Chapter Seventeen

I

"Good evening, Mr. Hanasaki," the old man said as the boy started outside the base. Heero grunted a response and kept going, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat as he walked toward the edge of the short platform that separated the primary building of this branch of the counteroffensive from the shore. He did not flinch when the door fell shut behind him, a solid thunk and a sharp metallic clicking as it automatically locked, but for a moment he did close his eyes, pausing in the long journey that still lay ahead of him.

Heero shook his head, clearing such unwanted thoughts, and walked on. He often went to the edge of the pier after he decided to call it a night — or day, his hours were quite flexible and he could come in or leave at whatever time he chose — and though he did not find any true enjoyment in this, he did eventually find something there, something that seemed to be becoming more and more vital to him with every day that passed.

The pier, as it had been on every other night Heero had thought to stop there, was empty, kept company only by the calm ocean. He could not see the edge of it in the unbroken darkness and while the water wasn't exactly deep there, it was well over Heero's head and if he were to take one too many steps there was a good chance that, even despite his aquatic skills, he would wind up dead before the night was through. He had seen such a thing happen to even the best of swimmers: unable to touch the ground, stunned and breathless from the abrupt plunge into the icy ocean, with the waves moving in from all directions one could all too easily become so severely disoriented that he simply paddled further away from land and soon became caught in the current caused by the nocturnal tides.

However, circumstances would have to be dire indeed for Heero to suffer such a fate, even if he still held that fervent desire to die. He subconsciously knew the exact number of steps it took him to walk from the beginning of the pier to its end. He had often crouched down in the darkness, expecting to take the plunge into the water but that had somehow never happened, and tonight was no exception.

The thing he found when he came here was the closest thing to solace he would ever be able to attain, a solace that was neither happiness nor sadness but some equilibrium between the two. The only time in his life that he had ever been able to truly rid his mind of all thoughts, to empty it out like so many grains of sand into the ocean below, had been when he had gotten the inexplicable idea that instead of going directly home one night, he would go out to the pier, and ever since he had become all but physically addicted to the mental numbness that came over him there.

He was not able to find that solace tonight, though. Too much had happened recently and too much had yet to be done for him to clear his mind of it all, regardless of how much he wanted to do it. He struggled against all the persistent thoughts that threatened to interrupt his reverie devoid of awareness for almost half an hour before he decided that such a battle was futile and simply gave in.

However, even after surrender, he still refused to think about the counteroffensive and was able to put it, for the time being at least, at the back of his mind.

He managed to instead think about something that had not entered his mind in months. The others. All united in battle, all scattered to the winds after there were no more battles left to fight, like old knighted warriors who suddenly found themselves without a sword or an adversary upon whom to use it.

Heero did not consider the others his friends, never had. They had had to rely on each other's help in desperate times but this was hardly a sign of true camaraderie. They had all parted ways soon after L3X18999's short-lived attempt to gain control over the Earth, and since, Heero had not heard from any of them, save for one quick phone call from Duo Maxwell while he had still been residing in the Sanq Kingdom and the braided pilot had still been able to attain his phone number with relative ease.

Duo was one of the two other pilots of whose whereabouts and exploits Heero knew, the second being Quatre. Duo and the former OZ soldier Hilde Schbeiker had gone to Duo's home colony after the war that was in all rights supposed to be the final one and the two of them worked together for the Sweepers organization, and Heero supposed that his former fellow pilot enjoyed this kind of life. After all, now he was being paid to find junk and play with it, and life with Hilde was probably another perk of his life after the war; it was no secret that the two of them had — in the very least — developed some kind of feelings toward each other in the time they had spent together before the commencement of the Eve Wars. The last time Heero had listened to Duo babble over the phone — for that was the only thing their conversations could truly be referred to as, for Heero rarely spoke in them, leaving the talking to the ever-obliging Duo — the Sweepers believed they might have found a sheet of drastically damaged yet still usable gundanium alloy in a mass of wreckage several kilometers from the colonies. Heero had uttered some sound of interest at this and had he given it any more thought than he had he might have realized that he had known even then what this solitary scrap of gundanium meant, but Duo knew nothing for sure, and if the metal had proven to be the same one used in the construction of the Gundams, the Sweepers had never released a statement about it. That one little piece of gundanium disappeared from both the face of the Earth and the colonies. Heero, more knowledgeable now than he had been then, supposed that suited Zechs just fine.

