Disclaimer - I don't own any part of Gundam Wing and this is purely for fun.

Note - Many thanks to KS for proof-reading, and to all my reviewers out there…Chapter 40 just has to be about 04, hasn't it?

Other People's Emotions:

He'd lost count of the times they'd made him watch Trowa die.

It hadn't been real, of course.

Probably.

It was hard to tell, any more, what was real and what was the product of his imagination.

Even the pain had to be some sort of illusion; they wouldn't really want to damage a valuable prisoner that much.

He'd stopped hearing himself scream at some point, unsure whether he had lost hearing, or whether he'd simply screamed himself hoarse.

None of it had achieved anything, naturally. Just more pain, and nightmare visions, and memories, and everything written down by the white-garbed, masked watchers who studied him like a bug under a microscope.

Quatre forced himself to calm down; panicking wasn't going to help anyone and it was all his fault anyway.

I'm so sorry, Trowa. Please, please, don't come after me.

There was a very slight chance that Trowa mightn't come in any case, after what had happened over the last few months. So slight as to be non-existent, probably, but something to cling to.

Sometimes Trowa could sense him. Trowa had known, on their first meeting, that the boy in the strange Gundam wouldn't hurt him, and he'd sensed things a couple of times during the war; once, when Quatre had been injured on Libra during the fight with Dorothy, and that other time when he'd lost his memory, but he'd still managed to know how badly Quatre needed him.

He'd never consciously tried to link with Trowa though, and he was so messed up it was unlikely to succeed now. There was nothing else he could do, but try to focus and strive for some sort of balance, while he had this brief respite.

He'd never been able to control the empathy; it had come and gone for as long as he could remember, and there had never been any element of control or choice in it.

It was just something that happened. He'd thought at first it was something everyone could do; he couldn't remember exactly when he'd found out that wasn't true. His sisters had thought it cute at first; little Quatre pretending to know what they were thinking. Such a sensitive little boy, and quite extraordinarily intuitive. His nanny had clucked her tongue and ignored most of what he said, thinking him an overly imaginative child being raised in a mainly female household.

Only his father had really disapproved, but then Father disapproved of everything he did, so that was no surprise. Quatre didn't need empathy to see that. He could almost always tell what Father was thinking. He was always worried about something or other, always rushing to cram too many duties into too few hours, with little time to spend at home with his children. He'd tried to be kind when Quatre was very small, bringing him little presents and taking him riding, but any time they spent together was overlaid with some grief to do with Quatre's mother, which hadn't made any sense because it hadn't been Quatre's fault that she'd died.

He was four or five when the problems started, when his older sisters and the servants started to notice that he knew things he shouldn't, or that his father's visitors looked oddly at him sometimes.

It took months before Father began to pay attention to his daughters' complaints that the little boy was - different, or to the servants' gossip that he was cursed.

He'd been taken to see a special kind of doctor, who talked to people instead of sticking them with needles and giving them nasty medicines. The doctor turned out to be a kind, elderly man whose office was full of toys. Quatre painted a picture for him, and played with some blocks and then they made up a story together. It was fun, and the little boy basked in the old man's praise, loving the undivided attention.

Then he was given a picture book and some pencils and told to sit quietly while Father went into the doctor's office to talk.

Quatre ran to the door to listen at once. He knew he wasn't supposed to do that, but his sisters did it all the time, and the housemaids, so it couldn't be all that wrong.

´Quatre´s a very intelligent, creative boy, Mr Winner. You should be proud of him.'

'And his...little problem?'

The doctor laughed softly. 'Young Quatre's an imaginative boy with older sisters; essentially he's an only child and he's lonely. It's not at all uncommon for children to create imaginary friends, or invent special powers to try to get their parents´ attention. I assure you, he'll grow out of it, as soon as he sees it's not getting him any special notice. In the meantime, I would recommend ignoring it completely. He'll soon stop once he doesn't get any response.'

'I see.' Father sounded unusually doubtful. 'Forgive me, Doctor. It's just - some of the things he's said have been ... Quite uncanny. Things he could never have known.'

'Children know a great deal more than we imagine, Mr Winner. I'm sure his sisters don't always guard their tongues around him, or your domestic servants. Quatre's a perceptive, sensitive child, no more than that.'

'I've been thinking of sending him to school. I've spoken to the principal of the Greenlands Academy for Boys, and he is willing to enrol Quatre for next term.'

