Part 12 - An error occurred while reading your profile

"I don't understand," Wufei said very slowly. "You should be mad at me, not trying to share your lover with me, because that is what you're saying, right?"

Trowa smiled again, and Wufei thought that it was the first time he had seen Trowa smile so much.

"No, Wufei, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not explaining well, I'm sorry…"

His voice trailed away and he sighed, then seemed to just decide to spill it all.

"Quatre is not the only one who needs you, Wufei."

A deadly silence fell in the room while Wufei tried looking around for his common sense and sanity. He could not have heard that right.

"I don't understand," he said again.

"It's simple really, and even a little amazing, but we both fell in love with you, Wufei. I know I have always admired you, and you have always been honest with me, especially at the time when I didn't remember who I was. Quatre was too kind to tell me I shouldn't go back on the battlefield, but you had enough guts to tell me to my face that as long as I didn't remember what I fought for, I would be a liability in combat. And you were right. When I took Zero, I almost did something that I would have regretted all my life."

Trowa looked up, eyes sparkling with amusement.

"Quatre will explain himself why he suddenly saw that he loved you more than just a friend, but when we spoke about it, we were so amazed to realize just how deep our feelings for you ran. But we had things to work out. A relationship between two people is difficult at the best of times, so three… we wanted our record to be clean before we would go to you and confess."

Wufei was gaping again, a fact that was fast becoming recurrent. It took him several minutes to find his voice back. Trowa waited patiently, knowing perfectly well the kind of bomb he had just dumped on Wufei. Maybe he had been wrong, and Iria had clearly wanted him to wait until Quatre would be better for them to work everything out, but Trowa didn't like keeping that secret from Wufei. His friend had been lied to too often, and had suffered so much at the hands of his own family that he felt bad hiding from him. And after all, he and Quatre had planned to let it out in the open. Trowa only regretted that Quatre wasn't sufficiently alert and recovered to be there with him, but he also felt it was better in a way. It would give Wufei more time to think about it.

"You… you love me both?"

"Is it that difficult to believe, Wufei?"

"And you wanted me to join you?"

"We still want it, it's just the timing that feels wrong."

"I don't… Trowa, I don't understand why you chose now to tell me this, but I can't. I feel like I'm taking advantage of you. I can't… I don't understand what you want from me."

"We don't want anything from you, Wufei. We just want you."

"Why?"

"I think I already covered that subject."

Wufei closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"This is… I…"

Again, he jumped when Trowa caught his hand.

"I don't want you to feel pressured, Wufei. I just wanted to be honest with you. I think you deserved to know. I didn't want to hide anymore. The last time I hid something from someone I loved…" He looked down at Quatre. "I know what happened to him is not my fault, but I can't help thinking that if I hadn't been so insecure about our relationship, and if I had stayed, maybe none of this would have happened. And… it's just like I told you before, Wufei. I don't know if I can do this alone."

A short silence.

"I don't know what to say," Wufei finally said.

"Then don't say anything. Neither I nor Quatre would force you to do anything against your will. We just intended to tell you how we felt and let you decide, and it still stands. I just would like you to promise me you will think about it. And I hope this will not change the way you feel about us…"

"Of course not!" Wufei protested. "You are my friends…"

"And we will remain your friends, whatever you decide, Wufei. We would love you to join us, but we won't force you. The decision is yours."

Another silence, but less tense. Wufei still seemed at a loss. Trowa smiled gently.

"Go get some sleep, Wufei. Once Quatre is better, he'll explain better than me. I am no good at that kind of thing, I never know what to say."

Wufei raised a sarcastic eyebrow. In his opinion, Trowa had said much more than needed for his peace of mind. In a few hours, the Chinese had gone from 'let's hope my friends never realize I am in love with one of them' to 'my friends know and want a threesome with me'. Even if he was used to non-conventional situations, it would take some serious thinking and talking before he could even begin to consider the idea.

"Are you okay, Wufei?"

"Not really," Wufei answered distractedly. "I need some time."

"That's understandable. Can you just promise that once the shock wears off, you will take some time to think about this objectively and seriously?"