The second pilot whose current state of existence Heero was sure of was Quatre Raberba Winner. But of course, Quatre's whereabouts were known to everyone.

There was always recompense for evil, Heero had been taught by a person he was beginning to believe couldn't die, and at the same time there is always something bad laying in wait for the good. There is recompense, and somehow after what had happened, he was brought back to a much more stable condition, but the constant of that condition that made it stable was that he was comatose, a human vegetable, and the chances that he would ever recover were very slim.

Trowa Barton had valued anonymity as a Gundam pilot and seemed to value it even more now. If there were any people either on Earth or the colonies who really knew him aside from those he worked with in the circus, it would seem to them that he had simply vanished. He had remained with his sister, Catherine, in the circus long enough to finish the South European tour, then had returned to the name given to him at birth, Triton Bloom, and had fled in the cover of darkness to one of the colonies. Heero, naturally suspicious as any true soldier should be, had wondered about this sudden departure, perhaps because of all pilots he had fought with, Trowa was the only one to whom he had ever actually talked, but Trowa's affairs were his own and as long as he remained out of Heero's way, that was fine.

He had not been surprised in the least when he learned that Trowa begun to have contact with the current President of the Prevention Organization.

Heero knew even less about the final Gundam pilot, Chang Wufei. He had heard that Wufei had been personally invited by the former Major Sally Po to join the Prevention Organization and that he had accepted. That was the last time he had heard Wufei's name mentioned.

There was no love lost between any of them, but nor was there any bad blood.

They were simply finished now.

They were not needed.

Heero was not needed.

And so he had believed until he discovered that Odin Lowe was still alive.

The Earth had returned, it had seemed then, to peace, and the colonies were trying to gain their much-desired self-government. The great military leaders who had orchestrated the wars of the past had been annihilated, ending with the dramatic death of Treize Kushrenada. Zechs Marquise, who had guided the White Fang to war with the Earth, had supposedly died in that final battle. His sister, Relena Darlian, had assumed the role of Earth's Vice Foreign Minister. The former soldiers of those wars had dissipated to carry on their own lives. The pilots of the mobile suits called Gundams, likewise, had been scattered, without farewell or explanation, to the winds, each unaware of what had become of the others.

And Heero was acutely aware that someone was following him.

The stalker was not blatant in his pursuit; he was in fact so discreet that anyone else lacking experience in this area would not have been able to detect it. Yet his constant presence was distinctly known to Heero, who sensed neither good will nor malice in it, and who had really ceased to care one way or another.

After a moment of this horrid, insubstantial game, he was sure he knew the identity of his stalker.

The suspicion was confirmed within only a few days. He had wandered aimlessly since his disappearance, and his wandering through the European continent had ended without reason just south of Milan. The wars had left the city ravaged and decadent, and for lack of anything else to do, he had taken up residence in an abandoned apartment building. It was to this apartment he returned on an afternoon that had already seemed to have no end, and within only a few minutes he became aware that someone else was there with him.

His hand, discreetly tucked into the pocket of his coat, tightened on the gun as he proceeded through the cold, unkempt halls, listening for any sound the intruder might make.

The silence spoke to his apathetic awareness of some impending epiphany.

The intruder was patient. An hour passed, another, and beyond the filmed windows the sun sank below the battle-scarred horizon, yet still he made no sign of his presence.