Quatre stiffened. He knew about school. His sisters had a friend who'd done something bad, so bad they didn't even know exactly what it had been, and she'd been sent to a school where she had to do lessons all the time and got punished for everything.

'That is your decision of course, sir, but I would suggest keeping him home for a little longer. Quatre´s rather immature for his age in some ways, and another year or so might knock these fancies out of him before he starts interacting with his peers.'

'I see. You don't think it would be better for him to have more contact with children his own age?'

The nice doctor sighed. 'Ordinarily, yes; that would be my recommendation. With Quatre, however, it might help for him to wait until he's somewhat more … robust. Little boys can be very cruel, Mr Winner, with anyone they perceive as being different, and your son is very sensitive. You told me yourself he dislikes seeing anyone in pain, even animals, and you may wish to give him a little more time, before sending him into the rough-and-tumble atmosphere of a boys' school.'

'Very well.' Father sighed. 'I'll accept your guidance for this.'

'Try not to worry too much, sir. Quatre would probably benefit from a little time spent with you; little boys need a father's presence in their lives. One last thing, sir, before you leave. He told me he frequently dreams of a woman with a violin, a woman he's never met. Would you have any idea who that might be?'

'My wife, Quatre´s mother, played the violin. But he can't have known that. We have no photographs in the house. I have forbidden all members of the household to speak of her. It is - too painful.'

Quatre ran back to his seat as he heard the scrape of chairs and was sitting when the two men, walked in, surprised when Father ruffled his hair and gave him a faintly shadowed smile.

He'd been sent to school the following year; not the all-boy's academy, but a small private school for both boys and girls, run by a friend of one of his sisters'. The children learned music and painting and were told a new story every day, and he had a special tutor for the violin.

For the first time in his life, he'd had the opportunity to make friends with children his own age, and to realise that if he could feel his new friends were unhappy, he could try to make it better. He'd shared his lunch with Lissa whenever her mother, who went to a lot of parties, forgot to pack her any, and he'd let Adam use his paints on the days Adam dreaded; when his new stepfather picked him up from school.

It was easier, though, most of the time, to pretend the empathy didn't exist. He'd learned to ignore it, to some extent; to shut out the emotions that swirled around his consciousness, unless they were very strong. It hadn't always worked, though; no matter how hard he tried, he'd never quite succeeded in blocking out suffering or despair.

There'd been an incident at a family celebration, a party for his sister Mariam's engagement, even though he knew she loved someone else, and was only doing this to please Father had chosen for her. Quatre had broken down in the middle of the ceremony, crushed under her feelings of despair, and he'd been taken out, aware of Father's chilling disapproval. He'd cried all the way through the stern lecture on family duties and responsibilities, and he'd been sent to bed in disgrace.

Then there'd been that awful time when Father had taken him into the WEI head offices, and he'd been overwhelmed by the building, which resonated with greed and desperation, and he'd had to be taken home.

Otherwise, his moments of empathy had been were isolated enough to be mostly brushed aside, and ignored. He'd been eleven when it all went wrong, when Nasir had died and he'd felt it.

Nasir was the head gardener's son; he was only fifteen but he was already working in the gardens and he was Quatre's friend.. He'd lifted Quatre on to his first pony and led him around the paddock for hours. If he wasn't too busy, he would let Quatre follow him around while he pruned and watered and picked flowers for the house, and tell wonderful stories, about princes and genies and evil demons, and he could carve wooden whistles and play real tunes on them.

He wasn't supposed to know the - thing that had happened to Nasir one night, the thing the bad men had done to him, but of course he'd sensed something was horribly wrong, and then he'd overheard the maids talking about it, whispering that Nasir had killed himself. Quatre had collapsed and been rushed to hospital.

The tests had hurt, some of them, but not so bad as that burning pain in his chest when he'd felt Nasir die.

Father was there by his bedside when they finally left him alone, talking earnestly to the doctors who claimed they could find nothing physically wrong with the little boy, that they'd run every test.

'Physically, Quatre's in perfect health,' the head doctor, a nice lady called Dr. Morton explained. 'I've spoken to him, and he says a friend of his died today; that seems to have affected him deeply.'

Father turned his gaze on Quatre and the boy swallowed nervously. Father would be furious; he wasn't supposed to tell people he could - sense things, but he'd had to tell the doctors what had happened because they'd asked and it was wrong to lie. Also, he didn't want Father to be angry with them for not locating the problem; that wouldn't be fair, when they'd tried so hard to help him.

