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Share my Thoughts
Share my Thoughts
Rated: PG13
Warnings: Angst
Pairings: 3x4, 1x2, 5xS
Summary: Quatre seems different and the other pilots would do anything to find out what happened to him.
Timeline: After the Endless Waltz.
Archive: Gundanium Line. Previous parts can be found here.
Notes: I'm rewriting this fic and I'll be posting the chapters as soon as they are done. If you read this before (which I doubt) the plot is still the same, I just changed some style things.
Dedication: To Anne, for her patience. Thanks a lot for beta reading this twice. *gives her some chocolate to feed her addiction and some carrots to feed her bunnies*
_____
Chapter IV
After the hypnosis session, Trowa and Quatre headed up to their room to rest. Quatre was very tired and had fallen asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.
That kid Trowa had seen in his vision had grown up to be the person in front of him. How often had things like that happened to Quatre? How many more hidden memories were inside his head? Trowa didn't like the idea of ignoring so much about Quatre's past. It was frustrating, to say the least. Quatre had never been particularly forthcoming with information about himself, and Trowa had thought it was just part of his personality. Quatre believed that he had to be perfect so that others could count on him when something was wrong, so Quatre hid his problems and carried the burden alone.
But he was far from perfect.
Trowa couldn't even be mad at Quatre for not sharing his problems. It wasn't Quatre's fault. But Trowa was mad, and he didn't know what to do with all that anger.
A soft knock on the door interrupted his meditations. Trowa turned around to see Heero looking at him through the half open door. Trowa gave Quatre one last glance, before following Heero downstairs.
Duo, Sally and Wufei were talking quietly when Heero and Trowa entered the living room.
"How is he?" asked Duo, as soon as he saw Trowa.
"He needs to take a nap; he is just tired but he'll be ok," replied Trowa, sitting on the couch.
Duo shook his head. "I couldn't do anything but stand there and watch Quatre get hurt. I tried to do something but she went right through me. Literally."
"It was Quatre's memory," said Wufei. "He didn't know us of us then, so naturally, as we didn't exist in that reality, we could only observe, not interact."
"I know that." Duo gave Wufei a glare. "But it's still frustrating as hell."
"Trowa, has Quatre ever said anything about Sheara?" Heero asked.
"He has many sisters but he doesn't talk about them much. He doesn't really know most of them. He gets calls from them sometimes but those are mostly work related. Normally he doesn't use their names when he talks about them; he just calls them sisters."
"I think we need to find out more about Sheara. I don't know why anyone would want to block this episode from Quatre's mind, but I have the feeling that Sheara Winner is involved." Heero stood up. "I'm going to see what I can find," he said, and headed upstairs to his room.
"Well, I guess I'm stuck with fixing lunch. I'll tell you when it's ready." Duo stood up and disappeared behind the kitchen door.
Trowa simply went back upstairs to check on Quatre.
* * *
Wufei and Sally watched them go and sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment. Sally was playing with one of her pig tails. Meanwhile Wufei was trying very hard to ignore the woman in front of him, but it was proving to be a very difficult task.
"We really appreciate what you are doing for Quatre," he said.
She raised her head, looking a little surprised at his words. "I want to help but I'm still confused about a lot of things. The empathy for example."
"I have to admit that when Quatre first told us about it I didn't believe him." Wufei smiled. Things had changed since then.
"Would you mind telling me about it?" asked Sally.
Sally had been a good friend, and Wufei trusted her. She was trying to help Quatre so she needed to know as much as possible, especially about his empathy. Wufei nodded.
"It was about two months after the Mariemeia incident. We'd been living together for about a week and we were still in the process of redecorating this house; there were boxes everywhere." Most of the things were new. Necessities bought to fill a previously empty house. None of them had a lot of material possessions. Quatre owned many things but there were very few he considered his.
"Duo, Heero and I were in the middle of moving that big piano." Wufei pointed at the piano sitting in the corner of the living room. He didn't know how much it had cost Quatre to bring it from the colonies, but Quatre had said that he was attached to it, and didn't want to leave it behind. "Duo tripped with one of the boxes and lost his balance; he fell, and the piano fell on top of him."
Sally was still looking at the piano. Probably wondering how much it weighed. She had a very analytical mind.
"We managed to lift the piano enough for Duo to crawl out, but he wasn't moving. Later he told us that he was in too much pain to move." For a moment Wufei turned his eyes from Sally to the instrument. "Trowa and Quatre entered the living room moments after the accident. Trowa rushed to our side and helped us steady the piano." Wufei gave a small chuckle. "It might not look it, but that thing is heavy. I sprained my wrist because I didn't have a good grip on it."
