Sorry for the long time updating! Here's the story!

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Current Timeline

Duo and the other pilots, plus Hilde, sat in silence after Duo had finished reading the first part of the book that had been delivered to him. No one had reacted quite yet, as they were still absorbing it all. Trowa turned to Heero.

"What do you think would have made you join OZ?" He asked. Heero shrugged.

"I don't know." He responded. "It doesn't seem like something I would have done, but something must have happened to change my mind. If all of this actually happened that is."

"Are you saying that you doubt what we've heard? Or what we saw earlier?" Duo asked.

"I don't have all the necessary facts." Hilde rolled her eyes.

"Just because something doesn't have physical evidence doesn't mean that it can't happen." She said.

"So what's your take on this?" Quatre asked. "According to this book, you were in the position that Lady Une used to have." Hilde shrugged.

"I think it's possible. If I hadn't met Duo, then I would have continued to believe in OZ. I had already started to rise quickly when we met, who knows how far I could have gone if I hadn't met him. I'm thinking more about that scene that Ashley wrote about, where she's meditating and sees all of us? That happened just last week, and she's supposed to have died 70 or so years ago. There has got to be some truth to this."

"75 years ago, actually." Wufei said, looking up from Duo's computer. They all stared at him. "What? I wanted to see if this woman actually existed, so I did a search. Ashley Larson-Castoff. Born April 10, A.C. 55. Died May 15, A.C. 125. Married to Julian Castoff on June 17, A.C. 61. It goes on to list her descendants, stopping with her Great-great grandson, Kyle Johnson, who moved to Colony L-2 in A.C. 143."

"Does it say anything about what she did with her life?" Duo asked, now very curious to learn all that he could about this woman who had died, and yet left him a box of things.

"The computer's still looking. Don't forget, it was more than a hundred years ago, and it was during a time of political confusion. Frankly, I was lucky to get that much. It'll be a miracle if I get anymore."

"Maybe she mentions all that in her book." Heero said, closing his hand around Duo's, silently saying that he was there. Duo squeezed back, acknowledging his friend's support. He didn't know why this had become so important to him, it really shouldn't be much more than interesting reading, but somehow this girl was growing on him, and he wanted to know more. He opened the book again and started reading from where he had left off.

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Alternate Timeline

He worked diligently at the missile controls, targeting them perfectly to destroy his Gundam before anyone else found it. He heard a light clicking on the steel deck plates behind him, stopping several feet away. They definitely weren't combat boots, which was the only reason that he had yet to pull his gun.

"Heero? Is that you Heero? It is you Heero, it is you." He stayed silent, hoping that the girl who had seen his face would get the hint and disappear. Apparently she didn't, as she continued walking towards him. "Heero, what are you doing? Those are torpedos, aren't they, I can tell. I want to know who you are. Talk to me Heero." He looked up at her.

"Relena." He said. Her features softened. She probably thought that he was going to talk to her.

"Heero." He pulled out his gun and pointed it at her, facing her fully. She gasped in surprise.

"You're in over your head. Say good-bye, Relena."

He pulled the trigger.

Heero awoke with a start as the memory finished, then put his head in his hands. That dream again. Why had he had it for the last few nights? He'd killed dozens of people like that, not to mention the hundreds of mobile suit pilots that he'd killed. So why did he continue to dream about that girl from when he had first come down to Earth, fighting against Oz instead of with them, as he was now. Was it wrong to have killed the girl? NO! She had known too much, she'd been a liability, she'd had to die.

That was the trained soldier part of him, the kind that molded well with the Zero system. But there was still a little part of him that rebelled, saying that she hadn't actually done anything wrong and that he shouldn't have killed her. The same part of him that still agonized over that little girl and her dog. But why? She was a school girl, not important to anyone.

But what if she had been? That question popped into his head from out of nowhere, and he stared at the patterns on his bed spread. Treize had insisted that he have nothing but the best, even though it didn't really matter to Heero. But there were times when the intricate patterns in the fine wood work or the furniture fascinated him, and helped him to think. He would stare at the patterns for what seemed like hours, letting his eyes unfocus and watch as the patterns seemed to take on a life of their own. He knew that it wasn't very soldier like behavior, but it was how he was able to think clearly sometimes.

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Ashley squirmed on the exam table as Sally looked in her ear, down her throat, and took a blood sample. Sally smiled.

"Don't like sitting still, do you?" She asked knowingly. Ashley nodded.

"I'm perfectly healthy, there's nothing wrong with me." She protested.

"So that's why Noin said that you looked like death when she came to get you this morning."

"I'm telling you, I'm fine!" Sally smiled again.

"Fine, you're fine. You can go now." Ashley hopped off the table so fast you would have thought it was on fire and began to dress just as fast. "You don't like doctors much, either, do you?" Sally inquired.

"It's nothing personal, I just haven't had the best experiences with them."

"Understandable. I remember reading about some of the medical practices from your time when I was in school. They scared the shit out of me. So how come you looked like death when Noin came by?"

"I told you, I was meditating. And I saw…I saw…I think I saw what was supposed to be, you know, if I hadn't been brought here."

"So you believe that you're in the future."

"There's a saying that I heard in a movie once: 'Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' Seems to fit this situation."

"So what did you see?" Sally asked as they walked out of the exam room and picked up Noin on the way to the cafeteria. Ashley was quiet for a minute as she tried to put into words what she had seen.