'What do you mean, son?' Father turned to him, an unusually gentle expression on his face. He'd actually been worried. 'All of your friends are fine; we'd have heard from the school if anything had happened.'

'It was Nasir.' Quatre whispered. 'I felt him die.'

'Not that nonsense again, Quatre. Do you hear me?' Father's face hardened, and he gestured imperiously for the doctors to leave the room.

'But I did! Truly…'

'That's enough, Quatre. You will never speak of these things in front of anyone again, do you hear me?' Father turned to face the doctors in the doorway. 'I'm taking my son home, now.'

'Mr. Winner,' Dr. Morton protested, 'I would advise against removing Quatre while we still don't know the problem.'

'Enough! You said you'd run all of your tests, and he was in perfect health; now he's coming home. Is that understood?'

Quatre didn't dare speak until they were in the car, driving home, when the silence became too much to bear.

'I don't mean to do it! I can't help it...I can't,' he said wretchedly, starting to sob again.

'Stop that snivelling! You're a Winner and my son. Enough of this nonsense. This ends now, Quatre. Your mother would be so ashamed of her only son!'

'I'm sorry,' the boy whispered.

'So you should be. Listen to me now. You are my son and you will inherit everything I have worked for. I've pandered to this nonsense for quite long enough, and it's accomplished nothing. From now on, you will behave in a manner that befits my heir, is that understood? You will stay at home and have private tutors, until I can trust you not to disgrace the family in public. I refuse to have our private affairs gossiped about; already I've heard ludicrous stories about the Winner boy who's able to read people's minds. There will always be gullible fools to believe such nonsense, and our business rivals will delight in spreading these rumours around,' he took a deep breath.

'This ends now, Quatre. I've indulged you too much, and this is the result of it. From now on, you will behave in a manner befitting my son, who will take over WEI one day. I'm taking you to a new doctor tomorrow. And we'll see what he has to say about all this.'

The new doctor had a polished plaque outside his door, proclaiming to be a child psychologist, and this time, there were no toys or games, just an endless stream of questions. It took over an hour, and then Quatre was dismissed to sit in a small waiting room and leaf through a magazine, and wait for Father to talk to the doctor.

The conversation had to have gone badly, because Father was silent on the drive home, and when the letter arrived two days later, with the doctor's name on the envelope, nothing was said either.

It had been hidden in the safe; Quatre had worked out how to open it years ago. Father always used some combination of Mother's birthday, with the numbers rearranged.

It was a thick wad of paper; too much to copy down, so he skimmed through it, listening for any sound outside, and making a note of all the unfamiliar words, to look up later; syndromes and complexes and neuroses with weird-sounding names, and something called latent homosexuality.

That last one sounded bad, especially when he couldn't find it in any of the library books; eventually he had to sneak back into Father's office and use the big computer that didn't have any sort of monitoring.

It was bad, something he'd never even imagined. Something that was utterly forbidden. Yet another thing that was wrong with him.

There were other doctors, called psychiatrists and therapists and consultants; there had been all kinds of treatment, none of which worked, and various drugs, but one made him cry all the time, and the others made him sleepy and none of them stopped him feeling things.

By the time he was into his teens, he'd realised it was simpler to pretend it didn't happen. By then, his tutors, all trusted WEI employees, had discovered he had a gift for numbers; that he could find patterns woven through lists of figures. Father had given him a tight little nod when he'd heard his son might not be quite so useless as he'd imagined, and then decreed that his time would be better spent in study. His favourite horse had been sold; the music lessons had stopped, although he'd managed to hide his violin and sometimes played when no-one was around.

The arguments began to get worse; he could never seem to please Father properly. Meeting the Maguanacs had been a revelation; they'd treated him like he was special, and then there had been Instructor H, who'd been so kind to him. During his training, when he was learning to fly Sandrock, and glorying in it, he'd even managed to forget that he was being trained for war.

And then he'd met the others; Duo, and Heero, and Trowa, most of all. They'd actually liked him. They hadn't treated him like he was different from everybody else, and he'd been so tempted not to tell them the things he could do, except they were bound to find out at some point, and then they'd hate him for not being honest from the start.

Heero had only nodded, and wanted to know that the empathy wasn't likely to endanger any of them, or jeopardise a mission, but then Heero was different too.

