Credibility Ch. III

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The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) "Man and Superman" (1903) Act I

A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.
Thomas Carlyle

Idiotic, retarded safety reports. I knew in exacting detail why I had to do them. But having to check and double check after every single person under me that used any of the company vehicles pushed my limits on ass wiping, as Trowa has so aptly put it once. So every time this week came, or once a quarter, I'd be in a foul mood while everyone tiptoed around. Those who had to actually drop something off for me to validate would get appropriately glared at, and muttered to and about, and heaven help them if they'd messed something up on the form, as my patience only stretched so far, and already worn thin, I didn't appreciate much about the general human populace. To validate every single one, I had to call down to the shop and personally verify that each and every vehicle had been inspected, and had been accounted for. It was an inconvenience for me. Then, after I finished with it all, I had to hand deliver the report to Une, as if internal mail wasn't secure enough to drop off vehicle inspections. Just one of the loops we had to jump through to get the funding from the new government.

I suppose that it's a perfect opportunity to be less than charitable once a quarter. Add that general leaning to the fact that, once again, I had to see Une for something completely, ridiculously trivial, and I was ready to chew nails for entertainment.

Une doesn't have comfortable chairs in her outer office. They looked comfortable from a distance, but the closer you got, the more dubious that description was, until you actually sat down, and you felt cheated, because they were quite the opposite of what you'd originally thought.

The fact that I was thinking such thoughts meant I needed coffee, or some other form of caffeine. I had one hand over my eyes, rubbing at the strain they didn't have, but should have, after the week they'd been through, when someone sat down next to me.

From the quick glance I got in at the person from out of the corner of one eye, they were wearing slacks and black dress shoes. Probably a woman, from the way they had their feet crossed at the ankles, tucked underneath the chair, compounded with the very light floral scent that had appeared.

Really, though, I was much more interested in finding out whether or not I could just dig my eyeballs out, and make them stop the imaginary aching that way. And then maybe my brain, too, which was really the sore point, not my eyes. But the person sitting next to me spoke, and I had to drag myself away from my self-abused eyes. Friday mornings should be abolished on general principle.

"Well, Captain, I guess we just have an Une dependency issue to get over."

Recognition popped up the second she spoke: Ms. Dowldon. I looked at her for a moment, trying to decipher what she meant, and she looked back at me, but she got uncomfortable after a minute or so, and began to explain herself a little.

"Because we keep meeting up like this. Feels like an AA meeting, or something. Regular scheduled time, and everything." She'd made vague gestures around the area, too, to indicate something.

I just shook my head. "I'm sorry, but I still don't get it."

She shrugged. "Ah. Well, I ran into you last Friday morning, so it's sort of as if we had a scheduled meeting, for, perhaps, group therapy." She smiled. "There's even the really uncomfortable chairs."

The reference dawned on me from the one and only time they'd been able to make me see the house psychiatrist. Uncomfortable chairs. That looked comfortable. So I nodded to indicate that I understood, and ran an internal debate on whether or not to try some of the coffee over by the secretary. Hamilton, Une's secretary, was notoriously bad at making coffee though, so it was a question of, one, get it, and die from mud poisoning, or two, expire from lack of energy and mugginess. An open debate.

The girl saw where I was staring, and shook her head. "Don't do it. I tried it, and it's really, really, really bad."

I made a deprecating noise. "Oh, I know it's horrible. But the cafeteria is worse, and I'm not sure if I can last until I have enough of an excuse to run out of the building for decent caffeine."

She choked on a laugh. "Oh, god. Bad day?" She was smiling at me invitingly, obviously offering conversation.

I shook my head. "Just dancing attendance on those who give us funding. And I was up too late last night. And it's Friday morning."

She raised her eyebrows at me, and shifted in her chair, to be facing more towards me. "Oh, yeah? Have to love that, needing to do things for funding." She grinned. "Same thing that happens to professors, they have to show something for all the grants they get. But what's so bad about Friday mornings?"

