Title: Never Turn Your Back on the Sea (9?)
Section Title:Reaching
Author: Alleyprowler
Pairings: 3x4, 2xH and 1xR
Ratings/Warnings: M for language, references to violence

Relena stepped through the French doors and onto the balcony, taking a deep breath as she did so. It was still chilly in the evenings this time of year, but the air was clear as can be and scented with pine, cedar, and the newly-born wildflowers that grew all around the estate. She surveyed the darkening sky, not looking at the lanky figure sprawled out on a wrought iron chair to her left. "Nice evening," she said softly, as if to himself. She wanted to give Trowa the option of ignoring her; if he did, then Relena would leave him alone. If he didn't, then...

"Yeah. You missed a great sunset."

She shrugged. "I've seen a lot of sunsets. I hope I'll see a lot more." She walked to the stone railing and leaned against it, and they were silent for a while.

It was almost fully dark when Trowa said, "I guess I know why you're here."

A breeze blew a strand of hair across her eyes as she turned to face him. "Oh?" she said, dashing it away and tucking it behind her ear.

There was a scraping sound as Trowa pushed back his chair. "You're going to ask me to leave. I understand. I'm not the greatest houseguest in the world."

Relena was startled into a bark of laughter; she hadn't been expecting that. "Oh, Trowa, no! That's not what I wanted to talk about at all!"

When he heard her laugh, he raised his head and she could feel his cool green gaze on her. "No?"

She laughed again, more naturally this time. "Of course not! Trowa, as far as I'm concerned, you can stay here till you're old and grey. As for not being a good houseguest, goodness! The mice are more of a bother than you are."

She heard him take in a breath as if he wanted to say something, but no words were forthcoming. She waited patiently. Years of living with Heero had taught her the value of silence, of allowing time for thought before speech. She only wished that the politicians she worked with on a daily basis could learn the same lesson.

"Well, then," Trowa said at last, "is there something I can do for you?" He sounded sincere.

Relena smiled warmly. Before this crisis, she had rarely had a chance to speak to Trowa alone and hadn't really had a chance to form a strong opinion of his personality, but after a week of brief but daily interaction with him, she found she had grown quite fond of him. When he wasn't engaged in heavy-duty sulking, he was very sweet, warm-hearted, quietly funny, and very thoughtful. However, the sulking part only seemed to get worse after his talk with Heero, not better. It was starting to concern her.

"There's nothing I need from you, Trowa, but maybe there's something you can do for yourself." She turned away from the railing and made an 'after you' gesture toward the French doors.

He took the cue and stood up, holding one of the doors open long enough for her to step through into the warmth of the carpeted corridor. He made sure they were securely shut before turning toward her with an expectant look on his face.

Now that he was in the light, Relena could see the bruised-looking patches of skin under his eyes. The mark of the veteran insomniac, she thought to herself, and smiled in sympathy. "Let's go to your room," she said, and had to giggle when she saw him raise his eyebrows. "Oh come on, I won't bite."

He smiled back and led the way to his room, which was really more of a suite. It wasn't as large as the rooms that she shared with Heero, but it was certainly spacious and luxurious enough to satisfy a visiting diplomat...or an old friend.

She left the door open behind them. Regardless of their sexual orientation, it wasn't proper for a married lady to be alone behind closed doors with a young gentleman, and besides, she didn't plan on being in there that long.

She motioned him toward the lounge area, which was a cozy room with a fireplace, a pair of matching leather sofas, a media center hidden away discreetly inside an antique mahogany credenza, and a quaint cherrywood rolltop desk. It was to the latter that she led him. It wasn't dusty, thanks to the attentions of the housekeeping staff, but it had an air of neglect about it that made Relena feel a little sad. It was such a cunning bit of carpentry that it was a shame it never got used but she intended to remedy that.

