4: Journey

By: Princess Sassafras

Notes: Wufei's POV.

----------------------

Days spent with him have made my mind weaker. Things slip past my lips that I do not mean to say. I do mean them, only not to say them. Things like, "I'm sure your sisters are jealous."

"Of what?" He asks, looking up at me from beneath beautiful bangs.

"Their only brother has more lovely hair than they do."

He blushes and smiles. I've foiled myself. But my comments are not always superficial. He is wiser than I ever could have imagined, and I do not mind telling him so…in small ways.

He says that what is important in life is the Journey. I wonder if this is true. But even though I am not certain, I admire his faith in himself. He does not wonder at his path, only follows it with a trusting heart. He is not afraid of hills he cannot see over. He is used to them. I have spent so much time despising them. I call it blindness: not being able to see where you're going. Quatre believes that blindness, and lostness, are a given. That's what questions are for, and asking them is what is important.

He is wise, but youth leaps out at me in his laughter. I make him laugh without meaning to. An insect in my face makes me swat it and curse. This he finds amusing, and laughs like tinkling bells. But his most beautiful laughter strikes at the strangest times, when I'm not even expecting such a reaction. Once he was speaking so forcefully about Fantasy and Fiction, and its importance to keeping alive the imagination, which he also thinks is vital, that I asked him if he believed in Unicorns. He laughed so forcefully then, his lips drawing back over white teeth and his eyes disappearing in creases, that I blushed. That only made him laugh harder. "I'm sorry, Wufei…" he apologized. "I am not laughing at you. Well I'm laughing at you, but not at you…"

"Oh, just give up." I said, and he quieted.

"But it's such fun." He made such a face at me then, I'll never forget. Sly. I felt an inferno in my belly then, and did not know why.

What I would not give to tease him back. I have been working on it for the past few months, but to no avail. He still surpasses me in humor and in etiquette.

Once when I was leaving the balcony, and we were off to start another long day, he put his hand on my arm to stop me. "Stay a little longer," he said. And he said it almost pleadingly, so what could I do but comply?

"They stretch on forever, don't they? The days, I mean." He looked ten years older for a split second, hunched over the railing, staring down at nothing. Staring into the bottomless pit of either paperwork or infiltration. Endless duty. I understood.

I was compelled to touch his hair, but moved my hand to his shoulder instead. He turned his pale face to me. "Quatre. If the Journey is what is important to you, then travel where you will. Not where you think you must."

It was my way of telling him to follow his heart. And he reached back and lay his hand on top of mine, and we stood there for what seemed a brief millennia. And then he smiled at me over his shoulder, and let me go.

I wanted so badly to kiss him then. It ached.

---------------------