"Of course, Trowa. It's just…"

"We will have to talk, all three of us, but there is one thing that you must keep in mind, Wufei. You will not come between Quatre and myself. I want you here, with us, just as much as he does."

Wufei did not answer. He got up, looked at Quatre, still unconscious, then at Trowa. His friend's face was unreadable again, but his eyes still asked the same question. The question Wufei could not answer now. Without a word, the Wufei left the room, the door closing behind him with a hiss.

Duo found Wufei apparently intent on destroying a tree with savage kicks and punches. He had left Heero in their room, hoping he at least would manage to sleep. Of course, Heero probably would not sleep at all until he would be back. Ever since he had been out of hospital, Heero did not like sleeping alone. He had told Duo that having him near him helped keeping the nightmares at bay, and Duo had to admit that he too slept way better when Heero was within arm's reach. Not to mention that it had been extremely courageous for Heero to come right out and basically say that he was afraid of being alone at night. That simple mark of trust had moved Duo to tears, even more than when Heero had finally admitted his feelings and told him that he loved him.

Duo observed his friend for a while. Wufei had left his tank top on one side and seemed determined to pound the tree into the ground, even if the only thing he had managed was to tear his pants and scratch his knuckles. Duo thought for a while about what could have made Wufei so angry or so confused that he would have to vent his frustration on an innocent vegetal, before he remembered that Trowa had asked the Chinese to stay in the room for a moment. He smiled. So Trowa had decided to go out in the open sooner than expected. It looked like Wufei didn't really know how to take it.

"Yo, Wu-man, what did the bad tree do to you?" he asked cheerily, careful to signal his presence by some noise before Wufei would react instinctively and hit him by mistake.

"Just go away, Maxwell," Wufei groaned. "Now is not a good time," he added, throwing another punch at the tree.

"I think it's exactly the right time," Duo countered, sitting down beside the tree. "Tro talked to you, didn't he?"

For the hundredth time in a day, Wufei's eyes went impossibly wide.

"You knew too?"

Duo smiled and leaned on the tree.

"Wu, Cat is my best friend. When he's got something on his mind, he usually talks to me. And lately the thing he had on his mind, apart from his problems with Tro that he didn't discuss with me, which kind of made me understand it was probably less serious than I believed but anyway, the thing, or more exactly the person he had on his mind lately was you. So, yeah, I think technically you can say I knew."

"Great!" Wufei said, flopping down on the ground. "Then I suppose Yuy knows too!"

"Yup, but not because I told him. You were less discreet than you believed, that's all, and… well he knows you quite well, you know, and he knows Cat too."

Wufei wiped some sweat off his brow and closed his eyes, taking his head into his hands.

"I don't know what to do," he whispered. "This doesn't make sense."

"What doesn't make sense, Wufei? It's simple, they are in love with you! Nothing complicated in that, is there?"

"Yes. That's exactly the problem, Maxwell. They are in love with me. Both of them."

"So what? If I were you, I'd be flattered that two guys like them loved me and I wouldn't have to choose. Mind you, if they were in love with me and asked me to join them, I'd be there in a heartbeat."

"What about Yuy?" Wufei asked sarcastically.

Duo choked on his own laughter and shot a surprised look to Wufei.

"That was a low blow, Wu."

"I know. And my name is not Wu."

"I like calling you that, so deal. Not to mention it must be the least of your worries right now so why don't you stop pretending me calling you names is infuriating you and go back to what is really important?"

"If I didn't pretend it makes me mad, you would think I was ill or something."

"Point," Duo conceded.

A short silence fell.

"I never intended to do anything," Wufei finally said. "I had no right to do anything when they were happy with each other, but this…"

"You're scared," Duo said flatly.

"What?"

"You're scared," Duo repeated. "And it's very understandable and nothing to be ashamed of," he added hastily when he saw Wufei's angered expression. "It's not every day somebody tells you that kind of thing, Wu, and I can only imagine how difficult it is for you to accept it. I'll probably never know what you feel right now, but… maybe I can help."

"At this point, anyone who can make sense out of it is welcome."

