and he would arrive in the evening. As I walked towards the house, I suddenly felt nervous all over; did they make it there safely? Did someone see them? Did Iria even let them in? I wished I had planned their escape better, it had been so hasty and impulsive that there had been so many things which could have gone wrong.

I was so relieved when I opened the door to find everyone safe and helping Iria to clean the house. Trowa stood guard at the kitchen window, Heero helped Iria with the dishes as Duo and Wufei dusted and swept.

"We're in God's hands now, and in Quatre's." said Duo. Their faith in me made me blush.

They hid in the basement when Treize came in that evening, the house had been cleaned from floor to ceiling, the table was set and dinner was right on time. He was very impressed; the house had been quite old and filthy when he had first seen and bought it.

"I'd say that you both worked at the pace of four people." He said.

'Or six.' I thought to myself with a smile.

Treize went to the compound during the day and we waited for about a half hour after he left before Heero, Duo, Trowa and Wufei came out from their hiding place in the basement to bathe, eat breakfast and help Iria tidy the house. I worked on the garden since it was too risky for the others to be outside and one person always watched the kitchen window in case anyone came unexpectedly. A couple of days after we moved into Treize's villa, Otto dropped by and approached me as I worked in the garden.

"Is Jana in?" he asked.

"I, um-" I stammered. I didn't want to tell him yes and let him in, but I couldn't look him in the eye and lie either. Otto saw how uncomfortable I was and laughed.

"I'm not going to harm you, Thomas, I just want to say hello to your sister. Look, I brought some flowers for her."

I quietly nodded and he went in, my stomach fluttered as he opened the door. Iria talked to him at the door for a bit before finally saying that she had a lot of work to do that day. He finally left and the others came out of hiding. Thankfully, Duo had seen him coming from the window and they had dashed into the basement before Iria opened the door. At least Otto hadn't looked inside or he would have seen the cloths, buckets, brooms and several cups of water scattered everywhere. That would have been difficult to explain.

But Otto refused to give up; he had fallen madly in love with Iria and kept dropping by unannounced when he had time. We began to worry that he might give us away. I agonized over what to do and after some close calls I finally told Treize about Otto, saying that I didn't trust him and wanted to protect my sister.

"I think I know what Otto is after, Thomas. I will make sure your sister doesn't come to harm."

Iria went back to Radom at the end of 1943 and my friends took the place of my family. A few days later when Otto knocked on the door, I answered and told him that 'Jana' had contracted tuberculosis and had left Ternopol for treatment. Otto left and never came back. In the days before vaccinations and medications were widely available, diseases like polio, typhus and tuberculosis often meant disability or a death sentence.

Safe for the time being and with time to spare since the five of us cleaned the house in no time at all, I got to know my friends better. I sometimes wondered if I would have forgotten who I was had I not rescued them, they were to only ones who called me by my real name and spoke to me in my native languange for a long time. We usually spoke in Polish, since it was the only language that Trowa knew. Duo, Heero and I spoke Polish and German, but their English was much better then mine. Wufei knew the most languages; he also spoke Polish, German and English, but he also knew several dialects of Cantonese, a language I had never heard before. Over time, they filled out, regained their health and told me how they had become friends.


Duo was the youngest and smallest of the group. He was about my height with unusual eyes; they were a deep violet and he had very long hair. The first time I had seen him, I honestly didn't know if he was a boy or a girl. He had grown up with his parents in Iowa, but when his mother died of cancer when he was 7, his father couldn't bear to stay in America. He took Duo with him when he went on assignment to Berlin, covering the Olympics. Duo remembered what a fun time he'd had since he hadn't known any better, but his father had seen though the deception and written a less then flattering article.

When his father started to receive threats, he began to travel and work in disguise; he dressed up as an old man and made Duo look like a girl by growing his hair out and braiding it. Duo told me with some embarrassment he felt a little confused about his gender for a while and wasn't completely sure that he really was a boy until he was about 9. He refused to cut his hair since it reminded him of happier times with his father, when he would have his hair brushed and braided and his father would tell him a story. The work finally became too dangerous for Duo to stay with his father and there were no other family members that could care for him. But his father was determined to cover what was happening in Germany, fearful that the truth would never get out. So he begged a close friend he had gone to University with to care for Duo. This man was Heero's uncle. Heero and Duo had only known him as Odin Yuy, since they couldn't pronounce his real name.

