by Raletha
Dedication: for the super-spiffy sevenall Thanks again! I hope this works for ya!
Notes: This can be read as a sequel to another fic of mine, Stepping Stones (NC-17 - 3x1 - canon, angst, yaoi, lemon), but it doesn't have to be.
Thanks: Mephisto Waltz for gently and affectionately nudging me along throughout my writing hiatus cum crisis of confidence cum fear of mediocrity. (I also blame her for turning me on to the canon OT3 potential of Trowa/Quatre/Heero.) Thanks also to Mookie, Vicki, Calli, Meritjubet, and Sevenall for their feedback in my journal.
Earth - Sanq Kingdom - AC 195
I hadn't seen Quatre cry since he'd retrieved me from the battlefield. Which one had it been? I couldn't remember. The past months before coming to Sanq blended into muzzy whorls of red blood, black ash, and drab earth. It didn't matter any longer. Here in Relena's kingdom was some kind of paradise I'd only ever seen in paintings. Here with the glittering sea, the sun-swamped gardens, and the clean formality of the school, war did not exist. No one even yelled in Sanq. There were no bellows of anger or screams of pain; no thundering shells or shrieking lasers. Instead there were the chimes of Quatre's meditations on the piano, the laughter of the female students, and the murmurs of lessons.
I might have described the way I felt in Sanq as dreamlike, but I didn't think I'd ever had a dream so pleasant--or at least so anesthetic. And the sedative sanguine of Sanq increasingly disturbed my dream. It wasn't my dream, it was Quatre's; it was Relena's, and its ill fit would necessarily chafe like the hard leather of a poorly made shoe.
"Why are we going there?" I'd asked Quatre again in the transport, in the shallow hope he'd give me a different answer. I'd been intrigued by his dry eyes already. His sadness and self-loathing had been replaced by determination and consideration. Ocean blue had come to resemble the clear azure of the Earth sky.
And like the sky, he seemed remote. Even when he'd been grieving, Quatre had a quick smile, but now when I expected to receive one of his automatic polite (or self-deprecating) smiles, instead I got a thoughtful pause and a furrowed brow.
It made me realise how much I didn't know him.
"I need to see if it--if peace--is possible, if I've been wrong. I need to learn more, Heero, and I have to understand more," he answered softly. "I think we both do."
I shrugged and adjusted my seat harness. "There's nothing to understand," I told him. "Fighting's part of human nature." My answer was glib; it was cliché. I didn't care to debate Quatre in matters about which he'd thought more than I had, and about conflicts from which I didn't believe thinking (of all things) could extricate us.
Quatre shook his head. "If that were true, then he wouldn't have sacrificed himself, and you would have killed me. And my father..." he trailed off, dry-eyed, but we didn't speak again for the remainder of the trip, and I refrained from asking Quatre questions for a time.
-
After a few days in Sanq we had established a tentative morning routine in our shared room. Quatre would stand before me in the en suite bathroom tying my cravat for me. His knuckles would bump my chin. "Sorry," he'd mumble.
I would grunt a, "No problem," and tilt my head further back, directing my gaze at his reflection in the mirror, but he wouldn't meet it.
We would attend classes all morning and study in the afternoons. I became a convenient lightning rod for controversy during our daily class debates. Quatre said I had a unique ability to disagree with anyone over anything. He always smiled when he told me that, and when I would grow flustered and silent in class, he would often step in for me (even when I knew he also disagreed with me, he enjoyed the structure of the debate and arguing different positions). This typically resulted in intense discussions between him and the Catalonia girl with the rest of the class as eager spectators. It seemed to be the sort of fighting for which young aristocrats like them were well suited, even if I thought the blonde girl enjoyed the strife a little too much. At least she was leaving me alone now.
Relena I avoided as much as I could. Not for any reason more complex than she unsettled me--more than I was accustomed. Quatre unsettled me too, but I didn't find him so distressing. As different as we were, as different as our backgrounds, we were united by common experiences now: the Gundams, ZERO, Trowa, OZ captivity, our mutual and individual confusion. I thought Quatre had been making more progress than I had been in Sanq, at least in terms of answering those questions he had for himself. He still had questions for me.