"It's heavy," whispered Sally. "It must weight about a thousand pounds."
"Eleven hundred," said Wufei. Quatre had told them after the incident was over. "Three Gundam pilots to lift eleven hundred pounds."
"Don't be obsessed, Chang." Sally looked a bit annoyed, but her lips were still curling slightly. "Be grateful that you managed to lift the thing at all."
She was right; Wufei had to give her that. "Anyway, Duo finally managed to roll out from under the piano. We were distracted with Duo, so we didn't notice right away that Quatre was leaning heavily against the door, and holding his chest so hard that I thought he might be having a heart attack."
Wufei smiled slightly. "Quatre has the bad habit of putting everyone's interests before his. He told us that Duo had a broken rib. He wasn't near enough to give Duo a good look, but he spoke with such certainty..." Wufei looked at Sally. "You would have to see it to understand."
"You don't need to tell me." Sally waved a hand in the air. "I took care of him on Peacemillion after the last battle. The only way I could get him to relax was to sedate him."
"Sounds like him." Wufei leaned back on his chair.
"So," asked Sally, "was Quatre right?"
"Yes, he was." A lock of hair fell on Wufei's face. He pushed it behind his ear. "We took Duo up to his room to rest and to bandage his ribs. That's when he told us that when the piano had fallen he had felt his rib breaking." Wufei didn't need to explain. Sally had been a soldier too, and she was also a doctor. She had seen and experienced enough injuries to understand that, when you know your body, you can tell just by the pain what kind of injury you have. "Duo was convinced that he hadn't been able to move until, suddenly, the pain receded. Since then the pain hadn't been as sharp as before."
Sally was frowning. "Pain doesn't just stop, unless there's nerve damage."
Wufei nodded. "That's what I thought too. Then we realized that Quatre wasn't there with us and Trowa went to look for him. They came back soon. I could see that Quatre was in pain, just by looking in his eyes. Duo noticed too. It took us a while but we convinced him to tell us what was going on." He gave Sally a look. "If you've argued with him, then you know just how stubborn he can be."
Sully chuckled. "Just like another certain fellow I know."
"Quatre said that he was an empath," continued Wufei, ignoring Sally's remark. "We just looked at him silently, and I wondered if he had lost his mind." Wufei shrugged at Sally's hard look. Back then, he hadn't believed in psychic powers of any kind.
"He told us that he has the gift to feel people's emotions. He's had it for most of his life, and that the talent has been evolving; he is getting stronger all the time. At the beginning of the war he had felt a special connection with the four of us, and his gift is more powerful where we are concerned. He knows how to put shields around him so he won't feel our emotions all the time but when the emotions are too strong they can break his barriers." Wufei stopped for a moment, remembering how Heero had stiffened his shoulders when Quatre told him that he had felt him self-destruct.
"Quatre said that since he'd mastered the Zero system, his empathy has been getting stronger. Before, all he could do was feel a reflection of our emotions, but after, he was able to, as he said, 'take them away'." Wufei made the quotation marks with his fingers. "I asked him what he meant by that and he said that he could steal other people's emotions if he wanted to." Wufei stopped for a moment, to let Sally assimilate the new information. "He said that since the connection was stronger with us, he could steal almost an entire feeling."
Sally looked confused. Her mouth was slightly opened but she made no move to talk. She was just waiting for Wufei to continue.
Wufei tried to remember the example Quatre had used to explain it to them. "If, for example, he tries to help his secretary with her stress he can take some of it but she will still feel the emotion, just not as strong. With us he can take almost all the stress away so all that's left is a small shadow of it." Wufei took a moment to gather his thoughts. "Hearing that was disturbing. It isn't every day that one of your closest friends tells you that he's been in your mind and has also been stealing something that should be impossible to steal. Quatre also said that he wasn't able to take all the feelings away, only a specific kind: the bad ones – fear, pain, suffering, sorrow, loneliness."
Sally's eyes were wide. "I'm not sure I'm following this," she said, shaking her head slowly.
Wufei understood how difficult it was to comprehend, and to take in so much information at once. "Just listen now," he said in a calm voice. "Try to understand later."
"I don't know if the others believed him right away," Wufei continued, "or if, like me, they were thinking that he had gone mad. Duo asked Quatre what happened to those feelings he stole. It took a moment for Quatre to reply; he looked at each of us and gave us a small knowing smile, and simply said: I keep them."
Wufei took a deep breath. "It wasn't long before we understood what he meant, but I didn't believe him, and I said it. Apparently the others didn't think the same way I did. Quatre just asked me if he could prove it. I nodded; I didn't know what or how he could prove anything." He smiled at Sally. "I understood when suddenly the dull pain in my wrist almost disappeared. I remember his words. 'It is sprained; you should bandage it.' As soon as he had finished speaking the pain returned to me. After that, I couldn't be skeptical. He had demonstrated that what he'd said was true and he was honorable enough to ask for my permission before going through my head."