"When I was eight years old my mother gave me a diary to write in, and in a way it was the most wonderful gift I've ever received. I wrote in it every day; my dreams, little stories and poems, any problems I might be having, and I discovered that writing is a wonderful way to soothe your mind and organize your thoughts. Please sit down."

Trowa seated himself in a padded oak chair that matched the desk. "Yes, I've heard that writing is good therapy," he said, moving the chair out of her way on its old brass casters.

Relena rolled back the top of the desk, revealing a flat work surface surrounded by cubbyholes for office supplies. From one such hole she removed a quantity of stationery, and from a small drawer, a gold fountain pen. "Sometimes, when I got angry or upset at a specific person, I'd write them a letter. I didn't always send the letters, but I found that the act of writing helped me sort out my feelings. In any case, I nearly always found that I came to a better understanding of that person and of my own feelings toward them."

She looked at him and saw that he was staring at her very intently. It made her feel like an insect pinned to a card under a magnifying glass. Her breeding and upbringing didn't allow her to show her discomfort, but Trowa must have sensed it anyway, for he looked down at his hands and nodded slightly. "I see what you're getting at, but I don't think I can do that."

"The letters are yours until you send them. If you don't want to send them, you can rip them up, or throw them into the fire, or take them down to the shooting range and use them for target practice." She was heartened when she got a little smile for that last suggestion. "I really think it could help you, Trowa."

He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, then looked down at the pen and stationery. "Maybe you're right, Relena. It can't be any worse than sitting around and feeling sorry for myself. I'll try."

Surprising both herself and Trowa, Relena bent down and kissed him on the cheek. It was a chaste, sisterly kiss, but a kiss all the same, and she felt her cheeks grow warm. It wasn't like her to be so impulsive. She backed away a step or two, bowing her head to hide her blush. "Good night," she said softly, and turned to go.

"Good night, Relena. And thank you."

As she closed the door behind her, she heard the rustle of paper, and she smiled.

The punch almost landed, but at the very last second Quatre's arm came up and he deflected the blow with his wrist. He did the same with Wufei's second punch and sidestepped the foot that would have knocked him off balance if it had succeeded in catching him behind the ankle.

The heavy draperies in the room had been pulled and the lighting was dim, but Wufei could see Quatre's face going red. "What the hell's the matter with you! Have you lost your damn mind?" Quatre shouted as he blocked and dodged.

"Fight back!" Wufei demanded.

"You're crazy!"

Wufei bared his teeth in a sharklike grin and threw another flurry of punches at Quatre, all of which were expertly deflected. He was pleased to see that Quatre had kept up with his training. "Your footwork has improved," he said.

"My footwork!" Quatre bellowed, outraged. "Wufei, what is the big idea with barging in here and attacking me like a psychopath and then complimenting my damn footwork! You really must be--OW!"

Wufei's strike to Quatre's ear had been more luck than anything else, but Wufei wasn't about to let him know that. "Are you going to fight me back now, or shall we dance a little more?" he taunted.

That did it. The final button had been pushed. With a berserker cry of battle rising in his throat, Quatre charged.

Trowa looked at his watch and groaned out loud. It was nearly midnight and he hadn't done anything to the stationery aside from admire the workmanship of the hand-crafted paper. It was thicker than normal paper, with a slightly uneven surface and deckled edges, and it was a pale beige color that reminded him of oatmeal. On each sheet, a winding ivy vine was rubber-stamped down one side of the paper, and Trowa had spent an inordinate amount of time trying to decide whether the vine should go down the right or left hand side. He had flipped it over at least a hundred times, visualizing his narrow, backslanted handwriting across the pebbled surface, and had finally decided that the vines should go down the right hand side of the paper.

I'm procrastinating, he thought. Since when have I ever procrastinated before? I can write whatever I want and then throw it in the fireplace. No one will ever have to know.

He took a breath and touched the fine gold nib of the pen to the paper and wrote down the first thing that came into his head:

Dear Quatre,

I love you. I miss you. I'm sorry.