Telling Duo had been much harder. Duo was his first real friend, even though he was hard to be around sometimes; a whirling kaleidoscope of fears and dreams and the darkness he called Shinigami, which Quatre could feel sometimes as a separate entity. He'd been wary at first, until Quatre had assured him it happened very rarely and never intentionally, and waited in silence for Duo to digest this.

'So - this thing you can do? It's not just me, right; it works on other people as well?' He nibbled on one end of his braid. 'Like, maybe, Heero, for example? You could tell what he's feeling?'

'He's crazy about you,' Quatre said calmly. He didn't need the empathy to tell that much; even if it hadn't been obvious how strongly those two resonated with each other.

'He doesn't even like me,' Duo scoffed. 'Come on, Quat; all he does is criticise me. He watches me all the time, to see what I'm doing wrong; he makes me go over all my mission specs with him. It's like he doesn't trust me to do the stupidest little thing.'

'Because he cares about you, you idiot. He worries about you, and it gives him a chance to spend time with you. And he's scared you don't like him.'

'You think?' Duo shook his head. 'You're wrong. The last mission we did together, I thought maybe he might be starting to like me a little bit, but now he pretty much ignores me. And he's started pulling my hair; I think he's trying to make me bald.'

'Of course he isn't,' Quatre told him; it was a source of continual amazement that those two still hadn't realised, or acknowledged, how they felt about each other. 'He watches you, Duo, all the time; he remembers all your favourite foods when he's shopping; he always picks shows he thinks you'd like on TV; he bought you all those books because he heard you mention you didn't have anything to read. I think he likes you.' Quatre sighed. 'Work it out, Duo. He pulls your hair because it's an excuse to touch you, and it makes you notice him.'

The thought of telling Trowa had been even worse, but he had to. Trowa deserved to know. Trowa said nothing until Quatre had stammered his way to silence.

'You can tell what I'm thinking now?'

Quatre nodded, miserably, knowing it wouldn't last, that of course Trowa wouldn't want to be his friend after this.

'Good,' Trowa reached out and took Quatre's hand, very hesitantly. 'I'm not good with words, not like you are. It's good that you can tell how I feel about you.' They smiled at each other, and then Trowa's smile faded. 'You can sense other things about me, apart from that? About how I'm feeling?'

'Sometimes,' Quatre admitted. 'I - I just know that you're sad sometimes, when you think about your old life.' Trowa's eyes clouded, as they usually did when anyone mentioned his past.

He'd told Quatre a little about life in the circus, about the animals and the clowns and a girl called Catherine who'd tried to make friends with him. But he never said anything about his life before that. Quatre could tell that bad things had happened to him, though, and that he didn't want to talk about any of it.

He was like Duo in some ways, although Duo hid his emotions behind that joker's mask, and Trowa just hid, as if he just didn't know how to be open with someone.

'I'm sorry,' Quatre said haltingly. 'I get everything wrong. I'm always wrong.'

'Don't say that,' Trowa said fiercely. 'You - you ´re perfect. Really perfect.'

Quatre knew very little about kissing; it always happened at the end of his sister's novels. The hero would clasp the heroine to his broad chest and crush his lips violently over hers.

Trowa's kiss was nothing like that, so he probably didn't know how to do it either.

He just leaned over and brushed his mouth against Quatre's, light as a whisper. It was warm and affectionate and very gentle. Very pleasant, really. Except that he hadn't been able to help imagining what it would be like to be held against Trowa's chest, clasped in his arms.

'I'd never hurt you, Quatre. You do know that, don't you?'

Quatre nodded, not quite daring to breathe, and then Trowa was kissing him again, and it seemed that he did know how to do it after all, or maybe they were inventing it between them.

He hadn't known anything then, an overly-sheltered boy of fifteen, but Trowa had taught him about love and loyalty and how to believe in himself, and he'd forgiven Quatre for all the awful things he'd done, and always been there for him.

Even at the very end, when he'd been fighting Dorothy, Trowa had come when he'd called, and he'd woken up in the hospital ward with Trowa sitting by his bedside, and emanating such deep despair that it was another type of physical ache.

'Trowa, don't!' Quatre pulled himself upright, forcing himself to ignore the pain from where he'd been stabbed. 'I'm all right. I promise. Everything's all right.'