"So it's real," said Sally. It wasn't a question.
Wufei nodded. "Very much so."
"How did the others take it?" It was just like Sally to worry about everyone.
"Well, Heero just took it as another important fact, but I know he had a long talk with Quatre sometime after that. Duo offered his support, and then demanded that Quatre stop blocking his pain from him. He doesn't like to see anyone suffer because of him."
"And Trowa?" Sally looked a bit worried.
"Trowa was more difficult." Those had been tense days. Wufei had felt as awkward then as he felt now, telling Sally about it. However she needed to know if she was going to help Quatre. "By then Trowa and Quatre had been together for almost two months, not to mention that they had been very close during the war. Trowa felt betrayed somehow. He was mad at Quatre for not telling him and at himself for not noticing. I had never seen them acting that way. It lasted almost two weeks, but they care too much about each other to let something like that keep them apart. Eventually, they reached an understanding." Wufei paused. "That's why everything is complicated now. Trowa isn't mad at Quatre, because he knows that keeping that information away from him wasn't his choice, but we are all very worried."
Wufei didn't know exactly when it happened but before he realized it, Sally was in front of him, hugging him. She smiled warmly and tucked that stubborn lock of hair, that had fallen on his face again, behind his ear.
"Lunch is ready!" Duo shouted from the kitchen, so everyone in the big house could hear him.
Wufei looked up at Sally and smiled. An invisible barrier that had kept them apart before had just broken, and he was glad.
"Do you want me to go tell Heero and Trowa about lunch?" she asked.
"No. I'm sure they heard Duo."
Sally nodded and they went into the dining room. They could smell fried potatoes and BBQ sauce the moment they came through the door.
"Duo, are you cooking that unhealthy junk food again?" asked Wufei, pretending to be annoyed by his friend but, in fact, looking forward to some grease filled dinner for a change. Of course that didn't mean that the others should know about his secret enjoyment of the richly flavored dishes.
"Cat loves my BBQ wings," said Duo, coming out of the kitchen with a plate filled with said wings in one hand and a bowl with French fries in the other. "Now stop complaining, Wufei; even you need some flavor on your diet now and then."
Wufei sat beside Sally, silently pondering if Duo could read into his annoyed act. His thoughts were interrupted when Trowa and Quatre arrived. Quatre looked much better, the nap had been a good idea and the color had returned to his face. He smiled at everyone in the room as he took his seat.
"Now, where is Heero?" asked Duo, after he finished bringing the drinks to the table.
Heero walked into the room with some papers in his hands. "Here."
"So, did you find anything about Sheara?" Trowa asked, while he helped himself to some chicken wings.
"Not much. I know she used to work as head of the resource satellite Quatre used to live on but she vanished a month after the start of Operation Meteor. I haven't been able to locate her."
Quatre took a sip of his coke. "She is managing one of our satellites near the L4 colony. I talk to regularly; she calls constantly to ask for more funds. Lately she has been pretty insistent; she wants a large sum of money to start a new project. She'll go ballistic when she finds out that I won't be taking her calls for a few days."
"You talk to her?" Trowa didn't look impressed.
Quatre only nodded; he probably didn't want to talk too much and get another headache. By the look in his eyes, he was still suffering from the last one.
"When are you supposed to give her your answer?" Heero asked Quatre.
"I never told her when. She wants it right away but I said I needed time to review the project before I could make a decision."
"And have you?" asked Wufei.
"Not yet. I've been busy with other matters but I was thinking of doing that this week. The files must be in my office somewhere." Quatre took another large sip of his coke. "I'll call Cecilia and tell her to send them over with the rest of the paper work."
Heero nodded. "I would like to take a look at them."
Duo swallowed his last piece of chicken. "Just what are you planning now, Heero?"
"I don't know yet but I have a bad feeling about Sheara." His eyes were narrowed, the way they got when he was concentrating hard on something.
"Oh, I wonder why that is?" said Duo, his voice filled with sarcasm.
* * *
The rest of the meal was quiet. The five ex pilots had known each other for a long time and they no longer felt the need to talk to fill the silent moments with unnecessary words. Sally seemed equally comfortable with them and she too ate her food in silence. Quatre had just finished eating when the doorbell rang.
Trowa stood up and headed for the door. "I'll get it."
