The Perfect Soldier

Chapter 19: Broken Masks

For nearly a week, all shuttle ports in the L1 colony were closed.  No exceptions.  The colony huddled beneath the heavy sirens and soot-stained yellow of emergency rescue personnel uniforms.  Fire engines were dispatched to deal with the flames.  Police were dispatched to deal with the few curious colonists.  Trucks were sent to deal with the rubble.  And, after several hours, it was clear that only dogs could be sent to deal with the dead.

As it was in many other casualties, in many other battles, in wars throughout the history of human existence, this was an attack so devastating that no one could have possibly survived.  But what was more, it had left very few bodies to be claimed.  Looking at the crater that remained of the six-story structure (four of which had resided beneath the colony’s surface streets), Taki felt any hope she had struggled to cling to numb.  She swayed for a moment before sitting down hard on the grimy street.  She stared in silence, the presence of her companions forgotten.

It was the same for the others.  The shock, the disintegration of hope.  With the exception of one.  With narrowed eyes, he stepped apart from the others and began to search for the items he would need.

Less than a half an hour later, having donned an equally grubby set of yellow jacket and overalls, Trowa Barton was crossing the maze of rubble toward the lone figure bent over the remains of an elevator.  The jacket and coveralls were nearly black with smoke stains.  But the froth of dark hair was unmistakable.

As he came abreast of his friend, he did not speak.  Heero had heard his approach.  Trowa saw the acknowledgement in the stiffening of the other man’s spine.  Without pause or preamble, Trowa bent to help him in prying the jammed doors open.  Heero had been working at the doors for nearly an hour, but with the uninvited assistance Trowa offered, it was opened in less than ten minutes.  And was found to be empty.

Trowa sat back on his heels, contemplating the setback, feeling the enormity of the task ahead of him.  The emptiness inside of him he kept carefully in check roared for release.  He looked away from the badly beaten elevator and found himself staring into Heero’s blood-shot gaze.  Days without sleep, days of searching through smoke and soot, and days of grief had slowly spread a pink cast over his gaze.  And on his face, the layers of soot, disrupted only by tear tracks that had been dried by the wind and partially obscured by a new layer of grime traced the path of his silent sorrow.  There, on his face, was a history of pain unlike anything Trowa had ever seen.  The grooves carved through soot by the continual presence of a wayward tear pulled at the lock that kept Trowa’s chest together. 

He stared in silence at a new tear shimmering on the edge of Heero’s lashes and heard her voice echo from somewhere inside of him.  “Everyone here knows how to cry...”

The lock snapped and Trowa struggled to swallow down the shattered pieces of his breast bone.   He turned his face away as Duo’s foot steps grew louder. 

Navigating the broken shards of metal was more difficult that it had initially appeared, but the defeat in Heero’s shoulders was the only thing Duo focused on.  How many days had it been since Heero had slept or eaten?  Duo stumbled to a halt next to the crouched figure and placed a gloved hand on his shoulder. 

“Come on, Heero.  You need to rest.”

Heero ignored him.

Finally, Trowa turned his attention back to the Wing pilot.  “Go,” he ordered.  “I’m taking over your shift.”

A long moment passed before he nodded.  And an even longer one came and went before he attempted to stand.  When Duo’s eyes finally moved over the face of his friend, he shot Trowa an alarmed look to which Trowa merely nodded once.  He said nothing, for his throat was still occupied with swallowing the pieces of himself that were attempting to force their way out.  His schooled features revealed nothing but he could feel his mask crumbling from the inside.

Duo listened to the rush of the shower spray with a heavy heart.  Heero had said nothing during the long trek to the hotel.  Not a word.  Not a glance.  Only a tear.

Duo’s violet eyes fell to the pile of discarded clothes at his feet.  Slowly, he bent and picked up the soiled, flame retardant jacket.  The single tear still quivered on its surface, fighting to make its downward journey.  In its wake, it left a glistening trail of black.  One tear, it seemed, was not enough to cleanse the horrors of the past week.