Trowa simply shrugged, his green eyes bleak.

'I'm going to be fine,' Quatre floundered, not knowing what was wrong. Trowa hadn't been injured; the others were all safe. 'The war's over. We can be together, like we talked about.'

'There's always another war.'

'No,' Quatre said firmly. 'It shouldn't have to be like that. People will want peace, after everything that's happened.'

'You sound like that Relena girl.' It wasn't a compliment. 'What do either of you know about the real world?'

We both helped to stop the war,' Quatre said quietly. 'We both lost people we loved. Why doesn't that count as real?'

Trowa said nothing; bowing his head so his hair fell over his eyes, and withdrawing into silence. It was that awful, awful night in San Francisco all over again, when Trowa had tried so hard to push him away. He'd felt so conflicted then, that Quatre hadn't been able to work out what he was really feeling and what he was trying to convince himself he should feel.

'Don't do that,' Quatre snapped. 'Don't do this to us. The war's over; you can stop thinking you have to protect me. We can do all the things we dreamed about.'

'Oh, get real,' Trowa had said harshly. 'They were just dreams. What would someone like you do with someone like me?'

'I love you.' Quatre whispered. He was trying so hard not to start crying, but he couldn't understand why Trowa was doing this, and his wound hurt so badly. 'I want to be with you.'

'Come on, Quat. Be practical, will you? What would you do at a circus?You wouldn't fit into my world, any more than I belong in yours. '

'I'm sure I could learn something,' Quatre said hopefully. 'We could have a caravan of our own, and lots of animals, and I could learn how to cook and everything.'

'Anything but that,' Trowa, finally, smiled slightly. 'I don't think poor Heero's ever going to recover from the liver of doom.'

'It wasn't that bad,' Quatre protested. 'I just didn't realise I was meant to cook it. And you ate it.'

'Only because I'm crazy about you.'

'Really? Then why are you doing this?'

'You're supposed to be the one with the empathy, Quat. You know I love you. I just don't know how it'll work, the two of us.'

He'd tried. He'd tried so hard, but it hadn't been anything like he'd imagined. Their trailer was tiny, and still smelt of the previous occupant, who'd worn cheap perfume and kept a pack of incontinent dogs, and there wasn't even a proper bathroom.

The circus was nothing like the picture books he'd read as a child. He wasn't allowed to play with the animals in case it somehow interfered with their training, and everything was so frantic and fast-paced, and even when he tried to help he'd usually managed to get in the way. He even had to stop watching Trowa perform, after he'd lost his grip one day and fallen from a high wire.

He'd had nightmares for weeks afterwards; Trowa hadn't hurt himself badly but in Quatre's dreams the fall got tangled up with the Zero episode, and Trowa's broken body alternately crumpled on the ground or hurtling through space.

The other people at the circus were friendly enough, but everyone thought he was just a spoilt rich kid who would soon get bored with slumming it. And Cathy had never liked him; the boy who'd turned up and dragged her brother off to war.

He'd stayed three months in the end, resolutely ignoring the reporters, and his family's disapproval, and his own unhappiness. He was with Trowa and Trowa was doing what he wanted to do and that was the important thing.

It had been Trowa, finally, who convinced him to go back, who offered to go with him. His sisters and their families had spent months trying to persuade him to come home; his father's will had named Quatre as sole heir to the Winner empire. It was his duty to fulfil the dead man's wishes, to assume responsibility as the head of the family.

Quatre had pretended he didn't care, but he did; of course he did care about his father's legacy, about showing the world what he was capable of. Even if Father was dead and would never know.

In the end, he'd let Trowa persuade him to return. It would just be for a couple of years; just until the colony had recovered from the effects of the war, and Quatre had learned enough about the business to be able to select suitable managers, and delegate.

In the meantime, they'd still be together; as far as Quat was concerned, that was non-negotiable, whatever else he was willing to do for his family. He loved Trowa and he certainly wasn't ashamed of their relationship, and he had no intention whatsoever of hiding it.

The first weeks back on L4, after they'd left the circus, were an ongoing nightmare. He'd endured the masses of hate-mail and the horrible comments by the L4 media and the protests outside WEI businesses. But even his own sisters were opposed to everything he did; they blamed him for their father's death; for rejecting the Winner principles and fighting in the war; for loving another man, never realising that Trowa's company was the only thing that was keeping him sane.

