Disclaimer: You guys know the drill. I don't own Gundam Wing, but I do own my own characters and my plot.


Chapter Fifteen: Outing

The following Saturday, I was rudely woken up by someone suddenly whipping my blankets off of me.

"HEY!" I shouted, leaping up. Adrenaline was pounding through my veins, and I was ready to defend myself against an attack.

Instead of an attack though, I was met with the sight of Jericho practically falling over with laughter. My blankets lay at her feet, and I quickly put two and two together. She was going down. I considered leaping at her, but right at that moment, I realized I was wearing nothing but my boxers. Blushing, I grabbed my bathrobe off the floor and pulled it on.

"What the heck are you doing?" I demanded. I was trying to hide my surprise by pretending to be angry.

Jericho grinned at me and walked over to my bookshelf, picking up the book WuFei had given me. "I've been trying to wake you up for ten minutes," she replied. "Get dressed. I suggest clothes you can walk in." She turned and headed to the door.

"Where are we going?" I asked. "And who says I'm going anywhere?"

"It's a surprise, and I say you're going somewhere," Jericho replied. "Get dressed. We're leaving in twenty minutes whether you're still in your boxers or not." She winked at me and shut the door behind her.

I sighed and got dressed in a pair of old jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. I brushed and re-braided my hair, grabbed my denim jacket and headed down stairs. Jericho was standing at the foot of the stairs, flipping through the tourist book. She looked up when she heard me on the stairs.

"Aww nuts," she said, pretending to pout. "I was hoping you'd come in just your boxers. Oh well," she sighed. For a second, I thought she actually looked slightly disappointed.

Her mom had lent Jericho her car for the day. We got in and Jericho started driving across town and then turned onto a main road that led out of town. For the first time since I had arrived from the colonies, I was leaving the town.

We drove out into the country. The town had been built in a wide, flat valley between two large hills. We drove over one of those hills and back down and continued to drive. The area was heavily wooded with farms and fields cut into the forests.

"Where are we going?" I asked Jericho after about twenty minutes of driving.

She smiled and turned off the main road onto a side road. A sign along the road read 'Indian Falls State Park and Nature Preserve, 3 miles'. "I saw this park was highlighted in your tourist book," she replied, tossing the book onto my lap. "I thought we'd go for a hike. Do you like hiking?"

I shrugged. "I've never gone. No real place to hike in the colonies."

"What about that time when you were here on Earth during the war?"

"I was, uh, too busy with other stuff to really go on hikes or anything," I replied.

"Yeah, I'll say," she mumbled, so quietly I barely heard her. I looked at her questioningly, but she didn't notice and I decided that it probably wasn't important enough to really worry about.

The late October sun shone down on us as we walked the trails in the nature preserve. The park consisted of a vast acreage of land that had a large gorge in it. We hiked the trails in the gorge, stopping to look at the different colored leaves surrounding us. Jericho had brought a camera, and I took picture after picture of what we saw to send back to WuFei. After about forty minutes of hiking, we came to a huge waterfall. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

Jericho sat down on a bench and pulled out a sketchpad. She fell silent and looked like she was concentrating pretty hard on what she was drawing, so I sat down on a rock a few yards from her and left her alone. I threw rocks into the stream and watched the waterfall and the clouds and looked at all the beautiful trees and let my thoughts drift.

I thought about how Earth was so different from the colonies and how I should have been grateful for the chance to spend time on Earth. Most normal kids from the colonies never got the chance to even go to a different colony in their lifetime, but here I was, an orphan with an awful past, and I was able to live on Earth. Life is funny like that sometimes, as Hilde would say.

I sighed. Poor Hilde, she used to talk about how one day she would go to Earth, and she would be able to see trees free to grow as tall as they wanted, and she would feel real sunlight, and feel the real wind. I had never really cared about that kind of stuff, but visiting the Earth had been one of Hilde's dreams. I remembered the day we had been sitting on the couch, just chatting. She had suddenly leaped up, kneeling on the couch and she grabbed my hands. "One day Duo, you and I are gonna go to Earth," she said, excited. "We're gonna go to the Earth and we're gonna go walking in the woods and have a snowball fight. We're gonna go swimming in the ocean, too."

"And then we'll sit on the beach and build sand castles?" I had asked her, smiling.

"Oh no," Hilde replied, and I suddenly realized her face was a lot closer to mine than it had been a moment ago. I was practically swimming in her blue eyes. "I can think of something much better to do on the beach than build sand castles."

That was when we had kissed for the first time. I couldn't remember if I had moved first or if she had, but suddenly we had our lips pressed against each other. It had been a simple, honest kiss. It wasn't the most passionate kiss, or the most intense, but it revealed the simple, honest love we had developed for each other over months of living together…

I missed her. I missed Hilde a lot. I missed her voice and her laugh and the way she used to yell at me about making a mess in the kitchen. I missed her cooking, and I missed the way she used to jokingly kiss any "boo-boos" I got. I missed the small pokes she used to give me when I least expected them. I missed everything about her.

"You're thinking about Hilde, aren't you?"

I looked up to see Jericho standing next to me, holding her sketchpad. "How'd you know?" I asked.

She smiled a little. "You always get that same sad face when you talk about her."

"Oh," I said. I looked down at the water.

"What happened to her?" Jericho asked. It wasn't the first time she had asked me, but for the first time, I felt like answering.

