Shortcut Communications Ch. IV

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If you have but one loaf,
sell half,
and with the dole,
buy a hyacinth for the soul.
idiom

The bus stopped at the edge of the tarmac. There was a short curb, a wide sidewalk and the façade of an art gallery. There were also a lot of trees and shrubs and little flower beds. I dropped the foot-and-a-half from the bottom step of the bus to the concrete, not turning to watch the bus drive away, hefting my backpack higher. The straps cut into the injuries, but I ignored the pain—superficial only, the straps wouldn't increase the wounds' instability beyond limits. It looked like a sleepy town that had somehow escaped the modernization of the world. I thought back to my history training. There were little towns and cities all over the planet that showed this same sleepy reticence. I held back the snort I could feel in the back of my throat. This was a complete waste of time, and I would have informed Doctor J of that in my last communication, but he was dead, and at this juncture, I had no other option. There was no list of choices for my perusal, just this one, dead-end vacation. My face nearly stretched into a snarl as I thought about that last word. This was completely useless.

I probably would have stayed there, mulling and complaining and disparaging over the stupidity of it all, had not an old woman—approximately late sixties, gray, nearly white hair, thin, bony, moved in a manner that suggested either a younger age or training—approached me, coming towards me in my line of sight.

She stopped in front of me, put her hands on her hips, and looked me over, twice, from the tips of my running shoes to the top of my head. She didn't say anything, so neither did I. I settled for a rather neutral expression, maybe the cross between a grimace of distaste, a sarcastic look of questioning and the look of complete boredom with the world. Maybe Duo would have a way to describe it. When she did speak, she did it without smiling, her voice brisk and businesslike.

"So, you're Jay's nephew." Was that a statement or a question? She didn't wait, so it didn't matter. "Well, you're not much, are you?" Her feet spun her around, and she began walking. I watched her back for the two seconds it took her to realize I wasn't following, then, knowing my expression had slipped back into an entirely blank look—though Duo claimed that my eyes were never blank, that they seemed to be seeing everything, that they never stopped moving—she twisted around and spoke again, a clear note of exasperation in her voice. "Aren't you coming?" Cloudy brown eyes under raised eyebrows speared my own. I gave a short nod, and began to walk. She 'hmphed' and began her fast stride again.

There were people milling about. I circumspectly studied them as I followed "docilely" behind her, as unassuming as I could dredge myself to bear.

I understood the reasoning behind the "docile" act. Just like I understood how very good Duo was at hiding himself. I'd fought with him, and even, in the beginning, against him. But during the war, and now, I had a much harder time than he seemed to, with this act of conformity. Which he'd noticed.

So this was as docile as I was going to be. Blank, impervious.

Except for that very first day, it'd been wet. All wet. And although I'll do it, I hate running and exercising in the rain. There wasn't anything I could do about it. On colony, by this point, nearly two weeks later, I'd have overrode the system controls. But you can't do that on Earth. I don't know if I was upset about the inconvenience, or almost...glad that I couldn't do anything about it. Because there were too many things that I could control, through legal or illegal means, which I'd never had a problem using, anyway.

But the rain kept coming down, and I had to work in it. The woman, Marissa, tried to urge me to rest, to lie around, and I did, more than I should have. But I also did what PT had to be done. And I kept up with the computer scene, not to become lax. Other than that, there wasn't anything to do. There was nothing broken around her house, apparently her son, two miles down the road, whom I'd had yet to meet, did everything that was needed, and well. There was nothing to clean; it stayed nearly antiseptic almost on its own. She'd run around with a can of lemon scented cleaner and a rag every few days, sweep, mop, and that would be that. I knew I wasn't taking up much of her routine, at the very least. I spent a lot of time out in the barn, because I couldn't be outside in the rain with the computer, unless absolutely necessary. And it wasn't, right now.

I knew it would be, in the future, but that was the future, and I was doing what I could to be prepared for it. Here, it was just peaceful, with nothing but quiet, and rain.

There were pictures on all the walls around the house. Not the fake pictures that showed scenes of life someone had never experienced, but things that were more tangible, being memories. Her children's first steps. Graduations. Weddings. Grandchildren. Everything from this woman's life.

I looked, but there were no pictures of Dr. J. Nothing as evidence to his existence in this woman's surroundings. And I still wondered how she knew him.

So much wall space, and it was nearly all covered with pictures. The woman's husband, her younger days mixed in with those of her children's. Her standing with her own family, looking content, well cared for.