Trowa hadn't actually been there the day Quatre had tried to kill himself; he'd appointed himself as Quatre's chief bodyguard, and that had somehow spread to him overseeing security for the whole of WEI. He'd been conducting a routine security check on an outlying resource satellite. Quatre had wanted to go with him, but he had meetings, and then his sister Laila had visited for afternoon tea, bringing her two little boys to see their uncle. He'd been playing with the children while Laila had gone to make a telephone call; she'd come back in and started screeching horrible, horrible things at him, accusing him of the vilest things imaginable, and he just hadn't been able to stand it any longer. Any of it.

When he'd finally woken in hospital, they'd all been with him; all five of them, just like during the war. Duo had tried so hard to convince him to come back to Earth, to forget who he was, but by then Quatre had come to realise that the colony needed WEI and WEI needed him. Of course Trowa had supported him, but only Wufei had really understood why he still felt an obligation to his family, to appease his father's spirit.

Everything had all changed after that. In public, Trowa had become no more than his loyal bodyguard, and the masquerade had become their lives for years. He'd had occasional girlfriends; pretty young women who would pose charmingly on his arm for the cameras and deflect attention away from Trowa's presence in his life. It had never been meant to go on for so long, but as soon as L4's economy began to prosper, the political situation began to change, with the ESUN eliminating more and more of the colonies' rights, and making more and more decisions from Earth.

He'd thought he was doing the right thing and he'd ruined it all. He'd been such a fool. He'd tried so hard to protect Trowa and it had all been for nothing.

'Can someone inform me what is going on here?' It was Dekim Barton, and Quatre couldn't help shrinking back. 'I was under the impression that the experiment was still ongoing. Was I mistaken?'

The cluster of scientists-doctors-torturers moved back deferentially as he stalked into the room, and one woman began a halting explanation.

'Apologies, sir. It's merely - we have already exceeded the recommended dosages several times, as you instructed, with no results. If we continue, the subject's sanity may be permanently affected.'

'If there are no results, his sanity is immaterial,' Barton said coldly. 'Provided he can stand up straight, and parrot a few simple phrases, I don't need him sane. You may continue the trials when I've spoken to him.'

'You warned him,' Barton hissed, striking one hand against Quatre's cheek. 'Didn't you? 03's left Earth; I've had his shuttle monitored since he took off, and it just dropped off radar an hour ago. What did you tell him?'

'To ….exercise extreme caution,' Quatre whispered. It hurt to speak but it didn't matter; Trowa was safe, for now at least.

'It won't make any difference. He'll come looking for you; we know where he's headed. It'll be almost too easy; perhaps you'll be more inclined to co-operate when 03's life depends on it.'

'No,' Quatre gasped. 'Please.'

'Fool,' Barton said coldly. 'Don't worry; 03 may have his uses; there's no point to killing him off just yet.' He brandished a folded newspaper in Quatre's face. 'Look at this! He's corrupted 05 for years and now this!'

Quatre raised his head a little to see. The article was titled 'A Royal Romance' and displayed a picture of Zechs and Wufei standing by a sparkling blue sea. Wufei, wearing an elegant, linen suit was glaring stonily at the camera, and Zechs was laughing, his pale hair tossed around them both by the sea-breeze.

'Wedding bells may be in the air for Sanque's very own Prince Charming. His Highness, Prince Milliardo, is said to be about to pop a very significant question to his long-time partner, Chang Wufei. A source with the Palace has revealed to our correspondent that the Prince has officially requested Sanque citizenship for Mr. Chang. Although His Highness has abdicated any official claim to the throne, he is still first in the direct line of succession and as such, can only marry a Sanque citizen.

'The Palace press-office refused to comment, but as yet no official denial has been issued, and a close friend of the couple, who declined to be named, has admitted that handsome prince has been considering this for some time.

'The dreamy duo met at an embassy party three years ago, and have been inseparable ever since, regularly topping the polls for sizzling celebrity couples.

'Prince Milliardo, in addition to sitting on the board of a number of charities, is a critically-acclaimed artist, and his exotic toy-boy is currently studying for his doctorate in Oriental Studies. Obviously, His Highness looks for brains as well as beauty in his partners and…'

'Filth.' Barton snatched the newspaper back before Quatre could finish reading. 'The man's betrayed every cause he ever fought for,' he rasped. 'He deserves to die, and then 05 will can be returned to the path I have planned for him.'