An Orphan's Life

Disclaimer: … I don't own it. Gundam Wing, that is. *Sigh*

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Theo ran out of the restaurant doors and stopped, just in time to see the limo drive off. He watched it disappear in the distance, trying to catch his breath.

He mentally slapped himself for not catching her in time. Now, he would have to wait for Caterina.

Who, by the way, was just walking out of the restaurant, yelling, " You guys better keep working slow tonight, because you all will be fired tomorrow!"

She turned to Theo, shoving things into her purse. "I am so suing this place!" She frowned when she noticed his face and Elysia not with him. "Hey, what's wrong? Where'd Elysia go?" She looked around quickly.

Theo looked down. "She went to the hotel."

Caterina's eyes widened. "Without you?" She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Well, now, that's just peculiar."

Theo made a face and looked at her. "Didn't you notice she was upset?"

Caterina looked up and continued tapping her chin. "No, not really. I was kind of preoccupied with our lack of service."

Theo rolled his eyes and faced the street. "Figures," he muttered. He crossed his arms. "This is all your fault."

Caterina blinked and looked at him slowly. "What?"

Theo watched the cars speeding by. "You made a big deal out of nothing."

Caterina frowned some more and motioned at the restaurant. "Hey, well they were going slow!"

Theo sighed. "Not the restaurant, Cat."

Caterina blinked and stepped closer to him. "Hey, you don't mean…" She trailed off and stared at him silently.

* Geez, what's with him? Why is he acting so weird? I thought he liked my plan… *

She placed a hand on his shoulder. "Hey… um…"

Theo looked down. "She doesn't feel the same way."

Caterina's eyes widened, a bit taken aback from this statement. "W-what? You can't be serious… How can you tell?"

Theo finally looked at her, a strange look in his green eyes. "Didn't you notice how she was acting? She looked like she didn't want to be around us." *Mainly me. *

Caterina frowned. "As I have previously stated, I didn't notice anything because of the bad ser-" She cut herself off and shook her head. "But that's not important."

She made a face at the way Theo was acting. He never got this way about anything. Especially when it involved a girl.

"Um… what do you want to do now?"

He sighed. "I'm going back to the hotel to sleep." He narrowed his eyes slightly at her. "Why? What were you going to do?"

Caterina shrugged. "Drink." She glanced at the restaurant behind them. "I usually drink when I get bad service at restaurants. Alcohol always makes up for it."

Theo rolled his eyes. "Only you would believe that… I bet your dad doesn't know about this."

Caterina shook her head, a bit smugly. "Nope."

Theo shook his head. "And I bet your mom got you in this habit."

Caterina nodded again. "Yep. But she doesn't drink as much as I do. And I haven't killed anybody yet, so I don't find a problem with it."

Theo sighed. "Always looking on the bright side of bad things." He looked to the parked limos nearby. "You don't need the limo to go do this, do you?"

Caterina shook her head and waved her hand at him. "Go right ahead. The best bars are easier to get to by walking." She put her jacket on and walked off. "Goodnight, Barton."

Theo watched her leave, then walked away to their limo, feeling sleepy already.

" Goodnight, Winner."

Elysia sat on a barstool in a dump of a bar. She had been getting cold outside, so she decided to go inside one of the many bars she saw, hoping to get warm.

Of course, she went inside what was probably the worst one in the colony.

It was just her luck that that would happen.

She watched the men in the bar and felt a bit uncomfortable, because they were looking back at her.

She focused on the counter in front of her and didn't look up when the bartender plopped a glass of some alcoholic beverage in front of her.

She then realized what happened and looked up at the glass, frowning at it.

Shouldn't he have asked her age first? Or at least make sure she had even wanted a drink?

"You look a bit dressed up to be in a bar,' a deep voice said from behind her.

She made a face and turned to face the speaker. "That has got to be the lamest pick up line I have ever heard. " She frowned when she noticed the speaker was a young guy, nothing like the much more older perverted men around him.

He had dark brown hair that was cut fairly short, his long bangs slightly covering his violet eyes.

He smiled some more and sat next to her. "What are you doing in a place like this? You seem way out of place."

She narrowed her eyes and stared at him. After a long pause, where he just kept smiling, she turned back to the counter and picked up the glass. She sighed and looked at it slowly. "What about you?"

He stared at her, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Why are you here? You don't seem like you belong either… much." *Probably trying to score with some whore. *

The guy shrugged. "I like going to bars at night and frightening young girls who don't belong in them, in the hopes that they will no longer go to them."

Elysia frowned and looked up at him. "Seriously?"

He laughed and stuck a hand out towards her. "The name's Shane. You must be gullible."

Elysia glared at him, but shook his hand. "Actually, my name is Elysia."

Shane laughed some more. "Well, I'm actually a bit of a swinger here in the colonies. Work all day, party all night. Now, that's my idea of fun."

Elysia frowned. "Swinger? You sleep around all night?"

She frowned some more as she tried to picture the cheerful guy next to her coming up to every girl on every colony. How did he go place to place every night and not run into the same people?

Shane started laughing at her expression, seeming to read her mind. "I go to the same three colonies for a month, then switch to three other colonies. And I only go to the ones closer to earth, since I live there. My dad gets mad if I'm late to work, so I have to stay close."

Elysia grew more confused as he went on. She just couldn't believe that this guy hit on women every night and probably drank, but had the maturity to stay near his job and listen to his father.

He had to be lying.

He smiled at her some more. "Anyways, you never answered my question."

Elysia frowned, then nodded when she remembered. "Oh, that. Um… I don't really want to talk about it."