Since she was interested enough to ask, and I thought that perhaps it might make the time go a little faster, I explained the reasoning behind why I disliked the morning so much. Because everyone was so interested in getting out of the building, they rushed, and I was usually left picking up the pieces they missed. It was, therefore, an especially bad day, on top of the whole, enthusiasm-from-other-people part. She found that suitably amusing, which I found interesting in turn, since I'd been told on more than one occasion that I had a strange sense of humor by Sally and Une and even Duo, who had much too strange a humor to be pointing fingers at anybody.

After I finished, she was shaking her head with quiet laughter, and I was staring, brooding off into space again.

With one last chuckle, she pushed back a strand of hair away from her face, making me glance at the motion, and I saw that her eyes were blue. "And if that's on top of too little sleep, I can certainly understand the need for caffeine, of very nearly any quality value."

I snorted agreement. Une was taking a long time for a meeting that wasn't scheduled. She hadn't had any meetings set up before noon today, and she'd called me up over half an hour ago.

I glanced at the girl. "So what are you doing here yet again?"

She shook her head, and sighed. "I missed a paper." She held up another file from where it was on her lap, and then gave a small laugh. "But this is the very last one. I pulled her entire study apart, and all of the cars, too, and didn't find any more."

Thinking of something that had been puzzling me from the very beginning, after I'd learned about her mother's interest, I felt my facial muscles tightening as I frowned. "Why was your mother so fixed on the Gundams in the first place?"

Her eyebrows raised a little as she turned towards me. "Hm?" I raised my eyebrows at her in return, and she shook her head. "I don't know why, exactly, but I know that she was fascinated with them." She was staring off into space now. "When I was younger, she spent so much time designing things, inventing new ways to do the things that engineers were doing already, across so many different fields."

He felt her pause, felt that it wasn't the end of the explanation. "But?"

As she met my eyes, hers were slightly confused, and serious. "But after the Gundams appeared, she wanted nothing more than to turn what she saw of their fantastic designs, the wonderful ingenuity of them all, and use that to fuel new ways of doing the things she'd always done." She turned back to the main room of the outer office, and stared into the space occupied by the disgusting coffee maker. "More often than not, now, I think that those suit specs weren't actually what she was after, but instead, she wanted to fuel her own imagination with the mechanical delights they presented."

I studied the girl's profile intently, piecing together what I could remember from the file I'd read about Dr. Dowldon. "Was she pacifistic?"

She looked at me, startled. "My mother?" She shook her head. "Not really, but she wasn't as interested in war as most you meet." She smiled again. "But she was a fan of the Queen."

I raised my eyebrows. "Relena?" I snorted. "She'll ramble on all day about the need to work peacefully together—even after she's gotten most of her way already."

She grinned at me a little. "Isn't it, like, against the rules for you to say anything bad about your boss' boss?"

I grimaced. "Neither of them really care enough about my opinion to do anything about it."

Eyebrows raised, she had a slightly surprised look on her face, and waited a second to say anything. Perhaps she was attempting to be diplomatic. "Surely they care what you think, or what people in general do?"

"Oh, Relena cares a very small amount about public opinion, unless they're not doing whatever she wants—essentially anything that includes fighting—and then she has no trouble getting them to eat out of her hand. She's proven that many times. Lady Une does not care. She's there, in that office, solely to keep the peace." I could feel the frown settle deeper on to my face. "Une has never cared for public opinion, or anyone's, really, up to and including mine." Except, apparently from what my intel could tell me, her dead commander's. Whose she still coveted, or so said Sally, the only one of my somewhat contemporaries that tried to breach the ivory tower that was the Commander's office.

The girl shifted back in her chair, staring off as she either absorbed that, or decided to stay away from someone who expressed those types of opinions. Perhaps she'd be quiet, and I could go back to brooding.

