Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing.

A.N. - I'm soooo sorry that's it's been so long since I last updated. My laptop has been broken for the past two months or so, and my story's on it, so I couldn't write anything. I have sent out an email about the update to all the reviewers I have addresses for, but if I missed anyone I apologize. Please keep reading. Barring any other unforseen computer problems, I plan to be consistent with updates again.

Last Chapter:

"It doesn't matter anymore though," Trowa continued. "The past is the past and is no longer relevant." He slipped off to his room soon after, leaving Quatre to think about what he had said. The other pilot resolved to ask Heero for his thoughts on the matter the next day, before heading to bed himself.

Chapter 21:

The next morning found all the pilots gathered around the breakfast table. Duo had bags under his eyes and was impatiently waiting for the coffee to brew. Heero looked a bit tired as well, and from that Quatre guessed that Duo had been up with nightmares. Trowa was his usual taciturn self, and Wufei looked a bit confused. He was obviously remembering his encounter with Treize the previous night. The five ate in silence until Heero finished his toast and began to speak.

"Does anyone know if we have building supplies? We're going to need to repair that hole in the wall."

Wufei grumbled under his breath about stupid ghosts who showed up to disturb his training for no reason. Duo had opened his mouth, probably to tease Wufei, when Trowa spoke.

"I don't think we have anything." Heero grunted.

"I'll go out and get what we need then. It wouldn't hurt to get a supply of tools anyways." Quatre saw his chance to speak with Heero privately.

"I'll go with you," he said quickly. Heero raised his eyebrow, turning to look at Quatre in slight surprise, but didn't object. "When were you planning on going?"

"The hardware store probably won't open until 9. I'll go then."

"Alright." The group broke up as they finished breakfast, leaving behind Duo who was on dish duty that day.

"Are you planning on talking to Heero like I suggested last night?" asked Trowa when he and Quatre were alone.

"Yeah," the blond replied. "But it probably wouldn't hurt to learn something about tools that doesn't apply to fixing a Gundam." Trowa nodded in agreement, and sat down with a book he was in the process of reading. Quatre absently flipped through a magazine on business until it was time to leave with Heero.

Now that he actually had the chance to ask Heero some questions in private, Quatre found himself suddenly, unaccountably nervous.

"Why am I so worried about this? Heero and I have never been that close, but he's never minded answering any of my questions fully and honestly before. Maybe it's because I want to ask him something a bit more personal..." Quatre would have continued arguing with himself for longer, but the Japanese pilot's deep voice suddenly interrupted his thoughts.

"What did you want to talk to me about, Quatre?" he asked. Quatre could only gape in his best impression of a goldfish. Heero sighed and continued when it looked like he wasn't going to get a response. "You'd never volunteer to come with me to the hardware store if you didn't want to ask me something privately." Quatre's mouth only opened wider. He hadn't expected the Japanese pilot to be so perceptive.

"I shouldn't be so surprised. This is what Trowa was talking about, last night." He managed to close his mouth before formulating a response. "Trowa told me last night that it's not enough to feel people's emotions, I have to understand the reasons for them as well."

Heero raised an eyebrow, clearly saying, 'and'?

"He also told me that you would be the best person to talk to about that. That I need to understand people's pasts in order to understand their emotions."

"What exactly what do you want to know then?" Quatre heaved a silent sigh of relief that the other was willing to answer his questions. Heero obviously noticed it, but chose not to comment.

"Well, firstly, I was wondering why you sometimes look wistful when I talk about my childhood. Trowa said it was because you didn't have one."

"Trowa was right. My first memories are of Odin training me to be an assassin, and my first 'toy' was a gun. I hear you talk about your childhood memories and I wonder what it would have been like, to be a kid." Heero shrugged self-consciously.

Quatre paused at that, then suddenly asked, "are you jealous of my father wanting me?"