He set the pen down. He looked down at the nine words he had written and felt a strange, sick feeling beginning to grow in his chest.

That was an utterly pathetic attempt at expressing yourself, Barton, he told himself, wadding the paper up into a ball. He pulled out another sheet of stationery.

Dear Quatre,

I probably don't have the right to address you as 'dear' but in spite of all the things that have gone on between us lately, you are still dear to me. I wanted you to know that before I wrote anything else, and I wanted to put it first before I lost my nerve.

I also want you to know that I realize I've been a fool, a coward and a liar.

I don't know how to explain why I treated you the way I did, but I'll try. You see, before I met you, I didn't know fear. It wasn't an emotion I could afford, given my circumstances. In order to fear, you have to have something of value to lose, and I had nothing--not even my own life was valuable enough for me to fear losing it.

Meeting you changed all that. While I merely existed, you were alive, radiant with light and joy. And you reached out to me. At first, I thought that was a strange thing to do, but now I know that that kind of courage is the best there is. I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long before speaking. I'll always be grateful that you did wait for me.

You never seemed to question it when I gradually warmed up to you and became your friend, your lover, your partner. You never pushed it or turned away from it; you simply accepted whatever I was ready to give until I eventually learned to love life almost as much as you do. I can never thank you enough for that Quatre. You taught me how to live, and for that I am eternally in your debt.

But with that new life came fear, because then I had something to lose. I suddenly had a future, and a purpose, and most of all, I had you.

I've been scared by plenty of things since I met you, but when I saw you lying there in the hospital so sick and still...I don't know how to describe it. What I felt went beyond fear. I wanted to take you away right then and there; take you away and hide you someplace safe and never let you go. At the same time, I wanted to run away and never look back because dammit, you betrayed me! You were the one who was supposed always be there for me, whole and sound. Not lying there in a hospital bed hooked up to machines to help you breathe, but by my side-- always by my side.

As for those awful things I said to you, I really don't have any excuse. I wasn't trying to provoke you or make you angry with me, I really wasn't. I was trying to break you, to plant doubts in your mind and make you more docile. More compliant. I thought maybe if you doubted yourself and depended only on me, I could keep you safe. Then when you came home, I kept it up. I fed you, medicated, you, made sure you were safe as well as I could, but I retreated emotionally and physically. For that, I am truly sorry. I tried to keep you safe and in the name of safety, I almost broke your spirit.

Quatre, I would give anything to be able to take back what I did to you at the hospital and after. I'm not looking for forgiveness. I need to know that you're getting on with your life and continuing to heal. I don't care if you never want to see me again; as long as you're still the Quatre I knew. I loved you the best I could and in the process, I nearly destroyed you. Please let me know that I didn't succeed.

Love,

Trowa

Trowa leaned back in his chair and put the cap back on the pen. His eyes were burning and blurred with fatigue, but his heart felt lighter than it had in weeks.

He gathered up the three sheets of paper he'd written on and stacked them neatly, intending to toss them into what remained of the fire, but instead of throwing them into the embers, he simply set them back down on the desk.

The letter would burn just as well another day.

The dark room was silent save for the sound of panting. The furniture was in disarrangement, and one decorative table was smashed to pieces, but the two human occupants were relatively unharmed, albeit sweaty and mussed.

"I'm sorry about the table, Quatre," Wufei panted.

Quatre, who was lying on the floor trying to catch his breath, looked at the pieces and pulled a frown. "Damn. I really liked that table."

"Was it expensive?"

"No, but it really pulled the room together."

Wufei chuckled wearily from his prone position near the fireplace. He labored to his hands and knees, then sat back on his heels with a sigh. "My hair tie snapped," he complained, shoving the wayward strands of jet-black hair behind his ears.

"We'll find something." Quatre sat up and grimaced, rubbing his spine. "Ow."

"Sorry about your back, too."

"My back was the table's fault. Technically, you've already apologized for that."

