Quatre POV

To say that I was worried about how the maganacs would react to Trowa would be a vast understatement. I knew that they wouldn't hurt him, but they wouldn't want to let him run loose, either.

Rasid came rushing up to us and Trowa sank down in my arms. Trowa's always been a bit afraid of Rasid, probably because of his size.

"Master Quatre, what happened? Is he alright?" Rasid asked, nearing the both of us to have a better look at Trowa. That's when I felt it. Trowa shivered and his skin shimmered and conformed in my arms. In a second, I was holding a large wolf. Rasid gasped and backed away.

"Master Quatre, get back!" he yelled.

"Rasid! Rasid calm down!" I yelled back even as the other maganacs surrounded us, weapons drawn. "Trowa's not going to hurt anyone. He's hurt, we have to get him inside."

Trowa shivered and became human again. There was an overwhelming sadness and fear coming from him, in both human and wolf form, but I had to block it out. Having me in a panic would have done nothing to help Trowa.

"Master Quatre, he's a werewolf! Get back!"

"Enough!" I yelled, fed up with their yelling. Ignoring the cries of the maganacs, I marched toward the ship.

In an instant, Trowa was pulled form my arms. There was a sharp feeling of panic from him before I could block it out. I turned around to find Rasid holding Trowa in his grasp as Trowa struggled helplessly.

"If he's on the ship, he stays in the prison. I won't have him hurt my crew," Rasid told me, his tone firm. Before I could answer he had pushed his way past me and the other gawking maganacs and into the ship.

It was a moment before I regained my senses and followed. Rasid had a head start, so he had Trowa in the prison hall before I got to them. I watched as Trowa struggled as they put him into the small, metal room and hooked a makeshift chain collar around his neck so he couldn't get away. The collar had a pad lock so that he couldn't get it off even in his human form. It was when he heard the snap of the lock that he went wild.

He pulled at the chain and screamed so loud it reverberated off the walls and down the hall. I could see the tears tracking down his face as he screamed my name. His eyes found me only as they shut the door and locked him inside. Everything went silent.

The pain was so great that I almost fainted and I had to sit down for a moment. When I came back to my senses, most of the maganacs had gathered in the room. I set to work at once.

"Abu, Abdul, go see if the cook has any meat cooking for tonight and bring it here. Arif, run and get some blankets from my room, then stop and ask Doc to bring some medical supplies down. Rasid," I said, turning and addressing him directly, "I can't make you let Trowa go, but I won't leave him alone in that room. I want to be allowed in the room and I want the key to that lock."

He looked at me for a long time after that. Both he and I knew that I wasn't asking, nor would I accept denial.

"When you are in that room, there will be no way for us to help you. We won't be able to see nor hear you. If the werewolf kills you, we can do nothing. If you choose to remove the collar, the outside door will be locked first and it will not be opened again until after the full moon," he told me. I nodded, I understood his reasons and accepted his terms.

"Be careful, master Quatre," he told me, then turned away.

Arif came running down the hall a second later, his arms piled high with blankets and Doc trailing after him. Rasid opened the door and Trowa's screams were once again audible. I made my way into the room, Doc trailing at my heels and Arif following hesitantly.

Trowa was curled up in a ball on the floor, screaming and sobbing brokenly. I rushed to his side, Doc and Arif waited by the door.

I knelt beside him and, unsure of what else to do, ran my fingers though his hair in a calming gesture. Trowa looked up, his beautiful eyes rimmed by tears, and just looked at me for a second, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Then he grabbed me and pulled me forward, burying his face in my chest. Arif made a move toward us, but I raised my hand in a gesture for him to stop.

"...thought you left me. I thought you wouldn't come back," Trowa whispered into my chest.

"I told you I wouldn't leave," I whispered in his ear and he gave me the first true smile I had seen of his. He was so gorgeous.

"Master Quatre," Doc interrupted, attempting to get my attention. I looked toward him and felt more than saw Trowa curl himself around me, afraid we would be separate again.

"He's hurt," I told Doc, "He has a long cut on the side of his leg and a smaller one on his shoulder."