The gun did not leave Heero's hand as he waited, occupying a third-floor room where he had set up his computer. Nothing he had stored on it held any interest for him now, though his eyes seemed locked to the monitor, which concealed from view the revolver. Patience, it seemed, was his only virtue.

He heard no sound of furtive movement nor did any change ever occur in the surrounding shadows; when at last the figure emerged, it seemed credible that he had done so out of thin air.

Heero had known long before that encounter the name of the man who followed him, yet when the face materialized from the shadows his breath nonetheless silently caught in his throat, and had he not regained his composure quickly the gun would have fallen from his grip.

"I see you remember me, then." A tight cynical smile, such a familiar voice, deep and resonant and as melodic as that of the devil. The face was almost exactly as it had been when they parted, almost exactly ten years ago, unfazed by age and unmarked by the explosion that should have killed him when the gunshot had failed.

The man, who to the world's knowledge had died on colony L3X18999 during the elimination of the Cosmos Arm, stepped fully out of the shadows, revealing himself to be clothed entirely in black, as he had always been in the past.

The devil started at her side, comely, and tall, and black as jet.

His treacherous body tried to move away from the table, to rise up brandishing the gun and attempt what no soldier or explosion could, but his mind would not allow it.

An extension of the night's darkness, it seemed, Odin smiled. The expression was enough to chill the spine of angels and demons alike. "Still so silent, are we? I shouldn't have expected any less. Here sits the soldier who saved Earth from certain annihilation, and he refuses to speak so much as a word of greeting to an old acquaintance." He stepped closer to the table. "You may put away gun you're holding. I have no intention of assaulting you."

"What do you want with me."

Odin gave a soft laugh. God, why couldn't he have forgotten what that laugh had sounded like, that bitter, cynical quality that had not truly come into being until after her death, and now it was she whom he saw as his furiously closed on Odin's dark image, her face streaked with blood—

"What I want of you is irrelevant." He paused, took another step closer. "However, your assumption that I request something of you is correct."

"Then what is it."

"Did I not tell you only a moment ago that what I want is irrelevant, Takeru?"

He shuddered at the sound of his own name, his name that he had abandoned so many years ago, the damnable name given to him by a woman with the face of an angel.

Odin must have seen him flinch, for he gave another familiar, cynical smile. "What is it, Takeru? Does that disturb you?"

"I have nothing to say to you," he said, forcefully and yet still monotonously.

Odin stood away from the table. "Very well then. That's just for the best. But if you should recover from having someone bring up your past when you've tried so hard to discard it and reconsider having something to say to me, come to Milan tomorrow afternoon. I'll be waiting on from four until six."

"I have nothing to say to you," he repeated, and yet his words lacked their former conviction, and his voice sounded fragile, quieter, almost weak.

Odin nodded. "Of course." He turned and started to walk away, returning to the shadows as though he were a part of them and they willingly accepted him into their cold embrace.

"Wait," Heero called before Odin disappeared fully into the darkness, without intending to and after the word had left his lips he did not know why he had said it.

Odin halted but did not turn. "Yes?"

"Where will you be waiting."

He had a feeling that, though he could not see it, Odin smiled then. "Beside the statue in the center of the piazza."

"Don't expect me to be there."

"I had no intention of it. God forbid anyone should ever expect anything of you, Takeru."

With that he took his leave, and the following afternoon Heero did indeed find himself walking in the direction of the piazza. He would never be able to explain, either to himself or to Odin, why he did, but of course it was irrelevant to him. God forbid something should ever be anything more than irrelevant to him.

Odin, though dressed completely in black, did not seem out of place in the semi-crowded square, but rather appeared a part of it all, as though he, too, had been sculpted and placed on these streets in some long ago age. Indeed, he seemed, as he stood within the crowd and yet apart from it, something more natural and more belonging to the city than anything else around him.

"I'm here," Heero said, stopping three feet short of Odin's watchful figure. "What do you want?"

