Chapter 93/96 – Orbiting Manoeuvres:

There'd been daffodils in the Embassy gardens the last time we'd stayed there; clumps of them under the trees along the driveway.

There were more formal flower beds now; lining the terraces.

Home, sort of. The girls and Zechs had easels set up on a corner of the terrace, and Wufei and Nat were at the table, reading.

The girls were painting flowers and fairies and rabbits, and Zechs had a large canvas set up beside them. Nothing like his usual stuff; this was a dreamy woodland scene.

'Hey. That's nice. 'Fei, you're not drawing?'

'I was helping the girls.'

'You guys ever think about being parents? You're naturals.' I was joking, sort-of, but he nodded.

'We have talked about it, yes. For the future.'

'Cool. You'd be amazing. Nat, how's it going? What's the book?'

He held it up; a book on fighter jets. 'I think I want to be a fighter pilot.'

'Right.' Looking at the illustration on the front, I could understand why. The plane had full external armour, and an undercarriage bristling with weapons. His Deathscythe.

'Duo, what's going to happen to us?'

I hesitated, gave Wufei a brief nod, and he took the hint, moving over to see what the girls were doing. 'I'm not sure, yet. A lot depends on these people, your grandparents.'

He swallowed. 'You mean, they mightn't want us?'

'No! It's not remotely a question of that. We know they want you; they've been looking for you for years. But we need to talk to them, make sure they're able to give you a proper home.'

'And if they can't? Can we stay with you?'

'If that's what you want, absolutely.'

I'd make it happen, I decided. I'd been pretty hopeless at looking after them so far, constantly passing them on to other people, but I'd do better. Heero and I would.

'We'll sort it out,' I promised. 'Something good, and soon. We need to get you settled, fix you up with school and everything.'

'School.' His mouth twisted. 'That's just for kids.'

'And for people who want to be fighter pilots. You need an education to do stuff like that.'

He looked down at the book in his hand. 'I've missed too much. Nearly two years. The other kids would think I was dumb. I'd never be able to catch up.'

'Of course you would.' God, he was so damn like me, sometimes. 'You're smart. We'd find you tutors. And a good school.'

'Could you teach me to fly?'

'I don't have a licence any more.' Saying it, I wondered if it would ever not hurt. 'But I'm sure one of the others would take you up. You don't have to worry about stuff,' I added quietly. 'I know, you had to take care of your sisters for years. But you've got friends now.'

'Yeah.' He gave me a jerky little nod. 'I just – want to know what's happening to us.'

'I know. Really. But everything's up in the air right now, I'm afraid. Me. Heero. What's happening with Tro and Quatre.'

He nodded again. 'We just met Trowa. Wufei introduced us. He's kind of quiet.'

'I know. Is he around?'

He jerked his head towards the garden. 'He said he wanted to go for a walk.'

'Right. You mind if I go and look for him?'

'Hey! Barton!' He was sitting under one of the cherry trees, looking up at the sky.

No Quatre. OK, I hadn't really expected he'd be there, despite what I'd said to Heero. He had WEI stuff to catch up with. I got that. And it probably wouldn't hurt them to have a bit of time alone, to think.

'Duo!' He was on his feet in a graceful blur. 'It's good to see you!'

'You too!' I grabbed him into a hug. 'Welcome back. Good job on L4, by the way.'

'Couldn't have done it without you.'

'You'd have managed. Maybe. God, it's really, really good to see you. You look great.'

That was true, and just highlighted how lost he'd been looking for weeks. He was wearing decent clothes, and smiling, and looking like he'd actually slept in the last month.

'You too. Everything OK?'

'Sure.' I plonked down on the grass and he followed me down. 'All good. Well, you know. Sorting stuff out.'

'I gather Heero's happy to have you around.'

'I guess.' I pulled up a grass stalk, tickled the end of my braid. 'We're getting there. So. You and Quat?'

'Wow. You actually managed to last all of twenty seconds before asking. I'm impressed.'

'Screw you. What's going on?'

He sighed. 'You know perfectly well. You've been talking to him every day. I'm sure he's told you.'

I made a face at him. 'Yeah, whatever, and none of it adds up. If you guys were really through, you'd have left straightaway.'

'I couldn't just leave. I was at the centre of it all. Une would have had me in shackles if I'd tried to set foot off L4. And Quatre and I had all kinds of practical details to sort out. Paperwork, divvying stuff everything up.'