He collected the discarded items and shoved them into a garbage bag, to be dealt with later.  Then he went to his own duffle and removed a set of clean clothes for Heero.  Duo realized that he knew Heero too well; he had known that the man only traveled with one spare set of clothes.  Shaking his head in something between disgust and bewilderment, he tucked the shirt and slacks under his arm and rounded the bed.

The water was still going in the shower.  How long had he been in there?  More than ten minutes, for sure.  That sent a bolt of alarm through him.  Heero never took more than a five minute shower.

“Heero?  You okay in there?”

Only the spray of the shower replied.

Duo knocked loudly this time.  “Heero?”

Nothing.

“Heero, I’m coming in.  I’ve got some clean clothes for you.”

Still, no reply.  Duo tried the doorknob.  It turned silently.

“Heero?” he said into the steam-filled darkness.  “I’m gonna put these clothes on the toilet seat, okay?  Don’t sit on ‘em when you come out and get ‘em all wet.”

One hand groped along the wall, searching for the light switch.  He wasn’t about to go stumbling around in the dark.  He would be just asking for a skull-cracking fall.  The first lever his fingers encountered got flipped on.  And, just as it so happened, Duo had found the nightlight.  Its soft, orangey glow radiated out above the sink and mirror.  Duo quickly mapped out the bathroom and plotted a clear course to the commode.  As promised, the clothes were placed on the seat.  That completed, Duo couldn’t resist glancing in the direction of the shower’s silent occupant.

Through the translucent curtain, Duo could make out the outline of Heero’s figure.  He wasn’t drowning or sleeping. He was standing.  And the way he stood made Duo pause.

“Heero?”  His voice was hardly more than a whisper.  And, before he’d even thought to do it, Duo had crossed the short distance to the foot of the tub and gently urged the curtain aside a few inches.  “Heero?”

Like all the other times before, he was ignored.  But that didn’t concern Duo nearly as much as the fact that Heero stood, arms crossed over himself, just beyond the shower’s spray.  From where he stood, Duo was presented with Heero’s back.  He rested his forehead in the smooth, plastic crease of the bath liner… as if he were hiding.  And it didn’t look as though he’d even stepped into the water yet.  His hair was still limp, dirty, and dry.

Duo frowned with concern when he noticed the sharp rise and fall of the young man’s shoulders.  He was crying… or trying very hard not to.  This time, Duo reached out as he said his friend’s name.  The instant his hand made contact with Heero’s shoulder, the other youth spun, slapping Duo’s hand away.

“Stay away from me!” he snarled, barring his teeth.

Duo was so startled that his hand hung in midair for a good two or three heartbeats.  “Heero?”

They stood facing each other with only the steam and hurt between them.  Icy, enraged cobalt to shocked, soft violet.  As the moment stretched until a single breath would break it in two, neither young man moved a muscle.

It was the shrill screech of the telephone that finally shattered the tension of the minute.  Without a word, Duo turned and left the bath.  He was silent from the sting of the violent rejection, confused, and still—always—compassionate for the lost soul in the dark room next door.

Duo grabbed the receiver.  “Yeah?”

The voice on the other end of the line wished him a good evening and asked for a Mr. Heero Yuy.  It wasn’t a voice Duo recognized, but he sensed the sadness, the resignation in the caller’s voice.  Automatically, he knew what it was about.

“I’ll get him.”  His voice was strangled and low, but a sound behind him alerted him to the fact that he’d been overheard just the same.  He looked up into Heero’s blank expression, his own eyes communicating his regret that this call had come. 

If Heero saw the compassion in Duo’s eyes, he didn’t care to show it.  He held out a still-grimy hand for the receiver.  Reluctantly, Duo relinquished it.  There was so much he needed to say, but he didn’t know any of the right words.  For once, Duo was forced to keep his mouth shut and watch in helpless silence as his best and most reluctant friend was informed that Yokaze’s remains had been identified.

Taki hadn’t needed to hear the words.  The look on Quatre’s face had told her enough.  More than enough.

And she was pissed.

It was obvious that all of them believed that inane DNA science babble.  What idiots.  Didn’t they know Heero?  Didn’t they realize that she wasn’t really dead?  Couldn’t be dead?  She was the fucking perfect soldier, God damn it.