I never did get that luck, because although she certainly was quiet for a few minutes, after she'd done whatever thinking on that she wanted to—which was interesting in and of itself, considering the fact that both women were very well respected, or, in Relena's case, universally loved, and I'd just expressed less than flattering opinions about them both—she shifted forward, and towards me again, obviously intent on entering back into conversation.

I was hardly uninterested in hearing what she'd say now, because, as she had in the past, I was now thinking she often entered in her opinion unasked for. It might have been the fact that she had somehow decided that, although I had never encouraged it, her opinion was of vital interest to me, apparently not put off by the fact that I was usually not as patient with the general populace as many.

"You know, that wasn't quite fair."

I tilted an eye at her from the side. "How so? What I said is completely true."

She was looking at me dead on, no sly glances to the side. "Because now, I'm going to have to go through and look at some of their broadcasts to see if it was the absolute truth, or just your take on it, and that's going to wreck havoc on the history paper I have to turn in next Friday, because this whole question is—"

"Do you like kiwi?" If all else fails, distract.

Sam, still apparently lost in the middle of her sentence, looked blank. "Huh?"

I shrugged. "Kiwifruit. Do you like them?"

She seemed a little off balance, but that was good. "Yeah, I guess." Now she was both confused and curious. "Why?"

Again, I shrugged. "I have some in my office, it's lunch hour, and I'm tired of waiting."

Her eyes steady, I think I saw the exact moment when her brain caught up with the situation. "Oh." She glanced at Une's office door. "Do you think it's a good idea to leave? I mean…I need to leave this," she held up the folder, "with her…and I'm sure she'll be done soon…" She sounded unsure, though.

With a snort, I leaned back, arms crossed. "We wouldn't be leaving. And it's hardly our fault that she's taking so long. It's unfair for us to wait for her for this long, when I know she didn't have any appointments scheduled for a three hour block, and we're both here on her bequest." And I was quite tired of Hamilton. Certainly Une had him as her secretary for a reason. I just didn't even want to know why.

She continued to look indecisive for a moment, and then nodded at me, picked the small portfolio back up from she she'd dropped it in her lap, and pulled her purse up from the floor by its strap. We both stood up, and I went straight across the office to Hamilton, informing in a less than patient voice that we'd both be in my office, if Une ever decided to see us.

Then we went to the elevator, and down the floor to my office, where I closed the door and distributed out my reserve of kiwi fruit, my one spoon and a paper towel to each of us. I'd started keeping various fruit, but most often kiwis, on hand a long time ago, because sometimes I didn't want to go out and spend exorbitant amounts of money on food that was questionable at best. Although Duo forcefully told me plenty of times that you could survive on fast food and take out rather cheaply, and do it in a manner that was at least more half good for you than not. I tended to look at him skeptically while all others looked at him in amusement, except for Quatre, who smiled, and said something along the lines of, "But do we want to eat that much fast food? Even if we were forced to due to budget concerns?"

The most annoying thing was that Duo seldom ate out at all. He just claimed that it was survivable.

So I kept something in my office to keep me from having to survive off of it.

I let Sam have the spoon. Being a gentleman, I suppose. That, and it was nearly as easy for me to peel the things with the pocket knife I kept in my desk drawer anyway.

Several minutes later, and she was using the spoon I'd given up to scrape the last little bit that she could out of the first half of the skin; occasionally she'd shoot a look at me from under her eyelashes. It took me all of thirty seconds after the last one to decide enough was enough, and call her on it.

"What?"

She glanced up fully, startled, but had the grace to face me, even if it was with a slight blush and a smile, which slowly grew. "Well…" She paused as she cleaned the spoon off before it could drip. "I was just wondering if this is a lunch date or not."

I felt like I'd just been punched in the gut, and it took me a moment to come to terms with what she'd said just standing by itself, and then, in the silence that lapsed again, as she started in on the second half of her current fruit, my thoughts scattered around and finally fell into place with a thunk. I was analyzing what she'd meant by that, and what my first initial response was other than a resounding "No". And since, at some point in the pinball imitation going on in my head, I knew she was being absolutely serious, she was, therefore, offering it to me. I responded late, instead of throwing my "no" out there immediately, which I'm sure I would have done at so many other points in my life, and answered her "wondering", with a question.