Doc quickly came over and knelt beside us. I had to force Trowa to uncurl so that Doc could see his wounds and ended up with Trowa's arms wrapped securely around my waist, his head pillowed in my lap as he lay on his back. It didn't take long for us to see that Trowa's leg had already stopped bleeding and Doc made quick work of stitching Trowa's leg. We then had to twist Trowa around so that we could see his shoulder, which had also stopped bleeding and was not in need of stitches.

"All in all, he's not too bad off," pronounced Doc while packing up his things, "The stitches I put in are loose enough that he should be able to transform without messing them up as long as he doesn't move around much. I doubt Rasid will let me back in to see him, so make sure you bring him down for a check-up after the full moon is over," Doc told me. Trowa was again curled up on my lap and could have cared less what Doc was saying. He was contented to just sit there in my lap quietly.

That is, until he smelled food. It was odd, the almost wolf-like way he reacted. He sniffed a bit, then stood up and walked as far as the chain would allow. A moment later, Abu and Abdul entered carrying two turkeys and two large baskets on either arm. Trowa pulled on the chain as hard as he could while making growling noises, but otherwise ignored everyone else. Abu and Abdul put their burdens on the floor and made a hasty exit, Arif followed suit, placing the blankets in a corner. Doc nodded to me, then also left the room. I walked up to the door where Rasid was waiting, the key in his hand.

"Be safe," he told me, handing me the key, then shut the door. There was the click of a lock and I knew that, for better or worse, I was locked inside.

It was dark with the door closed, our only light coming from the small window in the cell. The moon shown brightly through it.

Trowa was making wheezing noises, almost choking himself trying to get at the food. I hurried over to him, a little anxious, but he ignored me even as I undid the lock on his collar. When he was free, he leaped at the meat, devouring it with a vivacious appetite. Watching him, I felt a bit nauseous, so I busied myself with spreading the blankets out in the corner. I was glad Arif had brought so many, the floor was hard and the night was cold, not to mention the barred window let in an icy draft.

When I looked back at Trowa he had transformed into a wolf again, but somehow that made me nervous, being trapped with what appeared to be a wild animal, so I checked what the cook had packed us in the basket and was delighted to find everything from sweet rolls to apples to a large supply of beef jerky. There was also apple juice, a personal favorite of mine, and sweet water in the basket, along with napkins and forks and other such utensils. I smiled, it was just like cook to pack a picnic lunch for a prison cell.

I returned to the corner and sat down on the blankets, cocooning myself in them, my back against the wall. Trowa had finished off the first turkey and seemed to be eating the second a bit more slowly. In a few minutes, he changed back and it was not long after that when he lost interest in the food and crawled over to me, his belly full and bulging, like a wolf after it had gorged itself. He smiled at me, a sated, sloe-eyed smile. I pushed aside the blankets and opened my arms for him and he quickly crawled into my arms and fell asleep. His face was dirty with grease, so I wiped it clean with the edge of the blanket, not worried about it because the floor was dirty and all the blankets would need washed anyway.

Trowa slept until the moon had sunk beyond our window. I dozed a bit, but couldn't really bring myself to sleep with all that had just happened. The recent events played through my mind over and over again while I tried to make sense of it. I was so deep in thought that I didn't even notice Trowa's eyes had opened until he nuzzled my arm.

"Hey," I called, seeing that he was awake.

"Hey," he replied, softly, "I'm sorry I fell asleep on you like that."

"It's alright. I know the full moon has to be affecting you. You should go back to sleep if you need to."

Trowa shook his head mutely, staring intently at the moon.

"Thank you," Trowa said after a while of silence.

"For what?"

"For... everything."

"It wasn't much," I told him, knowing how little I had actually been able to give him. He looked me in the eye for a moment, some emotion I wasn't able to properly feel because of the barriers I hadn't yet taken down was shown there.

"Yes, it was," Trowa said, again quietly but this time with conviction. I thought that ended the conversation, but Trowa felt the need to go on even though it pained him.

"No one's every stayed with me when the moon was up. The mercenaries would always lock me in a room with no light and leave me there until after the full moon. Sometimes they forgot about me and three or four days would go by before they'd let me out. I was so hungry..."

"They didn't feed you?" I asked. Trowa simply shook his head. Well, that explained why he was so thin and weak.