-
Eventually a morning came that broke with our routine. Instead of helping me with my tie in the bathroom, Quatre lingered behind me, leaning on the doorjamb. The bright morning sun fell behind him on the pastel blue sheets of our unmade beds, and a cool summer breeze toyed with the curtains of our room's open windows. Today he met my gaze in the mirror, and we talked about our upcoming classes with birdsong filling the spaces between utterances.
Talking. It seemed like all I was doing, and though I had grown more comfortable translating my thoughts into speech over the past weeks, I still disliked being put on the spot and forced to improvise in discussions.
Predictably, the conversation led to our usual, private disagreements and having to tie my (utterly useless as far as I could determine) cravat myself did not help my mood. Quatre seemed oblivious to my difficulties. When it was my turn to speak again, I addressed him with annoyance chiseling my tone.
"I don't understand you or Relena, Quatre. You both talk about war as if it were a choice people make. Like someone out there chooses death and violence. It's not like that." I didn't see how anyone would choose it if they truly did have a choice, so therefore, I had to conclude that it could not be a choice. I knew it had never been a choice for me.
"It is a choice," he insisted. "Humanity doesn't have to fight itself. We don't have to hurt each other, but for whatever reason people do choose to use violence instead of other means. I think it's important to discover that reason."
"The reason is evolution," I said, "humans are programmed in some fundamental way for conflict and competition. We're violent animals--not angels."
A bird near our window chirruped loudly in Quatre's pause.
"Well--why didn't you kill me?" He finally asked--calmly--as if he'd just asked whether I wanted milk in my tea. But the question ripped into my heart, and I remembered asking a similar question--similar but more hopeful--of Trowa: 'Why did you save my life?'
"Heero?" he prompted.
I unraveled the half-made knot at my neck and started again. "Because I didn't."
"There must be some reason."
"Why?" I remembered then that Trowa had never answered my question either.
"You were so angry--what stopped you?"
"Nothing. I don't know. I was tired."
"Do you wish you had killed me?"
Why was he pressing me like this? It made my head hurt. I couldn't answer his questions; I didn't know anything beyond the factual history of my actions. If I were to give him a reason, it couldn't be the truth; it would be nothing more than an imagining--a retroactive assignment of motivation to myself. I couldn't remember what I'd thought or felt then. I only remembered what I had done. "Quatre..." It was both a plea and a protest.
"You made a choice, Heero, you chose not to kill me for a reason. If you can remember why, it's at least a start."
At that, I decided my tie was arranged well enough, and the conversation should end.
But when I moved to exit the bathroom, Quatre didn't move from the doorway to let me by; he even shifted to further block my way. We were standing very close, well inside each other's personal space, and I still felt the prickle of irritation at him under my skin. I didn't like that he had to be so deliberately naive and hopeful about the war, about me--about Trowa even.
I glared at him, and he met my gaze evenly. His eyes didn't challenge me, but nor did they yield. He lifted a hand to my shoulder, and I tensed, refusing the impulse that seized me to knock it away. My heart pummeled the inside of my ribs, and I felt hot. Quatre leaned near, and I could no longer focus on his face. And then he was kissing me. It was soft and damp and clumsy. Our noses bumped, and he smelled like toothpaste. I pulled away when I felt his lips part against mine, because I didn't know if I wanted that. He slipped a hand behind my neck to keep me close, but he didn't try to kiss me again--not immediately.
"In Siberia," he whispered against my cheek, "I felt you self-destruct. I thought I felt you die. I thought the pain of it was going to kill me too, and I barely knew you. We hadn't even met face to face."
"So?" My voice sounded strange and low. Quatre knew I knew he had some empathic abilities. I didn't know what was special about this admission.
"I felt your physical pain, Heero, as if it were my own. I've never felt that before. I don't understand why I feel these things about you."