Odin stepped away from the statue and gestured for Heero to follow. "I wouldn't worry, Takeru," he began, walking casually down the bustling streets of the piazza. "I wasn't expecting this of you."

"Hn."

"Somehow that word sounded much more poetic when spoken by your mother."

He stifled a grunt and pressed on through the crowds behind him.

"Do you yet have anything to say to me?" Odin asked finally.

"No."

"Even after all these years in which I've been presumed dead and yourself presumed all but the same."

"I said no, didn't I."

"Ah, but then you have indeed gone against your former convictions and have said something to me."

"I'm not what I was," he said, without reason but with much regret afterward.

"Considering that the last time I spoke with you, you were eight years old, I would hope not."

"You know what I meant."

"Then you're at last admitting that you were not always like this."

He said nothing.

At last Odin moved to the order of business. Heero listened attentively, feeling no surprise at anything he was told, and when Odin made his proposition he gave neither an acceptation nor a denial.

"Let me ask you something," he said, as Odin started to leave.

Odin raised an eyebrow. "I'll let you."

"Why do you want me to do this."

"Because, Takeru, I have decided that neither of us is entirely obsolete, not yet at least. I'll leave you to think on it. If you should decide you want to accept, there will be a private plane waiting to take you to Spain tomorrow evening in a port north of here."

"And if I don't want to."

"Then for God's sake don't."

He stifled a groan. "You know what I meant."

"If you decline, I will return to being dead in your eyes."

He grunted and watched passively as Odin, his former guardian, gradually disappeared into the crowd.

"Don't expect it of me," he whispered, to nothing and to no one.

God forbid anyone should.

II

Two nights later he received another visitation from Odin. He had accepted the proposition and the previous day had been taken to what would become the counteroffensive's production base. But he had not seen Odin that first evening, had instead been greeted and shown to the rooms he would occupy below the ground by an elderly Chinese man.

After a moment, he had recognized him as Xing Yuan-Chen.

"Are you always going to do this," Heero asked when Odin, without warning, had entered the bunker given to him. "No. In fact you shall be rid of my presence soon enough. I'm going to join the others in Vólos. Yuan-Chen will be left in charge here."

"Do you really believe what you're doing is right."

Odin considered this for a moment. "I wouldn't know. I've never been a judge of such things."

"You're doing it for her, aren't you."

"For whom, Takeru? Hmm? Would you care to refer to her as something more than 'her?'"

"Hn."

Odin was suddenly in front of him, only inches away from him. Heero realized that in his concealed hand he held a long blade.

"You will not employ your childish defense tactics on me, Takeru, not now."

"I don't have anything to defend."

"You've everything to defend. Is it truly pain that makes you so defensive, your espoused fear of pain? Will you ever admit it to yourself that something has hurt you?"

"Would you have said any of that to her."

Odin flashed him an angry look. "Who was she to you, Takeru? And why do you flinch whenever I address you by the name she gave you?"

"I–"

"Is it possible that whenever you hear that name it's her voice that you hear saying it?"

"She wasn't…"

"Wasn't what? The one who caused you so much pain? But her death hurt you, didn't it? Admit it, Takeru, the memory pains you still, doesn't it? Why can't you admit that to yourself, when you know that if you admit it, it wouldn't hurt quite so badly?"

"I–"

"And then there was Dekim Barton, who helped to make you into this empty shell you are today. He caused you so much pain, didn't he? Pain that you refuse to admit to. Pain that you even now will not relinquish. But you won't show a sign of it. Tell me, Takeru, does physical pain elicit an emotion from you?"

Heero saw the blade rising and, powerless to stop it, he winced as its edge was driven into his hand. Odin brought the blade up to his wrist in one graceful, curving movement, and Heero had perhaps never felt so fully detached from physical pain in his entire life, or at least since the last beating he had endured at Dekim's hands.

He winced. He winced, and nothing more.