He returned a couple of minutes later with a box filled with papers. Quatre sighed the moment he saw them, he had a lot of work to do. If his friends hadn't insisted he would have never taken time off work. He had a lot to do, and if he stopped, he would lose his rhythm, and it would be harder to get back to the piles of paperwork later. After just half a day, he was already dreading reading the proposals, reports, complain letters, and all the other pieces of paperwork that no one but him could look over.
He went to the kitchen and got another coke can from the fridge. At least he would have some sugar to help him get by. "Just give me that, Trowa," he said when he returned to the dinning room. "I'd better start working if I want to ever sleep again." He was almost at the door when he turned around. "Are we going to continue with the hypnosis today?" he asked Sally.
She thought about it for a moment. "Well, even if you can't speak about your memories, you can show them to your friends." Sally bit her lip. "I was wondering if continuing with the hypnosis this soon could affect you or the others, but since you all have been just fine and Quatre has recovered his energy after his nap, I don't think there'll be a problem with it." She paused. "We can continue tonight after dinner, Quatre; you have the entire afternoon to yourself."
Quatre nodded and looked down at the mountain of papers he was supposed to read. 'Yeah,' he thought tiredly. 'All to myself.'
* * *
"What can I help you with, Mr. Winner?" asked Cecilia from the vid phone.
"Cecilia, do you remember the files that were sent from L4364XV a few days ago? I need them so if you could please send someone here with them, it would be great." Quatre turned around when he heard the door opening. Trowa walked in silently and stood behind Quatre, waiting for him to finish the conversation.
"Certainly, Mr. Winner. Anything else?"
"Any urgent messages?" asked Quatre, already fearing the answer.
Cecilia gave a soft chuckle before replying. "Everyone thinks their message is urgent, it's like they need you to take their hand and walk them through the simplest tasks, Mr. Winner." She smiled. "Don't worry, I told them that you weren't paying them so you could do their work for them." Another chuckle. "Don't look so concerned, Mr. Winner. Everything is just fine here; we can manage without you for a few days."
"Thank you, Cecilia, I don't know what I'd do without you," said Quatre, smiling. "Have any of my sisters called?"
"Let's see," she looked at some papers on her desk. "Mirna called at nine to ask about the new contractor for the Majestic project. I told her to call resources for the information. Yael called at nine forty-five about the L2563D shipment. I answered all her questions. Sheara called at ten fifteen; she wanted to know, again, if you had made a decision regarding the L4364XV funds. I told her that you would be away from the office for a few days but that you'll get back to her as soon as you have an answer. Needless to say, she wasn't pleased about it."
Quatre took a deep breath. "Anyone else?"
"Yes. Latife called at eleven. She said she is on Earth and would like to see you. She left a number to contact her."
Quatre smiled and told Cecilia to send him the number. He thanked his very efficient secretary for all her help and cut the connection.
"Are your sisters always this demanding of your time?" asked Trowa, hugging his boyfriend from behind.
"Kind of, but most of the calls are company related so they don't take long. I almost never talk with those who don't work for Winner Enterprises. Some of them call sometimes to ask for money, but I don't talk with my sisters who have their own jobs and don't need the company's support. We never got to know each other that well."
"Who is Latife?"
"She is one of my younger sisters; she is only seven years older than me. I actually met her a few years ago. After the war had finished and I took over Winner Enterprises, she tracked me down and called me; she wanted to meet me." Quatre took a moment to think of how to phrase his next sentence; he hated not being able to talk freely about his childhood. "She was in a boarding school on another colony with some of my other sisters while I was on L4. When she came home, the war had already started so we didn't have a chance to meet. At first, I thought that she wanted money or something like that but it turned out that she is a very successful genetics doctor. She lives on L1 in relative comfort and is happy. I don't see her much but every time we are in the same area, we talk. Last time I was still living on L4 so I guess I forgot to give her the number for the new place."
"You never said anything about her," said Trowa.
"I didn't, did I? I guess I forgot about her too; it's been so long since we last saw each other." Quatre sighed. "That's sad, she is one of the few I truly know."
"You should call her. I think it'll be good for you."
Quatre nodded and sat on the couch, a couple of folders on his lap. "If you don't have anything to do," he told Trowa, "you could keep me company."
Trowa smiled. "I was thinking of doing just that," he said, sitting on the couch beside Quatre. "That's why I brought this book with me."
Quatre smiled and rested his head on Trowa's shoulder. He opened the first folder. "And we have the afternoon all to ourselves."
* * *
Heero opened the door before the delivery man had time to ring the doorbell. He took the file from the man's hands and closed the door without a word. Heero had things to do and there was no time for formalities. If his suspicions about Sheara Winner were right, there was no time to waste.
* * *
TBC
Rated: PG13
Warnings: Angst
Pairings: 3x4, 1x2, 5xS
Summary: Quatre seems different and the other pilots would do anything to find out what happened to him.
