Disclaimer/Note: I do not own GundamWing, or any of the characters in this story (unless otherwise stated). Zero-zero, for example, belongs to me. I do not own the series' creator, mech designer, or PHYSALIS, and I'm not making any money off this story. This story was written solely for entertainment purposes, and no copyright infringement was intended. Please, do not sue. All original concepts in this story are original (duh) and belong to me, or have had all rights handed over to me. Do not steal. This story is AC (Alternate Continuity), takes place (for the most part) almost five years after Endless Waltz, and contains: violence, language, angst, flashbacks, acts of terrorism and subsequent political brouhaha, religious references, twisted senses of morality, and an obnoxious timeline.

Better Than Nothing:
Chapter Five — Hear Nothing

The phone was ringing.

Wufei rolled his eyes, closing the sliding glass door with an irritable sigh. What now? He quickly thought through the possible people that it could have been. Master O never called, the new head of the Long family only communicated with him through the written word, and few members of the latest arms movement he had joined had his number. The police again, perhaps? No, they had only just released him from questioning yesterday; there was no way that they had come up with anything else to harass him over in such little time. Wufei tapped the button for the speaker as he walked by the desk, one arm full of sheets he was bringing in from the clothes line outside. There was a muted beep, and then a bright and cheerful voice came over the line:

"Hey, good morning!"

"Maxwell?" Wufei paused, setting the sheets down and picking up the handset. "What day is it?"

"Uh. . .Tuesday?" the answer came back uncertain, but Wufei knew better. If Duo was calling, then it must have been a Tuesday; he had called on the second Tuesday of every month for the last year and a half since Wufei had left the Preventers, mostly to see how things were going and to just shoot the breeze. It was ritual now, and while Wufei would grumble and complain about how the American was wasting his time, he was rather fond of their chats. It was nice to talk to someone so upbeat and optimistic sometimes. "Anyway, how's it hangin'? I heard you spent the night in jail again."

"Does news really travel that fast?"

"It does when you're a war hero," the reply came with a laugh, and Wufei allowed himself a small smile and faint snort. Hero. . .Duo had to use that word at least once in every conversation; he was glad that it was getting out of the way so early on. "So, what happened this time?"

"Ah, I wrote an article about the way that the government subjugates its people by refusing them the right to keep weapons in their personal homes that was published in a controversial journal," the Chinaman shrugged, then remembered that his listener could not see the action, and added. "It's the same thing that happened last time you called."

"Nah, that was the time before, remember?"

Wufei stopped to think about that for a moment, before making a soft sound of agreement. On the other end of the line, he could hear Duo fiddling with something, probably a pen. Duo usually called from his office at the Preventers' headquarters, and the young man could not seem to stand letting his hands stay idle for long. Wufei sat down on the corner of the desk top, cradling the handset between ear and shoulder as he began folding the sheets.

"What about with you? I've heard that there's some nasty business in the L4 clus—"

"If you want to know so badly, you could always join back up," Duo cut in, his tone a familiar mixture of worry and mild annoyance. They did this every month, too, but it was a little different this time. Wufei narrowed his eyes. Usually, Duo waited until near the end of the conversation to try to recruit him. "We're still short-handed."

"Uh-huh. Do you still hire women as field agents?" Wufei waited, listening to the sound of Duo breathing, knowing that there would be no response. Of course there were still women in the Preventers; it would have been big news if Lady Une had turned over control of the program to someone else. Wufei's tone turned cold, his previously amiable expression icing over into the soldier's mask of indifference. "I will never work there so long as women are in the field."

". . .What happened to Sally—"

"If you finish that sentence, I will hang up on you."

"Come on, 'Fei," Duo groaned, and Wufei heard the familiar sound of the American slamming his hand against the desk on the other end of the line. "Why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep holding on to it?"

"What?" Wufei was furious, his vision suddenly clouded by bloodlust and anger. "You're telling me to just let it go? To forget about what happened? Are you serious?"

