Hello, everybody, and welcome to chapter 10. If you missed it when I replaced the notes with a real chapter 9, go back and read it- it's where Quatre and Trowa come in! And if you don't know yet, this is super update week. Everything I've got is getting and update, so if read more then one of my fics, you're in for a treat.

This chapter uses a little different style of writing, and is a little shorter then the others, but I think it's good. It starts of REALLY fluffy, but then moves into a more introspective bit. Hope you like it!

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"No, Blondie, not like that! Tie the sails down like this, unless you want them to-"

::yank snap bam crash:: "Hit the deck!" ::wham::

"-come loose."

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

"THIS qualifies as a meal?"

"Yes, good Mister Turner, and it's good for you. Eat it all up now, and you'll get dessert."

"I didn't think it was possible to turn that particular shade without having a heart attack..."

"Me, too. My father's face was close when he found out about Trowa, but-"

"It wasn't quite as vivid a shade."

"Sparrow seems to bring it out in people."

"Don't glare at him like that Hee-chan, he learned it from me."

"...somehow, I'm not surprised."

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

"Your boyfriend likes the crow's-nest, doesn't he?"

"I think it reminds him of some of the stunts he used to do in the circus."

"Ship to starboard!"

"No, no, Tro'- Ship to PORT! Starboard's the other side! Sheeze, I've gone over it five thousand times already..."

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

"Whattaya MEAN you can't swim? You live in the middle of the freaking Caribbean, for crying our loud-!"

"Black smiths don't leave the smithy often."

"Yeah, I can see. Well, we'll just have to fix that!"

"What?'

"C'mon, everybody! Swimming lessons!"

"We'll be staying on board."

"Don't glare at us like that Heero- Trowa and I already know how."

"And Jack's at the helm, and Will's in the crows nest. Just you and me, Hee-chan! Try it, it'll be fun!"

"No."

"I won't let you drown, I promise!"

"No."

"Chicken."

"No.

"Buck-buck-buck."

"No."

"Scaredy-cat."

"No."

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Much later, Heero decided that he needed to take revenge on one Duo Maxwell. Oh, the swimming lessons themselves hadn't been so bad- they had been rather enjoyable, actually, once he'd gotten the hang of it. Swimming was surprisingly easy. And then there was the way Du- Maxwell had looked with his clothes soaked and sticking to his body, with that braid coiling around him and drops of water-

Focus! Revenge!

No, the reason he needed revenge wasn't the swimming lessons- it was for the method of starting those lessons. He had stood up to Maxwell's taunts. All three hours of them. He had stayed firm through his pleas. All four hours of them. He'd even managed to make it through those long, pleading looks. But those looks had distracted him long enough for the braided pirate to get close enough to throw him overboard. Granted, he'd dived in right after, but still, that had been unforgivable. Revenge was needed.

As if on cue, he spotted his quarry standing over by the railing, looking out at the sea towards the sunset. Heero began to slide in his direction, fully intending to treat the pirate with equal courtesy.

That is to say, fully intending to send him flying over the railing.

But before he could get close enough, the focus of his hunt turned around and looked directly at him, as if he had sensed his approach. It rather foiled his plan, not to mention the fact that most of his anger simply drained away at the sight of those violet eyes... Heero yanked himself out of his trance and stomped the rest of the way to the railing. There didn't seem to be any point in pretending that he hadn't been heading in this direction.

For a long moment, they just stood there, neither one saying anything. Finally, Duo broke the silence. Heero was slightly surprised- he'd thought that the pirate would have tried to say something long before now.

"So how did a black smith get to be on first name terms with the heir to the biggest shipping company in the Caribbean?"

Heero considered, and decided that it wouldn't do any harm to tell the story; if what he thought he knew about Du-Maxwell was true, he'd find it interesting.

"Remember when Will said that Quatre does a lot of things simply to annoy his father?'

"Yeah..."

"One of the things he does is refuse to go to many of the balls and parties thrown by the upper class. It got so bad a few years ago that his father began to send 'escorts' to force his son into going. And it escalated from there."

"Escalated? How can getting frog-marched to a lemonade-drinking fest hosted by a lady whose idea of 'excitement' is a cards game get much worse?"

"Quatre knew Trowa by this point, though they weren't a couple yet. Trowa had been teaching him some techniques in bare-hand fighting, and simple circus tricks. Quatre used them to... escape."

"As in, run off into the streets, with his father's hired guards slash wardens on his heels?"

"Yes."

"...Wow. Lookin' at him, you wouldn't think he'd have it in him," Duo commented, glancing over at the deceptively frail and fragile blonde who was currently talking to Jack at the helm.

"That undoubtedly worked in his favor. While he was running he hid in our smith shop-"

"Like Jack an' me, you mean."

"No. We were there at the time. When the person we recognized as the son of the most powerful man on the island came running in, we wanted to know why.

"Naturally," Duo muttered. Man, who'da thought Heero would talk this much in one day?