"I didn't say I could make sense out of it, Wu. Because, let's face it, love rarely makes sense. But maybe I can help. I don't think you, like Heero, ever got around the 'showing your feelings' part, did you?"

"Ever heard of traditional Chinese education, Maxwell? If it hadn't been for the fact that we lived on a space colony, my clan could have felt at home in the Middle Ages."

Duo laughed.

"I swear, between you and Heero, someday I'm going to eat my own braid out of sheer frustration."

"Anything that prevents you from talking your mouth off is fine by me, Maxwell."

"Awww, I knew you loved me, Wu-man. Anyway…"

Duo smiled. Wufei was definitely tense and not taking it too well, but then the circumstances were not the best ones either.

"I bet Tro only told you where they stand. Right?"

"Yes. He told me that Quatre would want to speak to me too, and… that the decision was mine."

"And they wouldn't lie about something that important. You are important to them, Wu, whether you see it or not. Hell, it took me the whole war to understand if you saw a human being or a bug when you looked at me, y'know? You're not an easy guy to read, so I guess I'm just glad those two can."

"It's so… weird", Wufei said slowly.

"Wufei… you probably need some time to think things out, but… you fell for Cat, didn't you?"

Wufei nodded, avoiding Duo's gaze. Even now that everyone he trusted knew, he couldn't really face it himself.

"I noticed you started to look at him differently when we all gathered on Peacemillion. Like you wondered what had happened for him to become like that in Zero, maybe because you knew the feeling too, I don't know. I saw you watching him and Trowa as Tro began to find his memory back and Cat did the guilt trip thing, and even after that, when it seemed things were alright again between those two… well, as alright as they could be anyway."

Wufei couldn't take his eyes off Duo.

"The Quatre you love, Wufei, is the Quatre that loves Trowa. It's the Quatre who has his whole face lighting up just because Trowa smiled at him. And be honest with yourself, you probably wouldn't even have considered it if there had been nothing between them."

"What is your point, Maxwell?" Wufei snapped.

"My point is, the Quatre you love is the one that exists because of Trowa. They complete each other, and I agree that trying to pry them apart would seem cruel and a very bad idea but lucky you, that's not what they have in mind. That's not what you had in mind either, I shall add. If Trowa wasn't here, Quatre would be a different person, and maybe you wouldn't love him the way you do."

Duo stood up slowly, brushing dead leaves and mud from his black pants.

"Think about it Wu, and you'll see I'm right. It's easy to fall for Cat. Even I did, however temporarily. But it's so much more to have both of them. Don't think about what you would take from them. Instead, think about what you could give them. Both of them."

Duo stretched, giving Wufei some time to reply, but the Chinese remained silent, eyes fixed on the ground.

"They won't ask you for more than you can give, but they need you, Wu. Cat needs you. And Tro needs you too. Maybe the timing was wrong, maybe the words were not right but… I think they deserve a chance. And I think you deserve a chance. Someone had to fall for you one day or another anyway. It's just so damn hard to try and tell you we love you! I always feel stupid when I am saying that to you, but it's true, you know."

Duo finished brushing his pants clean and started to leave.

"Well, it's your decision, but… I know what I'd do if I were you, Wu. Now it's your call. And don't thank me, I actually enjoyed doing this!"

He left, leaving Wufei sitting in the dirt and staring blankly in the void.

When Duo entered his bedroom, he found Heero waiting for him, sitting on the bed.

"You talked to Wufei," he said.

Not a question.

"Yup. How do you know?"

Heero pointed at the window.

"Ah. Should've known I couldn't go on a secret date without you spying on me!" Duo said playfully, sitting next to Heero.

"How is he taking it?"

Duo fell back on the bed and sighed.

"Better than I expected, but… he's got some serious thinking and talking to do before he can reach a decision. He does that a lot lately."

"What?"

"Thinking. During the wars it was always 'you're in my way, I get rid of you'."

"People change. They grow up."

Duo snorted.

"Growing up? No, thank you! I feel perfectly fine as an immature and hormonal teenager!"

"We should get some sleep. We will probably have to go after the shuttle soon."

Duo made a disappointed face.

"Does it mean I don't get sex?"