"You're searching for an end to that pain, aren't you, Takeru? And end to those memories that so haunt you."

The blade was withdrawn and disappeared again into the folds of Odin's coat.

Later, after Odin had left, he at last came out of it enough to allow Yuan-Chen to examine and stitch the wound, all without question.

III

The clouds had dissipated and the moon now shone down upon him, upon the pier, upon the ebony waves as they lapped up against the pier's supports. A light breeze, chilled by the Mediterranean, blew over him, blew through him as though he were finally fading away into nothing, into the cold, damnable emptiness that he so wanted to consume him. Had he ever wanted anything else than this?

He dipped his hand into the frigid water, let it run over his skin, penetrating to the bone, and his thoughts turned now to her. He had long ago lost use of those first, pure memories of her; he no longer needed the memories of her smile, her voice, of her dressed as a boy and all in black, that almost playful light in her usually solemn eyes as she defeated student after student, allowing him to watch, knowing that light only came into her eyes whenever he was there, or perhaps only whenever she could become somebody else. He had no use for his old wondering if she allowed him to watch in hopes of imparting some of her strength to him.

This was not the woman he thought of now.

Instead he saw those first nights without her, those years; he saw the photograph on the table before him of her face, bruised yet determined; he saw the photograph being snatched away and the gnarled hands lifting his head to face their owner.

"Do you know who I am, boy?"

Groaning, trying to pull away from these inhumanly strong hands.

"I am the demon who took your mother to Hell."

Even in those days immediately following her death, he had never wanted her as much as he had in those first months in the custody of Dekim Barton. She had fared well in her period of incarceration, though he knew not the specifics of it, and what had he done but become exactly what Dekim had wanted of him? She had given him nothing, while her pathetic son had given up his very soul. One for one, perhaps.

A shudder coursing through him, not from the cold but from something else that could not be named, not, at least, by him. A small sigh, like that of a child. Damnable emotion.

I have failed you so badly.

The waves lapped against his hand, tiny smooth caresses devoid of life.

Mother…

"It's a beautiful night, isn't it?"

The sound of the voice behind him startled him so much that had he not quickly pulled away from the pier's edge he would have fallen into the ebony water.

He turned and saw a woman watching him from the shore. The shadows cast upon her face made her unrecognizable at first, but when she stepped up onto the dock he realized who she was.

"What do you want."

She walked briskly toward him as though she thought he wanted her company. "What are you doing out here?" she asked, sitting down next to him on the edge of the pier.

"I asked you what you wanted."

The redhead — he had come to think of her under this term, for he had never caught her name — shrugged. "Very well, then. I wanted to see why you were out here."

"Hn."

"We've never been properly introduced," she said after a moment.

He stifled a groan. "Don't take this personally, but I didn't come out here to provoke a social gathering."

"This isn't a social gathering," she said, and not without the same vague cynicism he had always heard in her voice. "This is merely two people sitting by the ocean at the most ungodly hour and one of them is trying to introduce herself to the other." Her smile faded, her eyes sobered. "I don't bite."

He merely looked at her.

"My name is Marguerite St. Domingue." She extended her hand.

After a moment of hesitation, he took it. "Heero Yuy."

"It's a pleasure."

"Hn."

Her eyes traveled to the black water and back to him. He felt terribly open under her gaze.

"It wasn't that bad, was it? Engaging in such a simple social interaction, I mean."

"Don't you have anything better to do?"

"No. What could be better than chipping away at the icy façade of one of our organization's most secretive members?"

Her sarcasm unnerved him as much as her voice ringing out through the silence had earlier.

"Of course, no one is forcing you to talk to me. Had you been terribly unwilling to give me your name, you wouldn't have done it, would you?"

"I don't see what any of this has to do with anything."

"Then you've already grasped the point. The most meaningful experiences in life are those that revolve around nothing."

"Don't wax philosophical on me."