Wufei chuckled. "Right. Is there anything to drink around here?"

"I'll get us some juice." Quatre hauled himself off the floor with the aid of the sofa and limped off in the direction of the kitchen.

While he was gone, Wufei took the opportunity to tie back the heavy blue draperies on the two large windows and let some light into the room. The damage looked a little worse in the Colony daylight, but not irreparable. Well, except for the table. Sometime during their skirmish Quatre had managed to land a stockinged foot on a glossy trade magazine left carelessly on the floor and had lost his balance just as Wufei was aiming a high kick at his shoulder. The glancing blow and the lack of friction had sent Quatre into a spectacularly long-drawn-out battle against momentum and gravity, but eventually he had given into the laws of physics and landed right in the middle of the small, spindle-legged side table, smashing it to bits.

Wufei picked up the magazine and put it in a wicker basket next to the sofa where he presumed it belonged, then set about picking up the other odd bits of debris that had gone missing from their proper places.

"Oh, hey, you don't need to do that," Quatre said. He had returned from the kitchen with two tall tumblers of orange juice in his hands.

Wufei took one of the glasses and swallowed half its contents in a series of large gulps. He was parched. The canned air of the shuttle had dried him out quite a bit even before the exertion of the fight, and he felt new strength surge though his body as his tissues absorbed fluids and vitamins. "I'm partly responsible for it. I don't mind cleaning up after myself."

Quatre restrained him as he bent down to pick up a dislodged sofa cushion. "But you're a guest. Besides, Mrs. Charles will...um...ah, crap, I keep forgetting." Quatre threw himself down in a chair with a huff.

"She's not here," Wufei said, bending down once again. "You'll have to learn how to take care of yourself."

He was taken by surprise as a half-empty glass of orange juice went sailing over his head so close to his scalp that he could feel his hair ruffling. The glass exploded against the wall behind him, sending crystalline shards and sticky orange liquid flying everywhere, including onto Wufei's back.

"Fuck you Wufei!" Quatre shouted.

Shocked, Wufei looked up to see that Quatre was standing by the fireplace, his face contorted with rage and his hands balled into fists. He looked like murder incarnate. "What's wrong?" he asked in utter confusion.

"I know exactly how to take care of myself! How dare you! How fucking dare you!" Quatre took a step forward, eyes blazing with cold blue fire. "I don't need a goddamn babysitter, Wufei, and I sure as hell don't need a substitute lover! If that's what you're here for, then get the fuck out!"

Wufei felt his jaw drop. "Winner, what the hell are you talking about?"

"I don't need you to look after me! I don't need anyone to look after me! And if you think I'm a bad shot, then--" Quatre made a lunge for the mantelpiece and picked up a heavy bronze paperweight in the shape of a toad. As Quatre cocked back his arm, Wufei felt an imaginary target on his forehead burn.

He swallowed and heard a dry click in his throat. "Quatre, put that thing down. I'm not here to hurt you."

Quatre's arm was shaking, but his aim remained true. "No. You're here to protect me," he said, spitting out the word 'protect' like it was an obscenity.

Wufei held his hands up, palm-out. "I'm here to keep you company. That's all."

At the sign of surrender, Quatre let his right arm droop. The brass toad dropped safely to the carpet with a dull thud, and Wufei let out a sigh of relief. "I don't need someone to look after me," Quatre reiterated in a much quieter, but still hard voice.

"No, you don't."

"I can take care of myself."

"I know. Why do you keep saying that?"

"Trowa said..." Quatre's voice faltered. "Never mind."

Wufei got cautiously to his feet. "Trowa said what?"

Quatre raised a hand to his forehead and rubbed his temples. "I'd rather not talk about that right now. It's bad...bad memories, that's all."

Wufei laughed at himself silently. His carefully-plotted fight had failed, but his random comment had succeeded wildly...so much for his sense of strategy. He took a few steps toward Quatre and placed a cautious hand on the blond man's shoulder. "I know all about bad memories and regrets," he said carefully, and felt Quatre's shoulder tremble under his hand. "We all have them, Quatre."