Heero was the illegitimate son of a Japanese man and an English woman. His frame appeared stronger then a Japanese, but more graceful then an English boy and he always seemed very quiet, unwilling to speak unless he really had to, with a barely noticeable sadness in his eyes. Neither of the families of his parents had wanted him and just when they were about to abandon him, Odin had stepped in at the last minute and asked to care for him. Odin had been educated abroad and had different ideas from his family, but his decision to take Heero had estranged him from them. Odin had settled into a job at the University in Warsaw, Poland and Heero and Duo went with him to the campus. Most of the children of other students at the University didn't speak to them due to Heero's mixed race and Duo's strange appearance.

One of the few children who they did play with was Wufei. His parents were from wealthy families in China. After his grandparents had died, his parents had both accepted an arranged marriage from their other relatives on the agreement that they both be allowed to study abroad together. His parents attended classes in the day and taught him in the evenings. Wufei had a very striking appearance; I had never seen such dark skin on a person before. To me, his dark eyes and sharp features made him look deep, honest and soulful.

About a week after my hometown had been first bombed, German troops had reached Warsaw. The speed at which they reached the University had taken their families by surprise. On that day, their parents had been planning to leave the University and go underground, when Wufei's parents had secretly gone through some of Odin's things and learned that he had once been a Japanese spy. Things escalated into a huge argument from there, until Dr. J, one of the professors, had separated them. Heero, Duo and Wufei had been sent off when the fight started and had started playing together on another part of the campus, when they saw the soldiers coming. Terrified, they hid and watched as everyone was rounded up and taken away.

They didn't come out for several hours, but when they did they found that everyone else was gone. They debated about what to do, then finally took what they could find and left. They wandered south for a few days when they met a caravan of Gypsies who had managed to hide out in the forests and countryside. The Gypsies took care of them, even though they themselves had very little. In the past, Trowa's troupe had made a living selling horses and performing acrobatic shows wherever they went. But by this time they didn't dare go into the open for fear of being caught.

Trowa was the tallest and oldest of us and didn't call himself a Gypsy; he referred to himself as a Roma. Even without his usual clothes, his green eyes, odd hair and slightly sun browned skin tone gave him a mysterious look. His caravan had fallen on hard times with barely enough food to eat. The caravan traveled south, but finally got caught at around the time I had reached Ternopol. They told me how they had been separated, into men, women, children, elderly and invalids. While they had been part of a group herded to the compound where I met them to work as slaves, they had watched as others had been put onto different trains, loaded until there was barely even room to breathe on transport cars not even fit for cattle. If any fell or tried to resist, they were beaten or shot dead.


I finally realized how lucky I had been to find a safe haven for myself and my friends. Ever since I had lost contact with my father, my life had been rather harsh, but for a time, things became very easy. I would wake in the morning, cook breakfast for Treize, then see him out the door. After waiting for about a half hour to make sure he didn't forget anything and suddenly come back, the others would emerge from the basement, eat something and help me clean the house with one person watching the window all the time. We would then sit and talk until the afternoon when they helped me prepare dinner, then hide before Treize came back. By the time Treize opened the door, he would find me sitting in the kitchen, reading a book from the study as dinner finished cooking and nothing seemed amiss.

But occasionally it was hard to stay hidden. Even though my family never really observed our religion a lot, we had still seen pork as unclean. But Treize really liked bacon and I had to cook it rather often for his breakfast. He never really watched me as I cooked it and I looked normal, but I wasn't used to the smell of greasy bacon and it made me feel quite sick inside. One day he noticed that I never cooked any for myself nor ate it, just eggs with toast, and he offered me some. I hesitated for a bit, then took several bites, hiding the pieces under my tongue. I then took a long time eating my breakfast and when Treize finally left, I spat them out. I could never understand why the others enjoyed it so much.