Taki blew out a frustrated breath and squinted down at the sketchbook in her hands.  Taki had always drawn what was on her mind.  And today, on this rooftop, she was thinking about her best friend.  The face was beginning to take shape on the rough paper.  The dim spark of dry humor in her eyes.  The flat line of her mouth and high arc of her brows. 

“I don’t know how you did it, but you got out of there in time,” she told the unfinished sketch.  “You better have gotten yourself out of there, you wench.  I refuse to believe that DNA crap.  You’re too good to get yourself blown up.”

But Taki wasn’t really, truly convinced of her own words.  She spoke them with too much conviction, too much anger, too little confidence.  The truth was that Heero had always been the sort of person who would have given her life in payment of a debt.  And Taki knew the debt. 

“You bitch, I still want to know how you pulled off that spa thing!”

There had been a sadness about Heero when she’d explained that she’d had to leave her twin behind at the mercy of the organization.  She’d left him behind so that he might finish a war that he was destined to start.  Taki had seen the regret.  Taki had seen the knowledge in her eyes; Heero had known what they’d done to him.  And so she’d broken into the organization’s facility and destroyed whatever hold they’d had over Heero Yuy. 

And the bitch of it was that Heero wouldn’t have even seen this mission as a repayment.  She would have known that nothing could have compensated for what had occurred on the other side of those silent walls.  She would have seen it as the least she could do.

Taki’s hand was still moving over the sketch.  She was trying to get the hair right.  It had fallen over her left eye like this, hadn’t it?  But no, that didn’t look right at all.  With another heated sigh, she reached for her eraser and attacked the mess she’d made of Heero’s hair.

Damn it.  How had it fallen over her brow?  Taki must have spent four years looking at her hair, why was she having such a hard time picturing it?  How had it looked the first time they’d met, at the Federal Reserve Shipping Center?  How had it looked when she’d marched into Relena’s mansion and thumbed through yesterday’s paper?  How had it looked when she’d made her grand entrance wearing her black leather and laces?  How had it looked that night when she’d shown up in a tux on her way to The Red Eye?

She couldn’t remember.

With a strangled sound, Taki tore the page from her sketch book and tossed it into the wind.  “God damn it, Heero!  Why didn’t you sit still long enough for me to take a freaking picture of you?”

Taki bent her head to the next new, clean page of her sketch book.

“Damn you.  You’re not dead.”

Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the mechanical pencil tighter.  Something tinked against her glasses, obscuring the paper beneath her.  At first, she thought it was raining. 

At the edge of the roof of the unmarked building, Wufei Chang stood next to the fire escape.  His gaze slid from the unfinished sketch he’d caught moments ago to the slumped figure seated no more than twenty feet away.  There were no more words for the wind to carry to him, but he’d heard enough.  He’d heard the pain, the disbelief, the helplessness, the rage.  He’d heard all of the things in her voice that he’d ever heard in his own.

With a sigh, he dug down into his pocket and pulled out the DNA results.  The wind toyed with the folded sheet of paper, tugging it towards some unknown destination.  The unknown: finally, Wufei Chang was ready to face that.  He opened his hand and the wind snatched it away.  For a moment, he looked at his empty hand.  Then, he lifted his gaze to the city beyond and he thought he saw the letter flutter at him one last time before falling down toward the streets.

He closed his hand and looked over his shoulder to the lone woman who had sought solace on an unfamiliar rooftop and who had found only pain.  He understood that as well.  He tucked the discarded sketch into his jacket pocket as he approached.  She didn’t seem to hear his footsteps, perhaps the wind was to blame for that.  Nor did she seem to see him as he sat down beside her, perhaps her tears were to blame for that.  But she did stiffen when she heard his voice, penetrating her chaos.

“I’m sorry.”

He watched as she struggled to compose herself, to be strong.  Her dark eyes, defiant and filled with tears snapped to his face.  He did not know what expression he wore—he didn’t care—but whatever it was made her hesitate to speak.  She shivered as he reached out and touched the side of her face in one, long caress.

He said, “Taki.  I’m sorry.”

“She’s not dead,” she stubbornly insisted even as she leaned into his shoulder. 

He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and touched his cheek to hers.  With a shuddering sigh, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to relive the losses of his past as he shared her pain.  At last, he could face this deep pain within him and it was because of this single, strong being. 