"Do you want it to be?"

Her spoon stopped, and she tilted her head to the side, thinking, and making me regret, briefly, being forward enough to say that in the first place. But then she smiled again, and looked at me. "No. Because I'd think that would be much too easy, don't you?"

I frowned at her. "Maybe. But then, that still leaves me in a place where I would have to, hypothetically, think of something else, and that's more difficult, isn't it?"

Smiling fully now, she set her mostly eaten fruit down on the edge of my desk on her paper towel. "Is it? So difficult to think of?" Despite her fairly jovial manner, I knew she was again asking a serious question, it was sitting there in her eyes.

Meeting those eyes was both difficult and not, as I let the thoughts she'd raised percolate through the many layers they had to before they could come up against the nerve endings that controlled my tongue, and speech. "No." I paused, and observed how she responded to that, with a twitch in her smile, a slight hitch in her breath. "It might even be enjoyable."

She held my eyes for a little longer before she picked up the kiwi fruit to polish off the last of it, letting quiet fall after her final comment of, "Then I'll have to consider that a date." Silence resumed interspersed only with the slight squishing noises that accompanied her spoon in the fruit.

In the end, Une was the one to find us, not the other way around. It made me think of Hamilton again, up guarding the gates to her lair…and taking down messages for her if she didn't feel like devouring anybody right then.

She interrupted the quiet when she opened my door without knocking, and then didn't even have the decency to look slightly annoyed. Instead, she just stood ramrod straight in the doorway, in the strange cross between the diplomat and the Colonel that still had the ability to unnerve me. Not that I'd let someone so used to being my enemy, for all that our wars were over two years ago, see any lack of composure on my part.

"Chang. Samantha." She didn't move in any farther. "Please accept my apologies, but I had an emergency vid conference with some ministers of the council, and it couldn't be interrupted or reconvened." She raised eyebrows at me. "I assume you have the safety reports well in hand?"

I replied just as drolly as she'd stated it, nodding at the stack sitting on the file cabinet next to the door. "And you'll excuse me if I don't personally hand them to you, Ma'am." Une just snorted and tucked them under one arm.

"And Samantha? Your mother's last paper?"

Sam, mouth full, nodded, wiped her hands, swallowed, stood up, picked up her papers, and handed them to Une. "Last one, I'm absolutely positive about it."

Une layered the two small portfolios in one pile. "Good." She stopped hesitantly for a second, half turned away. "I'll…leave you to your lunch then." Then she was gone, and I was staring at the door before Sam cleared her throat.

When I looked up at her, she was wiping her hands off, and she smiled at me. "When will you pick me up than?"

I could feel my eyebrows climbing my forehead while my brain caught up with her, and it scrambled to come up with something suitable to say.

"Uhm." A pause. "Hm. Let me look at something, and I'll give you a call this evening?" I was staring at her now, my turn to be vaguely confused. "Would that be okay?"

Her smile grew. "Sure. Do you have something I could write my number on?"

I nodded, and pulled one of my cards out of the holder that stood on the front edge of my desk, handing that and a pen from my drawer to her. She wrote out her name and number in neat all caps, handing it back.

Then she stood up, collecting her handbag on the way, and made her way to the door with a smile. "Then…I'll see you later, Wu Fei." And she closed the door after she exited.

Leaving me with the card, number side facing up, sitting in front of me while I stared off into space and thought about the myriad different things you could do on a date.

She'd liked my offering of fruit, especially after I'd explained the custom, but, as I thought she might, had left it on a side table that was right next to the door with hardly a pause before she'd stepped out and locked her house. The evening was pleasant, much as the weather I'd checked had indicated it would be, so I knew that a walk would be good. That would get us out of any confined area, and let us talk, and then, if we saw anything of interest, there might be a good conversational point.


