To NailPolishBunny- I didn't plan on it; I just get stuck and frustrated and go work on something else for a while. I loved having Quatre try to pronounce big words like disrespectful and prodigy! I really hope I was accurate, but the only kid in my life is 9, and she lives two towns over, so...
To Flying Fish- No, Trowa and Cathy will not be getting together. I have other plans for those two. Trowa, of course, will eventually be gay, because he just seems so gay to me. I have yet to write a fic where Trowa was straight. Well, there is that one story…. But that's beside the point. I agree on the cuteness of 3x4x3, but I think it's a bit overdone. I like writing AU because it lets me explore other possibilities that the canon storyline makes impossible. As for Wufei... Oh, he's gonna show up, all right. Just you wait and see...
"Have you ever seen a rabbit, Heero? They're funny-looking, and they bounce really high when they move, like they've got springs in their feet. I saw a rabbit once last year. It was a pet, but its owner let it get out, and it was bouncing down the street and everyone was staring at it, and the girl who owned it was running after, screaming 'Come back, Mr. Bunny!' and the rabbit just kept bouncing. It bounced into a shop and they caught it, but it was lots of fun to watch!"
Trowa had come to the conclusion that ADHD was contagious. Everyone in the orphanage seemed to have it, especially Duo and Quatre, who both talked nonstop and seemed to have an endless amount of energy.
"Rabbits hop." Heero stated firmly. "S said rabbits hop. They don't bounce."
"Ah, bouncing and hopping are the same thing, 'cept bouncing goes higher." Duo said, grinning. "But deer really bounce! I saw some in a movie once, and they bounced really high!" Duo demonstrated how high the deer had bounced, using a potato to represent a stone wall and his hand to represent the deer, while Heero watched with wide blue eyes, storing everything he saw for later reference.
"Is he always this loud?" Trowa asked the nun, Sister Helen.
"It's one of his most charming qualities." Sister Helen said with a smile. "Quatre, dear, the heat's too high. Turn it down a little, or you'll burn the stew."
"How can you burn stew?" Heero asked, distracted from Duo's stories of bouncing animals. "Stew's like water, and water doesn't burn, it just disappears."
"So stew's all water?" Sister Helen responded. "What about the vegetables, and the potatoes, and the meat? Can't they stick to the bottom and burn?"
"I guess..." Heero admitted dubiously, and Trowa smiled to himself. Heero was very smart, already accepted into first grade at five, but sometimes, he just refused to believe the truth. "But then the meat burns, not the stew!"
"But the meat's part of the stew." Quatre protested, his aqua eyes bright with a smile he refused to show, probably because he didn't want to hurt Heero's feelings. "The meat makes it stew instead of soup, so if the meat burns and we can't eat it, we won't have stew anymore."
"Okay..." Heero said, sounding a bit less certain that stew couldn't burn.
Cathy made her way cautious down the stairs to the main floor of the orphanage, hoping no one had left their toys out for her to trip over. They usually didn't, but there was always a chance, and she didn't want to fall down the stairs again. That hurt.
She made it down the flight without mishap and felt along the wall for the door to the dining room, following the sound of voices and the smell of stew. After more than a year, she found it fairly easy to navigate the halls of the orphanage, and found the dining room with no trouble at all.
She recognized most of the voices engaged in conversation, and one that probably belonged to the new boy. Quatre would probably be near him, but it was hard to tell in the jumble of voices.
"Hey, Cathy!" Duo's energetic voice hailed her, and she moved gratefully towards the sound. "Cathy, over here! Heero, move, you're in Cathy's seat!"
"It doesn't have her name on it." A tantalizingly familiar voice complained.
"Just move, Heero." The new boy said, sounded exasperated. "If she usually sits there, it is, in effect, her chair. Move."
There was a heavy sigh and the sound of wood scraping against stone, and Cathy's usual seat was empty by the time she reached it. She didn't receive much in the way of special treatment, in the orphanage or at school, but routines provided a comfortable setting in which Cathy could function almost as well as her seeing friends. She'd been eating meals in this very same chair ever since she first came to the Maxwell Orphanage, and she was glad to not have to give it up.
Taking a deep breath, Cathy filtered out the background noise of conversation and dishes clanking together, listening for Quatre's voice. He didn't always sit next to her, but it always worried her when she couldn't hear him.
