by Ashura
A.C. 197
Dust, as unbroken as new snow, coated the halls and rooms and everything in them. Cobwebs clung to the corners of smoke-stained ceilings, long since abandoned by whatever wove them--the once-great house was now as desolate and empty as a tomb.
In a way, a tomb it was--a grave for the childish hopes and memories of the only two of its children to survive its fall. They woke it now, disturbed its silent slumber with the soft tread of their footfalls and the creak of aged doors.
"So that was my father." Relena stared up at the portrait, its colour dulled from fire and fading, her arms crossed over her chest. "What was he like?"
"A good man," Zechs answered honestly. He did no more than glance at the tired, kind-eyed face staring down at them from the wall; he had made his peace, or failed to, long ago. "Idealistic, but you already know that. Warm, sometimes playful. He loved us. You, me, our mother."
"Our mother," Relena sighed. Another face she had never seen--not even flashes, or glimpses of long-dead memory appearing in her sleep. She thought there should have been something. "Is there a picture of her?"
"It burned," Zechs answered flatly. "Most of them did." The only portraits even recognisable were of his father and himself, but at the disappointment in her eyes, he sighed. "I know where a picture might be. Come, I'll show you."
He led her through the quiet hallways, where the walls themselves seemed to be watching the intruders in their midst, into a small office that while less damaged by the fire than the rest, made up for it with extra inches of dust. It was small, had probably once been cozy, with a small fireplace and antique desk. He brushed the dust from the desk with a gloved hand, tugging lightly at a drawer in its side.
It was locked, but the mechanism was so old and dry that it cracked at even the light pressure, and he slid it open. A small stack of papers was folded inside, and he lifted them out gently, lying them atop the desk where he and Relena could see them.
She unfolded them gingerly, their browned creases protesting the touch, til she uncovered what she sought--Zechs heard her gasp, holding the picture at eye-level in stunned disbelief.
"Zechs," she asked calmly, only the slightest tremble in her voice, "is this our mother?"
A glance at the photo confirmed it, and he nodded. "Yes."
"I don't remember her," Relena continued, her voice subdued.
Zechs rested a hand gently on her shoulder. "You wouldn't," he explained softly. "She died when you were less than a year old. If you don't remember the Darliens adopting you, you wouldn't remember Mother."
A flash of something, he wasn't certain what, across Relena's face. "How did she die?"
He frowned. "I don't remember. That is, I don't think Father ever told me, except that she was sick....Relena, are you all right?"
She nodded, more instinct than honesty. "Of course. I just wonder--is it all right if I take this with me?"
Zechs shrugged, nodded. "Of course, Lena, if it's important to you." He paused, shifting uncomfortably, and finished, "If you're done...we should go. We've been here too long." And the memories are too much for me, little sister, I cannot stay.
She slipped the photo into her pocket with a nod, and followed him outside. She could see the need to leave in his eyes before he mentioned it, had noticed the way the old house overwhelmed him from his posture the moment they stepped inside. So she waited until they were on their way home, and he was engaged in conversation with Lucrezia Noin, before she slid the picture out to look at again.
I'm surprised you didn't notice, Zechs, she thought, then corrected her own mental evaluation. No, I suppose I don't, really. You never really looked at them, the way I did. But how could I not see? And now that I know it...what do I do?"
A pair of pale blue eyes, the soft clear aqua of the shallowest parts of the sea, stared back at her unanswering from the wrinkled photograph, framed by a halo of wispy golden hair.
Quatre paced to the window, peered out the corner of the curtain for the twelfth time in as many minutes, and threw himself impatiently onto the sofa with a sigh. Iria, curled in a chair near the fireplace with a book on her lap, let a chuckle escape.
"Patience, Quatre, patience," she challenged laughingly. "Staring out the window's not going to make her get here any faster."
"I know." He rolled onto his back on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling mournfully. "But--I've got butterflies in my stomach, Iria, just from the way her voice sounded." He laughed ruefully as a slender hand tangled in the trim of the Persian rug spread out on the floor. "I wish Trowa was here, I feel like I'm going to explode."
"I think," Iria said dryly, "that those are two separate problems, little brother."
Quatre tossed a pillow at her, wrinkling his nose as it bounced off her head. One thing a Gundam pilot could be counted on for was good aim. "That's not what I meant and you know it."
"Aa," Iria conceded. "Although I notice you're not denying it, either."
Quatre groaned and buried his head in the remaining cushions. "No, I'm not denying it, now don't be mean. I've been less nervous about going to war, Iria--do you know what it takes for a Gundam pilot to get butterflies?"
Iria didn't even look up from her book. "Mm-hmm. Tall, quiet, brown hair, green eyes, can do a triple backflip from the garden wall and land on his feet."