It was the sheer randomness of the idea that actually appealed to me. Certainly, walks were recommended in what I'd looked up as far as dating ideas went, but I also thought that it would be a good way for me to try to relax.

I did also let the fact that I wanted to see her in as unstructured an environment as I could sway my decision, and it helped when I presented it to her over the vid phone yesterday. During that conversation, she had given me directions, and I'd avowed to pick her up.

We had walked in companionable silence for several minutes, but that wasn't what I had planned, companionable or not, so, to spark something into life, I waited until the perfect moment, when the swing of her hand and the swing of mine intercepted, and took hers, wrapping it quickly in mine. She turned her head for a moment, smiled at me, and started to swing our joined hands back and forth, at first briskly and then letting them fall to their own rhythm, which, I noted absently, was some mixture of both of our individual swings. It was interesting, to see something happen so simply.

Not even thirty seconds later, she pulled our hands up, holding them for a second in front of us, and spoke.

"You know, Wu Fei…I don't get you, really."

I raised an eyebrow at her, letting my eyes scan the background of the pleasant park beyond her. "How do you mean?"

She smiled again. "Well, you do this fabulous job of making everyone in that lecture absolutely positive that you live for the Preventers, and, somehow, the tiny little details of mobile suits that only a true scientist would care about."

I shook my head, watching the cement of the sidewalk passing slowly by under our feet. "And? What if that's really all that there is?"

She shook her head quickly, clenching her hand in mine briefly. "No, you can't actually get away with that, because then you show this side of you, the one that laughs, a little, jokes about bad coffee, throws sarcastic comments in Lady's face…argues with your friend, Duo, over which parts are going to work the best. No, Wu Fei, I think you're very hard to figure out, indeed." I felt her hand tighten a little again, and she finished with, "And you think up fabulous ways to wine and dine me, too!" She swung our hands hard there, to over-emphasize her point before, she squeezed again, and looked up at me to smile. "Sorta." She laughed a little, and ended with, "You're just lucky I like fruit."

I raised an eyebrow at her, and half-smiled, letting it lapse back into silence for another minute, during which we reached the end of the park, and began to approach the small commercial district that was on the way to the restaurant I'd picked out and had reservations at.

The district was more a walking one than somewhere to drive, and it had small shops ranging from an upscale shoe store to what looked like a combination tattoo parlor/second hand music store, and in the middle a little park-like area that echoed the one we'd just walked along.

"Would you like to go into one of the stores?"

We'd stopped, and she let my hand fall after giving it one more small pressure, and was looking up at me, staring at me with a frown on her face. Then she shook her head, and nodded towards where we'd come from, "Yeah, sure. That bookstore looked interesting."

I nodded, and set off for that, with her beside me, noticing when we came parallel that the books displayed in the window were still focused mainly on the war, or things along the lines of, What To Do Now or, The Life and Times of the Last Peacecraft King: Before the War. I ignored them after one quick glance, and followed her into the store, letting her lead me around.

Actually, I was letting her show me into her mind passively, through the things she looked at. The trail of that thought led to the one I'd circled around so many times already. Why, exactly, did she find me so interesting? Interesting enough to make the first moves, when I'd acted to her exactly as I had to any of the other offers of dates in the past. With an internal smirk, though, I had to admit that no one else had been interesting enough in turn to make me take the offer up.

I'd let her continue to make the first moves, I think. That would show me what to expect.


Too many weeks went by for me not to notice them, but they went so fast that when I looked up and saw Sally looming over my desk with a jovial look on her face, I almost thought that there was some major disaster in inter-satellite politics and she needed big guns, so I'd have to make some embarrassing calls. It was only after I'd been racking my brain for a way out of it this time when her less than serious expression registered and I forced my adrenaline levels back down and started worrying.

"What the hell are you doing here?" As usual, I was absolutely blunt and direct with her, because it was Sally. Better safe than not, in her case, and my position.