Quatre bent to pick up the brass toad and put it back on the mantle. "God, Wufei, I'm so sorry."

"For what? For having bad memories?"

"For losing control." Quatre folded his arms across his chest and tucked his hands under his armpits as if he didn't trust them not to act of their own accord.

Wufei chuckled. "What do you think I was trying to do when I came in here swinging?"

"To tell you the truth, I thought you'd lost your mind," Quatre said with a faint smile.

"You should know me better than that," Wufei said, but his own smile faded. "You're choking, Quatre. I've seen it in your face for some time now. Something inside is poisoning you, and you'll never get better if you don't get it out."

Quatre flopped down in the armchair again, looking as boneless as if he'd been filleted. "Trowa said some things to me at the hospital. Really spiteful things, intended to hurt me. And they did. Later on he said he didn't really mean them, and I said I understood. I guessed that he felt angry and frightened when he said them and sometimes we say things we don't mean when we're angry and frightened, like I did just now."

"You're making excuses." Wufei checked the sofa for glass, and finding none, settled himself against the cushions.

"I'm trying to make sense of it."

"Make sense of a temper tantrum?" Wufei said, raising an eyebrow.

"Most of the time I can convince myself it was just a temper tantrum, but sometimes I wonder...what if there was some truth to it?"

"Maybe you'd better tell me what he said."

Quatre looked at Wufei with utter misery in his eyes, then looked back down at his hands. His mouth was set in a grim little line.

"Quatre," sighed Wufei, "I've been in the Preventers for ten years now. I've heard more confessions than a priest, and the only judgments I make are based on facts. Talk to me. Give me the facts."

"It was the morning after Trowa came to the hospital," Quatre started reluctantly. "I woke up and was feeling a lot better, except I needed to use the toilet. Duo helped me take the oxygen stuff off me. I guess it set off an alarm somewhere, because when I came out of the bathroom, Trowa was there. He was really angry and started telling me that it was stupid of me to take off the oxygen because the monitor alarm had gone off and scared the nurses."

"Hold on a moment. Did any of the staff come in to your room?"

Quatre looked up, curious. "No. It was just me, Duo and Trowa. Why?"

"If some sort of monitor alarm had really gone off, don't you think that someone would have come to check on you?"

Quatre looked doubtful. "Well, now that you mention it...but I really did take the monitor off."

"You took it off, but did you happen to notice if the machine was actually working?"

"No. I didn't really pay attention to it since I was feeling so much better, and the respiratory therapist said I was healing fast, so I didn't think it was important."

"Speaking hypothetically, the machine might have been turned off sometime in the night, perhaps to cut down on noise, but they left the monitor on. It goes on your hand, correct?"

Quatre nodded. "Over the index finger."

"So they might have left that on to avoid disturbing your rest."

"It's possible, but then why would Trowa lie?"

"Let's get back to that. What else did he say?"

"He said something about how I could have gotten myself killed, and that I wasn't a soldier anymore, and even when I was, I wasn't a good one and always had to have the Maguanac at my back...and something about having bad aim and you must have been crazy to give me a gun." Quatre's cheeks were stained red with shame.

"Quatre, what were Sandrock's armaments?"

"What's that got to do with anything?" Quatre asked, skewering him with an angry look.

"Humor me."

"It had two vulcan cannons in the head, two missile launchers in the shoulders, two shield flashes on the left arm, and of course, the two heat shotels."

"Yes, those. I always thought your Sandrock seemed to be designed more for close fighting rather than range."

"It was, originally, but I learned how to..." Quatre trailed off as the light went on.

Wufei finished for him. "Slice mobile suits neatly down the middle each time you threw your shotels at them? Ambidextrously? And in such a manner that they came back to you like boomerangs?"

"Well..."