"He explained his problem to us, once he had made sure that the other men had gone past. He didn't want us to lie for him or try and hide him, he merely wanted to go out the back way. He left shortly after."

Duo blinked at the apparent end of the narrative. "...But how would that put you on first name terms and everything with him and his boy friend?"

"I haven't finished. Another thing that Quatre often did was simply go out into the streets and talk to everyone he met, be they beggar, maid, or crafts men. I think that he's even managed to talk to some of the better thieves in the town, once or twice."

"Something else to annoy his dad?"

"It did annoy him, but I don't think that's the reason Quatre started to do it and kept it up. Quatre does it just because he wants to. He wants to know the people, he wants to talk with them. He kept coming back, after that, and kept bringing Trowa, too."

"Dragging his boyfriend along on a date?"

"Possibly, but I know that Trowa refused to let him go on these trips alone. Quatre never resisted, as long as Trowa didn't forbid them outright, as his father had."

"Yeah, the forbidding thing sounds like something a rich merchant-lord would do. Is that the end of the story?" Didn't seem like it would be...

"No," Heero replied curtly. The rest of the story involved an attack, but how much could he tell Duo without saying something Quatre didn't want the other to know...

His dilemma was solved by a voice on the other side of Duo. "One day, while Trowa and I were in the shop, an assassin came after us. The man was very good, and Heero and Will helped us fight him off. I don't think that Trowa and I would have been able to do it ourselves. That is why we consider them such good friends."

"Really? Cool!" Duo exclaimed, turning to Quatre. The small blonde had finished talking to Jack and walked back their way while they were both engrossed in the story. It seemed he had decided to add his own view on it.

"Hmm. Will and Trowa distracted him with swords long enough for me and Heero to get behind him and knock him out. Once he was down, we tied him up and dragged him to the jail in the fort."

Duo, by now, was completely entranced. "Well? What happened? Did you find out who sent him?"

"Yes- the weapons he was trying to attack me with, a pair of matched daggers, were a distinctive make that only the members of my family use or carry, so it was one of my sisters. But we didn't find out which one; the killer was found in his cell the next morning, dead. He must have had some poison on him, or possibly someone snuck in and took care of him while he was still unconscious; I don't know. But he wasn't the first person to attack me, and if this adventure is any indication, he won't be the last."

"Yeah, probably not," Duo agreed, chuckling. "Hey, Heero, what was that fight-" Duo turned to ask the blue-eyed boy about what had happened, only to find that he was talking to empty air. Heero had wandered off. "Well," Duo huffed, "looks like he's used up his quota of words for the day."

"Don't be so hard on him," Quatre cautioned. "I went back to the smith shop three times before I heard him speak two words together. He doesn't open up easily or often."

Duo tore his eyes away from searching for where Heero had gone to refocus on the person beside of him. "Why's that? I mean, I know that people don't open up to everyone they meet, but it doesn't seem like he opens up to anybody."

"His past isn't my story to tell," Quatre said softly. "But from what I've found out and guessed, I'd say that his childhood was a very harsh one, and that he hasn't ever forgotten the lessons he's learned from it. He's very cynical about the upper classes and the rich, which was one of the reasons that it so long for him to trust me. I think that it was my introducing Trowa, who obviously wasn't an aristocrat, as my boyfriend that finally convinced him that I wasn't trying to win him over because of some ulterior motive."

"Yeah, I noticed the class thing myself..." Duo mused. "Huh. Guess that explains a bit." Still lost in thought about Heero's past and what could have happened in it that had so closed him up, he wandered off, leaving Quatre at the rail.

The small blonde watched him go, eyes gleaming in amusement. He didn't move as Trowa came up on his other side and draped an arm over his soldiers. They sat in silence for a long moment.

"You do know what Heero's reaction will be if he finds out that you're matchmaking?"

"Trowa! I'm discreet. Besides, they look so cute together, and I saw the looks they kept throwing at each other's bodies during that swimming lesson. I'm just speeding up what would have happened eventually."

Trowa raised his one currently visible eyebrow. "So long as neither of them finds out. I don't want to fish you out when they throw you overboard."

"You could help."

"How?"

"When we get to Tortuga, people will have different errands to run, right?"

"Yes." Trowa intended to try and find some more throwing knifes, himself. He was no mean fighter with a sword, but you could never have too many knifes.

"Help me make sure that those two go off alone."

Trowa raised the eyebrow again. "Why, and how?"

"Because they'll have to act like a team against a crowd if they're alone, and there won't be anyone that they can use as a buffer that way. And they won't be able to abandon each other because Heero doesn't know his way around and would get lost without Duo. And how is simple: You get Jack and Will off early, while I delay them. Then you come and drag me away, leaving them all alone." Quatre was very pleased with this plan. He had seen how much good the braided pirate was doing to Heero, and how much more open he had been recently. He also genuinely liked Duo, and wanted them to be happy together. There was nothing wrong with helping them see that they'd make each other happy, now, was there.

Trowa shook his head, laughing silently. "You know, I wasn't all that surprised when this started."