Hiding four other people without getting noticed was rather difficult. We couldn't forget that we were hiding in the house of a Nazi, right in the heart of conquered German territory. Occasionally, Treize would make a comment over breakfast or dinner, something like "Are you sure we're out of bread? I'm quite certain you got a whole loaf several days ago." Or "Thomas, please try not to use so much butter in the food, the prices are becoming higher." But he never seemed to suspect that anything was wrong. By fall of 1943, I had begun to wonder what would become of us; I knew in my heart that we couldn't hide forever. But Duo always cheered me up.

Duo loved playing with electronic items and we would often listen to his tiny radio that he had received as a present from a student at the University. Just before they had been captured, Duo had disassembled it and convinced the others to hide the pieces in the bottoms of their shoes. He had reassembled it and hidden it in his sleeve on the day that I snuck him out of the compound. We managed to pick up allied news broadcasts now and then, listening to stories, music and news. Duo felt sure that the Allies would eventually come and rescue us.

All this time, I usually thought about the threat of being discovered. The others eventually became relaxed and didn't worry about being found out. But during the few times that I did go to the compound after moving into the villa, or I went into town to buy food and when Treize would suddenly all me over to him, I always had the fear of being found out in the back of my mind. I didn't really try to think about the war that much, or what was going on around me too often. There weren't that many signs of the war when I walked about town, but there was one incident that finally made me realize the very real danger.

Near the end of that year, I was walking back to the villa with a fresh load of groceries. My mind was filled with thoughts or raking up the leaves and removing the dead flowers out of the garden so it would be ready again when the snow thawed at the end of winter. I also thought about what I would cook for the evening and smiling to myself about a joke Duo had told me the other day.

As I walked along the street, I turned and saw Zechs standing on a street corner. He saw me walking by, smiled and beckoned me towards him. As I approached him, my body felt numb as my mind swirled with questions. Zechs hardly ever left the compound, what was he doing on the street? Why was he so happy to see me? Did he know something about me?

"Hello, Thomas. Wonderful day, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Come see these hidden cockroaches my men found."

There weren't any roaches. His men had just discovered and dragged from a house a group of escaped Jews and a terrified Polish family that had hidden them. Several of the Jews were about my age or a little older and the Polish family had several small children, crying and clinging to their parents. The soldiers flung them all up against the wall as Zechs looked on and gave the order.

"Fire!"

Time seemed to slow down as I heard the shots firing. I had never seen such an act of pure evil in my life before. I stared at the bodies, then glanced up at Zechs as he turned to me. I waited for Zechs to spit on me, to push me against the wall too as a soldier reloaded his gun. But it never happened. Instead, he took an apple from one of my bags and walked with the soldiers back to the compound, eating it with indifference.

I managed to keep my composure until I reached the villa, where I collapsed near the back door. I vomited on the grass and cried as the sound of the frightened young children echoed in my mind.

The cruelty of what I had seen wasn't the only thing that frightened me, what frightened me even more was the thought of what I didn't see. Surely that hadn't been the only time that Zechs or Treize had ever carried out orders like that. This realization caused me to have a horrible thought: was my family still alive, or had they been involved in killing my father or my sisters? What if that group I had seen killed were the last ones and I was the only Jew left on the face of the earth? Would I live through all of this, only to learn that there was no one else left and my life would have been without meaning?

My thoughts became too much to bear and I tried to look at the trees and the bulbs that I had left in the garden for next spring, but even the plants that usually comforted me seemed to taunt and remind me of my fears: they would sleep for a time, only to spring to life again in the new year with beauty and purpose. By now, the others had finally heard my crying and coaxed me to come inside the villa. I hugged Duo and told them what I had seen.

"I should have done something." I choked out.

"Don't blame yourself, Quatre, there's nothing you could have done. They would have just turned on you and then we would have been stranded here to get caught or starve to death." I think Wufei was trying to help me feel better, but his words just made me feel more helpless.