"No, I—"

"Have you ever held a dying woman in your arms, Maxwell?" the question was stated bluntly, dry like years of mourning had emptied his body of all emotions. It was a tired sound that Wufei made, the sound of an old soldier exhausted from years of death and dying. "Have you ever had a woman's blood pour out over your hands as you watch her cry and gasp for her last breath? Have you ever had to listen to her feeble voice as she chokes on death while trying to pass on the last words she will ever speak?"

"It wasn't your fault she died. There was nothing anybody could have done."

"Women do not belong in combat," Wufei was not angry when he said it, was still hollow and empty sounding. It was not normal. "She should have stayed at headquarters. She should never have been a field agent. And it was our fault that she was there that day, because if she hadn't been paired with me, she would be alive and working in a goddamn hospital today, where she belongs."

"Please don't hang up on me."

"You don't understand death, Duo. For all that you claim to be its patron god. . ." Wufei sighed, putting down the laundry he had been folding and rubbing at his temple with one hand. He held the phone in his other. "A woman's death is a hundred thousand times worse than a man's. . . Why did you call? What is it that you want?"

". . . You know the Gundam rumors?" he waited until he had heard the quiet grunt of acknowledgement before continuing. "I want to get everyone together, all us pilots and the scientists, and I want to get to the bottom of it before it's too late. Relena can do her pacifist thing if she wants, but I want the guy's head on a spike. Will you come?"

"Where?"

"L1, C-1013," Duo paused briefly, perhaps to wet dry lips or swallow. The next part was spoken in a rush. "And can you call Trowa? I can't find the guy anywhere; it's like he disappeared."

"Yeah. Yeah, I have an emergency number for him," Wufei sighed again, standing up and looking out the sliding glass door. His gaze brushed over the well-trimmed lawn, the sand garden further out, and the carefully pruned vegetation. He would need to call someone to take care of his bonsai plants while he was out. "I'll head out on the next available flight."

"You're a life-saver, 'Fei."

"And you're an inconsiderate moron."

Wufei hung up.

"We're not having this argument, Cecilia," Trowa's voice was clipped, terse, a polite formality that seemed oddly out of place in the bright living room. The woman standing across from him quivered, lips trembling with the force of some bottled emotion. Fear, anger, regret, sorrow? Was that confusion he saw evident in her pale blue eyes? It could have been, but Trowa was growing tired of this fighting game, this incessant bickering between them, and did not want to deal with it anymore. "Not here and not now."

"Then when is a good time, Markus?" she asked him bitterly, her delicate hands clenching at her side. Trowa lowered his head at the use of the false name, closing his eyes. Cecilia wanted to talk out all of their problems, wanted to sift through some intensive dialog for a menagerie of answers that, once found, would rid them of this brewing tension. She wanted him to be honest, to speak with her openly and freely about all the things that had happened since 'he' was deployed during the Eve Wars. "You're too busy in the mornings, you're too tired at night. . .I feel like you don't even look at me anymore! What is happening to you? To us? To this family? Markus—"

"Shh," he interrupted her softly, raising a hand for silence. Cecilia complied, the line of her mouth a thin and angry slash across her face. Trowa took a slow, deep breath through his nose, carefully planning out his next statement. He always had to be so careful with his words around her; this illusion, this lie that was 'Markus,' was delicate, a finely woven tale that he had invested far too much time and effort in for anything to be done hastily. It was not his real name any more than Trowa Barton had been his real name before the war. Somewhere, there were records of his true name and origins. Somewhere, there was a father wondering what had happened to his wayward son.

But Trowa did not care for 'somewhere.' That was why he had left all those years ago, after all; that was why he had left his name and the identity he had been born with on the ruined steps of his father's old estate. Taking on a dead man's name and face, integrating himself into an established family. . .at the time, it had seemed like a daring undertaking. He had faced it like a challenge to be overcome. Now, four years into the act, Trowa was beginning to falter as the lines between the man and the image began to mesh, to fade together until even Trowa had trouble distinguishing where he stopped and 'Markus' began. He opened his eyes, and met her gaze steadily.