Her teeth flashed at me, assuring me once again that she only looked nice, and despite her Hippocratic oath, she loved to victimize and pain me as much as was humanly possible. I had an immediate sinking feeling, and nearly wanted to surrender. If I'd been wearing a white shirt, I may have ripped off the hem and done just that.

She came right around the desk and propped one hip against the side. "Why, Wu Fei! Surely you've guessed, being so very certain and full of dozens of perfect tactical strategies for any given situation?"

My mind, having been jumping around like a crazed rabbit attempting to dodge the scatter from the shotgun, thought back to every conversation she'd ever initiated with me. After a moment, I'd rejected the first handful of ideas on why she was here, skipped over the next few, settled on one briefly, and, mind still whirling on how to get out of this current state, I threw her a bone to confuse and prolong.

"You've finally decided to make good on your threat to drag me to a tattoo or piercing parlor to inflict vast quantities of pain without getting around being a physician?" We both knew I wasn't serious…I hoped.

She stood up straight, and laughed, her head thrown back. "No, though the offer still stands, because I really do have a friend who's a true artist in his medium." She grinned again. "And that may loosen you up. Or give you spasms of embarrassment whenever you're forced, due to circumstances, to reveal anything, which you need, too."

Leaning back as far as my rigid chair allowed, and crossing my arms across my chest, I glared. "I give up. What are you here for, woman?"

Totally in her element now, she mimicked my gesture. "Why, to meet your girlfriend, Wu Fei. What else could pull me away from duty?"

Unbelieving, and possibly with my mouth open, I stared, the crazed rabbit in my head now dead, explosive ammo straight to its small frantic heart. I'd say all thought stopped, but it didn't. Panic and the word "Shit" echoed. "My what?"

Looking arch now, I'm sure because of my dumbfounded expression, she flicked her eyebrows up, and repeated it. "Your girlfriend. The rumor mill's going by leaps and bounds over it. My secretary practically had a conniption," here she paused, and changed the subject momentarily, "which I thought she would, because I've been telling you since the first time you were up that the only reason you found her so incompetent was all the fault of your presence—and she couldn't wait to tell me everything about it." Her smile was slightly kinder when she continued, but she was obviously having as much fun out of it all as she could. "I'm not even going to think about repeating everything I've heard since then, and instead, I'm just going to insist you tell me."

Of course she realized I was on guard; it was probably the fact that she was so intelligent that lead me to become friends with her, rather than treating her with the same unsmiling contempt I favored nearly all other offers and attempts at friendship.

With one hand rubbing my eyes again, I put the other up before she could babble on. After I'd made my eyes sore enough for the situation, I frowned at her. "Three dates. I have gone on three dates."

She grinned. "That qualifies."

I just shook my head and felt queasy as she settled into one of my office chairs. "So! The only hard info I've had I got from Une, and although I'm positive that'd you'd die to know what she gossips like, I'm not going to reveal, on pain of death. Except for the fact that the girl's name is Sam, and she was in your lecture." There was a bright flash of teeth as she smiled again at me. "And didn't I tell you that it was a necessary for you to do that for poor Margery?"

"Now you're going to go into that classic spiel that it's all your fault, and I should be thanking you for setting it all up?" If I didn't know that the woman was immune to any possible mechanism of disfavor that I could employ, I'd still be trying. As it was, though, I was stuck with her, and that meant hell.

She favored me with a benign look I wouldn't give a poor dog for risk of a bite, and went on. "Oh, of course. But I just think you're finally coming out of that shell you've tried to inflict on us all." She leant forward. "I swear Wu Fei, if that damned machine hadn't told you that your path lay with the others, I don't think you ever would have let them become friends. And I still have to remember that I was there to see it, because even that boggles the mind."

I could feel my lips tightening as they drew in to my teeth. "What do you mean, Sally? I don't understand what you mean."

"I mean that you have to start loosening up. I mean, that if you don't, you're going to drive yourself straight insane because you can't rely on that damned machine to tell you who your friends and comrades are going to be. It's gone, and now you have to do it on your own!"