He paused while I said nothing.
After a while he spoke again: "I didn't feel Trowa die." He sounded ashamed.
"But," I whispered, though I wasn't sure why I seemed unable to speak at a normal volume, "you don't believe he's dead, do you?"
Quatre's fingers twitched against the back of my neck. "I should have felt something. I mean--you didn't die either."
I couldn't determine toward what point Quatre was navigating, so I remained silent again and hoped he'd say something that made sense to me.
"And...I love him too."
Any reply I might have made to that statement died before its conception. My thoughts froze as well as my body, caught by the ambiguity of Quatre's words, the ambiguity of my emotions, and my complete inability to process either in a satisfactory manner.
Quatre tugged my head back and leaned away from me to study my expression. His features were set in a strange combination of earnestness and trepidation, with his mouth pressed into a thin line of anxious discontent and his eyes too tense and wide beneath the sharp angle of his frown.
All I could think was that his irises appeared to be the same shade of blue as the sliver of sunstruck tiles on the bathroom wall. All I could feel was a sudden urge to be closer to Quatre; that somehow being closer to him might ease my confusion. That desire, as I gave it recognition, grew, filling my chest and gut with a hollow aching need. Its urgency was like something alien inside me: an emotion so palpable it seemed it could be touched or seen as something separate from myself.
Quatre must have sensed it too, for he touched it even as he touched me. He put his hands on my shoulders and twisted us so that my spine was pressed against the hard ridge of the doorjamb, and he kissed me again with his tense, nervous mouth. I let him kiss me as he wished to this time; I relaxed my lips and opened my mouth against his and let him push his tongue against mine.
The quality of my desire changed. It grew dense and euphoric. This--I remembered feeling this way with Trowa, but he hadn't been kissing me--he'd never kissed my mouth--he'd been touching my bare skin: my arms and torso, my hips and buttocks... and then he'd touched me more intimately.
It occurred to me to tell Quatre this at least, that I wanted him to touch me more, but I couldn't speak. I could barely breathe against Quatre as he deepened the kiss, stealing the air from my lungs.
He knew. I'd barely reached for his wrist to guide his hand down from my shoulder when he'd moved it himself. He thumbed my nipple through the stiff fabric of my shirt and pressed his hips against mine. Though the wool of our trousers was between us, the rigid heat of his erection was vivid against mine.
I felt I was suffocating so I tore my mouth from his, gasping for air. Quatre panted too, and our breaths mingled in the heat between our faces. Our eyes locked, blurry and dark, before Quatre made space between us and fumbled with my belt.
Soon, my fly was open, and his hand dipped into my underwear to wrap around my cock. His touch wasn't gentle; he made no preamble of tender caresses but instead grasped me hard and began pumping my length with furious speed. Quatre masturbated me with the rough confidence of someone handling his own genitals, and I heard him sighing and groaning right along with me--as if he felt every glimmer of my building pleasure himself.
The head of my cock was still caught beneath the elastic of my briefs and Quatre's knuckles bumped against my pubic bone sharply, but it was exactly what I wanted--a quick and sure relief of the tension and anxiety within me. I hadn't even realised how much my body had been craving this kind of release. He sucked on my bottom lip and whimpered as I got close--sucked on my jaw and shuddered as I got even closer. I tangled my fingers in his hair and closed my eyes, and I wasn't surprised at all when, as I climaxed, he muffled his own cry of completion against my throat.
We shared no words as we helped each other clean up and change into clean uniforms, but we did share a smile as Quatre tied my cravat before he tied his own. For a moment, his smile looked sad, and for a moment, I saw his eyes shine with tears: tears he blinked back resolutely, tears that never fell. I wondered if his eyes truly had been dry since we arrived.
I thought perhaps there was something I should do or say at this point, or some question I was supposed to ask, something that might help him...but help him with what? I didn't know; I didn't have Quatre's sense of feeling or Trowa's intuition about these things. I followed behind him to the door, feeling my own concern and confusion in the muscles of my forehead. And I realised--suddenly, belatedly, and with such clarity I felt like a fool--that there was something I could do, and it didn't require my understanding or my certainty.