"Stop that. We need…"

"I know, I know. I'll just go take a shower and then we'll have some rest."

Duo got up and began to make his way to the bathroom. He only had to wait for three seconds before Heero asked.

"You wouldn't horribly mind if I shared your shower, would you?"

"How is he doing?" Sally asked, coming into the room quietly.

"He hasn't woken up yet," Trowa answered, frowning, the fugitive facial expression the only sign that he was worried.

"Iria, Carter and Shannon are right outside. I'll make them come in, if you don't mind."

Trowa shrugged. It didn't really matter right now anyway. The door opened again with a hiss and the three other adults came in. Iria walked to the bed and stood next to Trowa, looking at her brother's face and clinically assessing the visible signs that she could read. Carter and Shannon stayed by the door, unsure of what to do with themselves.

"Where is Wufei?" Sally asked lightly.

"I don't know," Trowa answered barely above his breath. "He left about an hour ago."

"Ah."

Sally was busy preparing some electrodes, and she caught the interrogative look Trowa shot her.

"I'm just going to monitor his brainwaves for a while," she said.

"I asked her to," Iria added. "It might help me for when I start his retraining."

Trowa nodded to show he understood. Iria frowned and checked her brother's pulse. It was steady, though a bit weak due to the blood loss and the fact that Quatre had overexerted himself while in a weakened state.

"Shouldn't he have woken up again already?" she asked Sally.

"I don't know," Sally answered, calibrating her monitor. "I didn't sedate him again because I felt it would be too much, but I don't know what Chang did exactly…"

Her voice trailed away and she looked at Trowa. He shook his head.

"I don't know," he said. "Some kind of pressure point in the neck, but I'm not an expert."

Sally abandoned the monitor for a while to check Quatre's neck. She had not thought of doing it before, since she had been too busy re-stitching his wrist. She discovered a small finger-sized bruise at the back of Quatre's neck and snorted.

"Looks like Wufei overdid it a bit," she said laughingly. "Nothing to worry about," she added for Iria, who had looked ready to go out and gut Wufei on sight and would probably have done so if not for the fact her brother was in love with him. "Chang knows how to use those kinds of techniques, Iria, but Quatre panicked. He would have bolted, and there was no way I could sedate him again. Twenty-four hours under that stuff is more than enough to make you sick and nauseous, and he needs to eat. But…"

She looked preoccupied now.

"I still think he should have woken up by now too, and I don't think Wufei's manipulation has anything to do with it. It took him out, but it is not supposed to make someone stay unconscious for that long. Even if it was applied with more strength than necessary, it was in no way dangerous and not designed to do more than incapacitate for a short period of time."

She waved her electrodes around.

"Maybe those will help us understand."

Very carefully, Iria and Sally placed electrodes on Quatre's temples, forehead and also on the back of his neck. Quatre didn't even stir as his head was gently maintained in place. Then, Sally switched her monitor on, and small lines began to sway on the screen. Sally's brow furrowed as she looked at those lines. Trowa just waited. He had basic medical training from his days as a mercenary, but reading an EEG was not a part of it. The only thing he knew about those was that when the lines were flat, you were supposed to be in deep shit, and that was the extent of his knowledge.

"I don't understand," Sally muttered, flicking on several switches.

"What?" Iria asked.

"Look at that," Sally answered, pointing at one of the lines. "Carter, come over here and tell me what you see."

The young man obediently approached, bravely ignoring the headache that was probably busting his head open because of the machinery in the walls. He studied the lines on the screen too, especially the line Sally was pointing at.

"Delta waves," he said without a hesitation. "He seems to be in a phase of semi-deep sleep."

"Which is conclusive with the fact that he's basically been knocked out," Sally kept on, "but we shouldn't be able to detect those waves now. He should be on the way to waking up, so we should be looking at theta waves, not delta. And… look at those."

"It can't be!" Carter exclaimed, and Iria shook her head in disbelief.

Trowa patiently suppressed the urge to yell at everyone to start speaking English again and just held on to Quatre's hand. He had no idea what was exactly going on, but it didn't look good. Or more exactly, it didn't look like any of the physicians in the room had ever seen this.