"Hey, Cathy," Duo said quietly, resting a hand on her shoulder. "Q's right across the table. Heero, the new kid, is next to you. Say hi."
With a smile that was most likely slightly off the mark, Cathy gave wordless thanks and turned to her right. "Hi." She said, still smiling. "My name's Cathy."
"I know." The same familiar voice said, and a small hand touched her face. "We met already, when you lost your shield."
My shield? Cathy thought, momentarily confused. Oh, he must mean my glasses.
"Yup." She agreed. "But now we're telling our names and stuff, so it's a second meeting, okay?"
A moment of contemplative silence, then, "I'm Heero. My big brother's Trowa. We're staying in your room, so we have to be sure we don't leave our stuff out so you can trip over it."
"Heero." The voice that must belong to Trowa said. "Eat your vegetables."
"But I hate green beans." Heero protested, and Cathy smothered a laugh.
"Eat them anyway." Trowa countered smoothly, sounding used to his brother's antics. "Or need I remind you what S used to say about a well-balanced diet?"
"'Eating healthy is the first step to living healthy.'" Heero sighed with the air of someone quoting. "But I still don't like 'em."
Cathy just sat there, hiding a smile by digging into her on meal. Since she didn't need things to be aesthetically pleasing, whoever had served her plate had simply dumped everything but the bread into her stew and mixed it together, as was usually the case.
"Eat them anyway, Heero, and maybe we won't help clean up."
"The beds are big enough for us to share." Trowa admitted dubiously, eying the small room. "But I must warn you, Heero might switch beds."
"Switch beds?" Cathy repeated, sounding perplexed. "Why?"
"For some reason, Heero feels more at ease in bed with girls." Trowa said, resisting the urge to shrug. The younger brunette had gotten into trouble a lot in the circus, wandering out of the family's trailer and bedding down with one of the female performers. "Don't ask me why; I have no idea."
"Well, he could just share with me." Cathy said, then paused. "But then you'd have to share a bed with Big Brother…. I don't know if he'd like that…."
"We could go and ask him." Trowa suggested, not sure he was comfortable with the idea of sharing a bed with a strange boy. "If you're okay sharing with Cathy, Heero?"
"Sure." Heero said. "Cathy's all right, and I can make sure she doesn't trip over my stuff in the morning."
Cathy laughed delightedly and, with amazing accuracy, threw her arms around Heero's shoulders.
"I love you, Heero!" She exclaimed happily, and Trowa wondered if she had any real notion of what she was saying. From what he understood, she was about two years younger than him, and what seven-year-old knew anything about love?
Hero, unlike most children his age, had never picked up on 'cooties'; he simply smiled and patted Cathy's cheek in a strangely paternal gesture.
"Let's go see what Quatre thinks, then."
It was very late at night when Heero woke up, surrounded by shadows and the unfamiliar night sounds of his new home. He lay there for a moment, trying to pinpoint what had woken him up; he was a light sleeper, sure, but it took something strange to rouse him out of sleep.
After a moment, he heard the sound again- a small, frightened whimper, like a scared puppy, coming from nearby. In the dim light of the streetlamps, Cathy's scarred face was twisted with fear and pain, and the whimpering was coming from her.
Now, Heero, being only five, didn't know very much, but he did know a thing or two about pain. In the circus, he'd learned about the three different kinds of pain: body pain, mind pain, and heart pain. He knew body pain healed fastest, and pills made it go away for a while. He knew that mind pain was usually lasting, but could be fixed with pills sometimes, too. And he knew that only time and love could heal heart pain, and that heart pain was the very worst kind of pain, because only someone you loved could give it to you.
Time, Heero had no control over, and he couldn't offer it as a cure for Cathy's kind of pain. Love, on the other hand, he did have, and he gave it freely, snuggling up close to her and wrapping his arms around her. It was always better to have someone to help heal heart pain, even if you didn't know that someone very well. If support and the unconditional love of a child was all Heero had, it was all that was really needed that cold October night on colony X27-NL8, and Heero drifted back into dreams.
Aw, Heero's so sweet! I had to work very hard to decide what Heero would be like at such a young age, especially if J never got his grubby mitts on the boy, but I did enjoy writing that last scene. Keep a look out for more characters in the next episode!