"While on the other hand, I recall Trowa's preferred method of combat was to spray bullets with that huge gatling of his in the general direction of the enemy until something hit. At least, until he ran out of ammunition." Wufei said with a haughty sniff. "I hardly think Trowa is in any position to question your aim. I knew exactly what I was doing when I gave you that gun, Quatre, and I never regretted my decision."

Blushing darker than ever, Quatre gave him a small smile. "Thank you, Wufei."

"Did he say anything else?"

"He asked me what happened to my pacifist ideals and wondered if I was honoring my father's memory."

"Would your father have approved of Yates?"

Quatre's eyes went wide. "No! He hated people like that, people who cut corners just to make a few extra credits."

"I see. Is there anything else?"

"He said I don't know how to take care of myself and that he's been doing it for me the entire time we've been together."

"So, Trowa took care of you? What did he mean by that? Was he somehow responsible for your day-to-day well-being?"

Quatre shook his head. "No, no, nothing like that. As far as running the house goes, Mrs. Charles takes care of most of that. Otherwise, we take care of ourselves...or maybe one of us takes over if the other is too busy, but I never got the impression that I relied on him more than he relied on me. As for my day-to-day well-being, what do you think he did? Leave little notes to remind me to brush my teeth and put my socks on before I put on my shoes?"

"No need to get defensive. I'm just collecting the facts," Wufei said calmly. "So that's yet another unfounded accusation Trowa tried to place on you. That makes four by my count. Is there anything more?"

Quatre closed his eyes briefly. It was obvious he was trying to rein in his temper. When he opened them again, Wufei was surprised to see him start to smile. "Well...he accused Duo of wanting to sleep with me."

For a moment, all Wufei could do was stare. Quatre stared back with a little shrug that said, 'yeah, I don't get it either'. Wufei shook himself out of his shock and said, "I might not want to know the answer to this, but were you two doing anything that might have led him to that conclusion?"

"What? No!" Quatre looked appalled. "Everything else aside, that would practically be incest!" He shuddered theatrically.

"That's what I thought," Wufei said with an internal sigh of relief. He got up and began to pace back and forth in front of the sofa, carefully avoiding the area with broken glass since he was wearing only socks on his feet. "Let me see if I've got your side of the story straight. Trowa walked into your room, and that was the first time he's seen you conscious and lucid since you left home. You were probably expecting some affectionate gesture on his part, correct?"

"A 'hello, Quatre, how are you?' would have been nice," Quatre said bitterly.

"Instead, he appeared to be very angry and began to say untrue things to you. Things that, knowing you as well as he does, were carefully calculated to hurt you. He played on your insecurities and doubts, and he even cheapened your relationship with Duo."

"That pissed Duo right off, I can tell you."

"I imagine it did. Has Trowa ever done anything like that before?"

"No. We've had arguments before, called each other names and raised our voices, but he's never attacked me like that." He looked down at his hands, which were knotted together in agitation. He forced them to flatten out in his lap. "He apologized," he added in a very quiet voice.

"Well, that's something."

Quatre nodded, seemingly fascinated by the backs of his hands. "He said he didn't mean it. But..."

Wufei said nothing. He had already done as much prodding as he felt comfortable with; after all, Quatre wasn't a suspect to be interrogated. He was a friend.

When several long moments went by and Quatre remained motionless and silent, he stood up to leave. So far, his 'vacation' had been anything but restful. "I'll go put my things in the guest room. I'll help you clean this mess up later."

Quatre raised his head and looked at him with eyes that seemed infinitely sorrowful and weary. They seemed too old to be in such a young face. "Take all the time you need, Wufei," he said.

Wufei was fairly sure that was Quatre's way of saying he wanted to be left alone. He nodded in acknowledgement and made a great show out of selecting a book from one of the shelves on the wall before picking his way carefully back to the entry hall to retrieve his shoes and bag. They could resume this battle another day.

TBC