Orb Waterfront District

They had split up into two groups to better cover the ground as they searched for the possible location of the Legged Ship. Naturally, Dearka and Yzak paired off; nobody ever considered any other possibility. In his present frame of mind, Yzak might have murdered either Athrun or Nicol if they had got landed with him. Dearka wasn't exactly enjoying the experience himself at the moment. Yzak's mood had been black from the day they reunited with the others, and Commander Le Creuset made Athrun the leader of their little team to continue pursuit of the Strike and the Legged Ship.

Cooped up in the submarine carrier as they had been, boredom only broken by one fleeting episode of furious and unsuccessful battle with their quarry, Yzak had grown steadily worse. No doubt sexual frustration played a part thought Dearka as they made their way through a waterfront factory district. It certainly wasn't helping Dearka's mood, either.

They had worked their way out of the built-up area and were now on grassy ground near the shore; a hillside with a grove of trees looking down on a little cove lay not too far up ahead. Privacy, thought Dearka, cheering up at the possibilities that came into his mind.

"Hey, Yzak. What say we take a break for a while? There's a nice stand of trees there, with plenty of shade. We could take a little rest out of the sun."

Yzak looked sour, but said grudgingly: "Yeah, all right. But not for long. We've got a lot more area to search."

Once among the trees, Dearka was disappointed to see how rough and damp the ground was. Not very promising for sitting down, let alone a romantic encounter, he thought ruefully. For the lack of anything better, he leaned back against one of the broader trees. He stretched his face up to expose it to the little cool breeze that played through the grove. Yzak stood a metre or so away with hands on hips, gazing around with the same sour look on his face.

Dearka decided he might as well confess his disappointment. "I was hoping it might be a little more comfortable in here, Yzak. We could use a little time together, you know."

Yzak glared at him. "We are on duty here! This may be bloody Zala's crazy little exercise in futility, but I'm not going to waste time on fucking around. Literally!"

Dearka grinned at the enraged Yzak. "Bet you'd be tempted if there was a lovely thick soft patch of green grass under here!"

"You are such an arsehole, Elsman!"

Dearka launched himself off the tree and quickly closed the distance between him and Yzak, scooping the other boy into a hug. "We could at least have a cuddle! Don't be such a grouch, Yzak. I miss you!"

For a moment it seemed as if Yzak would shove him away, but suddenly he caved in, and his arms encircled Dearka in return. "OK, but just a hug. No kissing, nothing else."

Dearka laughed, "Not even one little kiss, Yzak?"

Deadly serious, Yzak shook his head. "No. You know it wouldn't stop at one. And it's not what we're here for in Orb. I mean it, Dearka!"

Dearka knew and understood the tone. He gave a sigh of assent and contented himself with snuggling a little closer to Yzak, burying his face in Yzak's neck, and the soft hair that fell from below the ugly Morgenroete factory cap. Dearka's own cap was stuck though his belt. He felt Yzak's hand on the back of his neck, pressing him closer, lightly caressing the skin. Dearka shivered and held Yzak more tightly still. It was better than nothing, but he ached for more.

Several minutes ebbed away. Dearka felt the tension begin to return to Yzak's frame, even before he said the words: "We'd better get going, Dearka." They reluctantly broke apart.

Yzak squared his shoulders. "We should go back along the shoreline into town. I don't think there's anything more of interest in this direction."

As they emerged from the trees, Yzak removed his hat and attempted to smooth his hair into some semblance of order, before putting it back on. "Does my hair look all right?"

"Geez, Yzak. You're just like a girl! Why don't you just carry a mirror?"

Dearka had meant the teasing comment as a way of lightening the mood between them. It badly misfired.

Yzak's face coloured with angry embarrassment. "You're only about the thousandth person to make that comment about how like a girl I look! I didn't think you'd sink that low, Elsman!"

"Hell, Yzak. I never said you looked like a girl; I said you were behaving like one over your hair! There's a big difference!"