"The mercs wanted to keep me weak," Trowa continued, "like some kind of pet. T-they liked that they had a monster in their grasp to do whatever they wanted with. They wanted to keep me helpless. Trowa... the real Trowa was a mercenary. He was kind to me and named me after himself, he treated me like a person and didn't hurt me like the others did. He... he never knew I was a... a werewolf. I was afraid to tell him and then he died. I always wondered if he would have hated me for being what I am."

We were silent for a long time after that. A breeze came down from the window as the night wore on and I shivered, pulling Trowa closer.

"Are you warm enough?" I asked. Trowa only nodded. I sighed, there was only two days left in our journey and I still hadn't asked Trowa to stay with me. I thought that at least here he couldn't run away.

"Trowa, I've been meaning to ask you, what do you think about... not staying with the maganacs?" Trowa froze and I could feel his heart beat faster. "Calm down," I soothed, realizing how my nervousness had made that sound, "What I mean is... I..." Trowa was looking at me curiously, so I took a deep breath and prepared myself, "Trowa, will you come and stay with me at Haven?" I asked him. True to form, Trowa deliberated over his answer for a moment before speaking.

"You mean you don't stay with the magancs?" he asked.

"No. My home is in Haven, I just travel with the maganacs when I need to."

"I would like to stay with you, but..." he hesitated, "what about my..."

"It won't be easy bringing a werewolf to the capitol of Russia, but I'm sure we can manage. Haven is surrounded by deep forests that you can hunt in. You... you don't have to stay or even come with me, but I'd like to try."

It was a long time before Trowa answered, and even then he only nodded, but I was so delighted. I smiled and stroked his hair before we both fell asleep.

We both slept for a long time that night. When I awoke I was no longer sitting against the wall and, as I looked around, I had been moved to the other side of the room.

"You didn't look comfortable," Trowa told me, coming to sit beside me and handing me a glass full of apple juice, "and the window had a bad draft, so I moved you over here."

"Thank you."

I looked out the window and found that the sun was high in the sky, though it was still cool in the room because of all the trees shading us. I decided it must have been a little later than noon.

"When will they let us out?" Trowa asked.

"Probably after the moon rises tonight. Not long."

Trowa seemed uneasy. He rose and paced the room a bit, I had to call him to sit down for fear that he would break his stitches. He kept looking at me, but with the barrier between us still up I couldn't tell what he was feeling. I would have pulled the barrier down, but I was afraid that Trowa might feel it, so I simply waited. When he finally did approach me, I could tell from his movements that he was nervous.

"Quatre, that night, when we... when I..."

"Go on," I told him, knowing which night he meant and realizing how embarrassing it must be to try and talk about it. He meant on the night that we sucked each other off, but I could see why he couldn't say it.

"D-did you mean what you said? That you'd have to love me to have a relationship with me?"

"Y-yes."

"Could we? H-have a relationship, I mean. I-I..."

"Do you love me?"

"I think so..."

"You don't know?"

"I-I've never been in love before. I don't know if this is love but... but I panic every time I think about you leaving me and I'm not afraid to let you touch me. That night... the night when I took you in my mouth, I heard you making all those noises and it made me hard. I started thinking about how it could be with you. I started thinking it might not be so bad to do that... if it was with you. When I took you like that, I wanted to prove myself wrong. I was so afraid that I'd be disappointed, that I wanted you to hurt me so that I wouldn't hope for anything. I wanted you to hurt me... but you didn't. You took me in your mouth, the same as I did to you, and we were equals. No one's ever done that for me before. I-I don't know what love is... but I'd like to find out. Show me?"

"I've never been in love either, so maybe we can show each other. No matter what happens, I'll always be here for you, even if this doesn't work out. But I think it will. I think I love you. No, I know I love you. Will you let me give you something?"

Trowa looked a bit wary and a bit curious when he nodded. I leaned in and gently brushed out lips together. For a moment, I stayed like that, with my lips on Trowa's, allowing him to get used to the feel of it. Then I deepened the kiss, pushing our lips together more forcefully and really kissing him. He jumped a bit when I stuck my tongue out, but opened his mouth and gave me entrance, then explored my mouth in turn. Trowa's hands slipped under my shirt as the kiss went on. I could feel his hardened member pressed against my thigh, only a thin blanket between his naked body and my clothed one.