"Not so loud, Cecilia—"

"You don't think they know?" her tone was incredulous, a slight breathy exhalation belaying a sense of shock, or perhaps betrayal. A hand came up from her side, clutched at the cloth over her heart. She had always been dramatic like that, Trowa noted idly. It was neither good nor bad, but simply was. His observation was a fact unhindered by opinion or bias, made in a boredly scientific manner. He sighed, and prepared himself for the oncoming storm. "They know that something is wrong, Markus. It doesn't matter if they hear us right now, because they've been hearing us fighting behind closed doors for the last three months, and they know that we're fighting because you just won't say anything!"

They. William and Valerie. Trowa sunk into a seat on the sofa, putting a hand to his forehead as if that would ward off the oncoming headache. He did not know what to tell her. What would Markus say in this situation? He did not know the answer anymore.

". . .What do you want me to say, Cecilia?"

"Oh, don't you start with that again," her words were sharp, biting when she spat them into the air between them violently. The hand at her chest dropped. "Don't you dare start with that 'what do you want from me' bullshit again, Markus—"

"Don't curse like that, what if Valerie—"

"—We're having this argument, and we're having it right now!" she yelled, overpowering his soft request. Trowa fell into silence, and Cecilia continued, fuming. "What the Hell is going on, Markus? You're withdrawn; you won't talk to me, let alone touch me, and you just haven't been yourself lately. What is it that you're trying to tell me?"

"I—"

"Is it another woman?" she cut him off, a gasp following this question as though he had already answered it. Cecilia was being irrational, hyper-emotional and illogical. As sexist and wrong as it may have been, Trowa could not stop himself from justifying her actions through her gender; from his experience, this was just the way that women were. They did not make sense, and they were constantly reading far too much into everything. Sometimes, the answer really was so much simpler than all that drama. "It is, isn't it? You've been seeing another woman. Do you want a divorce? Is that what you're trying to tell me with this behavior?"

"No," he held out the vowel a little long, trying not to let his own annoyance with her overactive imagination show. She was being paranoid, and the last thing that the situation needed was for her to take any of his statements as being defensive. This called for a very gentle diffusion. "I do not want a divorce."

"But you have been—"

"No, I haven't," he told her in that mild, deliberate manner of his. 'Markus' had never really spoken like that before the war, but it was a habit that Trowa could not seem to break. It was his hallmark, his trade signature; it was the tiny aspect of himself that he took with him no matter what name or face he was wearing at the time. "I'm quiet because this is a stressful time for us right now. A thousand people are going to get laid off from work, Valerie needs braces, and William broke his arm in practice two weeks ago. Why are you trying to fight with me, Cecilia?"

He saw the tears welling up in her eyes, noticed the way that she wrung her hands together in front of her, and raised a brow. Why was she acting this way? Cecilia had always had a penchant for the dramatic, this was true, but now that she had quieted down. . . This was certainly not normal. Trowa opened his mouth to speak again, but just then, the cell phone in the pocket of his blazer went off, startling them both. He pulled it out to check the name and number while he turned off the ringer.

"I—"

"Just a second, Cecilia. . ." he murmured, looking at the display screen oddly. A call from China? There was only one person that he knew in China, but why would Wufei be calling him? He flipped the phone open, holding it to his ear, a look of worry crossing his face. "Hello?"

"Trowa? Is that you?"

For one pivotal moment, the whole world seemed to stop. Time slowed to a crawl as Cecilia placed her hands delicately over her lower abdomen, looking down at herself with knit brows and a tiny, uncertain frown. Sound disappeared after her next wavering statement as the roaring silence of shock filled Trowa's head.

"Markus? I think I'm pregnant again."