'That's bullshit, and you know it is,' I snapped. 'Since when have you given a fuck about Une? And if you seriously expect me to believe you spent weeks going through your house and arguing over who gets the paintings and antiques and whatever, you're insane.' I narrowed my eyes at him. 'Did you sleep with him?'

'That's none of your business.'

'Fuck off, Barton. It damn well is, if you've spent the last three weeks in his bed, and then you just walked out on him. You're supposed to care about him. He's supposed to mean everything to you. Did he cry, Trowa, when you walked off on him?'

He rounded on me, then, something dark and raw and ugly in his eyes. Not a surprise; poke a wounded animal and it'll strike back.

'What are so worked up about, Duo? Scared that if Quatre's single, your boyfriend might suddenly decide to make a play for him, actually act on that little crush he's always had? Or would that mean you'd actually have to admit to yourself that Heero has a thing for him?'

'That's the best you've got? Seriously? Sure, Heero's always had a bit of a crush on him. Same as me, same as 'Fei, since we're being all honest and open here. What guy wouldn't look at Quat and not feel something? But to answer your question, no. I know Heero and Quat would never do anything about it. They'd never hurt me like that.'

'Jesus, Maxwell. When the fuck did you grow up?'

I shrugged. 'About time, for some things. Wasn't it? Now, your turn. You still love him.'

'Duo.' He said it very quietly, with that edge to it that I hadn't heard very often. 'Stop. I know what Quatre means to you, but that does not give you the right to talk to me like that.

'Well, if I don't have the right, I don't know who does,' I snapped. 'And you know what? I think I actually do and it's because you've dragged me into this thing between the two of you since you first left him. You could have hooked up with any guy you wanted in the whole damn universe, and you picked me. At first, I thought I was a way for you to piss Quat off, but I wasn't, was I? You picked me because I was the next best thing. If you couldn't be with Quat, you could be with his best friend; the person who loves him nearly as much as you do. And when we were together, you treated me like I was him, half the time.'

'I did not!'

'Yeah, you did. Trowa, I was there, remember? I thought maybe it was just the way you acted when you were with someone, but you were doing all the things Quat liked. Come on, you practically jumped me in Heero's house, and you've known me long enough to know how I'd react to something like that.'

'I didn't think you were just a substitute for Quat,' he said again, but less forcibly. He was thinking about it; I could practically feel him. You could always tell when he was focussing on something; the hair came down all over his face, hiding everything.

'I think I was at some level,' I disagreed softly. 'Tro, it's OK. I get it. It just shows how crazy you are about him.'

'He made me hurt him. Duo, God, you saw the scrapbook he was keeping. He recorded every time I hurt him.'

'You've been hurting him for years,' I said flatly and his head jerked up. 'C'mon, Tro. I know your sex life's never exactly been vanilla. Did you ever do anything to him, hurt him the way you wouldn't have in a scene?'

'It wasn't the same,' he said stubbornly.

'How? What, he never manipulated you into doing something before? He always went up to you and said straight out that he felt he needed to be punished for some shit that probably only existed in his head, or for being alive and using up someone else's air, and could you pretty please cuff him to the bed and smack his ass 'til he felt better? Like hell he did. I know him, Trowa. Sometimes, he just needed…stuff. You were the person he trusted to do that, and to keep him safe, and not judge him for being who he was. You were his anchor, always. And that scrapbook was never about you. You know that, don't you? Or haven't you worked that out? He never meant anyone to see it. It was just a way to punish himself for what he was doing to you. And he was doing it all to try to protect you.'

'How the hell do you still have such faith in him? After everything he tried doing to you?'

'I dunno. The stuff he's been doing the past few months, it never felt real, any of it. When he slit his wrists after the war, that was real. If he'd really wanted to kill himself, he'd be dead. He wouldn't have taken some crappy overdose that only made him sick. And the stuff he did to me – none of it really meant anything. It was like he was going through the motions, but not trying too hard. If he'd actually wanted to ruin my life, I'd be dead or in prison right now.' I shivered, saying it. Thinking it.

'He's sorry,' I said softly. 'For all of it. He loves you. There's only ever been you for him, you know that. He was trying so hard to shield you, that he lost sight of everything else.'

'I know. That's the problem. He didn't trust me enough to tell me about any of it.'