"You're no help," Quatre grumbled, abandoning the couch to peek out the window again. "Putting pictures like that in my head when I'm not likely to see Trowa for another month. Oh!! There she is!" He watched the car pull up the drive for a heartbeat or two, then grinned at his sister over his shoulder. "I'm glad she got rid of that awful pink thing. I even like pink, but for a car...?" His nervous monologue continued as he fluttered out the door, and down the hall to greet his guest, leaving Iria laughing softly into her book.
Relena, like all of the pilots, had grown taller in the two years since the war had first erupted. On Dorothy's (remarkably good) advice, she had highlighted her hair with streaks of gold, and taken to wearing lipstick. Her face had left behind the cherubic roundness of childhood as the rest of her had blossomed into at least a sophisticated curvaceousness. Once her attention had turned from wars and battles, Dorothy had proven to be a good friend and a surprisingly warm person. She'd made Relena her project, displaying her proudly to the pilots and their friends whenever they saw each other. Quatre got the idea she'd been through Relena's wardrobe with some thoroughness as well, because the dowdy, shapeless ensembles and childish pastels had been replaced with darker, more vibrant colours as time went on. It was a change he approved of, though Duo had told him he was biased. He remembered the discussion well--they were sharing a bottle of wine on Duo's living room floor. Heero had been unable to comprehend how they noticed trivial things like Relena's wardrobe, let alone found it interesting discussion. Trowa had just smiled affectionately.
All of which brought him back to the moment, where Relena was standing in his doorway in jeans and a blue sweater, her hair tied back in a ponytail that bobbed behind her head. "Come in," he told her, with very little preamble, and she slipped inside. She looked--and felt--nervous. "Can I get you something..? Cup of tea, glass of wine..?"
She nodded, tense but pleasant. "Wine would be great, if you don't mind--I'm nervous, Quatre. Though I guess you probably know that already, don't you?" She smiled ruefully as he nodded assent. She'd always been the one who had the hardest time acclimatising to the idea that he could feel what the rest of them did.
Despite the butterflies still doing their own triple-standing-backflips in his stomach, Quatre did his best to make small talk and put her at ease as he poured the wine, handed her a glass, and led her back to the sitting-room Iria had discreetly vacated. She curled into the fireside chair, her eyes momentarily closing as she took a long breath, forcing herself calm. Quatre perched opposite her, on his favourite sofa.
"So..Relena," he began finally, when he thought the butterflies were about to transform into dragons and burst out of his chest, "you sounded troubled, when you called." That was an understatement. "What's on your mind?"
"Do you remember your mother?" she blurted.
She saw the flash of pain in his eyes as he shook his head. "She died having me, Relena, I thought--I thought you knew that." A slight shrug, barely more than a ripple of his slender shoulders, and he forced his composure again. "Why?"
Relena's fingers clenched around the stem of her glass, her eyes searching the amber liquid for answers she couldn't provide. "Have you ever seen pictures of her, though? Or...heard anything about her?"
It was apparent to Quatre that this was leading up to whatever she'd come over to discuss, so he answered honestly. "Pictures, yes. My father had one on his desk when I was little. I don't know too much about her, though. Her--her name was Quatrina; I was named for her. Everyone says she was very sweet, but they would never talk to me about her. It was like there was a big secret." His head fell back onto the arm of the couch. "Well--there was, I guess, it was that I killed her. Nobody wanted to tell me that. They told me I was a test tube baby til I found out for myself." His confession complete, his pale eyes sought Relena's again and he repeated, "Why?"
Relena didn't answer immediately, instead she reached for her purse. Quatre watched her, willing himself to be patient as she drew a wrinkled photo from the leather bag. "Quatre," she asked, nervously, her voice almost too soft to her, "is this a picture of her?"
He rolled off the sofa to reach for the picture, unfolding it to see his own aquamarine eyes staring back at him. Shock momentarily strangled his curiosity as well as his voice, and Relena just watched him, wide-eyed, until he nodded. "Yes. Yes, it is. Why--where did you get this?"
She slid to the floor to kneel next to him, her fingers trembling as she reached for the photograph. "It's my mother," she answered hoarsely. "Katrina Peacecraft of the Sanq Kingdom."
The issue, for Quatre, who was currently engaged in pacing back and forth across the thick Persian rug in the sitting room, was not that he had a sister. He already had twenty-nine of those, fully half of whom he probably wouldn't recognise in a crowd; one more hardly made a difference.
It was the story running beneath the surface that had him tied up in knots.