Not something I could really analyze. What made them so content? Was it that they were well fed? Content with each other's company? Pictures of them happy, but also of them sad. A picture of a large group of people standing still, unsmiling, or those smiling, doing it with tears streaming down there face. I asked her about it, and she said it was a funeral. I knew those. There'd been one held for Treize and Zechs. There weren't many people who knew that the coffin of one was empty not because they couldn't find a body but because there was none to find. He'd show his real face again, some day.

So would we all. I kept track of the others, what I could. The easiest was Quatre. He was staying at his father's...or his, residence on L4. Laying low. He said in his emails that he was studying; anything and everything. Apparently he didn't think that he would be able to do anything much at all when he took over the company's reins. I thought differently, but that wasn't something I would tell anyone.

Trowa could be tracked through the circus, but I never heard from him. Wu Fei disappeared. Duo was hard to track, as well. He'd check in with us, penning us mass emails, but he wasn't in one place for very long. He held interest in a salvage yard on colony, but he wasn't ever there.

That was all of us, scattered as we were. And me, here. Two months, now. Three since Christmas. Spring. I'd not seen the beginning of spring, planet-side. It was...ethereal. I woke up one morning, and as I ran, the sun rose, and fog was everywhere. Up and down the hills, and pockets of mist. I could have been in one of the story books that I'd taken up reading. Marissa had a large collection of books, and I was working my way through them. The story books for children. The old—and new—fiction. The textbooks, those that I hadn't already read, or studied the subject of, anyway. Psychology was interesting. So was gardening, I found.

One morning, in late March, I woke up to find Marissa already up, and one of her grandsons up with her. She was setting up little cups, all along the kitchen counters, and filling them with dirt, with him following with water. She was starting her seedlings, she said. I listened while she explained that "those tomatoes, they like lots and lots of sun." And that "when it's hot outside, and sun's shining down, if you go out into the garden, it'd smell of dirt and tomatoes, and make you want spaghetti." The little boy laughed, enjoying the time he had. I stayed silent, behind them, and left to do my exercises without really interrupting. When I got back, I took out the first gardening book in that section, and started to read.

Three months. Then four. At the beginning of the fifth, Duo visited. I hadn't told him where I was, and I'd only sent blind 'mail to him, but he found me anyway. He would have eventually, even if I'd buried myself into a bunker, with no exits. That's what he was like. He could disappear better than any of us, because he understood more about the "normal" people, and he just thought like that, and he could track us better, too. Not as good as Quatre, maybe, because Quatre seemed to be drawn to people, and seemed to track them instinctively, but Duo could do it well enough.

Marissa liked him immediately. And I think he liked her too. I hadn't read enough psychology to know.

There wasn't much different about him. He was still Duo. What else was there to say about him? He knocked on the door, and when I opened it, he smiled.

"Heya, Heero." His black duffel was over his shoulder, and he walked into the house on his cat-quiet feet, just like he always had. And his braid followed him in. Marissa let him stay, but asked about him as we were in the garden, weeding together, the next morning, before Duo appeared for the day. I told her what she wanted to know, but not everything I knew. And I left the parts out that I wouldn't want someone to know. It think that was okay, because he laughed when I told him later, as we ran. And then as we sparred, I told him about how quiet it was here.

And I realized that it wasn't unquiet, even with Duo there. He fit into the peace that was the farm.

I asked him a question as he was getting ready to leave, three weeks later. About families.

I'd caught him looking at all the pictures that lined the walls many times, and I wondered what he saw in them. I knew what Marissa saw. She saw her life, laid out to view, to help her remember everything about her. I saw peace in them all. Life and death, but more life.

Duo said that he saw trust. I questioned him further, and he said: "Well, look at this one, here." It was two boys, Marissa's sons. They were both laughing, mouths open, eyes shining, and neither of them were looking at the camera. Tom, her older son, was holding onto Sacha's arm, where he hung out of a tree. That was all that supported him, that arm, and the grip of his brother. But they weren't unhappy, or scared in it. They were content, and you could tell, looking at it, that Tom wasn't going to drop Sacha, and Sacha wasn't going to let go. Equilibrium. That was Duo's idea of family.

He was gone, then, and things went back to how they'd been. At the end of the summer, when I'd been there for almost eight months, we harvested what had been planted in the beginning of the spring.

And I decided that I'd been there long enough. I was sad to leave. But I think I learned what Dr. J wanted me to learn. Including, there at the end, more about him, and what he'd been like as a young man, before he'd grown into his ideals.

They'd been family. I didn't need to know what the others thought of that ideal, because I think they'd answer the same as Duo did. About trust. Maybe...maybe, a certain concern. I think I felt that, now, for them. Maybe. I don't know. But the future would tell.