"My father always said to just do the best you can and leave the rest to God." Added Duo. This comment made Heero, who had been quiet the whole time, release bitter sentiments from his heart.

"There's no God, what kind of a God would let such things happen? What sort of God would create a nation that sentences us all to death just for being alive? Why would God have let my parents declare me impure and my soul damned before I even knew what I was? Why would he do nothing?" I think he wanted to say more, but the years of cruelty he had lived and the sight of me crying seemed too much and he started to cry too.

"God did something." Duo countered as I began to see tears forming in his eyes. "He sent Quatre to help us. If it weren't for him, we would all be gone by now. You mustn't cry Quatre, we'll all leave this place one day and go to America. My dad would love to meet you-", but he couldn't say any more because as we remembered all our families all five of us began to cry.


I didn't sleep very well after that incident for quite some time and I even felt a bit guilty for having access to a safe warm place with lots of food while I knew others were starving out there. After a few days, Duo decided to try and cheer me up by baking a cake, a real treat since things luxuries like butter and sugar were becoming scarce. I helped him put icing on the cake while Heero and Trowa happily licked icing off their fingers. Wufei volunteered to watch at the window, he found the icing too sweet. Duo talked about the idea of us all going back to America. It seemed like such a prosperous place, since he told us how everyone had a car, a television, a radio and a house with lots of nice things to eat every day. As he talked on, Wufei suddenly raced into the kitchen.

"There are soldiers coming down the path! Hide!"

Duo dropped the knife into the icing bowl and they raced into the basement. A moment later, I answered the door.

"Can I help you?" I addressed the two German soldiers as calmly as I could. I hadn't seen either of them at the compound before.

"Whose house is this? Who are you?"

"This is Major Treize Kushrenada's home. My name is Thomas Moremer, I'm his groundskeeper. What can I do for you?"

"We received a tip that there were spies hidden here and we have orders to search this address."

Author's Notes:

Decided to leave you hanging for now. If you haven't guessed it yet, this chapter's title is from the historical novel 'Number the Stars' by Lois Lowry. It's a good book, read it I don't know how many years ago.

When someone's drunk, you want to roll them on their side until they sober up. And it's not to stop them from swallowing their tongue; that's a myth, it's impossible to do that for real. It's to stop their tongue from closing off the top of their windpipe or to keep them from choking on their own vomit in the event that they toss their cookies when passed out. Delightful, huh?

Despite the objections of the international community Berlin, Germany won the Olympics in 1936. They became known as the Hitler Olympics. Hitler had assumed total control of Germany and assembled his war machine by now. Journalists were allowed to cover the Olympics, but before they did, Gypsies in the area were rounded up and out of sight in camps, anti-Jewish posters were removed and the area was cleaned up for a PR success and most people were fooled that there would be peace; few journalists saw through the illusion and German newspapers and radios were heavily censored. The Olympics were not held again until 1948.

The Warsaw University of Technology was founded in the 1800's and is internationally acclaimed. They had about 5000 students attending just before the war, and they even allowed in about a few hundred women. There are faculties in Mechanics, Electrical Engineering, Chemistry, Architecture, Civil Engineering and Aquatic Engineering, with a faculty in Law added in 1933. The Germans reached Warsaw on September 8, 1939. Some teachers and students went underground around 1942, others went to fight and some even helped in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Official classes began again on January 22, 1945 despite being damaged in the fighting. Today the University now has about 30 000 students attending with plaques throughout the campus to commemorate students lost/ involved in events in the war. In those days, people who went to University often had kids, so the mother usually cared for the kids while the father attended University. Don't know how they managed without going insane, I probably would have.

The Gypsies refer to themselves as the Roma because they believe that their ancestors were driven out of Romania. Most wandered and earned a mostly living breeding and selling horses as well as put on performances before WWII. But they were associated with thieves and vagabonds due to their traveling lifestyle. They were the second largest ethnic group to be killed in the Holocaust.

Since travel and immigration were somewhat common by now, children of mixed race were born sometimes. In those days there was also a huge stigma against children born out of wedlock and kids of mixed race, they were usually shunned and some were even killed at birth.