"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped."
--- Elbert Hubbard
"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn."
--- David Russell
Requiem for the Sinners Part 26
Willing Faith
After Duo disconnected their call, Trowa was unable to move, frozen to the chair he was sitting in. Quatre was the first one to do anything. He took out the disk he had recorded the call on and plugged in his laptop, sending the file to the Preventer HQ in Cinq. He did it silently and in a daze, as if he had been struck hard and didn't realize he was bleeding yet.
The silence lingered. Trowa went out and walked in the fields alone, staying out for hours. Quatre sat in his study, a cup of untouched green tea in front of him. He stared at a book without reading it, listening to the ticking of the clock in the hallway. It was better than listening to the run of his own thoughts.
When Trowa finally returned, burrs caught on the bottom of his jeans, bloody scratches on his arms were he had been roaming through the woods, he said four words, his expression completely unreadable.
"He didn't shoot her."
Quatre closed the book in front of him, setting it aside. He didn't remember a word of it, and Trowa's declaration left his mouth dry. "How do you know?" he said, grating the words out, as if it was painful to say them. "How could you say that? We watched him. Dammit, I felt him, Trowa."
Trowa shook his head, sitting in the large armchair across from Quatre. The chair seemed to swallow him. He closed his eyes. "Quatre, I've been a mercenary since I was seven years old. I've seen hundreds of people get shot, and I know what it sounds like when bullets hit flesh."
He opened his eyes, expression resolute. "It doesn't sound like that."
"How can you be sure?" Quatre's fists were tight in his lap. "Why would he do that? I don't... I can't see why. He's closed to me, I don't know what he's feeling at all. You... don't understand what it's like."
The Sandrock pilot rubbed his fingertips across his forehead, as if he had a terrible headache. His voice was tired when he spoke again. "Shit, Trowa. It's like seeing someone you care about dying...and not being able to help them."
"How did he make you feel?" Trowa prodded, softly.
"Furious," Quatre answered forcefully, then lowered his head, cheeks burning. It wasn't embarrassment, Trowa knew. It was anger.
He nodded silently, waiting.
"Sad. And helpless," Quatre added softly. "Because I can't help him. I can't... not after what he did. He destroyed what we worked for."
"You're not helpless. You can hear him when nobody else can. You've always been able to do that for us," Trowa said. He took Quatre's clenched fist gently, uncurling the fingers, running the pad of his thumb over the palm until the muscles relaxed slightly.
Trowa looked down, deep in thought. "... And Maxwell doesn't lie."
"He feels helpless," Quatre said finally, his voice soft. He pulled his hand away gently, cupping it in the other one as if it had been burned. "Or he felt helpless. That's why he's done all of this. We all... we all lived together. We were equal. We're both councillors, but now..."
Quatre swallowed, closing his eyes, but he continued. His brow was furrowed, and his hands were clenched again, as if he wanted to grab the cup of tea on the desk and dash it against the wall. "Now, he's on the fringe. A terrorist again. He feels...vulnerable. And angry."
The two sat in silence. Trowa was the one who broke it.
"He's seen his people starving to death, Quatre, and he couldn't do anything about it. The helplessness you felt was nothing compared to the way it must feel to watch people under your protection die again and again. He's telling us, if we'll listen. He showed us."
"He showed it to more people than us," Quatre answered. His voice was soft, but there was a deep undercurrent of rage in it. His turquoise eyes flashed in the half-light of the room. "And I'm one of the few that lived through it."
Trowa shook his head. "It was the only way. At least...the only way he knew."
Quatre glanced at him, an inexplicable hurt in his gaze. "You really believe that?"
"You know I do." Trowa sighed softly. "The night Noventa took Heero, I told him that if he or Duo hurt you or Wufei, I'd kill them. I didn't say not to help Duo. I simply told him the consequences of making the wrong choice. I didn't think then that I could bring myself to help Duo, not after what he did to you, and Relena, and Heero."
"And now?"
Trowa met his eyes. "I don't think anything will be right for us again until we do."
~*~
"Want me to hold your hair?"
"Oh, fuck off."
Wufei smirked in amusement, leaning against the wall of the unisex bathrooms between the tech and pilot living quarters.
"You know, you don't really strike terror into the hearts of the enemy with your head draped over a toilet, Maxwell."
Duo groaned a little, resting his cheek on the cold toilet seat, eyes closed. He pulled the sunglasses off his face, tossing them onto the tile. He pawed for the handle and flushed, the sound roaring in his ear.
"... You're a real sympathetic guy, you know that, Wuff?"