In silence, he thanked her as held her while she grieved.

Trowa had watched in silence as one of the workers had approached the board, marker in hand.  It was a list of the confirmed dead, and it was about to add one more name to its ranks.  He’d watched in silence as the clumsy, gloved hand had written out the next name.  Her name.

No.  The name he had given her.  Yokaze.  The night wind.

The name he’d given her out of awe.

He hadn’t cared enough to give her something real, something true.

He hadn’t cared enough to repay her.

But he now understood that he had—did care.  Too late.  Too late.

Now, as Trowa stood at the edge of the mangled debris, his gaze focused on the list of the dead, he indulged his aching chest and allowed himself to breathe.  And allowed himself to remember.  He saw her in her once-of-a-lifetime entrance.  He saw her hanging over the edge of the trapeze platform.  He saw her singing.  He saw her perched over the edge of a monstrous truck engine.  He saw the spark of humor in her eyes.  He heard the resignation in her voice.  But most of all, he dwelt on a single sentence, seemingly so inconsequential: You were alphabetically first, Mr. Barton.

He bent his head and let the significance of that admission roll over him.  His name had been Barton.  Hers had been Zero-one.  And just like that, she’d consigned the unveiling of her own past to last.  A task she would never complete.

“Trowa?”

He turned his head at the sound of Quatre’s voice.  And beside him was Cathy, his sister.  No, she was Triton’s sister, not Trowa’s.  He saw the understanding in Quatre’s eyes.  He saw the compassion in Cathy’s.  He shivered as she placed a hand on his back.

“Trowa?”

He looked away from them and his gaze collided with the list of the confirmed dead.  His throat working to urge the words up from his gut, he took a shuddering breath.

“No,” he said, looking back to the only two people in the world who cared for him.  “That’s not my name anymore.”

Tears glittered on Cathy’s lashes.  Her voice broke as she supplied, “Triton.”

Trowa felt a tiny smile tug at his mouth in reply.  “Aa,” he told her.  She slipped into his arms and hugged him, smearing her tears on his dusty, sweaty shirt.  Over her head, he met Quatre’s gaze.  And while Quatre sensed the sorrow and the regret in his friend, he also witnessed a weight disintegrating from his shoulders as he, at last, accepted Yokaze’s gift.

“C-cathy?”

Trowa and Quatre turned at the sound of George’s inquisitive voice.  She leaned away from her brother’s chest and smiled up at him before looking over her shoulder at George.

“Yes?”

“I’m s-sorry to interrupt.”

She smiled at him.  “No, no, that’s fine.  Is everything all right?”

“Y-yes.  It’s just—“  He glanced at Trowa and then looked back at Cathy.  “Y-you haven’t eaten today and I’m g-going t-to get s-something now...”

Trowa studied the musician.  He’d taken the news better than Trowa had expected, but he could still make out the raw, puffiness of his eyes.

She looked thoughtful.  “I suppose I am hungry.”  She glanced back at her brother but he had nothing for her but a command.

“Eat.”

Cathy managed a smile.  “That’s usually my line.”  She patted his arm and said “Good night” to Quatre before accepting the burly musician’s invitation.

Quatre and Trowa watched her go and then, as one they turned to study the scribbles on the board.  For a long moment, they said nothing.

Then: “I miss her.”

Quatre blinked at his friend’s admission before turning his inquisitive gaze on him.

Trowa sent his friend a look.  “She had a beautiful voice.”

“She did?”

The wonder and surprise in Quatre’s voice urged him on.  “Yes.  And she played the bass.”

Quatre smiled.  “What else?”

Turning his green eyes on his friend, he told him the one thing he would never speak of again.  “She once told me that she cared.”

Quatre watched in stunned silence as twin tears shimmered to life and spilled down the passive face.  It was only the second time he’d ever seen Trowa cry, the first being mere weeks ago on Christmas Day.  But he wasn’t Trowa any longer, was he?  His name was Triton.  He was a man with a sister, a home, a future, and a past.  Quatre understood now that it was no coincidence that Yokaze had been the one to give him all of those things.

~End of Chapter 19~