"His beta waves are…" Carter started, only to be interrupted by Iria.

"Relevant with deep REM sleep," she said.

Sally took out a small lamp and checked Quatre's eyes, confirming that his body was indeed supposed to be in a deep REM sleep phase, although the delta waves still sniggered at them from the monitor.

"I think I know why," Iria said slowly. "It's because of the empathy. The brain is more awake than the body is. Those beta waves are not even deep sleep beta waves, even if they look like it. They look more like the beta waves you get from an aware patient."

"So basically, his body is sleeping, but his brain is awake?" Carter tried to understand.

"No, he is sleeping, but… it's not easy to explain, but his empathy makes his brain function in what is almost akin to a conscious state even though he's asleep."

"He is dreaming right now," Trowa cut in.

"He would be dreaming if he really was in a deep sleep phase," Iria corrected. "This would be more like… visions?" she suggested.

"But when will he wake up?" Trowa asked, not understanding how Quatre's body could stand up the pressure it must be to have your mind telling you you were awake when you were asleep.

"I don't know," Sally said. "Probably when he wants to."

"What do you mean?" Iria asked, puzzled.

"I mean that I think this state is self-imposed. That he put himself in that kind of trance almost automatically once his body was out of commission. Which means that he will get out of it when he decides to."

"If I can add something…" Carter said nervously. "I noticed that he seemed to be a little better when he managed to have some sleep. Actual sleep, not drug-induced. I supposed that being asleep probably dampened his abilities a bit and helped him stay in touch with his memories. That's why I tried to have him sleep as much as possible without any kind of sedatives, but…"

"But he didn't sleep much," Iria completed. "Don't worry, Dr. Carter, I know you did your best. And I know treating someone like Quatre is difficult, but… I hope he gets better soon so that you can get to know him better."

"So, he's not gonna wake up?" Trowa cut in again.

"Not immediately, at any rate," Iria answered. "But don't worry, Trowa. He will get out of this… trance. There are only so many contradictory signals a body can get before it starts to react. You're staying here, right?"

"Yes. I don't want him to wake up alone."

"Good. Just have someone warn me once he is good enough to have people around. I have several things that need to be attended to, I'm afraid. Sally?"

"I'll just leave the monitor, and…" she handed Trowa something that looked like a com device with only one button, "this is a panic button. Things get out of hand, you press that switch, it's supposed to reach me in a fifty-mile radius around the emission point. Now let's get out before my head splits in two," she added with a groan. "Good luck."

They left, leaving Trowa alone with Quatre and the strange beeping of the brain monitor as background noise. Trowa spent a moment looking at the strange lines that were supposedly saying what was going on in his Quatre's brain, almost hypnotized by them. When they started to get blurry, though, he shook his head, trying to clear his vision. He was tired. He had slept far less than his comrades, and none at all ever since Quatre had disappeared again. If he didn't watch it, he was going to fall asleep.

"Just out of curiosity, what did Quatre tell you before he… you know," Sally asked Carter with a ghost of a smile.

Carter frowned. He was not amused by the situation, and being clocked cold by Quatre was definitely not on his top ten list of fun things to try again, but Sally Po seemed to find it incredibly funny that he had underestimated the pilot's strength so much. He suspected it was a rather common occurrence for people who were in contact with Quatre on a day-to-day basis.

"I didn't really understand," he finally mused. "Something like… 'access violation'? He talked about 'incoming hostile presence', then, whatever that means, and proceeded to 'remove present threat', that must have been me. And some figures too… like he was calculating the probabilities of success or something. It was weird and his voice was… I don't know, a bit mechanical, almost sounding like a voice synthesizer on a computer, see what I mean?"

When he didn't get any answer, Carter turned around. Both Sally and Iria were standing a few feet behind him, staring at him with wide eyes and faces very pale.

"No," Iria said weakly. "It can't be… Sally?"

"I don't know," Sally said, just as weakly. "I'll have to tell the guys and ask their opinion about it, but it doesn't look good. I… let's not talk about that now. I have to report to Une. Immediately."