Timeline: After the Endless Waltz.
Archive: Gundanium Line. Previous parts can be found here.
Notes: I'm rewriting this fic and I'll be posting the chapters as soon as they are done. If you read this before (which I doubt) the plot is still the same, I just changed some style things.
Dedication: To Anne, for her patience. Thanks a lot for beta reading this twice. *gives her some chocolate to feed her addiction and some carrots to feed her bunnies*
_____
Chapter IV
After the hypnosis session, Trowa and Quatre headed up to their room to rest. Quatre was very tired and had fallen asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.
That kid Trowa had seen in his vision had grown up to be the person in front of him. How often had things like that happened to Quatre? How many more hidden memories were inside his head? Trowa didn't like the idea of ignoring so much about Quatre's past. It was frustrating, to say the least. Quatre had never been particularly forthcoming with information about himself, and Trowa had thought it was just part of his personality. Quatre believed that he had to be perfect so that others could count on him when something was wrong, so Quatre hid his problems and carried the burden alone.
But he was far from perfect.
Trowa couldn't even be mad at Quatre for not sharing his problems. It wasn't Quatre's fault. But Trowa was mad, and he didn't know what to do with all that anger.
A soft knock on the door interrupted his meditations. Trowa turned around to see Heero looking at him through the half open door. Trowa gave Quatre one last glance, before following Heero downstairs.
Duo, Sally and Wufei were talking quietly when Heero and Trowa entered the living room.
"How is he?" asked Duo, as soon as he saw Trowa.
"He needs to take a nap; he is just tired but he'll be ok," replied Trowa, sitting on the couch.
Duo shook his head. "I couldn't do anything but stand there and watch Quatre get hurt. I tried to do something but she went right through me. Literally."
"It was Quatre's memory," said Wufei. "He didn't know us of us then, so naturally, as we didn't exist in that reality, we could only observe, not interact."
"I know that." Duo gave Wufei a glare. "But it's still frustrating as hell."
"Trowa, has Quatre ever said anything about Sheara?" Heero asked.
"He has many sisters but he doesn't talk about them much. He doesn't really know most of them. He gets calls from them sometimes but those are mostly work related. Normally he doesn't use their names when he talks about them; he just calls them sisters."
"I think we need to find out more about Sheara. I don't know why anyone would want to block this episode from Quatre's mind, but I have the feeling that Sheara Winner is involved." Heero stood up. "I'm going to see what I can find," he said, and headed upstairs to his room.
"Well, I guess I'm stuck with fixing lunch. I'll tell you when it's ready." Duo stood up and disappeared behind the kitchen door.
Trowa simply went back upstairs to check on Quatre.
* * *
Wufei and Sally watched them go and sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment. Sally was playing with one of her pig tails. Meanwhile Wufei was trying very hard to ignore the woman in front of him, but it was proving to be a very difficult task.
"We really appreciate what you are doing for Quatre," he said.
She raised her head, looking a little surprised at his words. "I want to help but I'm still confused about a lot of things. The empathy for example."
"I have to admit that when Quatre first told us about it I didn't believe him." Wufei smiled. Things had changed since then.
"Would you mind telling me about it?" asked Sally.
Sally had been a good friend, and Wufei trusted her. She was trying to help Quatre so she needed to know as much as possible, especially about his empathy. Wufei nodded.
"It was about two months after the Mariemeia incident. We'd been living together for about a week and we were still in the process of redecorating this house; there were boxes everywhere." Most of the things were new. Necessities bought to fill a previously empty house. None of them had a lot of material possessions. Quatre owned many things but there were very few he considered his.
"Duo, Heero and I were in the middle of moving that big piano." Wufei pointed at the piano sitting in the corner of the living room. He didn't know how much it had cost Quatre to bring it from the colonies, but Quatre had said that he was attached to it, and didn't want to leave it behind. "Duo tripped with one of the boxes and lost his balance; he fell, and the piano fell on top of him."
Sally was still looking at the piano. Probably wondering how much it weighed. She had a very analytical mind.
"We managed to lift the piano enough for Duo to crawl out, but he wasn't moving. Later he told us that he was in too much pain to move." For a moment Wufei turned his eyes from Sally to the instrument. "Trowa and Quatre entered the living room moments after the accident. Trowa rushed to our side and helped us steady the piano." Wufei gave a small chuckle. "It might not look it, but that thing is heavy. I sprained my wrist because I didn't have a good grip on it."
"It's heavy," whispered Sally. "It must weight about a thousand pounds."
"Eleven hundred," said Wufei. Quatre had told them after the incident was over. "Three Gundam pilots to lift eleven hundred pounds."