He'd known for a long time that all of his sisters were half-siblings to some degree or other; test tube babies who shared the same biological father but came from a variety of mothers' egg cells. His own mother, Quatrina, had refused this method of childbirth, despite the difficulties inherent in having babies in space at the time, and thus had died in birthing him. None of this had been easy for Quatre to come to grips with at the time, but time, war, and inability to change the past had worked their magic til he no longer worried over it.
Now, though, it was all returning, and with it came speculation. Relena was older than he, if by less than a year. What would have made the Queen of the Sanq Kingdom leave her home, her people, and her new baby daughter and flee to the space colonies--only long enough to have another baby to the leader of said colony? She couldn't have been there for more than a month before conceiving him.
He sank onto the sofa and dropped his head into his hands, rubbing fists into weary eyes. The more he learned about them, the more he felt he didn't know his family at all.
Relena, he found, had known even less than he did. The Sanq Kingdom had fallen when she was too little to remember it, and she had been adopted by Vice Foreign Minister Darlien. She hadn't known she was a Peacecraft until he imparted the secret to her with his dying breath, and she hadn't wanted to believe it even then. She and Zechs had returned to the ruins of their ancestral home, to make peace with it and lay the ghosts to rest. Zechs had found the picture for her, because she'd never seen her mother, and as soon as she laid eyes on it, she'd recognised Quatre's features staring back at her.
It had shaken her as much as it had him, and she called him almost immediately. That call had led to the previous night's visit, when she showed him the picture and he confirmed their mother's identity.
Neither of them were sure what to do next. While they had tentatively suggested forgetting the entire matter and live on in pretense of ignorance, neither really considered it. There were too many unanswered questions, secrets lying hidden beneath the veneer of idealistic respectability claimed by both eminent pacifist families. They had uncovered a mystery, the only path to peace of mind was to solve it.
Relena had returned home that morning, promising that now her suspicions were confirmed, she would go hunting for clues. Quatre, remembering how effective Relena could be when she was being persistent, held onto the faith that she'd uncover something.
He promised to do the same, which is why he was pacing, impatient, waiting for Iria.
It was after lunchtime by the time she arrived, troubled enough by the disquiet in his face and voice that she spared him the usual teasing barbs she greeted him with. "All right, Quatre," she asked, settling into the fireside chair, "what's the matter?"
"I need to know whatever you remember about my mother," he answered.
It startled her, though she hid it well, and he heard the word 'Why?' almost escape her lips til she bit it back. A sigh, then, her eyes closing briefly as she summoned old memories. "Not very much. I was your age, Quatre, and on my way to university back on Earth. I only really talked to her once." He waited, silent, til she continued. "All right, I'll try. I remember when Father first brought her home--she was very quiet, and a little sad I think. She mostly kept to the house, which is why I didn't see much of her. Before I left for Earth I asked her what it was like there, that was the only conversation we ever had. She said it was beautiful, but torn up by war. I kind of got the idea she'd been trying to escape it." One shoulder quirked in an apologetic shrug. "I'm sorry, Quatre, that really is all I know. I couldn't get to know her any better--I was gone that year, and when I got back she was gone and there you were."
Quatre nodded. It was what he'd expected, no more and no less. "Thanks."
"Quatre..." Iria leaned forward in the chair, resting her chin on folded hands. "What's all this about? Is it something to do with Relena's coming yesterday?"
He shrugged. "Yes...I'll explain it all to you once I get it figured out for myself." He'd been perched on the arm of the sofa, now he let himself fall backward onto it, sprawling. He needed to clear his head, he decided. Run through his options with someone who could convince him he was overreacting, calm his whirling mind, and help him decide on a suitable, sensible course of action. He had a distinct preference as to who that someone could be. "Iria..?"
"Yes, you should go talk it over, no, he won't mind, and he forwarded a new contact number yesterday," his sister answered without ever hearing the question. "Go get packed, I'll work out the flight arrangements."
"Am I that transparent?" Quatre asked, laughing. Even though Trowa always made sure Quatre could reach him, in case there was an emergency, he'd never had to use the information before.
And while this didn't quite qualify as an emergency, he was certain Iria was right. Trowa was hardly likely to object to the visit. And even if he hadn't been so desperate for his lover to help put his head back on straight, it would have been a good excuse, wouldn't it? He practically skipped to his room, and started packing.
"Miss Noin." It had taken most of the afternoon to get her alone, but Relena had been persistent, and determined not to involve her brother unless, or until, it became absolutely necessary.
"What is it?" The woman, who Relena expected would be her sister in the not too distant future, looked up from the letter she was writing expectantly.
"I wondered," Relena asked, "if you know anything about my mother."
It was clearly not a query Noin had been expecting, and she veiled surprise as she shook her head. "Not really, no. She died when you were so young...I wasn't fighting for the Sanq Kingdom for a good while. Why?"