"I saw the four Gundam Pilots that you know. They were in a room, all wearing the same jacket, and looked much more…relaxed…than they are now. Another boy ran in wearing the same jacket. He had long hair that he kept in a braid and the same color eyes as me. He hid behind Heero, and a girl with short, bluish-black hair came in after him, looking madder than hell." Both Noin and Sally froze, and Ashley looked at them curiously. "What? What did I say?"

"The girl that you saw, did she have pale skin? And a slightly German accent?"

"She had pale skin, but I couldn't hear anything. Why?"

"I think that you might have seen Treize's Right Hand."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Let's just say for now that she's not someone you want to mess with. But I've never seen or heard of anyone with eyes like yours, and the only guy with hair that long that I know of is Zechs Merquise, and he's with OZ." Noin said.

"Is that the blonde guy from the other night?" Ashley asked. Noin nodded.

"So then who's the guy I saw?" Both women shrugged.

"Beats the hell outta me. What do you want to eat?" Sally asked as they stood in the serving line of the cafeteria. Ashley craned neck to get a look at the food, and was glad that it looked better than high school cafeteria food. She chose a salad, brownie, and chocolate milk, then looked up in innocence at Sally's disapproving look.

"What? I'm not all owed to have desert after my meal?" She asked.

"Don't you think that eating a brownie after eating a salad defeats the point of eating the salad in the first place?"

"That's if you're trying to be healthy by eating the salad. I'm not. I just felt like a salad, and I felt like a brownie. And I love chocolate milk." Quatre waved them over to where he, Trowa, and Wufei were eating lunch, and they headed in that direction. Well, Quatre and Trowa were eating, Wufei looked like he was trying to figure out what he had chosen, and whether or not it was safe to eat. They sat down and placed their trays on the table.

"So how are you liking our time?" Quatre asked with a slight quirking of his lips. Ashley smiled back, and placed her chin in her hands, elbows on the table.

"I haven't actually seen too much of it, this place reminds me of the Army mess hall that my father used to take me to. Though the food looks a lot better."

"If you can call this food." Wufei mumbled, glaring at his lunch.

"Your father was in the military? That wasn't in the records." Trowa asked. Ashley raised her eyebrows innocently.

"You looked at my records? Of course you did, you had to make certain that I wasn't a spy or anything. He was a 92Y; at the time that was Supply."

"Why would you say that we had to make certain that you weren't a spy?"

"Please, a girl shows up out of nowhere, says she's from the past, and you just trust her? I certainly wouldn't. My first thoughts would be either that she's crazy or a spy. Though using a cover story of being from the past is a little farfetched. So, am I a spy?" Everyone blinked at such a blunt question coming from that innocent looking face. Quatre smiled.

"No, I don't believe that you are." He said. "But if I was going to send in a spy I would certainly use someone who could play the innocent act like you are right now."

"Yes, you probably would, because the innocent looking ones are usually the most dangerous, yet very few people expect them to do anything like spying." Wufei, having decided that his lunch was indeed edible, took a sip of his tea and raised his eyebrows at her.

"You sound quite knowledgeable. Are you sure that you're not a spy?" Her eyes sparkled mischievously, and she did her best to make her voice sound a little spooky.

"I am many things, some of which not even I know of probably. I am a college student, I am a girl, a musician, a writer, a lover of animals, I love to read, cook, sew, swim, dance, and I watch plenty of crime dramas on TV. So if I seem to know about certain things that most people don't care about, it's because I watch and learn all that I can."

"And you're apparently clairvoyant to." Sally said.

"Clairvoyance is seeing the future, I saw another reality. I am Wiccan as well as everything else I said." All three boys looked at her curiously.

"What are you talking about?" Quatre asked. So Ashley once again described what she had seen, and the boys all got quiet at the mention of the girl with short hair.

"That definitely sounds like Lt. Hilde, but I don't think that I've ever seen or heard of the boy who hid behind Heero." Quatre said.

"You said that we were all friends, even Heero?" Wufei asked, a note of disdain in his voice at the very thought. Ashley nodded.

"Quatre didn't have the eye patch, and you all seemed much more relaxed." The three boys all sat there and mulled over this in their heads, while the girls began eating. Sally and Noin had already gone over this in their own heads, so they were just waiting for the boys to catch up.

"Do you think that there was peace in the 'other reality' that you saw?" Trowa asked quietly. Ashley shrugged.

"I really don't know. All I did know is that all of you looked happy, as though you were apart of something that you could believe in."

"Could you find out more if you meditated again?" Wufei asked.

"Maybe, maybe not. I can meditate and try, but I can't control what I'll see, or if I see anything. Can you tell me about this Lt. Hilde and Heero? Since they seem to be the one's whose lives differed so much in what I saw, it might help to concentrate on them." They all nodded, and Noin began talking. She explained how a woman named Lady Une had been Treize's right hand from before the war, and for the better part of it as well. She explained how two years ago Une had died in a fight against Wufei, and a colony volunteer named Hilde Schbeiker had been chosen to take his place, and how at times many of them wished that Une was still alive, for, while being a fairly cruel person herself, she had nothing against this colony volunteer, whose name was associated with some of the foulest strikes of the war. She told of the Zero system, and how it warped its pilots mind so badly with strategies and battle tactics that you nearly went crazy, as Quatre had when he had piloted the suit. She spoke of how none of them knew the reason that Heero had joined OZ three years ago, for he had only told them that it was right for him to do so. They only saw him on the battlefield now, taking orders from Treize.

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Ohhhhhh, little more information……I promise that one of the next chapters will have Heero's reason for going to OZ! I have an outline, I swear! 1-800-Please Review?