She smiled, and her expression was so much like Odin's that for a moment he had to glance away. "I have no intention of waxing philosophical, and as for doing anything on you, I have someone else for that, thank you very much."

He flashed her an unguarded shocked expression and she laughed softly.

"I thought that would elicit some kind of emotion from you," she said.

He grunted and moved away from her.

She did not seem offended by this. She studied the water in silence as though reading her own future in the patterns of the waves, and at last she returned to her solemnity. "Why don't you tell me your real name?" she asked after the passing of several minutes.

"I told you — my name is Heero Yuy."

She nodded. "And so it has been for quite a few years, I assume. But what was it before you took that one?

"What was yours."

She smiled. "If you must know, my given full name is Magdalena Marguerite Gabrielle d'Anton de St. Domingue, but I'm sure you are able to see why I shorten it."

"My name is irrelevant."

"As is half of mine."

His eyes met hers. "What do you want."

"Only to speak to you."

"You've spoken."

"Hmm." He thought for a moment that she would leave finally, but strangely she remained.

"I've not come here to attack you," she said, and for the first time her melodic French accent became noticeable to him. "Nor have I come to subject you to an inquisition. Unlike some of the others under Odin's employ, it would seem, I know nothing about your life or your past. I've not really come to pry these things from you either. It's not knowing that intrigues me."

He scoffed. "You're wasting your time. I'm not a romantic intrigue."

"I never said you were romantic in the least. As I've stated, I already have someone to supply me when it comes to those matters. You compliment yourself too much by thinking otherwise. I find you, thus far, to be rude, distrustful, and a bit cocky as well. So rest assured, mon cher, you hold nothing romantic for me."

He was silenced again by her acidic response, but he did not look away from her.

Her dark red hair gleamed under the silken moonlight.

"What were you thinking about," she asked finally, turning her eyes back to the sea, "when I interrupted you? You seemed quite lost in it."

He shrugged. "What do you care."

"I don't care." Whatever it is, it matters very little to me."

For a long while he could only remain silent. When at last he spoke, he did not intend to answer her question, yet before he could evade it he heard the reply rolling from his damnable, treacherous tongue. "Someone I knew a long time ago."

She seemed momentarily stunned, but her voice did not convey it. "Would I be prying if I asked you who this 'someone' is?"

"Who that someone was."

"Is this one of the many proverbial skeletons in your closet?"

"What are you talking about."

"That's what they say about you," she continued, "that you're haunted by and hiding more memories than Odin Lowe himself. Is it true?"

"Who are 'they.'"

"Everyone who has taken note of you. Did you really think that if you scurried through the crowds without speaking no one would notice you?"

"Hn."

Again she neglected to respond for some time. He wished as much as he knew how to that she would finally come to her senses and leave.

"They also say that a part of you is in love with death," she said as she moved so that he would be forced to look at her, and he bit down on his lower lips to silence the groan that arose in his throat.

"You listen to what others say too much."

"Perhaps you're right, but I only listen to their ramblings if I agree with them."

"Hn."

"You're quite fond of that guttural little word, aren't you?"

"As fond as you'd like to believe I am of death."

Her eyes widened behind her glasses in mock astonishment. "Do my ears deceive me or did I just hear the infamous Heero Yuy utter a sarcastic remark?"

He said nothing.

"Am I so wrong to agree with them?" she asked, mercifully deciding that to mock him further would be nothing more than a waste of her time.

"What do you think."

"I think that I'm not wrong at all, and that's why my presence bothers you so badly."

"You're not bothering me."

"And you've just spoken one of the worse lies I've ever heard in my life. Don't think I haven't noticed you wincing every time I've opened my mouth. Am I striking a nerve somewhere in you?"

"Hn."

"So I am then. But which one disturbs you more — having to accept that you've allowed something in the past to trouble you, or acknowledging that you long for death?"

"What would you know about that."

"About what?"

"Death."

"I wouldn't know anything about that. I haven't died yet."