"You weren't?" Quatre asked curiously.

"No."

"Why?"

"I've always thought that you'd end up as a pirate, eventually."

Quatre mimed throwing a punch at Trowa, but remained cuddled at his side. "Pirate is an ugly word. Try, 'adventurer,' or 'free-booter,' or maybe 'liberator.' They all sound much better."

Trowa just chuckled.

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Duo sat in the crow's-nest, turning what he had learned over in his head, examining it from all angles. Heero had grown up somewhere rough. Somewhere where he had learned to fight, and learned what an enemy was early. He had a very large grudge against the rich or privileged, and was harder to open than a clam that had been nailed shut. Duo ran the list through his mind again, and again reached the same conclusion: Heero had grown up on the streets, before winding up at the blacksmith's shop. Or somewhere very close to them. It was the only thing that fit everything.

Rough was one of the mildest adjectives to describe street-life. Hellish was better, and God-fucking-awful came even closer. He should know, after all. On thee streets, it was fight or die- and you learned to treat everyone as an enemy after the first time your dinner was stolen. And you learned the lessons young, or didn't get to be old.

And it took very little effort to remember all the times he had spat a curse towards someone with more power, more money, or more privilege than he. Another lesson that street-life beat into it's followers very early was the fact that, as far as those in the higher classes were concerned, they were nothing, nobody, and powerless. Less then the dirt that their pretty shoes ground into the street.

The impersonation of a mute, though, was still a mystery. What had happened to make Heero shut himself up so tightly?

Duo stared out at the horizon, not eyes unseeing, as he turned the puzzle that was one cobalt-eyed smith over and over in his head.

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Heero, for his part, had left when Quatre had started to go into the fight. He knew the story, and didn't need to hear it again. And Quatre would probably tell it better than he could, anyway. Besides, if he'd stayed there any longer, he would have been in danger of forgetting just why he was supposed to be annoyed at Du- Maxwell. A small voice in his head informed him that he'd forgotten the annoyance long ago, but he ignored it.

That pirate was confusing everything that Heero had thought he knew about life. Actually, 'confusing' was a very mild adjective for what he was doing. Duo Maxwell was doing to his perceptions and defenses about what Godzilla had done to any given city that he'd happen to have been in. And that was stomping anything and everything in the way.

Pirates were supposed to be on the lookout for no one but themselves.

Yet Jack and Duo clearly looked out for each other, and considered the other good friends. And Duo even looked out for the others on the ship- he'd shoved Quatre out of the way of the rampaging sail when it had come loose from faulty knotting, and taken the time to teach him to swim, regardless of what future retaliation Heero might have pulled on them.

Someone who was a criminal was supposed to be hardened, and tough.

But Heero had seen D- Maxwell glancing worriedly at Jack, helping Quatre and Trowa with a ship's chore they were having trouble with, and even doing extra tasks around the ship that the others didn't yet have the skill to do. He was helping, and being cheerful while doing so.

Fighters with the amount of skill that Duo had were supposed to be serious, and always vigilant.

But Maxew- oh, hell. But Duo laughed and smiled more than anyone Heero had ever met- and truly meant it, when he did so. He honestly found most of the world funny, and always made sure that everyone around him knew it. Though this was a mixed blessing- he could as easily be laughing at some trick he pulled on you as at anything else.

He was the most enigmatic person that Heero had ever met. On one had, he met every single expectation of him, but on the other, be broke them all into little pieces that he then ground underfoot.

He was also the singularly most attractive person that Heero had ever seen.

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A/N: Well, what'd you think? I loved writing the first few scenes- have you ever thought of everything that could go wrong on a ship? And I hope you liked chapter 9, if you just read it. And here's the notes!

Saiph Taeveryn:
Love the name. And yeah, Quatre's family life is a bit of a mess, but he doesn't really mind it. The sisters who hate him are all the ones who moved out before he was born, and thus they see him only as an obstacle and not as a person. All the ones still at home love him. And he's got Trowa, so the fact that his father highly dissaproves isn't as bad as it could be. The main thing that's worrying him is the assasins, but they can't find him now that he's out to sea. I'm really glad you like this story!

Silverblaise:
More screentime for the Gboys is definativly always a good thing. Ain't they cute... I hope I answered your question about meeting Quatre here- he's a little OOC, but I like him better that way. I really love it when he's uber-manipulative. And, yes, Heero will smack Duo soon. As soon as he can stop thinking the braided boy's ass (pun fully intended). Sorry about the typos... I look and reread and edit, but I never catch them all. ::sigh:: How did you like the dialouge format in this chapter? I was trying out a bit of a new style. Thank you for the review!

Katrina:Thank you! I hope you found this chapter to be funny as well- I love to make my readers laugh. I hope you like the new chapter- and I hope you like it when the girls come in. I actually intended to do them far sooner, but the story grew a mind of its own and decided to stretch. It's alive, I tell you!

Well everyone, I hope that this new chapter amuses you and entirtains you- until next time (or the next fic, depending.)