'Oh, that's such bullshit, Barton. Since when have either of you been remotely rational about each other's safety? That time he was in hospital, after he cut himself, it took me and 'Fei and a couple of security guards to stop you strangling some poor nurse who'd accidentally moved him the wrong way, remember? And exactly how many people did Quat have to pay off when you'd attacked them in your house? That was all listed in that damn scrapbook too, wasn't it?'

'I know. Fuck, Duo, I know all of that. And you know what? It doesn't actually make any of it any better. It doesn't stop how I feel.'

'Well, nothing in the universe is ever going to stop the way you feel about him. Yeah, you're pissed at him now. I don't blame you. Shit, all the trouble he's caused. I'll probably thump the stuffing out of him the next time I see him.'

'You will not touch him!' he rapped out.

'Oh, now who's gone all protective?' I grinned at him. 'You don't care about him, but you won't let anyone else touch a hair on his pretty little head, is that it? Get real, Tro.'

'I never said I didn't care about him.'

'So, what's the big plan then? You say you still have feelings for him, but you're going to spend the rest of your natural life wallowing in loneliness and misery? Settle for someone who reminds you of him a little bit?'

'It's what you tried to do,' he said, but it lacked bite.

'Yeah, and look how well that turned out,' I muttered. 'Shit, Tro. Don't pull any of the stuff I pulled, OK? Yeah, you can try to walk away, but he's still in there.' I leaned forward and tapped the side of his head. 'He's so deep in your mind and your heart and your damn soul, that there's no damn way you can just leave him.'

He took a deep breath, picking a bit of bark from the tree behind him and turning it over in his hands. 'On L4, I saw this guy a couple of times. A therapist.'

'Fuck,' I breathed. 'Did Quat know? Or did you have to sneak off?'

'He was the one who suggested it,' he said.

'Quat suggested you go to a therapist? He hates the whole profession with a vengeance.'

'He hates what was done to him,' Trowa said soberly.

I nodded. 'Can't blame him for that, can you?'

He'd told me, the things his father's pet psychiatrists had done in exchange for generous helpings of his father's money. The ways they'd tried to cure him of being gay, of the empathy. If he'd actually encouraged Tro to go within a million miles of a shrink, something godawful bad must have happened.

'There was … an episode,' he began haltingly. 'I don't remember any of it. It was after I shot Dekim Barton, or maybe during it. Quat said he thinks I had some sort of flashback. I don't know. He said he was scared I was going to do something to myself; hurt myself.'

'He felt it,' I said, chilled.

'Yeah. I suppose.' He wrapped both arms around his knees, curling in on himself. 'Didn't he tell you anything about this?'

'No, no I swear. We never talked about it.'

He managed a weak grin. 'Wow. Finally found something you two aren't talking about. Fuck, Duo. I don't remember it. Any of it. I just remember shooting that bastard, and waking up the next morning.'

'Scary.'

'Way beyond. So I went to see this doctor. He was OK. He said I had PTSD. Have had for years.'

I reached out, squeezed his shoulder. 'Welcome to the club, Tro. And, no offence, but I'd kind of guessed anyway. We all have it, a bit. You were just really good at keeping it under wraps. Well, you know, when you weren't pulling guns on anyone who looked sideways at Quat.'

'Very funny. Does it get better?'

'Gets worse first. But, yeah, it gets better. It might really help if you could find someone you trusted. Someone professional to talk to.'

He nodded. 'Quat made a list. Army doctors and stuff. This guy on L4 talked about repressed memories. All that shit. That I'd apparently coped by building my whole life around Quat; focussing on him. And that seeing Barton again, thinking about him and his son, made me start thinking about all that other stuff.'

'Did it help? Talking?'

He shrugged. 'Not really. I'm not great at sharing stuff with strangers. Don't know how you and 'Fei do it. I talked with Quat a bit. I think I need to go off for a bit. Try and get this sorted out. Sort out my head, what I want to do with my life.'

I stared at him. 'You're going into some sort of mental institution? Trowa!'

'No!' He actually laughed. 'Nothing like that. I just need to – I don't know. Figure my life out. What I want to do, since I'm not orbiting Quatre any more. And don't start on that,' he warned. 'OK? I don't know what's going to happen in the future, with us, but I need to do something for myself; this time. And I'm really going to need to know that my friends are supporting me?'