Shane raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Let me guess." He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead a little. "You're here, because of a guy."

Elysia made a face. "Most women in bars are usually in them, because of guys."

Shane shook his head and waved his hand. "Maybe, but you're in here for a different reason."

Elysia smiled in amusement and leaned back, starting to enjoy this. "Aren't we all?"

Shane opened an eye at her. "You're breaking my concentration."

Elysia laughed. "Sorry."

Shane nodded slightly and reclosed his eye. " As I was saying… this guy. He's special. Different. You like, or, dare I say, love, this guy. But you don't know why."

He opened his eyes to see her expression.

Elysia was staring at him blankly, obviously trying to hide her emotions so as to make it more difficult for him to continue.

Shane smiled, liking her silent defiance.

She reminded him of someone he had loved for years.

But that was something he quickly pushed out his mind, the pain of heartbreak too much for him.

He cleared his throat and went on. "He's arrogant and rude and seems to hate the sight of you. In fact, you don't even know why you like him. You beat yourself up and yell at yourself, because you let your feelings control you." He studied her face as she began to show that he was, indeed, correct. "But then, all of a sudden, he's different. He's nice to you, and seems to show concern, affection, and all that other crap that makes you stop beating yourself up and go,' Oh, that's why I love him'… And then, everything feels right, like… That's the way it's supposed to be." He paused, getting caught up in his words. He looked down slightly, remembering his first and only true love again.

Elysia was looking down as well, somewhat in shock of him being correct. Everything he said was right.

Except…

She looked up at him and tried to phrase her thoughts right. "Um… But what do you do when the other person doesn't feel the same way?"

Shane frowned, then shrugged. "What can you do? You can't change how the way you feel or the way he treats you. You just have to go on with your life and hope he eventually sees what you see." He shrugged again. "Or you can force yourself to not love him anymore. But I wouldn't bother with that. You can never force yourself to stop loving, no matter how hard you try. There's always something that has a hold on you."

She nodded, taking this in slowly. "So, what do you do, then?"

Shane shrugged for the third time. "I don't know," he said softly. "I'm still trying to figure that part out."

Jennifer Silverman, or Groff, as she now went by, looked around her family's living room, which was filled with her adoptive parents' friends and business associates.

It was another meaningless party in the Groff household, something that Jennifer never really liked about her new parents.

She loved them almost as much as her real parents, but these parties always put a strain on their relationship.

The reason for tonight's soiree was that it was Daughter Day. This was why Jennifer was actually allowed in the room with her parents and gets to drink.

Not that she liked to drink, no alcohol was something she never appreciated, but it was thought, she supposed, that count.

She sighed as she sat on a chair near the bar, bored out of her mind. Nobody had bothered to talk to her, which bugged her, even though she didn't really care. She hated talking to these people. Especially when they were all drunk.

She tugged on her new dress uncomfortably, the older men's gazes freaking her out a bit.

What seemed like a good idea of rebellion at the mall was now a really bad idea. She should've known that something like this would happen.

Then she frowned, remembering the incident at the mall.

She hadn't expected to run into somebody she knew. Especially someone from the orphanage.

Jennifer couldn't get over the fact that she had seen Elysia. And with Caterina Winner too, of all people.

She had changed, somewhat, Caterina, that is. She seemed nicer, almost… more fulfilled.

But Elysia…

She still had that sadness in her eyes. That look of defeat she always had around her. Something that looked like she had just accepted what was handed to her and didn't bother fighting about it. She just took it…

That was the look that had always bugged Jennifer. Not because it was almost an admission of weakness, but because it showed that Elysia had never bothered to stand up for herself. She had a fear embedded inside her, a fear that was placed inside her long before Jennifer had arrived at the orphanage.

And Jennifer had never been able to thank Elysia for covering for her that one night. Jennifer had been new to the orphanage, so she didn't realize the consequences of her actions. Only a few years later did she see what happened to bad kids at the orphanage.

She had seen one of the boys get whipped for falling down the stairs and breaking a leg.

She then understood why Elysia took the blame. Elysia didn't want Jennifer to get the same beating as that boy did that one day.

But Jennifer didn't get why Elysia took the beating for her. There seemed to be another reason. Something Jennifer never got the chance to ask.

And Jennifer was ashamed about that too.

She should've received the punishment that was rightfully hers, not Elysia. It wasn't fair.

That's why she couldn't look at Elysia at the mall. She felt the guilt so strongly. She had to leave, to get rid of it.

But the encounter left her with a hole in her life. Long ago, she had forced the orphanage away from her memory. She didn't have a pleasant time there and she wasn't going to paint rainbows around it and say it was a good place.

No, it was far from being a good place. She had sometimes found herself wondering if she would have been better off on the streets.

Now, though, Jennifer felt she had to do something. Something for Elysia.

From what she saw, it appeared that Elysia had never been adopted. And that saddened her to the core.

Jennifer had thought she would die in the orphanage, before her new parents had saved her.

And she was only there for three years.

Jennifer decided that she would look for some sort of living relative to Elysia. There had to be someone out there for her.

Jennifer had just found out she had a distant cousin alive still. And that cousin had adopted a child a long time ago.

If there was hope for Jennifer, then there was hope for Elysia.

All she had to do was contact Elysia somehow. And get all the information she could about her. And there was only one person who could help her with this. Jennifer had to call her as soon as possible.

Caterina Winner was the one person she needed to help her make Elysia happy.

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A/N: And that was the third new chapter. Go on to the next one, stop right now, review, or… do something else. And can I just comment and say that Quatre and Dorothy's genes screw up whatever innocent child they have. And why does Elysia always meet weird people?