She disappeared in her room. Iria remained standing in the middle of the corridor for a while before she managed to regain her composure. She looked at Carter steadily, but he wasn't a psychiatrist for nothing. The woman was afraid, Carter had no idea of what, but she was pretty much terrified, and Carter had come to think that whatever could terrify one of those people had to be formidable or very evil.

"I am sorry, Dr. Carter, Miss Shannon, but unfortunately duty calls. I will remain in contact with you, but I may not be available for most of the rest of the day. Please make yourself at home here, and feel free to use any of the facilities."

She walked away before they even could utter their thanks. Shannon looked very confused, and Carter couldn't blame her.

"What was it all about, doctor?"

"I don't know, Shannon, but whatever it is, it's not good."

~AC 197, March 7th, L4-A001, Winner Mansion, 5:47pm~

Trowa jerked awake when the hand he was holding suddenly constricted. He had fallen asleep without meaning to, still sitting in his chair and head pillowed on Quatre's bed. But the very small movement had him awake in an instant. He sat up slowly, and watched, holding his breath, as Quatre's eyes flickered open. The blond boy blinked several times, trying to assess his surroundings, then apparently felt that someone was holding his hand because he jerked it away and cradled it on his chest. He sat up in the bed and in the same movement managed to get away from what he probably perceived as a potentially hostile presence. Trowa did not make the mistake to be hurt or even to show hurt. Quatre was still too disoriented to know exactly what he was doing, and showing hurt or disappointment would only make things worse. So Trowa just concentrated on being calm, even though he knew he wasn't calm at all, and on breathing quietly. He didn't say a word, patiently waiting for Quatre to realize he wasn't a threat.

Quatre looked at him for a few seconds with a blank look, almost through him. Then… something lit up in the green-blue eyes, some kind of recognition. But this was immediately followed by a small gasp of pain and tears. Quatre opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. He hesitantly reached out with his hand. Trowa did not move at all. Even if he had wanted to, he was too petrified to move. He had no idea what was going on, except that his lover was sending out some deep confusion and he didn't know how the hell he could know that with so much certainty.

He jumped slightly when Quatre's hand touched his cheek. The touch was feather-like, hesitant, but it came from Quatre. He had made the first move. Trowa remained perfectly still and tried to calm the beating of his heart. Quatre first looked taken aback by the reaction, then the look on his face became one of intense sorrow, regret, and guilt.

"T-Trowa?"

Trowa could have fainted when he heard his name spoken in a hesitant whisper. Quatre had recognized him. He really hoped it was for the best.

"You're back again," Quatre said, barely above a whisper, as the tears began to flow down his cheeks.

Trowa frowned. He supposed it was normal that Quatre wouldn't make much sense after what had happened to him, but that made even less sense than what he expected.

"It's a dream," Quatre said, his fingers still against Trowa's cheek. "But it feels so real… just like the other times."

Trowa spoke before he could help himself, and a lot more calmly than he believed himself capable of.

"Why do you think this is a dream?"

"Because I remember. Every time I dream, I know it's really me and not…"

Quatre stopped and shivered.

"I know it must be a dream and you're not really here and it's all my fault. I know I will dream again and again and again, and every time you will be there and tell me it's not my fault and…"

Quatre began to cry in earnest and took his hand away, as if afraid that touching Trowa would make him disappear.

"I'm so sorry, Trowa!" he sobbed. "I didn't want to, I swear! Zero made me! I tried to stop, but… I just couldn't! I didn't want to, I didn't want to…"

Alarmed, Trowa did the only thing he could do. He stared at Quatre and asked for an explanation.

"I don't understand, Quatre. What is wrong? What did you do that you think is your fault?"

Quatre looked up sadly, eyes blurred by tears.

"It's the same every time. Every time I ask for your forgiveness, and every time you just look at me and say that I did nothing wrong, but I did! I did!"

"What did you do, Quatre?"

Quatre hugged himself and looked away.

"I remember now," he said in a low voice. "I remember it so well, it hurts just to remember. I didn't want to."

Trowa wisely decided to remain silent. But Quatre's next words were definitely not what he expected.

"I remember now. I killed you."