"Don't be obsessed, Chang." Sally looked a bit annoyed, but her lips were still curling slightly. "Be grateful that you managed to lift the thing at all."
She was right; Wufei had to give her that. "Anyway, Duo finally managed to roll out from under the piano. We were distracted with Duo, so we didn't notice right away that Quatre was leaning heavily against the door, and holding his chest so hard that I thought he might be having a heart attack."
Wufei smiled slightly. "Quatre has the bad habit of putting everyone's interests before his. He told us that Duo had a broken rib. He wasn't near enough to give Duo a good look, but he spoke with such certainty..." Wufei looked at Sally. "You would have to see it to understand."
"You don't need to tell me." Sally waved a hand in the air. "I took care of him on Peacemillion after the last battle. The only way I could get him to relax was to sedate him."
"Sounds like him." Wufei leaned back on his chair.
"So," asked Sally, "was Quatre right?"
"Yes, he was." A lock of hair fell on Wufei's face. He pushed it behind his ear. "We took Duo up to his room to rest and to bandage his ribs. That's when he told us that when the piano had fallen he had felt his rib breaking." Wufei didn't need to explain. Sally had been a soldier too, and she was also a doctor. She had seen and experienced enough injuries to understand that, when you know your body, you can tell just by the pain what kind of injury you have. "Duo was convinced that he hadn't been able to move until, suddenly, the pain receded. Since then the pain hadn't been as sharp as before."
Sally was frowning. "Pain doesn't just stop, unless there's nerve damage."
Wufei nodded. "That's what I thought too. Then we realized that Quatre wasn't there with us and Trowa went to look for him. They came back soon. I could see that Quatre was in pain, just by looking in his eyes. Duo noticed too. It took us a while but we convinced him to tell us what was going on." He gave Sally a look. "If you've argued with him, then you know just how stubborn he can be."
Sully chuckled. "Just like another certain fellow I know."
"Quatre said that he was an empath," continued Wufei, ignoring Sally's remark. "We just looked at him silently, and I wondered if he had lost his mind." Wufei shrugged at Sally's hard look. Back then, he hadn't believed in psychic powers of any kind.
"He told us that he has the gift to feel people's emotions. He's had it for most of his life, and that the talent has been evolving; he is getting stronger all the time. At the beginning of the war he had felt a special connection with the four of us, and his gift is more powerful where we are concerned. He knows how to put shields around him so he won't feel our emotions all the time but when the emotions are too strong they can break his barriers." Wufei stopped for a moment, remembering how Heero had stiffened his shoulders when Quatre told him that he had felt him self-destruct.
"Quatre said that since he'd mastered the Zero system, his empathy has been getting stronger. Before, all he could do was feel a reflection of our emotions, but after, he was able to, as he said, 'take them away'." Wufei made the quotation marks with his fingers. "I asked him what he meant by that and he said that he could steal other people's emotions if he wanted to." Wufei stopped for a moment, to let Sally assimilate the new information. "He said that since the connection was stronger with us, he could steal almost an entire feeling."
Sally looked confused. Her mouth was slightly opened but she made no move to talk. She was just waiting for Wufei to continue.
Wufei tried to remember the example Quatre had used to explain it to them. "If, for example, he tries to help his secretary with her stress he can take some of it but she will still feel the emotion, just not as strong. With us he can take almost all the stress away so all that's left is a small shadow of it." Wufei took a moment to gather his thoughts. "Hearing that was disturbing. It isn't every day that one of your closest friends tells you that he's been in your mind and has also been stealing something that should be impossible to steal. Quatre also said that he wasn't able to take all the feelings away, only a specific kind: the bad ones – fear, pain, suffering, sorrow, loneliness."
Sally's eyes were wide. "I'm not sure I'm following this," she said, shaking her head slowly.
Wufei understood how difficult it was to comprehend, and to take in so much information at once. "Just listen now," he said in a calm voice. "Try to understand later."
"I don't know if the others believed him right away," Wufei continued, "or if, like me, they were thinking that he had gone mad. Duo asked Quatre what happened to those feelings he stole. It took a moment for Quatre to reply; he looked at each of us and gave us a small knowing smile, and simply said: I keep them."
Wufei took a deep breath. "It wasn't long before we understood what he meant, but I didn't believe him, and I said it. Apparently the others didn't think the same way I did. Quatre just asked me if he could prove it. I nodded; I didn't know what or how he could prove anything." He smiled at Sally. "I understood when suddenly the dull pain in my wrist almost disappeared. I remember his words. 'It is sprained; you should bandage it.' As soon as he had finished speaking the pain returned to me. After that, I couldn't be skeptical. He had demonstrated that what he'd said was true and he was honorable enough to ask for my permission before going through my head."