"About longing for death. What would you know about it." The expression that he shot her was unintentional but nonetheless bitter.

"About longing for death?" Her eyes looked as though she had just been injured. She stared at him a moment longer, then with a quiet, mirthless laugh she glanced down at her hands. "What would I know about longing for death." She removed her coat and pushed up the long sleeves of her shirt, revealing two wide clasp bracelets, one on each wrist. Silently she undid them and lay both silver bands on the pier beside her. "Would you like to see what I know about it?" She turned over both arms, exposing the vulnerable underside of her wrists. "This is what I would know about longing for death."

Running down each wrist, beginning at the very base of the palm and stopping only a couple of inches above the elbow, was a swollen white scar, lighter than the tone of her skin and in the moonlight appearing as the color of a cleaned bone. The wounds had been inflicted only within the past one or two years, it appeared, and both had been mortally deep, the right only slightly more shallow as she was right-handed.

"Do you think this impresses me." He laid a single hand upon her forearm and turned it so that her pale wrist with its bold scar was no longer facing him.

"No, and I have no need of impressing you." She paused long enough to refasten the bracelets on her arms and pull her sleeves and coat back over them. "You are not the only one who has espoused death, Heero Yuy, nor will you be the last."

"Why are you doing this."

"I saw you sitting out here so passionately alone with your thoughts, and you looked as though you wanted to jump and end that longing. I merely wanted to see if you would do it."

He gave her the closest thing he could muster to an incredulous look.

She gestured toward the black rippling water. "Go on. I won't stop you. If you need me to I'll even hold you down should you have any second thoughts."

He started to get up to leave and she pushed him back down.

"You long for death, don't you? This is a perfect opportunity for it. Go on and do it if you want it so badly. Or perhaps you don't want it as badly as I did."

He rose and this time she allowed him to.

"You really don't want it then, do you?" she said somberly, staring up into his eyes with those pained ones of hers. She stood up and touched his hand warmly, and for once in his life he didn't try to recoil. "Thank you for this pleasant conversation. I've now decided it was well worth my time, and I sincerely hope you'll soon realize that it was worth yours as well." She stepped away from him and slowly walked toward the edge of the pier. As she disappeared into the shadows, as silently as she had come, she called back, "If you don't truly want it, you shouldn't waste your life asking for it."

He put her out of his mind and returned to the pier's edge.

Author's Notes: This chapter, too, was written long before most of Ballad as character study for Heero. It is much shorter than I remember it being, but I'm not entirely displeased with it. The relationship between Heero and Odin has always been an odd one for me. Odin is quite the stoic until he appears in a scene with the 'emotionless' Heero, who unintentionally begins to display a hated sensitivity around those who are connected to his past. Heero's scar is finally explained in this chapter; Odin is not psychotic by any means, but Heero's lack of outward emotion does offend him, I think. My friend for whom this story was written actually drew a cute little doujinshi parody of this scene: in it, when Heero barely flinches as Odin slices up his hand, Odin then decides to cut his arm off.

There is a very noticeable lack of question marks in Heero's dialogue, and I feel I should explain this. In my mind, Heero very rarely sounds interrogative; therefore, his questions are often written as statements to reflect the intended deadpan tone of his voice.

I hope I didn't go overboard with Heero's repressed bitterness over his mother. I wanted there to be a real reason for his hollow nature, and trauma due to the death of his mother at a very young age seemed to make sense back when I first had the idea. I don't think Heero consciously fears being what would have been a failure in his mother's eyes; it is only when he is seriously remembering her that the part of him that is still capable of expressing emotion questions his own merits in light of the person his mother was.

Regarding Marguerite, yes, this is Rhyn's lover, and one of my favorite original characters, despite her infrequent appearances. Her name is ridiculously long, but it is meant to be humorous, and I will justify it by saying that it, too, is meant to be a reflection of social/linguistic changes that have occurred by the AC era.