"Not really. I was at first, but then I thought about it. Odin wanted me to some extent, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered taking care of me. And I know he valued me, as a cover, and maybe something more. If he hadn't cared at all, he certainly wouldn't have taught me how to look after myself. I know Duo envies your life though. You complain about being born in a test tube sometimes, but look at the family you were born into. His parents probably abandoned him on the streets to die; but yours put a great deal of effort, and probably money, into creating you. I know you don't value money very highly, but it means a lot when you've never had any."

"Oh. What do you know about Trowa's past?"

"Don't you think you'd be better off asking him that?"

"He told me the basics, but I have a feeling there's a lot more he's leaving out. Why would he do that?"

"Because he doesn't want you to pity him. He, Duo, and I don't talk about our pasts because we don't want pity."

"How does he know I'd pity him?" Heero gave Quatre a flat stare.

"It's what you do, Quatre." Quatre opened his mouth to object, but he was cut off. "You grew up in a lavish home, and a lavish lifestyle. We grew up on the streets. You pity us just for that, and we don't tell you any more because we don't want or need it. The past is the past, and nothing can change it. Our lives were hard, so we got harder. It doesn't bother us most of the time anymore, but pity just opens up old wounds."

"Is there anything specific that was hard about your past, Heero?" Heero shut his eyes briefly, and Quatre regretted asking. He was about to retract his question when Heero began to speak.

"Odin wasn't overtly cruel, but he was a hard taskmaster. He discouraged open displays of emotion, even if he acknowledged it wasn't good to cut them off completely. I was punished for any mistakes I made, and his favoured form of punishment was a cuff to the head. I was about 3 years old when he found me, so I cried at first when he hit me, or when I was hungry, but I quickly learned not to do that anymore."

"He hit you when you were 3?" Quatre's voice was full of shocked disbelief.

"See, you're pitying me, aren't you? It was all he knew how to do. Like I've said before, he didn't know how to raise a child, so he treated me like a rookie soldier under his command. He didn't hit very hard when I was that small, just enough to let me know that I'd done something wrong.

"It was worse when he started teaching me martial arts. I wound up very badly bruised, and occasionally with broken bones, but he never hurt me badly intentionally. It was more that he overestimated the force a child's body could withstand. When Odin died, I wandered the streets alone for a few months before I met Doctor J. I wasn't as good a thief as Duo, so I went hungry a lot. The only advantage I had was my assassin's training. I was able to defend myself from the gangs and rapists.

"When Doctor J took me in, I knew what I was getting into. He wasn't deliberately cruel either, but he was trying to train a human weapon, so there were a lot of painful things he felt were necessary." It was then that they pulled into the parking lot of the hardware store. They got out of the car and entered the store before Heero resumed his story.

"One of the things Doctor J felt was necessary was the ability to resist torture. You can't build up a resistance to it unless you experience it, so he did so as often as was necessary for me to be able to ignore pain. I also had to learn how to fight while badly injured, set my own bones, and sew my own wounds, since a soldier has to be completely self-sufficient. He basically set out to drive all the humanity out of me."

Quatre's face was horrified when Heero finished his narrative. He fell silent for awhile, silently trailing after the other pilot as he walked through the isles, selecting the necessary tools and supplies. He remained quiet until they had paid and were back in the car.

"I can't believe you went through all that. No wonder you're jealous of my childhood." Heero snuffed a laugh.

"And now you pity me because I told you some of the worst things about my past. Be glad I didn't tell you the exact worst moments. You'd probably have thrown up by now. But it wasn't all bad. There were some good times too. When you're in a situation like that, you have to take advantage of the good moments and try to forget about the bad ones. Just like anybody does. That's why I understand emotions so well. We're all the same in the end. But you have to accept that things like those in my past, or Duo's, or Trowa's, really do happen. You've chosen to ignore them in the past because you didn't want to accept that, but you'll never be a good empath until you do. Violence, hunger, and cruelty do exist, and they motivate quite a lot of people. Especially the kinds of people we're going to be fighting against in the future."