Sally pushed away from the chair and stood up, her arms askew on her hips like I'd seen her do so many times, and glared at me with the amused affection that seemed imbedded in her personality. It never helped my mood or disposition, because I could imagine her showing the same face to the aforementioned awkward pet…which is often how I felt.

"Wu Fei, you're going to have to face up to it sooner or later." She turned to the door, but stopped with one hand the handle, pausing before she opened it up again. "Surely, after all the trials that life and you have put yourself through, this isn't something that can make you back down? After all, Wu Fei…I think it is certainly time for you to move on from the last lesson." And poof, she was gone. Some magic genie.

But Friday afternoon was a good time for me to have a dilemma of thought, because by the afternoon it was easy to make my way into the gym, and take out what I could there. Being the week's end, it was deserted, those who had been frantic in the morning apparently deciding that keeping themselves as neat and presentable as possible was a good idea—I imagined so they wouldn't have to shower on the way out the door for whatever amusements they had planned for the evening. That left me to do solitary exercises, and clear my mind, for which I was very grateful.


The polished black wood of my table reflected a little of the cold light from the fixture. I could stare at the pool and let my mind follow each of the twisted tangents it sought, because no clarity of mind can actually root through the problem for you.

Vacant, more than anything else, is what I felt. That vacant feeling you get after an overload of thought or emotion. I'd felt much this same way after Treize defeated me, and after I'd killed him. And when Heero confronted me. Or after I'd realized that I'd loved my wife, and hadn't known until she was dead.

Something was waiting now, too. It waited for me to decide what to do, make the various choices that needed to be made with this new-found stillness, before the cacophony of life made its way back to light my kitchen table up in the morning. In the morning.

The morning would have that same tinge of gold promise to it that my thoughts had. That was the thing, I suppose, that had me feeling the echoing of a door slamming on the many things I'd done already.

I couldn't so easily fall into that silliness that is love, again. Not with my eyes open, and my thoughts no longer full of the arrogance and foolishness that had clouded them when I was fourteen, when I was not in love with my wife, but loving her nonetheless.

Would I get some peace from that old one, or from this new possibility of caring routine that I was now facing?

That was the burning question that roiled around in my head, filling it with all emptiness but for that single string of thoughts. Would allowing myself to fall into this still let me find my few peaceful moments, or would it embroil me into the game of jealousy and deceit that so many allowed themselves to find in any type of relationship, any interaction of people?

Could I circumvent that happening by taking care now…a just in case clause for the future. Take anything that could be used against me, and get rid of the possibility, and would I feel more secure in any of the outcomes that this interaction have?

That was it, in the very littlest of terms.

That thought gave me a path, and it was a simple one. Before I was actually there, so far that I couldn't leave it, I would have to show her that nothing she could really do would hurt until I let it. Which was simple, and galvanized me into action.

If, perhaps, I was a little more frenzied about that action than I would have liked, I let it pass, knowing that I would have to find my answers before I could calm myself. I would have to prove to myself that my judgment wasn't skewed now, as it had been in the past.

I felt a small smile brush the edges of my still lips as I pulled my helmet off of the wall next to the garage door opener. This was just another test for me to attempt to break myself against. Had I learned in the time I had known the other pilots? Had they, collectively, managed to teach me anything? Had Treize, with his high words and scathing actions taught me? Had Mariemaia, and, again, the other pilots? Had Sally, with her relentless prodding and pushing and teasing and jokes?

The farther along the road I went, the more turns I took, leaning on my bike, the more I thought about all the different lessons I had taught myself, and had been taught by others, I could feel myself become slightly more frantic for the answers to my questions. And again, I felt the urgent need to see what my judgment had chosen, with this girl, and this circumstance.

When I reached her house the entire neighborhood was dark, and peaceful, and quiet.

I'd been to her front door before, with its grated fake window, and the large lock that I'm sure Duo would have laughed at. But my mind was halfway numb as I reached out to pull her to the door with the strike of my hand on the wood.