I reached out and took his hand to stop him from opening the door. He turned back to look at me in surprise.
"What is it, Quatre?" I asked and squeezed his fingers. I felt clumsy and awkward reaching out to him like this. I pressed ahead anyway. "What's wrong?"
He blinked at me and grimaced and took a breath as if to speak, but then frowned and released it heavily. I released his hand, and he ran it through his hair, destroying in that one gesture his prior ten minutes of fussing with hairbrush, comb, and hair gel in the bathroom.
Dumbly, I stood there. I'd made an overture--the correct one I hoped.
"We have to get to class," he evaded.
"No we don't," I replied, relieved at that realisation too. As much as I was out of my depth trying to comfort Quatre, it seemed a less daunting task than facing the classroom, Dorothy, and Relena so soon this morning. Part of me actually relished the thought of spending the morning with just Quatre. It was that same feeling of wanting to be close to him, but the physical urgency had been tempered so that now I felt clearly its emotional component.
And having recognised both my emotion and my goal, I was determined to attend to both. I took him by the elbow and steered him toward his bed where I sat down first. With a sigh, he picked up the pillows and arranged them against the wall and then sat as well, settling against them and giving me a wary look.
He began slowly. He talked about many things, his narrative meandering from the recent past to his childhood, to his hoped for future as well as his feared future, and (repeatedly) our present. He talked about his reasons for fighting and his reasons for not fighting, his doubts about himself and his feelings of guilt and betrayal. I listened quietly, speaking only to encourage him when he fell silent and withdrawn.
Finally, I saw his eyes water again, and his voice broke, "Sometimes, Heero, sometimes I still wish--I even believe sometimes that you should have...you really should have..."
"Should have what?"
"It... it sounds indulgent to say, but I feel it so much sometimes, and it feels true." Quatre stared at his interlaced fingers in his lap as he spoke. "You should have killed me. I was so wrong...so wrong, about so many things. How can I ever atone for what I've done? Or for all the things I've failed to do?"
Given the opportunity, Sylvia hadn't killed me. Neither had the other relatives of General Noventa. I told Quatre I understood what he was feeling, and I told him what I'd eventually told myself, what Trowa had helped me understand, that we, Quatre and I, already had atoned, by recognising our mistakes and learning from them. Regret and further punishment weren't necessary to clear a conscience, since future action was all we had. We had learned, we had educated our hindsight, and we could make better choices now. That was the best we could do--keep working toward those hoped for futures with as much integrity as we could.
Quatre laughed and sniffled and wiped his eyes with his shirt cuff when I finished, and I couldn't help but smile too. "That sounded a little like Trowa," he said.
"You don't think I came up with that on my own, do you?" We both laughed at that, and Quatre hugged me.
The rest of the day seemed brighter for the memory of being close to him that morning, and each time our eyes met that day, I felt a little lighter for it. Judging by the answering smile that crinkled the corners of Quatre's eyes, he did too.
Later that morning, after we'd arrived tardily to class, he took a more aggressive tack with Dorothy in the daily discussion. They debated the merits and dangers of using war as a political tool. Quatre presented his argument with such authority and persuasiveness that, at the end of it, he received applause from the other students and our teacher. Dorothy he left glowering with her pretty teeth clenched behind her thin-lipped smile.
Come dinnertime, as I stood in line beside Quatre in the school cafeteria I considered again his earlier questioning of me. Why hadn't I killed him?
I considered what I'd seen of Quatre since I'd made that decision: his charisma and his kindness; his leadership and his quick intelligence; his modesty and his sincerity. I considered his feelings for Trowa and their reciprocal. I considered my feelings for Trowa, and I considered my feelings for Quatre. Maybe it had been because of Trowa, but maybe also because somehow I had already known, somewhere in my subconscious, through some strange magic of Quatre's space heart that I might already love him too.
-
the end