"She died," I replied. "She was crossing the street, and a car ran the red light and hit her."

"Oh, Duo, I'm so sorry," Jericho whispered. And she sounded sorry. She placed her hand on my shoulder. "You were in love with her didn't you?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. I think I was, but it was the first time, so I don't know. We were best friends though." I smiled. "We actually only kissed for the first time a week before she died. I think we probably could have lived together forever."

Jericho didn't say anything, staying respectfully quiet while I brooded a few moments more on Hilde's memory. Then it occurred to me that Jericho probably didn't know how to react, so I changed the focus of the conversation. "What were you drawing?" I asked.

Blushing a little, Jericho slowly handed me the pad. "They're not very good. You didn't sit still long enough for me to really finish any of them."

I looked down at her drawings. They were of me sitting on the rock. Some of them were no more than a few simple lines and shapes, while others were well developed. One of the really good pictures was a view of my back with my braid hanging down and my hand running through the hair at the top of my head. Another good one was an image from the side of me in the middle of throwing a rock. The best though was a profile of my face and body. The expression on my face did seem awfully sad and depressed.

"You're really good," I said to Jericho as I admired the pictures. "These are incredible!"

Jericho smiled. "Thanks. I still have a ways to go though."

We hiked another trail that lead up to the top of the falls and then back down the other side. We snapped pictures of everything we saw, and by the time we were done with the hike, we had gone through three rolls of film. I realized I enjoyed hiking; it was a lot of fun, and the fresh air really was helping me relax. As we headed back to the car to go to lunch, I asked if we could go hiking again.

Jericho grinned at me. "Sure thing, Duo."

After lunch, we got back into Jericho's car and went driving again. This time, we ended up at the Zoo.

"Ever been to the zoo before?" Jericho asked as we got out of the car.

I shook my head. "No."

"You poor thing!" Jericho cried. "Well, here, we're gonna go and see every animal they have here." She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me through the gates.

We walked through the zoo, stopping at looking at each other animals. I had never been to a zoo, so it was the first time I had ever seen real giraffes, leopards, tigers, eagles, polar bears, and what seemed like thousands of other animals. I couldn't get over how cool it was that I was so close to some of the animals.

I got really excited when I saw sea otters. We had to go down into a room under ground. One wall of the room was glass, and on the other side was the sea otter habitat. The otters swam right up to the glass, turning somersaults and doing other acrobatics in the water. I stood with my face really close to the glass, watching them. It was amazing. They were even better acrobats than Trowa!

"This is so cool! Oh wow, did you see that? These guys are amazing. WOW! Neat! Did you see that Jericho? He just did like three somersaults in a row. Jeez, I wish I could swim like that!"

Jericho just stood off to one side. I think she had more fun watching me than she did watching the otters. A group of little kids came in with their parents, and suddenly Jericho grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the window and back up the stairs to the outside.

"HEY!" I cried. "Jericho! I wasn't done! I wanna watch the otters more!"

Jericho laughed and grabbed my other arm too to keep me from going back "Did you see the looks people were giving you Duo? You were acting more like a little kid than the little kids!" She smirked. "Besides, it was getting crowded in there, and I want you all to myself today."

I stopped protesting and looked down at her. The way she had just told me she wanted me all to herself suggested something deeper. Did she like me? I met her eyes and gulped. She was really pretty and as we looked each other, I felt my cheeks go red. She had the same look Hilde had in her eyes that day we first kissed. Hilde…

I laughed a little and pulled my arms out of her hands. "So, what animal can I go freak out about next?" I asked her. I acted like nothing had just happened, but I new something had changed in our friendship.

She frowned slightly. I couldn't tell if she was disappointed or if she was just thinking. "The penguins are just down the path a ways. Wanna go see them?"

We walked down the path to the penguin habitat. There were all sorts of penguins. Jericho pointed out the species and told me where they lived. I never knew there were several species of penguins. I had always thought there were just penguins, and they all looked the same. But some of these birds looked pretty far out. My favorites were the Rock Hopper penguins. They had these bright yellow feathers sticking out of their heads, sort of like naturally occurring mohawks.

We stopped at the gift shop before we left. Jericho went to browse in the t-shirt area while I looked through the little toys and stuffed animals. I found a stuffed animal of the Kimono Dragon, the largest lizard on earth, the closest thing to a dragon. I wondered what WuFei would do if I sent it to him with a note that said, "Hey, WuFei, look! It's Nataku's cousin!" I grinned at the idea and decided I would do it.

"Hey, Duo! Look! I'm a Penguin!"

I looked up and saw Jericho wearing a huge Penguin suit, waddling towards me. I nearly fell over laughing. Jericho was laughing too.

"There was an otter suit back there," she said. "But it was for little kids. They're all out of adult sizes."

I pretended to pout. "But I wanna be an otter!"

She laughed and began to waddle back to the clothing area.

I bought the Kimono Dragon stuffed animal and waited for Jericho as she got out of the penguin suit. When she was finally free, we went back to the car and drove home. It was late in the afternoon, and so Jericho just dropped me off at my house.

"Thanks for taking me out today, Jericho," I said as I got out of the car. "I really needed it."

"Anytime Duo. You're fun to spend time with. I'll see you later."

"Yep, see ya!" I waved to her as she pulled out of the driveway.

That night, I fell asleep thinking about otters and waterfalls and penguins and Jericho, and I slept soundly through the night.