"You're right, Heero. I'll probably have to ask you quite a lot of questions about that in the future still, but I understand you, Duo and Trowa a bit better now. But if those weren't your worst moments, I don't think I ever want to hear about the real ones. Thank you for helping me to understand. Trowa was right, you were the right person to ask about this."

"You're welcome. If you want to fully understand though, you might want to go live on the street for awhile and see what it's really like. Don't go alone though. For all of your skills, you wouldn't last long on your own."

"What do you mean? Why wouldn't I?"

"You just aren't ruthless enough. People on the streets are desperate, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to survive. Starving people don't have anything left to lose."

"How did you all manage then?"

"Trowa didn't, strictly speaking, live on the streets. The mercenaries were a kind of a buffer, and they valued him for his skills in combat, so they weren't going to damage that. Duo got very good at hiding and running away. He is also one of the best close in fighters I have ever seen. If he couldn't run, he beat them. As for me, living on the streets is the origin of my glare. I got very good at it, and it saved me more than once. Noone on the streets ever tries to look that threatening unless they can back up the threat, so more than once gangs simply left me alone. I never looked like a particularly easy target anyways. On the streets you are either predator or prey, and I moved like a predator. You, on the other hand, would be perceived as prey. Unless of course, you were with a predator. Then noone bothers you unless they're desperate. That's why I said you shouldn't go alone."

"What differentiates predator from prey?"

"Attitude. Prey either skulks around, trying to hide, or looks at everything curiously. The first one says that you know you aren't strong and are trying to avoid notice, the second says that you're either new to the streets, or visiting. Predators walk like they own the place." He would have said more, but they had arrived back at home. Heero went to fix the wall, and Quatre wandered off to think about everything Heero had told him.

bellashade - I'm glad my chapter brightened your day. I like Quatre, but he seems awfully naive at times. It seemed appropriate to have him not fully understand the pasts of people like Heero, Trowa, and Duo.

Windy River - I'm sorry it took so long!

Mystical-Maiden - Of course I'm not going to tell you what's going to happen! You're right, it would ruin the story, and besides, I don't know for sure myself. Treize just kind of wrote himself in there, like a lot of things seem to. I haven't actually planned out a plot for this story, so it goes in surprising directions sometimes.

Your friend sounds a lot like Duo. Is depressed but acts happy anyways. It just made a lot of sense to me that a spoiled rich kid like Quatre wouldn't understand the past of someone raised on the streets. I'm glad you like the bit about Trowa's past. I'm trying to develop the five pilots somewhat equally, and Trowa's always been one of my favourite characters.

Death Phoenix - Um...sorry?

The Chaotic Ones:

Chaos - Thanks for the return of Zechs. I'm going to need Relena back sooner or later. If you don't give her back, I may have to use something from my own collection of shiny silver objects. Hmmm, maybe I can threaten to cut out your heart with a spoon. (I live in rez where you aren't allowed to have anything even remotely dangerous. I'll show them, metal spoons can be sharpened.)

Aaries - Your muses are completely insane. More fun that way though. Sane people are boring. PR would be terrifying on a sugar high. I'd probably wind up going and hiding in the bomb shelter I've been constructing since I took so long to update if I saw that.

PR - Gee, I wonder why Aaries won't give you any candy. Why don't most people notice you? If you're naturally that hyper though, maybe we can figure out a way to use your energy to solve the impending power crisis.

Lord Aries Greymon - Clean air is a good thing. Polluted air tends to give me headaches.

Strictly speaking, I don't really know anything about their pasts either. All I'm working from are assorted flashbacks and the Episode Zero manga. Which I have in English, so I'm not even sure if it's completely accurate in terms of translation. Gah, I can't wait until I learn to read kanji in Japanese class. I'm not telling why Wufei saw Treize though. If it is for training though, Wufei needs to learn to see walls. As for Quatre, Heero might eventually be able to make him understand. Either that or seeing the world for a few hundred years.

Kiyoteh Kiaira - Thank you very much for your sympathies. Sorry for not updating sooner.