Disclaimer: As per usual, I do not own Gundam Wing, but I own the AU, 'cause I have yet to find anyone who uses this one :)

A. N. : I would like to explain some thing, to those of you that actually will read this. I had and have every intention of updating this story at least once a week. However the last four weeks that idea has been foiled. First by the ending of my co-op and me moving from the capital of our country back home. I got home just in time to have my wisdom teeth removed, needless to say I didn't write those weeks. The next problem was I was just ready to go back at it and I headed north to my gram's house to visit her for a week with my mom and she just got a CD player last year, never mind a computer. Finally, I got home, and I was all ready to work on updating and I couldn't get to any of my files. So, I have just now gotten to them, but I have to say because of the delays, etc. this is a much shorter chapter than I had planned originally. What I'm posting now is what I had typed before I left my co-op job. I guess the short version of this story is I'm sorry, and I didn't want to make this wait any longer. I hope you all enjoy it. Such as it is...

Oh, and btw, hughug Thanks for the reviews. Nikkler, Trowa doesn't know Quatre yet, but as he writes the story, and is searching for words he just mentions that Quatre has a better vocab. and glomp you noticed the forever think... is it annoying? I hope not. But I wanted him to have a different exclaimation than we do, instead of something like 'like', or whatever, or a Canadian 'eh'. :) See ya next time!!!! Thanks everybody!

Woodcutter.

Kasi-kun.

Chapter 3

In Mama's stories I would have bounded to my feet exuberantly, rosy faced, filled with vim and vigour. I wish I could get my hands on whoever wrote those stories, 'cause I would kill them so completely that there would be no help for it but to bury them 12 feet under. Actually I can understand why they did write quick recoveries into ballads and such, it's a bit embarrassing to say that my muscles were stiff, my brain fuzzy and none of me was close to doing anything at a normal pace let alone with vim or vigour. Forever, but I promised to be honest in this tale, so I will be! Even if it means telling what a wimp I can be.

This time when I woke up I brought my score for thinking stupid things up to three for, one against, or is that all for inane thoughts? Not good, not good at all, maybe I should stop keeping count. This time I wondered why my ribs were shaking. None of the rest of me was, just the section of skin just above my hip, beside my stomach. Obviously I really need to work on my intelligence because it took me many moments of sluggish thinking before I realised that someone was leaning against me and it was him/her that was shaking, not me. So I then assumed it must be cold out, until my brain worked its way up to the realisation that I could see the red of blazing sunlight through my eyelids, and that even lying still I was dripping sweat. I tried to open my mouth, to ask what was going on, but it was glued shut. I was so thirsty, I'm not sure I had ever been that thirsty in my whole life before! I have afterwards, but I'll get to that.

I must have groaned because a moment later water was pouring over my mouth, someone pried my jaws apart, and blessed water was spilling in through my parched lips. I swallowed some, spit out more, and opened my eyes to once again look into the face of Duo. This was getting to be as much of a habit as waking up with inane thoughts. Then my brain registered another thing. It was him that was shivering. "What's wrong?"

I got the water flask in the face, and snatched it out of his hand before he could hit me again. "What's wrong?" He was practically screaming, in the heat of the moment not seeming to care that he was making that much noise. "Sha! You're stupid! I'm sitting here, in a slave pen, waiting to get sold to some Grasslander who'll make my life miserable while leaning against what I'm thinking is gonna be a corpse soon and you ask 'What's wrong?'" He crawled as far away from me as he could manage with the manacles that locked our legs to the same chain, and while he'd deny it of course, he was pouting.

I guess he wasn't the only one who forgot himself in the heat of the moment, because I realised that I was up, sitting on my heels and glaring at him. "I'm not stupid! Forever, what else was I supposed to say?" I raised the pitch of my voice so I sounded like one of my little brothers when he whined. "I know it's roasting hot out here, and I'm a bit tied up at the moment, but would you like me to find you a blanket? After all, you're shaking, are you a bit cold?" Even as I snapped my head away from him, going as far as to cross my arms over my chest to show I was ignoring him, it hit me just how juvenile I was acting. Maybe it was a side affect of Fast Healing, maybe I had just made a wonderful discovery that would be documented in the Plainland's Library, and I would go down in the nation's chronicles as the first mountain man to make a discovery worthwhile enough to them that they were willing to write it down.

A voice boomed for silence, and Duo grabbed my arm, maybe he was trying to pull me to the ground so we wouldn't be noticed, but whatever he was trying to do failed miserably to budge me and I felt the stinging pain of a whip striking my back. Well, there is a first time for everything isn't there? My friend, who had ended up half hanging when his snatch at me had failed to even move me, looked shocked out of his mind (maybe at my strength?) as I slowly turned my head and looked at my would-be tormentor. I don't know who was more surprised at that moment, him or me, but the next thing I knew was he was ambling away at what looked to be a jog, all the while attempting not the appear unnerved. After a breath of time I lowered myself to the hard packed dirt, not really feeling completely steady, after all I had just woken up.

"No wonder everyone said that master was a fool to have captured a mountain boy. Sha, but I wish I could do that, I mean glare like that. You scared the wits out of him."

"He has wits?" I smirked at the boy sitting beside me, reaching over my shoulder in an attempt to rub my newly aquired welt and he grinned back, I guess life really is too short to hold anger.

"How'd you do that glowing thing with your eyes?"

I stared at him in blank incomprehension and his smile faded to a puzzled face that must have matched mine. Glowing thing? What glowing thing? That sort of thing happened in stories and in the lands beyond the mountains, not from my community, or from these grasslands either. Not knowing what to say I finally raised my eyes to look around. I was sickened by the sight of hundreds of children chained together in groups of fifty or so. Rough plank fences formed the pen that hemmed us all in, and flies buzzed frantically over everything. The sun burned down on our unprotected heads mercilessly and the smell of human sweat and waste was overpowering. This had to be the culmination of all things evil in our world. I mean it is one thing to know and be warned by your parents that it is legal to sell humans under twenty-five as slaves, likewise you could be jailed for owning or buying someone who is over that age. Just like it is a simple thing to say that you understand when they tell you that if you are held as a slave for two weeks and your parents have not yet been able to find you or your snatchers by that time then they are legally unable to prosecute the slavers, or to take you back, accept by buying you. Forever, but it is an entirely different thing to have it happen to you, or to see the pathetic little urchins huddled against each other hopelessly for comfort. I wanted to have my axe in my hands. I wanted to see some heads roll, until I realized that I was younger than some of the girls and boys that I was wishing I was able to protect. Rage shook me, but Duo's hand on my shoulder brought me back to myself.

"You're doing it again, and it's scaring the babies."

tbc.