It was the hardest thing for me to do, when I broke our kiss and pulled Trowa's hand away from my chest. I would have liked nothing more than to have him writhing beneath me on the floor, but I realized that it was neither the time nor the place to try to deepen our relationship. For one thing, it would be most inopportune if I should happen to be inside Trowa or the reverse when he transformed. For another, Trowa simply had too many bad memories of sex, I would not add any more. When we made love, it would be somewhere we both felt safe at a time that we could take as long as we wanted.

Trowa looked at me with confusion and a little bit of hurt in his eyes when I pulled away from him.

"Don't you want to have sex with me?" he asked in a pained voice.

"I want to make love to you, but not here or now. I want to have you all to myself when we don't have to rush. Besides, we don't have anything to make the process easier. You know I couldn't hurt you."

"I don't understand. I thought it always hurts," he told me, confusion on his face. I had to frown at that comment.

"If you thought it always hurt why did you want to do it with me?" I asked. Trowa blushed.

"I-I wanted to be closer to you. To be... joined, I guess. It doesn't hurt too much anymore..."

"It shouldn't hurt at all. If you do it right there shouldn't be any pain involved. And it never hurts if two people love each other. I won't hurt you at all, not now, not ever. I know it's going to take some time for you to understand that, but please try. When we get to Haven, I'll show you how to do it without pain. We'll take it slow and if you don't like something we can stop. Maybe... maybe you should take me our first time."

"What?"

"You should take me. You already know what hurts and I can walk you through the preparations..."

"You would let me take you?" he said his voice full of wonder. I suppose he hadn't thought about that aspect yet.

"Of course. I've told you before, we're equals. Partners. If I plan to do something to you it will only be something you'd enjoy. In the same way it will probably be something I'd be willing to try myself."

I think that this time, it really sank in to Trowa that I didn't want to own him, or use him, or get anything from him. That we really were equal. There were unshed tears in his eyes when he looked at me, and he gently reached up and pulled me over for a long sweet kiss. He sighed when we parted, closed his eyes, and curled up in my lap.

We both dozed after that, but only for a few hours. Again there was something preying on my mind and I felt that if I didn't get it out I'd keep putting it off until it was too late. When Trowa woke I decided I would tell him about our link. He woke all too soon for my taste.

"Trowa," I called gently, "I have to tell you something, but I don't want you to get mad at me."

"I could never get mad at you."

"Of course you could. We're partners, remember? You can get mad whenever you want, yell, scream, um... don't throw things, but you can yell as loud as you want." This comment brought a smile from Trowa.

"So what do you need to tell me?"

"Do you know what a mind link is?"

"No."

"Well, I linked with your mind."

"Alright."

"No, Trowa, you need to understand. I linked my mind to yours. I can feel what you're feeling and you can feel what I'm feeling."

"I haven't felt what you're feeling before."

"Yes, you have, I was just discrete because I was worried about how you'd react and I didn't want you to know."

"Oh. So you can feel whatever I feel and I can do the same?"

"Exactly."

"Okay."

"Trowa, you're not taking this seriously. I can see inside your mind."

"I trust you, Quatre. You've obviously been able to do this for a while now and you haven't used it against me. The only reason I ever hid my emotions before was because the mercs would have used them against me and now I can't seem to help it. I'm glad you can tell what I'm feeling even though I can't show it. I love you and I trust you and you wouldn't have linked with me if you didn't feel the same, right?"

"R-right. I just, I just wanted to know if you'd like to have our link upgraded when we get to Haven. It will allow us to read each other's minds and share memories, but we need a psychic there to make sure nothing goes wrong. Would you like to?"

"Sure," Trowa said, curling up in my arms again and dozing back off. I felt a bit silly about how much I had worried myself over what had turned out to be nothing. But after the way Heero reacted to finding Duo in his mind I couldn't help but worry.

I also realized that Trowa didn't completely understand the link yet either, but I was certain that he knew enough to decide that he wanted to link with me. The rest I could explain when we were back at Haven. Carefully, while Trowa dozed, I brought the wall down so that we were fully linked again. There was no pain this time, only hope and love.

It was so peaceful in that cell, with Trowa sleeping on my chest. Nothing else seemed to matter at that moment and, for once, it just felt like everything would work out for the best.