Wufei saw the braided pilot's black eye and narrowed his eyes in question, but instead of asking it, he walked into the stall next to the one Duo was sprawled in. He pulled a roll of toilet paper off the bolt and walked back to the entrance of Duo's, holding it to him. "Here. Wipe your face and get up."
"I'll sit, thanks anyway." But Duo reached over without opening his eyes and felt until he touched the outstretched roll, taking it. He pulled off a swatch and wiped his mouth, sitting up slowly.
Wufei shook his head, rolling his eyes. "Chun-zi. No wonder you need my help. Maxwell, need I tell you how stupid you are?"
"Ah, you're such an idiot, Maxwell, let me count the ways," Duo muttered, bracing himself against the wall of the bathroom stall to stand shakily. "I think you've went into such detail in the past, Wuff, that by now I could write a thesis on what a moron I am." Duo rubbed his face with both hands. "Ni jue de wo hen ben ma?" the American added softly.
Wufei understood the rhetorical question perfectly. //How stupid am I, Wufei? I can understand half a dozen languages. I know more about mobile suit and ship mechanics than you could learn in an entire lifetime. I organized a mass assassination not even Heero Yuy could stop. So just how stupid does that make me?//
Wufei moved to the side to allow the Deathscythe pilot to pass, making his way to the sinks. Duo turned the faucet and leaned over, waiting until the tepid, dirty water ran clear before cupping his hands under it, splashing his face.
"You never answered my question. Where is Chandler? And Yuy?"
Duo sighed. He pulled a coarse brown paper towel from the stack on the small shelf over the sinks, drying off. "Your girl is fine, just like you guessed, although I'd rather you kept that little scrap of info on the down-low. And I have no idea where the hell Heero is." A bitter, forlorn expression crossed his face; Wufei marked it in the mirror. "If you have to know, he's not exactly talking to me right now."
"What a surprise. Yuy doesn't talk to anybody," Wufei answered disdainfully.
"No, Wuffers. I mean he isn't talking to me period."
Wufei crossed his arms over his chest, raising an eyebrow. "Ah."
"Don't aaah me, you don't even know what the hell's going on around here," Duo replied irritably, tucking his bangs behind his ears nervously, only to have them fall into his face again. He turned his back on Wufei, walking back towards the hall.
"I would if you'd tell me," Wufei said, his voice quiet.
Struck, Duo turned back at him, studying the Chinese man critically. His old friend just gazed back steadily, expression open and impartial. He had the urge to curse and scream and throw something, trying to get something, some kind of reaction, but Wufei was a blank slate.
He sighed, smiling a little. The urge passed as quickly as it had come. Even if he gave in to it, the reaction he got wouldn't be the one he wanted, anyway.
~~~"Let go, sir."~~~
He could wait.
"Tomorrow, Wuff. For tomorrah is anothah day," Duo answered quietly, the mock Southern accent perfectly inflected. "Too tired tonight. You can head to the pilot quarters, drop your stuff off, sack out if you want. May be the middle of the day in Cinq, but it's after the witching hour here, if you haven't noticed."
He opened the door to the bathrooms, stopping for a moment. He spoke without turning around again.
"I won't just tell you. I'll show you."
~*~
"Penny for your thoughts."
Trowa didn't look up from where he was sitting out on the balcony. His eyes were locked with the deep liquid brown pools belonging to the saluki whose head was in his lap, one of Quatre's many dogs. The Egyptian hound's gaze never left him, its feathered tail waving softly back and forth as Trowa stroked its head.
"They're not worth that much," he replied softly, hearing Quatre come up behind him. He felt a solid warmth against the back of his head as Quatre buried his face in his hair. Quatre's arms came around to cross wrists over Trowa's chest.
"Don't say that." Trowa could feel the Arabian man shivering against him. He didn't know whether it was from the chill or something else. Quatre was the one that most often let his emotions control him, his compassion, and he always criticized himself harshly for it. As Duo had always put it, Quatre would blame himself for the fact that space had no air, if he thought he could get away with it.
Quatre saw it as a weakness. But Trowa knew better.
Trowa lifted his head, a night breeze ruffling his bangs across his face. The night was clear, the sky full of stars. The vineyards behind the house seemed to go on forever in the darkness, and looking up at the sky, he felt a pang of homesickness. For which home, he didn't know.
He just didn't know.
They were silent for a few minutes, gazing out into the night. Quatre walked around to the side of him, gazing out over his land like a sentinel. Finally, Trowa heard Quatre's whisper, a touch of warmth in the darkness.
"If you go... if you really believe..."
He slipped his hand into Trowa's, squeezing hard.
"... I'll follow you."
TBC...
Notes:
Ni jue de wo hen ben ma? - (Mandarin) Do you think I'm an idiot?
Chun-zi - (Mandarin) Moron
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