They walked rapidly and in thunderous silence, till they were back on the streets of the wharf area and heading towards a busier part of the waterfront. Yzak stewed over the taunt the entire way, but realised that he had lost his opportunity for retaliation. Hitting Dearka or even yelling at him would attract attention, tempting though both options were. "Witless moron," Yzak muttered to himself, not even sure which of the two of them he meant.

They stalked on for a couple of minutes more. Stopping at a street corner to get their bearings, Yzak finally relented from the grim silence. "It's a bit of a sensitive issue with me at the moment. Back in Banadiya, some memories got stirred up. I'm still having problems with them, I guess." By Yzak's standards, this was an abject apology.

Dearka smiled. "Sorry, Yzak. I should keep my trap shut, too…. Say, look over there! There's a guy with a van selling ice creams. How 'bout I get us a couple? What flavour would you like?"

Yzak decided to let himself be mollified by this peace offer. "If you want to get me one, I'll have vanilla. None of those crappy things with the pieces of candy through it that you eat!"

Dearka grinned. "You got it, Yzak!" There weren't that many other customers, so it wasn't long before he was back. The two boys strolled along, licking their ice-creams; just two young factory workers enjoying a break in the Orb sunshine.

It's hard to hold a conversation when you are dealing with an ice-cream; particularly one that melts quickly in Orb's warm air. So Dearka was not particularly concerned at the lack of any kind of response from Yzak at one or two mild remarks he made in passing. But apparently Yzak still had something on his mind to account for his silence.

"I know I look a lot like a girl."

Oh, no, not back to that are we? thought Dearka.

"There's a reason for it, actually. Specifically, the girl I look like is my mother. When they engineered me, she told them that she wanted me to look like her as much as possible. So they selected for her physical characteristics. Maybe they did a little bit too good a job."

Dearka stopped in mid-lick; a big blob of ice cream landed on the front of his overalls, quite unnoticed. He hoped he was not stepping out of line, but there was something in Yzak's tone that almost invited the question.

"Why did she do that?"

"She didn't want me to have any resemblance whatsoever to my biological father."

Yzak had never spoken about his father in all the years they had known each other. It was a forbidden subject with him. Dearka decided that he might as well stick his neck out a bit further. "Why was that?"

Yzak was glaring at the remains of his own ice cream; he stopped at a street bin and lobbed it in. "Because that was part of the deal they made He was a rising politician; a married man who didn't want any ties to a child outside his marriage. She wanted his DNA because she saw him as having many of the characteristics she wanted for her son. They didn't have any kind of personal relationship. They had a deal: her support in exchange for helping her create a child. A son she could groom as a future political candidate of her own."

Yzak shrugged. "I'm sure they've never had any more physical contact than shaking hands. That's another trait Mother and I evidently share: we both have a preference for our own gender."

Dearka stood there frozen, staring. Yzak gazed into the depths of the bin as if it held the secrets of the universe in there.

Dearka found his voice, automatically trying to salvage some of the ice cream that was by now oozing freely over his hand. "Do you know who he is?"

Yzak turned and looked at him, smiling grimly. "Yeah. I've known since my twelfth birthday. The information about all of this was one of my mother's presents to me that year. Pretty stunning. It was what I was talking about in Banadiya. They've done very well with their little alliance. They're both on the Supreme Council now."

Dearka, in the act of slurping the excess ice cream off his hand, choked. He coughed and spluttered, throwing the remaining cone and ice cream mess into the bin in his turn. He felt a cold hand scrape its nails down his back. Was this why Yzak hadn't said anything to him five years ago?

In a voice so strained it verged on squeakiness, he asked: "Bloody hell, Yzak, it's not my father is it?"

Yzak looked surprised for moment and then gave a grim laugh. "Shit, Dearka! It never occurred to me that you might think that! No, it's not your father!" He gave a Dearka a feral grin. "Did you think we'd committed incest? Actually," he drawled, blackly comical, "does it count as incest between same-sex siblings?"