"So it's real," said Sally. It wasn't a question.
Wufei nodded. "Very much so."
"How did the others take it?" It was just like Sally to worry about everyone.
"Well, Heero just took it as another important fact, but I know he had a long talk with Quatre sometime after that. Duo offered his support, and then demanded that Quatre stop blocking his pain from him. He doesn't like to see anyone suffer because of him."
"And Trowa?" Sally looked a bit worried.
"Trowa was more difficult." Those had been tense days. Wufei had felt as awkward then as he felt now, telling Sally about it. However she needed to know if she was going to help Quatre. "By then Trowa and Quatre had been together for almost two months, not to mention that they had been very close during the war. Trowa felt betrayed somehow. He was mad at Quatre for not telling him and at himself for not noticing. I had never seen them acting that way. It lasted almost two weeks, but they care too much about each other to let something like that keep them apart. Eventually, they reached an understanding." Wufei paused. "That's why everything is complicated now. Trowa isn't mad at Quatre, because he knows that keeping that information away from him wasn't his choice, but we are all very worried."
Wufei didn't know exactly when it happened but before he realized it, Sally was in front of him, hugging him. She smiled warmly and tucked that stubborn lock of hair, that had fallen on his face again, behind his ear.
"Lunch is ready!" Duo shouted from the kitchen, so everyone in the big house could hear him.
Wufei looked up at Sally and smiled. An invisible barrier that had kept them apart before had just broken, and he was glad.
"Do you want me to go tell Heero and Trowa about lunch?" she asked.
"No. I'm sure they heard Duo."
Sally nodded and they went into the dining room. They could smell fried potatoes and BBQ sauce the moment they came through the door.
"Duo, are you cooking that unhealthy junk food again?" asked Wufei, pretending to be annoyed by his friend but, in fact, looking forward to some grease filled dinner for a change. Of course that didn't mean that the others should know about his secret enjoyment of the richly flavored dishes.
"Cat loves my BBQ wings," said Duo, coming out of the kitchen with a plate filled with said wings in one hand and a bowl with French fries in the other. "Now stop complaining, Wufei; even you need some flavor on your diet now and then."
Wufei sat beside Sally, silently pondering if Duo could read into his annoyed act. His thoughts were interrupted when Trowa and Quatre arrived. Quatre looked much better, the nap had been a good idea and the color had returned to his face. He smiled at everyone in the room as he took his seat.
"Now, where is Heero?" asked Duo, after he finished bringing the drinks to the table.
Heero walked into the room with some papers in his hands. "Here."
"So, did you find anything about Sheara?" Trowa asked, while he helped himself to some chicken wings.
"Not much. I know she used to work as head of the resource satellite Quatre used to live on but she vanished a month after the start of Operation Meteor. I haven't been able to locate her."
Quatre took a sip of his coke. "She is managing one of our satellites near the L4 colony. I talk to regularly; she calls constantly to ask for more funds. Lately she has been pretty insistent; she wants a large sum of money to start a new project. She'll go ballistic when she finds out that I won't be taking her calls for a few days."
"You talk to her?" Trowa didn't look impressed.
Quatre only nodded; he probably didn't want to talk too much and get another headache. By the look in his eyes, he was still suffering from the last one.
"When are you supposed to give her your answer?" Heero asked Quatre.
"I never told her when. She wants it right away but I said I needed time to review the project before I could make a decision."
"And have you?" asked Wufei.
"Not yet. I've been busy with other matters but I was thinking of doing that this week. The files must be in my office somewhere." Quatre took another large sip of his coke. "I'll call Cecilia and tell her to send them over with the rest of the paper work."
Heero nodded. "I would like to take a look at them."
Duo swallowed his last piece of chicken. "Just what are you planning now, Heero?"
"I don't know yet but I have a bad feeling about Sheara." His eyes were narrowed, the way they got when he was concentrating hard on something.
"Oh, I wonder why that is?" said Duo, his voice filled with sarcasm.
* * *
The rest of the meal was quiet. The five ex pilots had known each other for a long time and they no longer felt the need to talk to fill the silent moments with unnecessary words. Sally seemed equally comfortable with them and she too ate her food in silence. Quatre had just finished eating when the doorbell rang.
Trowa stood up and headed for the door. "I'll get it."
He returned a couple of minutes later with a box filled with papers. Quatre sighed the moment he saw them, he had a lot of work to do. If his friends hadn't insisted he would have never taken time off work. He had a lot to do, and if he stopped, he would lose his rhythm, and it would be harder to get back to the piles of paperwork later. After just half a day, he was already dreading reading the proposals, reports, complain letters, and all the other pieces of paperwork that no one but him could look over.