Relena slid the picture from her purse and thrust it out impulsively. Noin, who had worked closely with Quatre far more than Zechs had, needed no further explanation. Her eyes widened, as she took the photo gingerly from Relena's hand. "Oh dear," she said simply, staring at the photograph for a long moment as if to confirm what she already saw as plain. "Have you asked Quatre..?"
Relena nodded. "Yes. It's true." Noin sighed, and Relena crouched on the floor at her feet. "So you see why I need to know. What happened to make her leave..?"
Noin shook her head sadly. "Relena, I was four. It's hardly the sort of thing they would have made public, let alone told children." She sighed, tangling long fingers pensively in her hair. "Why don't you ask Peygan?"
"Because," Relena grumbled, "he's too busy protecting me to ever give me a straight answer." She tossed her hair, frustrated, and sighed. "I will ask him. I'll go back home tomorrow and ask him then."
Zechs returned then, and Relena excused herself for bed. A part of her still wondered why she felt the need to attach herself to her birth family at all. The parents who'd raised her, loved her, done their best to protect her--the ones she grew up calling "Mother" and "Father", those were the people she'd felt close to. The Peacecraft monarchy had ended when she was too young to remember it. Her mother, it seemed, had abandoned her practically at birth, and her father had given her away. Zechs had done his best to sever his own ties, though they were both making an effort to get to know one another as siblings.
But wouldn't it be simpler if she and Quatre just pretended she'd never found that picture?
Scenarios ran through her mind as she brushed out her hair, staring thoughtfully into the mirror without ever really seeing herself in it. It would have to stay a secret regardless of what they found, wouldn't it? The Peacecraft-born vice foreign minister to the colonies and the Winner heir needed to maintain a certain separation, or the citizens of earth and the colonies were likely to become nervous. And their own credibility would be stretched, if it were revealed that the former Sanq queen had fled to the colonies and abandoned her family.
So. Whatever they found would be for their own peace of mind alone. Somehow, that made it easier to stomach. That was reasonable, wasn't it? She would find the answers, if only so that she could lay the family she'd never known to rest.
She really needed to get this off her chest. She stared at the mirror for another long minute, then abandoned it to flop down on her bed and flip on the vidphone. Only one of the Gundam pilots could be trusted with such a delicate subject...and one of those pilots had been privy to all her confidences for the past two years.
She forgot, when she sent the communication, that it was a ridiculously late hour on L2, a time when most respectable people would be asleep. Fortunately, it was not a respectable person who answered the phone.
"Hello--Relena?" Duo Maxwell rubbed the sleep from his eyes, looking only a /little/ bleary, wisps of hair escaping his customary braid to float around his face. "What's up?"
"Can I talk to Heero?" she asked, annoyance rising in her chest when he shook his head.
"Sorry, he's not here. He's out on a delivery, won't be back til Monday." Duo's head tilted, his eyes narrowed, assessing her. "You look stressed," he said after a moment. "Something wrong?"
She shrugged, willing her face into a neutral mask that would have fooled anyone /except/ the king of Masks himself. "I just wanted to talk to him about...some things."
"Well...." Duo shifted, his face wobbling on the screen--probably getting comfortable, though it was hard to tell on the small monitor. "Anything I can do for you instead, Relena? Contrary to popular belief, I can shut up and let other people talk on occasion."
Relena tried to keep her surprise from registering on her face. Talk to Duo? She considered. She'd never given too much thought to Duo after their first auspicious meeting--he and Heero had apparently resolved their difficulties, because they'd been best friends the next time she'd encountered them. From then on, that had been just what she considered him--Heero's friend, a sidekick perhaps, but hardly an entity in his own right. That was probably why it had hurt so much when Heero had elected to stay on L2 with Duo after the war and help him run the scrapyard with Hilde. The three of them seemed to be doing well together as friends and business partners, and Relena had felt abandoned.
She'd gotten over it, in time. Heero was right in his instinct. Without the conflict to keep them together, they had too few common interests, and the few dates he'd agreed to had hardly been satisfactory for either of them. They cared for each other, that was no secret, but it was hardly the passion that great love affairs are made of, or even the deep connection Trowa and Quatre had for each other. It was, she'd been finally forced to admit, puppy love that had evolved into friendship. That was all.
She had stayed friends with Heero. It had never occurred to her that Duo might want to be her friend too.
"Thanks," she said, realising Duo was waiting patiently for her to stop considering and either talk or hang up. "I would like to talk, if you don't mind...."
"Not a bit." He grinned at her, leaning closer to the screen. "I'm a night person, and since I've got the place to myself..." He shrugged. "So let's hear it."
And Relena, keeping her voice low, began to explain.
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