He wasn't speaking very loudly, but Dearka looked quickly round for anybody who might be within earshot. Nobody was anywhere close, thankfully. He grabbed Yzak by the sleeve of his overalls and dragged him over to a doorway. "You're not getting bloody hysterical on me, are you?" he hissed.

"No, not that, Dearka. The look on your face was just too much for me. I promise you I'm fine."

"So which other one is it, then?"

Yzak's mouth smiled, though his eyes were like chips of cold blue marble as he drawled: "Well, can't you guess? It's Patrick Zala."

The world seemed strangely silent to Dearka apart from the beating of his own heart. Then reality clicked back into place as his brain absorbed the information. "Oh, shit, Yzak."

"Yeah, 'oh shit', just about sums it up for me, too."

"Does Athrun know?"

"No, of course not. Nobody does apart from you, me, and the two of them."

"Have you ever spoken to your father about this?"

Yzak snarled: "He is not my father. He is simply the source of some of my DNA."

Yzak took a deep breath, visibly calming himself. "Don't forget, he was living on the Moon for over a decade while we were growing up, so he wasn't around. I have met the man only once, a bit over a year ago. He and his wife attended an opera performance where Mother and I were also in the audience. They had a box across from ours, so I got a good look at them. Later, we bumped into them in the foyer while leaving the theatre. My mother introduced me as her son; he nodded at me, and I said "Sir" and that was it. His wife just smiled and nodded. This was about two months before she was killed in the Bloody Valentine. Their son looks a lot more like her than him."

Dearka realised that when Yzak said 'Their son' he was talking about Athrun, his…brother?"

It was one of those times when Dearka's head must have been like a clear pane of glass, where Yzak had no trouble seeing the thoughts passing through the mind inside.

"Don't even go thinking about the word brother in connection with him! He is not! We are nothing to each other! Except a pain in the arse to me!"

"It must seem strange being…connected…to these people, but not feeling like they're any sort of family." Dearka was careful in his choice of words, he didn't want to cause an explosion from Yzak, but he badly wanted to gauge his friend's feelings. Dearka could recall Yzak's sarcastic words when Yzak and Athrun argued over this sortie into Orb: 'I can't disagree with the son of Committee Chairman Zala, now, can I?' Those words now had significance in Dearka's mind that they had lacked when he first heard them spoken. Could all that hostility toward Athrun Zala be some sort of perverse sibling rivalry?

Yzak looked at him scornfully. "You've still got a Natural grandfather somewhere here on Earth haven't you? Your mother's father, wasn't it?"

Puzzled, Dearka, nodded. "Yeah, that's right. He and my grandmother split because she wanted their child to be a Coordinator and he didn't. She had my mother made a Coordinator and brought her to the PLANTs as a very small child. She died before I was born, but there's still a photo of her kicking round at home somewhere. What's that got to do with anything?"

"Do you consider the Natural here on Earth, whose DNA you share, to be any kind of family of yours?"

"Well, of course not. DNA doesn't…Oh… yeah; I get your point, Yzak."

"Glad to get that cleared up!" snorted Yzak sarcastically. "Now, shall we get back to this bloody search? I wouldn't want to report anything other than a thorough attempt when we rejoin our illustrious leader!"

"Yeah. Um, Yzak. I have just one question. Why now? I mean, why decide to tell me now?"

Yzak looked moodily at him. "I said in Banadiya that I'd tell you one day, so I have. You may also have to pull me off Athrun's throat some time, the way this farce is going. I thought perhaps you'd better know the background. Now, shall we move on?" And not waiting for a reply, Yzak strode off towards the wharves.

Dearka scrambled to catch him up, his mind racing with the impact of what he had been told. He would have to re-examine his memory of the last five years with Yzak, to re-evaluate so many things about his friend/lover in the light of this new knowledge.

Yzak, why is it every time I find out something about you, I end up with a bigger puzzle than I had before?