He went to the kitchen and got another coke can from the fridge. At least he would have some sugar to help him get by. "Just give me that, Trowa," he said when he returned to the dinning room. "I'd better start working if I want to ever sleep again." He was almost at the door when he turned around. "Are we going to continue with the hypnosis today?" he asked Sally.
She thought about it for a moment. "Well, even if you can't speak about your memories, you can show them to your friends." Sally bit her lip. "I was wondering if continuing with the hypnosis this soon could affect you or the others, but since you all have been just fine and Quatre has recovered his energy after his nap, I don't think there'll be a problem with it." She paused. "We can continue tonight after dinner, Quatre; you have the entire afternoon to yourself."
Quatre nodded and looked down at the mountain of papers he was supposed to read. 'Yeah,' he thought tiredly. 'All to myself.'
* * *
"What can I help you with, Mr. Winner?" asked Cecilia from the vid phone.
"Cecilia, do you remember the files that were sent from L4364XV a few days ago? I need them so if you could please send someone here with them, it would be great." Quatre turned around when he heard the door opening. Trowa walked in silently and stood behind Quatre, waiting for him to finish the conversation.
"Certainly, Mr. Winner. Anything else?"
"Any urgent messages?" asked Quatre, already fearing the answer.
Cecilia gave a soft chuckle before replying. "Everyone thinks their message is urgent, it's like they need you to take their hand and walk them through the simplest tasks, Mr. Winner." She smiled. "Don't worry, I told them that you weren't paying them so you could do their work for them." Another chuckle. "Don't look so concerned, Mr. Winner. Everything is just fine here; we can manage without you for a few days."
"Thank you, Cecilia, I don't know what I'd do without you," said Quatre, smiling. "Have any of my sisters called?"
"Let's see," she looked at some papers on her desk. "Mirna called at nine to ask about the new contractor for the Majestic project. I told her to call resources for the information. Yael called at nine forty-five about the L2563D shipment. I answered all her questions. Sheara called at ten fifteen; she wanted to know, again, if you had made a decision regarding the L4364XV funds. I told her that you would be away from the office for a few days but that you'll get back to her as soon as you have an answer. Needless to say, she wasn't pleased about it."
Quatre took a deep breath. "Anyone else?"
"Yes. Latife called at eleven. She said she is on Earth and would like to see you. She left a number to contact her."
Quatre smiled and told Cecilia to send him the number. He thanked his very efficient secretary for all her help and cut the connection.
"Are your sisters always this demanding of your time?" asked Trowa, hugging his boyfriend from behind.
"Kind of, but most of the calls are company related so they don't take long. I almost never talk with those who don't work for Winner Enterprises. Some of them call sometimes to ask for money, but I don't talk with my sisters who have their own jobs and don't need the company's support. We never got to know each other that well."
"Who is Latife?"
"She is one of my younger sisters; she is only seven years older than me. I actually met her a few years ago. After the war had finished and I took over Winner Enterprises, she tracked me down and called me; she wanted to meet me." Quatre took a moment to think of how to phrase his next sentence; he hated not being able to talk freely about his childhood. "She was in a boarding school on another colony with some of my other sisters while I was on L4. When she came home, the war had already started so we didn't have a chance to meet. At first, I thought that she wanted money or something like that but it turned out that she is a very successful genetics doctor. She lives on L1 in relative comfort and is happy. I don't see her much but every time we are in the same area, we talk. Last time I was still living on L4 so I guess I forgot to give her the number for the new place."
"You never said anything about her," said Trowa.
"I didn't, did I? I guess I forgot about her too; it's been so long since we last saw each other." Quatre sighed. "That's sad, she is one of the few I truly know."
"You should call her. I think it'll be good for you."
Quatre nodded and sat on the couch, a couple of folders on his lap. "If you don't have anything to do," he told Trowa, "you could keep me company."
Trowa smiled. "I was thinking of doing just that," he said, sitting on the couch beside Quatre. "That's why I brought this book with me."
Quatre smiled and rested his head on Trowa's shoulder. He opened the first folder. "And we have the afternoon all to ourselves."
* * *
Heero opened the door before the delivery man had time to ring the doorbell. He took the file from the man's hands and closed the door without a word. Heero had things to do and there was no time for formalities. If his suspicions about Sheara Winner were right, there was no time to waste.
* * *
TBC
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I'm really glad that you are enjoying it. I wanted to do something different, write a possibility of what might have happened, even if in a way is a little darker than other stories.
I'll do my best to post more soon, but currently I0m working on other projects, and my beta reader is having RL problems so things are a little behind.
Thank you again for commenting. ^_^